a printing house in hell

prove to me

2008-12-22T21:30:00.000-05:00

... that God exists.

1. I'm not opposed to "evangelisation" as such. The spread of the gospel of the Kingdom is, as far as I can tell, a great thing. There are, however, two things associated with evangelisation that I am opposed to: the belief that the only valid or "successful" response to evangelisation is conversion, and the refusal of Christians to show the same humility, openness, and willingness to be changed that we demand from the ones we evangelise to. The former is just patently false: conversion entails the replacement of one religious tradition with another, and if evangelisation thus requires the annihilation of one tradition by another, it can hardly be said to be right or worthwhile -- a world deprived of Judaism or Buddhism is not a better place. The latter, meanwhile, is precisely the kind of imperialistic attitude that has contributed to such shameful chapters in the history of Christianity as the Crusades, the Holocaust, and the ongoing persecution of women and homosexuals. Until both of these errors are rectified, Christian evangelisation will be unproductive, unauthentic, and incongruous with the very gospel it espouses.

2. There is an enormous difference between uncertainty and openness to correction.

3. A person who isn't open to correction on an idea forfeits both the honest conviction of its correctness and the right to speak about it with others.

4. Labels never do justice to what they categorise. Still, some labels are too general to even be useful, and others are just wrong or misleading. Some examples: "West" and "East," "Hinduism," "world music," "good" and "evil."

5. I am incredibly irresponsible. I've been aware of this for quite some time (as have most of the people I know), but it's recently been brought into extremely sharp relief for me. I guess it's a difference of degrees of (active) awareness -- at any rate, I know I need to change.

For what it's worth, I don't think the proof is possible, or necessary.

jupiter, and beyond the infinite

2008-12-11T00:35:00.003-05:00

I finished my seminar paper early Tuesday morning. I would've posted it here, but it was 6,018 words long, so I didn't.¹ Instead, I've chosen to feature this shining example of modern scholarship, featured in the Wikipedia article on Interpretations of 2001: A Space Odyssey²:

Wheat's triple allegory

An extremely complex three-level allegory is seen by Leonard F. Wheat in his book, Kubrick's 2001: A Triple Allegory. Wheat states that, "Most... misconceptions (of the film) can be traced to a failure to recognize that 2001 is an allegory - a surface story whose characters, events, and other elements symbolically tell a hidden story... In 2001's case, the surface story actually does something unprecedented in film or literature: it embodies three allegories." According to Wheat, the three allegories are:

1. Friedrich Nietzsche's philosophical tract, Thus Spoke Zarathustra, which is signaled by the use of Richard Strauss's music of the same name. Wheat notes the passage in Zarathustra describing mankind as a rope dancer balanced between an ape and the Übermensch, and argues that the film as a whole enacts an allegory of that image.

2. Homer's epic poem The Odyssey, which is signaled in the film's title. Wheat notes, for example, that the name "Bowman" may refer to Odysseus, whose story ends with a demonstration of his prowess as an archer. He also follows earlier scholars in connecting the one-eyed HAL with the Cyclops, and notes that Bowman kills HAL by inserting a small key, just as Odysseus blinds the Cyclops with a stake.[9] Wheat argues that the entire film contains references to almost everything that happens to Odysseus on his travels; for example, he interprets the four spacecraft seen orbiting the Earth immediately after the ape sequence as representing Hera, Athena, Aphrodite and Paris, the protagonists of the Judgment of Paris, which begins the events of Homer's Odyssey.

3. Arthur C. Clarke's theory of the future symbiosis of man and machine, expanded by Kubrick into what Wheat calls "a spoofy three-evolutionary leaps scenario": ape to man, an abortive leap from man to machine, and a final, successful leap from man to 'Star Child'.[9]

Such compelling insights! But here's the kicker:

Wheat often uses anagrams as evidence to support his theories. For example, of the name Heywood R. Floyd, he writes "He suggests Helen - Helen of Troy. Wood suggests wooden horse - the Trojan Horse. And oy suggests Troy." Of the remaining letters, he suggests "Y is Spanish for and. R, F, and L, in turn, are in ReFLect." Finally, noting that D can stand for downfall, Wheat concludes that Floyd's name has a hidden meaning: "Helen and Wooden Horse Reflect Troy's Downfall".[9]

Simply outstanding. Please buy this book for me. Prof. Wheat could probably use all $66.34 to pay these guys back for a job well done.

Notes:

¹ Those were 6,018 quality words, though.

... Okay, not really, but they're much more sensible than the 24 pages of gibberish that I submitted for a similar seminar last year. I've gone from making no arguments to making grand, specious arguments to finally making relatively modest and defensible arguments.

² Can you tell that I was confused? Although I definitely did better this time around -- I first (and last) saw it when I was maybe twelve or thirteen years old, and I didn't even remember anything about the Moon, or Jupiter for that matter. I did remember those prepacked sandwiches, though.

this may be long overdue

2008-11-25T22:36:00.003-05:00

I incapacitated my left thumb tonight while dicing an onion. There are two lessons to be learned from this experience.

First, I have learned how utterly useless this hand is without an opposable thumb. The simplest tasks became impossibly difficult to accomplish, and my dinner took a lot longer to make than it should've. Through this experience I came to appreciate God's evolutionary gift of the hand-grip to humanity. After all, thumbs don't just let us cook dinner; they give us access to a broad range of precise motor movements that allow us to function on a day-to-day basis. Thumbs have also had a critical function in the historical development of the human race, allowing us to create and manipulate tools, and most importantly giving us the ability to write. Since the written word shapes language -- moreso than the spoken word, which is limited in its scope and thus never makes substantive progress -- and since language shapes the capacity of human thought, our thumbs have had an enormous effect on humanity's intellectual development.

Second, I've determined that I am a bit too careless with sharp objects. Of course, tonight's cut pales in comparison to an incident a number of years ago, when I nearly severed the tip of my index finger; although it might have been nearly as deep, luckily this cut was into the finger length-wise, meaning my fingertip isn't dangling off the end like it was the last time. This was a clean cut (at comparable depths of penetration, those serrated Cutco knives are a LOT more painful), but it was fairly deep -- it bled a lot -- and it's been stinging intermittently, likely because of the onion. I think that from now on, I'll try to exercise some more caution.

I had intended the title of this post to be in reference to my posting after another long delay, but I suppose it might be read in more than one way. More posts will hopefully follow, as another sleepless week approaches.

samorost

2008-11-05T17:27:00.002-05:00

1. I love school. I love my classes, and my professors, and the people I study with, who I refrain from calling "my peers" insofar as they're all a hell of a lot smarter than I am. I've realised (affirmed in a conversation with my dad, who saw the east side of campus for the first time a few weeks ago) that most people hate UT because they spend all their time west of Queen's Park, taking enormous classes in ugly buildings full of people who smell bad and taught by disinterested professors. My experience of UT has been markedly different.

2. I owe very many people very many emails.

3. As a cultural and racial outsider, you cannot come into my country and presume to be able to make moral judgements of it. I don't even have words to describe that kind of utter arrogance. Don't think for a second that the standards of American religiosity or Chinese society apply to Japan. Imagine how you'd feel if an Iranian Muslim missionary came to you and told you there was an endemic pervasion of sin in your country or culture, some special or unique evil that didn't exist in Iran or in Islam. If you want seriously to engage people in their own element, you have to do so on their terms.

4. For that matter, as a cultural and racial outsider you can't even begin to understand what it is to be Japanese. Obviously if "Japanese" to you is either cartoons and game shows or some inaccessible hipster-indie culture, then this isn't even a point that needs further clarification. But that isn't the only difficulty. As a cultural and racial outsider, you can't understand the concept of makoto; you can't understand the Japanese aesthetic; you can't understand the horror of atomic bombs or the profundity of a cup of tea. Likewise, I can't (and don't pretend to) properly understand aspects of other cultures -- I can only observe them as objects, and can never internalise or "subjectify" them.

5. I attribute 2. to my recent busy-ness. It's a fun busy, but it's the kind of busy that I tend to unintentionally lose myself in. Sorry if/that I'm not keeping in touch.

6. Every created thing has a finite existence, which means that no created thing is absolute. It makes no sense to attribute absoluteness to something created (how can something have absolute existence if at some point it didn't exist?). As such, this world, being created, is not absolute. By the same logic: the Church is not absolute; scripture is not absolute; Jesus of Nazareth is not absolute.

7. Different sections of this post have been written at different times, and for that reason there's some divergence in terms of content and tone. These are, in effect, pieces of mental driftwood.

driftwood

2008-11-04T21:44:00.000-05:00

Samorost.

jesus, the man

2008-09-16T19:33:00.004-05:00

I might be the only one who thinks this, but I'm a bit confused and disturbed by the way people think about Jesus.

Theological statements aside, I've noticed that for a lot of people there isn't really much of a line separating "Jesus" from "God." I add the clause "theological statements aside" simply because everyone knows and can readily describe some concept of the Godhead in which there are subtle distinctions between "the Father" and "the Son." But I don't think those conceptual distinctions translate into actual belief or experience.

Why? Well, consider how often you hear people praying to Jesus. I certainly hear it a lot; but isn't the whole idea to pray to the Father in the name of the Son, and not to pray to the Son himself? It might sound like a trivial point, but I think it demonstrates a fundamental lack of understanding of the Godhead as attested to in scripture and Christian experience.

And what about this idea that Jesus was some kind of a magical, unerring being with superhuman powers? I honestly don't know how we can take the idea of the incarnation of God in human flesh seriously if, at the same time, we treat Jesus as beyond-human. Did the Son of God only come halfway in humbling himself? Did he retain his ability to zap people with lightning bolts? Did he never trip over something and fall, or accidentally call someone by the wrong name? Did he really always have perfect blonde hair and a glow of holiness around him? I don't think he did.

We have to be clear in distinguishing the Son of God (and moreover, the Son as incarnate in Jesus) from God, the Father. It's not enough to just profess to it; we aren't Trinitarian Christians if we don't actually recognise the Trinity in our personal experience of faith. That also means getting rid of these bizarre notions of the SuperChrist, the human Jesus who also has the divine Father rolled into him somehow. Jesus was a man; the Son was incarnate in him, but he wasn't some kind of a demigod with supernatural powers.

And that's not just to say that he had the power and never used it. I don't think the power was there at all.¹ How could it be? How does a man, a real man, have in himself the power to enact in the physical world what lies beyond the realm of his physical power?² Moreover, why do we need to ascribe supernatural powers to Jesus to begin with? It's not as if that kind of belief is beneficial to our faith in God or to our understanding of the Son-who-reveals-the-Father. If anything, it's a detriment: it puts distance between us and the Son, while the whole point of the Son's incarnation was to close that gap.

I know there are accounts of miracles performed by Jesus in the Gospels. But I'm not convinced that the point of those miracles was ever to demonstrate the supernatural power of divinity in Jesus. His miracles were always miracles of love and of faith, and specifically of human love and human faith. They were never motivated by or in the service of any other objective, and they were never performed out of himself and his own power. When Jesus disrupted the market outside the Temple in anger, he didn't snap his fingers or pray to God and set shopkeepers on fire; he trashed the place with his own two hands.

If Jesus hadn't been a man, if he'd been some kind of a superhuman being, with a superhuman essence and superhuman powers, then what would our faith be? The incarnation would've been a sham, and the God who became incarnate would be a deceiver. The crucifixion would've been a sham, too, because when the crowd jeered at him, Jesus really could've come down from the cross, even if he chose not to, meaning that he'd never really emptied and humbled himself in the way Paul describes. His death and resurrection would've been meaningless, at least to us. And his ascension would've meant nothing, since he would never have fully descended to begin with anyway. Instead, he would've been a part of some cosmic equation that decided the fate of humanity independently of humanity itself, and we would've had little hope of seeing the face of God in a figure so distant and inaccessible.

If that was the Jesus of my faith, I'd give my faith up in a heartbeat.

----------

¹ CONTROVERSY.

² And of course, we affirm that Jesus was a real man; we are not Docetists.

the cost of eating meat

2008-09-13T18:41:00.003-05:00

A lot of people think I eat too much meat. A lot of people also think I eat my meat too rare. For those of you who aren't aware of it: I love eating meat (with the exception of chicken, which makes me nauseous), and I love eating it as raw as possible. I cook the exposed surfaces of my meat for obvious medical reasons (although I trust the butchers we buy meat from), but on the inside, anything is fair game. I've in fact eaten steaks that were still cold on the inside (although I haven't yet tried anything blue-rare).

In my family, I seem to be the polar opposite of my brother (who has gone vegetarian), and I'm not sure that my parents approve of either of our dietary regimens. Tonight, over a medium-rare steak (an apparent side effect of a new grilling method), I had a discussion with my parents over the merits of rare (and bloody) meat. In the course of this discussion I was called a barbarian with "no sense of culture."

The impetus behind my love of meat and the particular way in which I cook it (i.e. as little as possible) is a bit more complex than I was able to properly express in Japanese at the dinner table. To be sure, I love the taste of meat. I hate when anything, including over-cooking, detracts from that taste. But that's not the only reason why I eat meat the way I do.

I'm keenly aware of the fact that the meat I eat comes from an organism whose only ontological distinction from me is the lack of some degree of advanced brain function, and that this difference is what allows me to legally (and for many others, shamelessly) have it slaughtered for my consumption.¹ Believe it or not, I'm actually not entirely okay with that. The concept of animals being bred on a production line for slaughter is a sickening one (one of the reasons I much prefer game meat to farm meat). It's even worse that the actual slaughtering process is so removed from me that all I see is a paper-wrapped hunk of meat on the kitchen counter. I'm sure that some people mostly only see the finished, cooked product.

The meats and other related produce (eggs, etc) that I eat at home are at least free-run or free-range. This eliminates part of the ethical problem (the problem of strict domestication, or the prolonged deprivation of one organism's livelihood for the benefit of another's) but not all of it. Eating meat still requires the taking of an animal's life, and the slaughtering process is still very far removed from the point of consumption, so that I, as the consumer, can conveniently enjoy all the benefits of meat-eating without even having to consider its moral implications.

This is the second and decidedly more complex reason for why I prefer rare meat. For practical reasons I can't be the one doing the slaughtering; but the less I remove myself from the moral tension-point -- the slaughtering of the animal -- the more directly I can force myself to confront its implications. When the meat is still red, and still bloody, and when cooking and seasoning haven't obscured its taste, then it becomes hard, if not impossible, to ignore its origins.² Granted, it makes the whole eating process less pleasant; but why should killing and eating another living being be an entirely enjoyable experience anyway? It should be at least somewhat challenging, and I should at some point have to consider the moral questions involved, even if in the end I choose to eat the meat anyway. Then meat-eating becomes an involved, almost religious process, in which I can pay at least some small spiritual price for the largely undeserved physical benefit that I receive.

Having said all that, and having made a small case against meat-eating, I should remind you that I do, of course, still eat meat. Again, this is partly because I enjoy it, but also partly for another reason: that I sincerely believe that the human race, being omnivorous in its natural diet, was designed by nature (and ultimately by God) to eat meat. For thousands of years, we participated in the same ecological balance that maintained all life on the planet, consuming and contributing our share of resources, killing when necessary and giving back at other times. Even though we've recently screwed that balance up, I still think eating meat is a natural process, and one that stays true to our evolutionary history.

At the same time, I will admit that I probably do eat too much meat. That's to say that I don't eat meat in accordance with the natural balance that I just described. Historically, while it gave us certain benefits that other sources of nutrition couldn't, meat was always a scarcer resource and more difficult to acquire; this tradeoff maintained a natural dietary balance that had proportionally less meat than other food types. Even the modern economy reflects this balance to some degree, with livestock being costlier to maintain and meat being more expensive to buy than plant-based food sources. Those costs, however, probably haven't scaled perfectly with the natural proportions, and so people like me are able to eat disproportionately large quantities of meat. I am at least trying to explore viable alternatives (i.e. options that don't require me to eat okras and eggplants) to my current meat-heavy diet.

-----------------

¹ I'm not going to get into a discussion of animals and souls, because the fact of the matter is that no one can say anything about an animal's subjective experience. If, on those grounds, you can deny that an animal has a soul, then by that very same logic I can also deny that you have a soul.

² Sorry about the graphic description. I can guess that at least one of you will not enjoy reading this post.

what i want

2008-08-29T22:37:00.004-05:00

- to learn
- to grow
- an umbrella
- a Fender (or Squier Classic Vibe series) Telecaster
- time
- a different kind of memory
- to see visions
- to know Jesus, as a man
- courage
- some answers, but not all
- some questions
- the restoration of trust between people
- an end to selfishness
- an end to prideful comparison
- clocks and watches
- memorable moments
- my mother's cooking
- for people to not be so set in their ways
- more originality
- less cynicism
- more pictures and fewer cameras
- more music and fewer guitars
- openness
- to see God
- for God to not be too appalled by the state of things
- for everyone to take real responsibility
- intensity, but not at the cost of sanity
- intelligence and activity over novelty
- more passion and fewer trends
- less Victorian vulgarity
- an honest and effective stratification of society
- for people to embrace their own culture
- for people to be open to but not enslaved by other cultures
- for friendships to transcend pride and competition
- not to be compared
- patience
- to see the log in my own eye
- for God to be real
- to know God
- love

moral king-of-the-hill

2008-08-23T00:18:00.004-05:00

It's everything the name implies. Only one person can be the moral king of the hill, and that person can only get there by claiming a higher moral ground than anyone else. The objective, in other words, is to out-moral (or out-good or out-conscience) everyone else. If someone gives some change to a homeless person, go put in a couple hours of community service at the soup kitchen. If someone sponsors a starving child in Africa, sponsor an entire family, or else go there yourself and help build a school or a hospital. If someone denounces discrimination against individuals or groups, denounce it louder/better/more. Remember, in the end, There Can Be Only One.

This competitive activity (remember, this is no mere game, and it would be an offence of the highest order to call it one) can be adapted to other social norms. Examples include: Christian-of-the-hill, hipster-of-the-hill, Asian-of-the-hill, brand-whore-of-the-hill (although most of these examples -- particularly the last one -- are already well-established). Ideally, at some point in the future, moral king-of-the-hill and its variants will join the likes of beach volleyball and BMX as newly-inaugurated Olympic sports. Until then, play on!

moksha

2008-07-21T13:30:00.007-05:00

After two weeks of total reclusion, I've finally finished the project I was working on. It's probably the worst paper I've ever written, but it's done, and I'm (sort of) happy. The flip side is that I've inverted my sleep schedule, broken my body down to the point of near-sickness (and it takes a lot to get me sick), and had almost no interaction with the outside world.

After reading hundreds of pages and typing thousands upon thousands of words, I'm understandably not so keen on writing anything substantial here right now. Since I seem to love numbered lists lately, I'll do one of those instead:

1. Getting out to see The Dark Knight on Saturday was the first substantial exposure to other human beings that I'd had in a long time. This might have contributed to my perception of the movie itself -- or maybe it was the absurdly loud sound? (And obviously I'm not against big explosions and all, but when it's been amplified so much that there's audible clipping and distortion, I think it's probably a bit too much.) At any rate, it was a great movie, and Heath Ledger won an Oscar seven months before the ceremony. I'm waiting for the director's cut, which pretty obviously exists, judging by all the absurd editing (which still only managed to shrink the whole thing down to two and a half hours).

2. My parents have left town. As is usually the case when they leave town, my diet is reduced to a strict daily regimen of steak, salad, and bread, with shepherd's pie and pasta on nights when I have time to cook. Cooking utensils are used in a way that absolutely maximises efficiency, taking the cleaning process into account. Copious amounts of cream, salt, and butter are used where applicable, and sometimes where they aren't. I no longer have to sit properly when I eat.

3. Since I won't be playing the guitar outside of my room anymore, I have no need for an amp with a big cab and 12" speaker. In light of this, I'm thinking of selling the Epi, getting one of these, and pocketing the difference. If I do get it, I will resist the urge to tear it apart (although I'll swap tubes).

4. I actually really do appreciate pop music, just not today's pop music. And that's not because I'm trying to be unique or counter-cultural or postmodern or postpostmodern or postpostpostmodern or postpostpostpostmodern; it's because today's pop music sucks. Anyway, I'm really into the Stones right now.

5. For what it's worth, all the bands I listen to are all the top-selling musical acts of all time. So really, I'm not going against pop or the mainstream at all. In fact, I'm as pop/mainstream as it gets.

6. There is no 6.

7. I'm excited about next year. My courses all seem really fun, and I'll be doing a ton of things outside of class at the university too. I know most people find the academy boring, but I love it here.

8. Now that this paper is done, I have more books to read and another, longer paper to write. Guess I should get started.

an apology

2008-07-07T12:21:00.006-05:00

I tend to be headstrong about things. When I form an opinion that I really believe in, I commit myself fully to it. Most of you know this -- there was a fiasco some months back that was largely caused by a particularly contentious opinion of mine.

I apologise for this tendency that I have, because I know it can cause tensions and conflict. I don't think I can help feeling strongly about things (I'm not sure that I should), but I do think I should be doing a better job of filtering those convictions or emotions out of the way I behave. I guess there's a balance that needs to be maintained between indulging my own convictions or emotions and hurting or conflicting with others, even when that balance compromises some truth that I hold to. I'll admit that I don't have an easy time saying this, because Unadulterated Truth is an ideal that I base my understanding of the world on, but I'm starting to think that there are times when even the truth isn't worth it. I think Confucius had something to say about this once.

At any rate, I'm sorry for the hurt I've caused by being so overbearingly assertive. It's something I'm trying to work on.

fear me, --

2008-07-05T20:40:00.022-05:00

-- for I am a Liberal Protestant™; for my faith is based on the Lies of Humanity and not on the Truth of God; for I indulge in vile and idolatrous rites of culture-worship; for I spend money that I should be tithing on indie trends and starving children in Africa; for I have never heard of Regent College or Charles Spurgeon; for I am POSTMODERN; for I associate with Non-Believers; for I listen to Radiohead and snort disdainfully at any mention of "Contemporary Christian Music"; for I hate Conservative Protestantism™; for I am emerging, or am possibly emergent, or perhaps, alternatively, I am emerged; for I invoke the name of Rob Bell (occasionally in vain); and for I speak and write (though not here) with contractions, slang, and profanity.
What a pile of skubala!
I am your worst nightmare, and I am coming for your intellectually underdeveloped and impressionable youth. Be very afraid.

more on love

2008-07-03T10:50:00.000-05:00

Love has a reality beyond the personal or subjective, and by this I mean to say that love isn't just to do with one person's particular experience. Love isn't just a name for an emotion or an action or a type of relationship that we have with someone else. Of course, love encompasses all of these things, but it's also something more, since all of these things are limited to a single frame of reference: if love is an emotion, then it's felt by the lover, and if it's an action then it's enacted by the lover, and if it's a category of experience then it's created and reinforced by the lover. This sort of a definition of love is necessarily one-sided and non-reciprocal, delineating strict roles of "lover" and "loved", so that if we were to describe love between two people we would, in fact, have to posit the existence of two distinct loves. While an understanding like this might seem to make sense when love really is one-sided, I don't think it's the whole picture.

Love is a union, in that it takes two distinct parts and creates from them a single, unified whole. This kind of a union doesn't favour one perspective over the other, but rather elevates both perspectives to the point of recognition of the wholeness of love. In this and other senses, love is literally more than the sum of its parts, and the lovers become capable of so much more when this experience of love becomes a reality for them. There can, for example, be a mutual awareness both of self-needs and of other-needs, as the object of love becomes neither "me" nor "you" but instead "us". This love, by virtue of its all-encompassing nature, creates a context for reciprocity and an according appreciation of the deep complexity of human relationship.

A love like this can't be boiled down to emotional responses or physiological processes or isolated experiences and memories in the way that the personal-subjective model of love can. It's necessarily holistic, since it encompasses the whole of both lovers and their love-experience. That means that love can't be something that only part of the self engages with; in the moment of love, it has to immerse a person's entire being.

scatterbrained

2008-07-01T14:50:00.004-05:00

1. I can't focus when I work, which isn't a good thing, since my work requires focus. I need to establish some kind of regimen, and I need to stop distracting myself. I definitely need to stop listening to AC/DC. For now, I think choral music is most conducive to my productivity, but even then I sometimes derail myself.

2. This post is an exercise in not focusing when I work.

3. I apparently don't have any trouble focusing on other things, or at least on things I'm interested in. I recently spent a night attacking my computer with screwdrivers and shears and twist ties and hockey tape. Here's what I wound up with:

I won't lie; I'm quite proud of my handiwork. After a bit of cable-mangling and re-wiring, I've managed to lower the speeds on all of my fans (by reducing the voltage that's fed to them). They still push enough air to keep everything nice and cool, but they now do it without creating any excess noise. And with the implementation of some makeshift soundproofing (not pictured because it's too awesome), my computer has now become essentially inaudible, even at night.

4. While I don't necessarily agree with him on all his points, I do think Swami Vivekananda has a lot of interesting and important things to say.

5. People say they hear Hendrix's influence on Stadium Arcadium. I don't get it, I really don't. I think John Frusciante's older stuff had a lot more Hendrix in it than this album does. I also have this nagging suspicion that people are just picking up on a distorted-Strat-lead-on-a-Marshall type of sound and equating it with Hendrix on those grounds. At any rate, I definitely think that what stands out about this album is the rhythm playing, and not the soloing.

6. I'm still learning, and I have a long way to go.

problems

2008-07-01T00:22:00.002-05:00

I know they seem like opposites, but could insecurity and pride be two faces of the same problem? To be more specific: can insecurity emerge out of pride? or can pride emerge out of insecurity? Alternatively, could both emerge out of some deeper issue?

It's strange, really -- I know I can be quite insecure, and at the same time I know I can be quite proud, and I know there are often situations when I'm being both. It's almost like a simultaneous lack and excess of love for myself. How does that work?

Circumstances unfolded today in a way that made most people less happy, but I was secretly glad. I guess that's not something to be proud of -- but I don't feel sorry for feeling that way at all. I know the situation wasn't ideal, even after it'd developed the way it did, but anything is better than nothing, and right now I feel like I need everything I can get.

Is that wrong?

love?

2008-06-18T17:50:00.001-05:00

I'm horrified by the prospect of losing friends, whether to distance or to estrangement or to any other circumstances of life. I guess it's because I'm really needy when it comes to being loved. It's easy enough for me to stop loving a person, but I can't handle having love withdrawn from me.

I wonder if all people are wired this way. I, at least, feel like love, both for and from other people, is something I absolutely can't do without.

But that brings me to a question I've had on my mind for a while: if I can't live without love for and from other people, then is God's love enough for me? or is it enough for me to love God? Should it be enough for me? I'm starting to think that it's not.

And this, of course, is hardly the theological lynchpin that undoes Christianity. Actually, I think it adds something beautiful to Christianity. As dangerous as people will say it is to put anything in the place of God, I think it's equally dangerous to equate putting God first with putting God everywhere.

brand-whoring

2008-06-17T09:42:00.004-05:00

So I've had my moments of brand-whoring in the past. There was a period of time when the origin of the clothes I wore meant something to me (I suppose it still does now, but for very different reasons). I bought a computer that I probably could've gotten from another company for a lot less -- granted, I hadn't known about the merits of VAIO when I got the Alienware, but I should've at least done more research. And I made a thousand other purchasing decisions that were motivated primarily by my own vanity (which I masked with a facade of functionality). It all had to do with that disturbing concept of "brand identity," I think. I was, in essence, buying my identity.

I think, with the exception of the laptop, I was always the subtle and more dangerous breed of brand-whore; I hated visible branding, like the little prancing horse or polo player or eagle or penguin or whatever, and preferred to harbour my knowledge of the brand in secret. That way, I could convince myself that I didn't care about the brand, when in actuality it was only that I didn't care about the brand as perceived by others, and it still mattered enormously to me. Of course, I still got occasional kicks out of having dorky Asians come up to me at Sid Smith and be like, "UHHUHUHH, NICE COMPUTER, WUT'RE THE SPECS."

I believe they call this "pride."

I think I care a lot less now. My purchases, when I ever do make purchases (I was recently linked on someone else's blog as a "poor friend" -- what does that tell you?) are now informed by function rather than form. Of course, brand names still matter in terms of a particular reputation (this was especially true when buying computer parts, for example, because I don't plan on having enough money to replace anything that might get fried anytime soon, and so factors like reliability are of enormous importance to me), but I don't any longer feel like my identity benefits positively in relation to the amount of money I spend in order to acquire a specific brand. Obviously that means I'm also saving money, which is never a bad thing.

But I've recently realised that there's another, possibly even more dangerous threat lurking under the surface of this new perspective I've adopted. I don't quite know what to call it yet (although I'm tempted to link it to the concept of "indie," if only because I love taking jabs at "indie"), but I can definitely describe it to you: it's the sort of "counter-cultural" snobbery that defiantly tries to cultivate its own identity in opposition to the mainstream. I'm pretty sure it started out as an intellectual and ideological snobbery that, in the 1990's, turned its attention to the products of culture and commerce. The sheer irony is that it's now commercialised and is more or less the "mainstream"; but even as we struggle to find new ways to be indie, the root problem is still there. Identity is still something that's purchased (and nowadays, it can either cost a whole lot less or a whole lot more than the norm, depending on what kind of indie you are), and in the end, for those of us who, like me, tend to take it to the extreme, there's only an endless cycle of trying to feed the bottomless pit of our own vanity.

I know I refrained from naming any specific trends or tendencies in that paragraph. I'm trying not to because I don't want to offend anyone more than I may have already. But what strikes me about this counter-culture business is that it's just as prone to asserting itself over and against other views as the mainstream mentality is. I tend to see this a lot in discussions about musical instruments, particularly guitars: you have the guys buying high-end gear who won't shut up about "tone," who think nitrocellulose lacquer is the difference between life and death, and who think the term "guitar" only applies to instruments made in the USA with retail prices over $2,000, and you have the guys buying low-end guitars who also won't shut up about "tone," but who think there's a secret corporate conspiracy (fuelled by the idiocy of brainless consumers) behind anything that costs more than $200, and that the cheaper stuff actually sounds way better anyways. There are, of course, people who might lean in one or the other direction but who understand the choice as a point of preference, and consequently don't take it quite so personally. But for others, and importantly, for people on either end of the spectrum of belief, this has become an issue of identity. The same thing happens with respect to clothes, gadgetry, and whatever else we might buy and have and then compare.

I believe this is also called "pride."

Just so you don't get any false ideas, I'm not going anywhere constructive with this. I don't honestly know if there's really a solution to vanity or this kind of self-buying. If you think about it, your identity will always be directly linked to your financial decisions, if only because what you have shapes your identity (particularly what you have on you or with you at all times, like clothes, since we tend not to make a fundamental distinction between a person and the clothes they wear -- unless, of course, we're perverts with vivid imaginations), and most of what you have is bought. Even if you choose not to buy anything, you're still forming your identity (as a homeless, nudist ascetic) by way of negation.

I do think, though, that the idea of buying your identity is in some way morally objectionable. I think it spits in the face of human dignity and cheapens the notional worth of the individual. I mean, it's called "brand-whoring" for a reason, right?

But I say this only with respect to the desire to buy things for the sake of identity. It's that kind of buying that leads to prideful contention and vanity, and which ultimately reduces a person to a sum of meaningless parts. Buying in general is unavoidable, and so inheriting some facets of identity from the things we buy is also unavoidable. I don't think it's wrong for us to buy things that appeal to us or that we think will make us look pretty or feel good or whatever, either. In the end, I guess, it's all about a healthy balance. We can't avoid being shaped by what we have, in our own eyes and in the eyes of others, and so it's inevitable that at least part of our identity gets outsourced to something "external" to ourselves. The trick is to not get carried away and wind up outsourcing too much.

more lessons learned

2008-06-14T12:57:00.011-05:00

1. The only thing more difficult than driving safely while listening to AC/DC is studying while listening to AC/DC.

2. However, AC/DC happens to be the perfect accompaniment for cooking or playing video games.

3. There is nothing better than an open, honest conversation with a friend.

4. It's probably a good idea to get directions before leaving the house.

5. Meat should only be measured in half-pound increments.

6. Tat tvam asi.
6.5. The sacred and profane are not distinct.
7. I need new contacts.

8. Even though it seems like I can never love and cherish them enough, friends mean the world to me.

9. Pews are uncomfortable.

10. I love C-plus (even more than ginger ale!).

the beggar

2008-06-11T09:09:00.003-05:00

The beggar rages against grey plaster skies
And the water beneath his feet.
He holds the key to a door that he has never seen before
Wondering why the lines are drawn between his eyes
Or why his watch never knows when the sun will rise.
The thick air wrests the breath from his tired lungs
But as night falls, and washes his shadow from the wall,
He starts to believe that his luck has turned.
A roll of the dice: six and two;
This might work out after all.

He ascends the golden ladder with heavy steps;
He knocks --
But in quiet heaven, no one answers the deaf and blind.
At his feet is a billboard knocked off its post
It screams in words he cannot read, but which nonetheless
Appear beautiful.
Distracted by memories and prophecies,
He wanders into the clouds, only to find
That the thin air is suffocating;
That the ground felt firmer beneath his feet;
That the movement itself is now replete
With vanity.

The beggar mourns the passage of time;
In his mind is a seed, but his mind is in asphalt
And heaven denies him rain.

sometimes

2008-06-05T03:22:00.001-05:00

Sometimes, words aren't enough to tell someone how much you care. Sometimes change comes, but not quite when you'd hoped it would. Sometimes the surest right turns out to be the most flagrant wrong. Sometimes a single thought unravels the most complex rational constructions. Sometimes, it's okay to have regrets. Sometimes, you have to say goodbye.

I love you and wish you all the best.

folding, part ii

2008-05-14T20:51:00.004-05:00

This is a continuation of the previous post, in which I talked mostly about the mechanics of the Folding@Home project. But my excitement about folding has to do with a lot more than just the technical aspects of the project, or even the feel-good factor of having contributed to some tangible good. There are a lot of important and challenging implications to Folding@Home and the principles behind it that I've been forced to consider seriously in the short while that I've been involved with it.

It's first of all true that the whole notion of doing good through technology is, in fact, counterintuitive for a lot of us. I'm not at this point arguing that Folding@Home accomplishes "good" (although I think it does); but it certainly has the potential or the capacity for good, and this in itself is for some of us a stretch. Think about it: when do we ever really talk positively about technology? At most we describe it in morally neutral language, like when we acknowledge the convenience of a particular thing. Most of the time, though, we're talking about how we really shouldn't be watching TV, or using so much gas, or wasting so much time online.

Granted, these examples are all tied to other issues (e.g. laziness, vs. the desire to be active), but they nonetheless breed a sort of instinctive moral aversion toward technology. Consequently, when our thoughts about technology move beyond indifference, we almost always adopt a language and conscience of guilt. Sometimes this antipathy is warranted, like when technology is used to harm or oppress or kill others. I think, though, that a lot of the time it arises moreso out of the sort of ingrained cultural paranoia that I've (briefly) described, and that it in fact isn't the necessary or even the appropriate response.

Of course, in order to make the claim that this sort of moral aversion is in fact an inappropriate response, we'd have to first establish that technology actually does achieve moral goods. It's not exactly an easy point to make, though: even in the case of a technology like Folding@Home, there are moral "pros" (the advancement of medical knowledge, or even the advancement of knowledge in general) and "cons" (the hardware and equipment used to fold and the energy required to power them, both of which might have adverse ecological effects).

In fact, it's a point I'm not even really going to try to make, since I haven't exactly thought up a rational proof for the moral merit of technology in general, or of Folding@Home in particular (although, on a slight tangent, I've recently become convinced that morality can't be determined by reason alone). I will say, in the particular context of this discussion, that I believe there are some ends that energy or natural resources should be consumed for, in the same way that animals consume resources for their own benefit (and yes, I understand that animals give back in order to integrate seamlessly with their ecosystems -- ideally, we would, too). I'll leave the question of morality open-ended, though, since I'm primarily interested not in its solution, but in how people perceive the question in the first place.

I've also been considering how the issue of technology and morality relates to our appraisals of culture. For a lot of us, the words "human culture" set off any number of alarms and red lights; this is particularly true of Evangelical Christians, who tend to see human culture in direct opposition to God's authority.

Here's a bit of a history lesson: for a while now, and against the centuries-old Christian paradigm of the sinfulness of humanity, people have been talking about the inherent goodness or merit of the human race. This school of thought, aptly called humanism, might be said to generally affirm that "Man is the measure of all things" (Protagoras). In the latter stages of the European Enlightenment, Protestant Christianity started picking up on threads of humanistic thought; the result was the abomination that we usually call liberal Protestantism. Suffice it to say that in the aftermath of the Second World War, a lot of Christians realised that liberal Protestantism, and its tendency to view human culture in a positive light, had contributed a great deal to the rise and subsequent horrors of Nazism. Modern "Evangelical" Protestantism reacted strongly against humanism as a result, and it's in the midst of this reaction that we've come to develop such a pessimistic language about culture and its creations (such as technology).

Of course, the polemic against culture existed in other forms before the rise of liberal Protestantism, but I think this is where the modern push, driven by the likes of Barth, originates (although this origin has since been forgotten). The polemic against technology has also found a lot of different expressions throughout Christian and even pre-Christian history, but generally speaking, when Christians look for a doctrinal basis for these sorts of beliefs, they adopt a view that's parallel with the objections made against liberal Protestantism (human insufficiency vs. God's power or authority), and thus I've decided to find a correlation between the two.

But is human culture actually so evil? I think that in order to answer the question, we'd first have to consider Protagoras' aforementioned maxim. If Man isn't the measure of all things -- if there exist layers of experience that aren't contained within human experience -- then there's the possibility of a higher (e.g. divine) existential mandate. If, on the other hand, Man is the measure of all things, then human existence can only be dictated by human experience.

This brings us back to a discussion (or was it more of a pitched battle?) that took place on this blog a while back, in which questions of subjectivity and objectivity came up. In short: we all think and feel and know and remember through the lens of our perceptive faculties (and these, of course, aren't limited to sensory faculties). Everything we experience and claim to know passes through this lens. In other words, we're subjective beings, and have no actual understanding (beyond a purely conceptual one) of what objectivity even is or means. For this reason it's completely nonsensical for us to claim access to "other" layers of experience, regardless of whether or not they even exist, because even if they do, they couldn't be known directly -- again, they would be coloured by the lens of our own experience.

So if human beings are subjective beings, and if our perceptive faculties are the lens through which all experience is filtered, then Man really is the measure of all things, as far as we can be concerned or ever know. Again, I'm not saying that God doesn't exist, in the same way that I'm not disavowing the existence of trees or birds or water or even other people. I'm simply saying that our knowledge of this and all other existence is contained within experience, whether we admit to it or not.

(Am I going to conclude that human culture should be glorified above God? No, and if this is where you thought I was going, you honestly need to give me a little more credit than that. Then again, what I am going to suggest might be an even more abhorrent train of thought.)

I think the very fact that all experience is subjective (and by extension that all knowledge of existence is contained within experience) precludes any real distinction between human culture and God's authority. If "human culture" loosely describes the expression of human experience, and if our understanding of God's law is contained (as all other knowledge is) in experience, so that the implementation of God's law could be said to ultimately be a form of such expression, then to deny the merit of culture is to deny the merit of the divine law. To deny the merit of human culture, in fact, is then to deny the merit of experience as such. I don't know about you, but I can't really conceive of a merit-less experience of life.

I hope that all made sense, and I hope it isn't perceived as an attack on some fundamental values. I actually think it's entirely in tune with our experience (at least when we're honest with ourselves), and that it doesn't undermine the importance of faith at all; I just happen to be using a lot of words that are taboo or already laden with negative connotations in the Christian context.

I'll just skip ahead to the most foreseeable and obvious objection to what I've said here before I end this post: no, I'm not saying that we should just be wishy-washy liberals who cave to the social/cultural fads of the day (and again, if you were thinking along these lines, you need to give me a little more credit). I've only argued that experience in general has merit, and not that "therefore everything that proceeds from experience has merit." The aim here was to object to the dismissal of all culture (still used here in my definition as the expression of human experience) as fundamentally corrupted, which I don't think it is -- although there are certainly such things as particular cultural forms that are wrong or evil.

I don't think Christianity loses its subversive, counter-cultural element in such an understanding of experience, either. There are quite obviously a lot of things wrong about culture, and Christianity and other creeds are right to oppose them. What I'm saying is that the polemic against culture as such, as if culture by its very nature is evil or in opposition to God, needs to be reconsidered. For the most part, I'm convinced that few Christians actually feel this way anyway, and that this sort of extreme, all-encompassing polemic emerges only when people start to look for a theoretical or doctrinal ground to tie their many counter-cultural convictions together.

In closing, I'll note that the Folding@Home project is again a perfect example of a cultural form -- of an expression of experience -- that doesn't fit into a fundamentally negative view of culture. Its specific merits aside (we left the question of its "net morality" open-ended), it does do some good, which already challenges a view that human culture and all its forms are essentially evil. At least, that's what I think -- I might be wrong, and in light of the possibility (as well as the fact that I just like to talk about these things) I'm more than open to discussion.

folding, part i

2008-05-13T22:05:00.005-05:00

In a post I wrote a while ago I mentioned something called "distributed computing" and its application in fields like medical research. The specific initiative that I was referring to was the Folding@Home project run by Stanford University. Now that I've started folding regularly, I figured that I should explain a little more of the concept and what's involved. I'm actually really hoping this post isn't ignored out of boredom or perceived technical complexity, because I think the project is a really amazing and important one, and that awareness about it should be spread.

Distributed computing is actually fairly straightforward. We're all familiar with the concept of the supercomputer, a uniquely powerful and specialised machine that handles complex or involved computational tasks. There are a number of fields (e.g. in scientific research) where enormously powerful computers like these are required. Of course, this kind of equipment can cost a lot to operate and maintain, and even then there are general limitations on how much processing power can be crammed into a single working machine. Basically, distributed computing works around these problems by creating a "virtual" supercomputer, which in actuality is a whole bunch of less powerful computers working together, and by "distributing" the workload across this network in small-enough chunks that even these less-powerful computers can process them.

It seems, then, like distributed computing trades off one expense for another: an institution like Stanford waives the cost of having to maintain supercomputers, and instead that cost -- the initial cost of equipment, and the upkeep cost of electricity -- gets pushed on to the people who participate. But it really isn't that sinister, because the reality is that there's an enormous amount of energy waste on most home computers. That's to say that most computers these days are fairly powerful, and are a lot more powerful than they need to be to do the things we want them to do (word processing, browsing around on the internet, chatting).

To underscore the point: if you're running Windows, you can open up your "Task Manager" (if you don't know what I'm talking about, just ignore this part) and see, under the "Performance" tab, a graph of how hard your CPU (the brain of your computer) is being worked.[1] Chances are that 95% of the time, you aren't using more than 5-10% of your CPU power (I actually rarely ever exceed 1%), and that a huge portion of your computer's computing potential isn't being utilised. Distributed computing taps those spare resources and puts them to good use.[2]

So that's distributed computing, in a nutshell. Folding@Home is a specific project run by Stanford's chemistry department. Its purpose is to run simulations of protein folding, in order to gather data about the folding process and to analyse related phenomena. I can't go into a full explanation (partly because I want to keep this concise, but moreso because I don't fully understand myself -- all I know is what little I've read online and extracted from my dad over the dinner table), but the research is directly linked to studies of diseases like Alzheimer's, Parkinson's, and even some cancers.

There's so much more to say about it, but I'm probably not the best person to say it. A wealth of information is available on the Folding@Home website, including instructions on downloading and using the Folding client. The instructions might be a bit technically involved, though -- so if any of you are interested but can't quite figure out how to make it work, you can ask me any questions and I'll be happy to try to help.

This post is a preliminary one, in which (I hope) I've clearly outlined the concept and mechanics of distributed computing in general, and Folding@Home in particular. I'll follow up in a few days with another post on some of the broader ideas and issues I've been reflecting on in relation to this project.

Notes:
[1] Ctrl+Alt+Delete -> Task Manager (unless Ctrl+Alt+Delete already gets you to Task Manager), and then click on the tab labelled "Performance".

[2] Now, granted, when your computer isn't working as hard it doesn't use as much electricity; and so when a distributed computing program is running on your computer, the end result is a higher power draw out of the wall socket. Still, and even if power usage and associated costs (financial and otherwise) are higher, there's a huge difference in efficiency -- a distributed computing program will make use of way more of the energy that your computer is eating up than your average, mostly-idle usage will.

im spiegel

2008-05-12T12:22:00.005-05:00

If this were my body, and if this calloused flesh
Could twist and tear across these brittle bones,
Would it be broken?
Or would it only be reformed, but not re-Formed,
Being in essence still a cell of the living Body?

And if this were my blood, poured out of every gaping wound
To fill the cup of Thanks-giving for a short and bitter life,
Would it be drunk and spent?
Or would it solve into the stream and disperse,
And dissipate across the channels of experience?

Humanity has one Soul, and one Body;
The Soul and Body are one,
And entirety is contained within.

In cold heaven, the condemned man sits alone;
His sentence: to be cleft from the world of men
And thrust into the chasm of Deity.

questions of no importance

2008-05-09T22:00:00.007-05:00

Meet Malachi, the magic 8-ball:

Pictured here engaging a daruma in a staring contest (which he's clearly losing), Malachi is nonetheless all business when it comes to his prophetic office. He was kind enough to answer a few questions for me (although I occasionally had to coax the answers out of him):

Q: Does God exist?
A: ASK AGAIN LATER.

Q: Does God love me?
A: SIGNS POINT TO YES.

Q: Do I love God?
A: WITHOUT A DOUBT.

Q: Is that enough?
A: YES DEFINITELY.

Q: Is there a difference between "enough" and "everything"?
A: IT IS CERTAIN.

Q: Is God love?
A: MY SOURCES SAY NO.

Q: Then is God greater than love?
A: REPLY HAZY, TRY AGAIN.

Q: Then is God greater than love?
A: ASK AGAIN LATER.

Q: Does God permeate all existence, rather than standing outside of it?
A: IT IS CERTAIN.

Q: Then is there a real difference between loving what exists and loving God?
A: CONCENTRATE AND ASK AGAIN.

Q: (with furrowed brow) Then IS there a real difference between loving what exists and loving God?!
A: CANNOT PREDICT NOW.

Q: Can you predict the weather?
A: ASK AGAIN LATER.

Q: Is my body absolutely distinct from my soul?
A: MY ANSWER IS NO.

Q: Is the rest of the physical world absolutely distinct from my body?
A: VERY DOUBTFUL.

S: Sounds like Shankara was right.
A: IT IS CERTAIN.

Q: Is there a wrong way to live?
A: YES.

Q: Is there a right way to live?
A: MY SOURCES SAY NO.

Q: Is there an a priori religious "premise" to humanity?
A: BETTER NOT TELL YOU NOW.

Q: Is it possible for Christianity to be radically without religion?
A: YES DEFINITELY.

Q: Is love the highest law?
A: IT IS DECIDEDLY SO.

Q: Is love the only law?
A: DON'T COUNT ON IT.

Q: Is it actually necessary to have a developed or systematised central belief?
A: VERY DOUBTFUL.

Q: Do belief and knowledge essentially have the same requisite conditions?
A: IT IS CERTAIN.

Q: But is there still a difference between the two in terms of actual qualification?
A: YES.

Q: Then is it right for Christians, whose confessed faith is a belief, to attempt to qualify their faith as knowledge?
A: MY SOURCES SAY NO.

Q: Relatively speaking, am I hard to love?
A: IT IS CERTAIN.

Q: Is it unreasonable of me to demand reciprocity in (most) relationships?
A: MOST LIKELY.

Q: Can love be destructive?
A: YOU MAY RELY ON IT.

Q: When I "trust in God" am I ultimately discerning/deciding, according to my own faculties, what God wants me to do?
A: IT IS DECIDEDLY SO.

Q: So am I not ultimately trusting in myself, and in my own understanding of God?
A: YOU MAY RELY ON IT.

Q: Am I really a liberal Protestant?
A: MOST LIKELY.

Q: Are you John Connor?
A: WITHOUT A DOUBT.

Q: Is the world really divisible into rock stars and groupies?
A: IT IS CERTAIN.

Q: Is it possible to live without passion?
A: YES DEFINITELY.

Q: Is it possible to live a worthwhile life without passion?
A: DON'T COUNT ON IT.

Q: Are people inherently evil?
A: AS I SEE IT YES.

Q: Are people inherently good?
A: YES.

Q: Are good and evil really inherent attributes, or are they just descriptors of human actions (and therefore not inherent)?
A: ASK AGAIN LATER.

Q: Is human culture evil?
A: ASK AGAIN LATER.

Q: Is religion an example of human culture?
A: YES DEFINITELY.

Q: Is it better to love people and ignore God than to love God and ignore people?
A: WITHOUT A DOUBT.

Q: Do you think most people would misunderstand the meaning or intent of these questions?
A: AS I SEE IT YES.

Q: Will the Red Wings win the Stanley Cup?
A: MY SOURCES SAY NO.

S: Your sources are wrong.
A: DON'T COUNT ON IT.

Q: Does God exist?
A: DON'T COUNT ON IT.

the remains of the day

2008-04-25T16:09:00.002-05:00

There are times when I'm acutely aware of the immensity of existence. There are also times when a single thought engulfs the whole world, and consumes the entirety of my being in one fleeting moment.

Love isn't bound by the conventions of courtesy or obligation or even attraction. Love abides by its own law, which supersedes all others. Its motivation to act isn't necessity but a creative, positive energy, and its object isn't the loved "other" but is the union of lovers in a greater whole.[1]

I'm excited by the prospect of forming new friendships and reviving old ones. Still, I know I'm far from having figured friendship out.[2] In order to make the most of these opportunities that are now presenting themselves, I need to fundamentally change the way that I relate to people. I need to make myself vulnerable if I want to break down barriers and love more openly.

An insight that a very wise person -- or rather, a very wise friend -- shared with me recently: people are always either growing together or growing apart (and never seem to grow parallel to one another).

To believe in something is to know the truth of that thing.[3] If truth has an intrinsic moral value, then belief, too, has direct moral implications. Thus if two contradictory beliefs come into contact (being, as they are, in service of two contradictory truths), they have a moral obligation to conflict with and oppose each other, cum dilectione hominum et odio vitiorum.[4] To avoid conflict is to betray the truth in which one believes. At the same time, if the outcome of such conflict can be decided in favour of one or the other perspective, to deny this verdict is to betray Truth itself.

What does it really mean to anchor yourself somewhere, in something other than yourself? Can you meaningfully be grounded in something external to your own existence, to your own experience of life? And is that kind of a foundation really true to your experience? to your humanity?

Over the past ten days I've been afforded a lot of time to think, to wonder, to laugh, to create, to learn, to listen, to grow, and to love. I think that I've once again substantially revised my definition of Me, and that in spite of my failures and imperfections I've grown a great deal. Love has really changed things for me this past week, and opened my eyes to new and beautiful realities. In short: the last ten days have been the happiest that I've had in a long time.

Notes:
[1] Thus the greatest love isn't the love that gives or sacrifices, but rather the love that creates something greater than the mere sum of its parts -- a process which involves giving, but doesn't culminate in it.

[2] What does it mean, after all, to be a friend? to have a friend? Is a friend someone who's cared for, or someone who cares, or both? Is love necessary for friendship? Is friendship necessary for love?

[3] I don't think it's really possible to believe in a falsehood; those who try to do so succeed only when they manage to convince themselves that the lie is actually a truth. In a sense this goes without saying: to believe in something is to believe that something is right. Thus the only possible object of belief is truth, even if the truth itself is only subjective.

[4] "With love of mankind and hatred of sins." -- St. Augustine