Creativity

The counterfeit innovator is wildly self-confident. The real one is scared to death.
- Steven Pressfield

Bad Poetry

What is an eye, so easily blinded?
What is a heart, so easily pierced?
I did it myself, why should I have minded?

External Structures

Large scale structure can't be imposed from the outside.  This is why you don't see gigantic crabs or spiders the size of horses.  What's true for organisms is also true for organizations.

Thoughts on July 4th

Experience reveals our heroes as flawed, our dreams to be tainted with vanity, and our ideals to be warped by self interest - tempting us to either paint over the darkness with a rainbow of positivism or to discard all things aspirational. 

Vaccines and Traditional Morality

I see a real parallel between the anti-vaccine movement and Western Civilization's departure from its historic/traditional morality over the past 100+ years.  Sometimes the formulation or application of traditional morality has produced harmful results (e.g. prideful and condescending - even hateful - attitudes to those whose actions fall outside the bounds of "approved" moral conduct) - like mercury-based vaccinations.  But rather than striving to find the appropriate expression of morality (i.e. non-mercury based vaccination formulas), a significant portion of society has decided to abandon traditional morality, with disastrous results.

Four Ps

Policy, process, and procedure are subordinate to purpose.

Prayer

Prayer increases our attentiveness to God, not his to us.

In a Big Country

This is where I'm at today:

"So take that look out of here, it doesn't fit you
Because it's happened doesn't mean you've been discarded
Pull up your head off the floor, come up screaming
Cry out for everything you ever might have wanted
I thought that pain and truth were things that really mattered
But you can't stay here with every single hope you had shattered"

Dave Packard's 11 simple Rules

Ran across these today.  As applicable and effective as ever...



Dave Packard's 11 Simple Rules

Bill Hewlett (left) and Dave Packard (center) serving food at the company picnic. Photo circa 1958.

"Elegant" and "timeless" describe 11 simple rules first presented by Dave Packard at HP's second annual management conference in 1958 in Sonoma, California.
Discovered in Dave's correspondence file, these rules show his philosophy of work and life.


11 Simple Rules 1. Think first of the other fellow. This is THE foundation — the first requisite — for getting along with others. And it is the one truly difficult accomplishment you must make. Gaining this, the rest will be "a breeze."
2. Build up the other person's sense of importance. When we make the other person seem less important, we frustrate one of his deepest urges. Allow him to feel equality or superiority, and we can easily get along with him.
3. Respect the other man's personality rights. Respect as something sacred the other fellow's right to be different from you. No two personalities are ever molded by precisely the same forces.
4. Give sincere appreciation. If we think someone has done a thing well, we should never hesitate to let him know it. WARNING: This does not mean promiscuous use of obvious flattery. Flattery with most intelligent people gets exactly the reaction it deserves — contempt for the egotistical "phony" who stoops to it.
5. Eliminate the negative. Criticism seldom does what its user intends, for it invariably causes resentment. The tiniest bit of disapproval can sometimes cause a resentment which will rankle — to your disadvantage — for years.
6. Avoid openly trying to reform people. Every man knows he is imperfect, but he doesn't want someone else trying to correct his faults. If you want to improve a person, help him to embrace a higher working goal — a standard, an ideal — and he will do his own "making over" far more effectively than you can do it for him.
7. Try to understand the other person. How would you react to similar circumstances? When you begin to see the "whys" of him you can't help but get along better with him.
8. Check first impressions. We are especially prone to dislike some people on first sight because of some vague resemblance (of which we are usually unaware) to someone else whom we have had reason to dislike. Follow Abraham Lincoln's famous self-instruction: "I do not like that man; therefore I shall get to know him better."
9. Take care with the little details. Watch your smile, your tone of voice, how you use your eyes, the way you greet people, the use of nicknames and remembering faces, names and dates. Little things add polish to your skill in dealing with people. Constantly, deliberately think of them until they become a natural part of your personality.
10. Develop genuine interest in people. You cannot successfully apply the foregoing suggestions unless you have a sincere desire to like, respect and be helpful to others. Conversely, you cannot build genuine interest in people until you have experienced the pleasure of working with them in an atmosphere characterized by mutual liking and respect.

11. Keep it up. That's all — just keep it up!

Tim Keller re: Supposed Inconsistencies between Old and New Testaments

http://thegospelcoalition.org/mobile/article/tgc/making-sense-of-scriptures-inconsistency

Scary Thought

One of the scariest realizations I've come to is that I am responsible for thinking things through and for the resulting decisions and consequences.

50th Anniversary of The War on Poverty

While fighting "wars" against states of mind (terror) and existence (poverty, obesity, etc...) is patently absurd, the most unfortunate aspect of the thought process that leads to such wars is that it subtly necessitates a belief that the consequences of individual decisions must be borne primarily by society at large and prevented by communal, rather than individual action.  This means that rather than allowing the painful consequences of poor decisions to be shouldered primarily by those who make such decisions, society (i.e. it's 'agent', the government) must bear the costs of poor decisions and prevent future occurrences by curtailing the rights of all, with each failure of the former necessitating increased severity of the latter. The fact that our "caretakers" obtain power in ever increasing degrees as a part of the process and exercise their "duty" with increasing measures of glee is, of course, just a happy coincidence.

Still, the most tragic irony isn't the aforementioned "big brother" syndrome or the fact that a middle class person somewhere has a higher tax bill as a result; it is that a lack of consequences robs us (I'm really good at making bad decisions, mind you) of the opportunity to learn.  It might seem terrific at first to be unable to feel the pain of being burned, but such pain is ultimately healthy - it keeps us from injuring ourselves further or even irreparably. It may seem compassionate to shield a person from the consequences of his or her decision (and in some cases it is), but in many cases it retards one's growth as a human being and ultimately produces greater suffering in the end.

Criminalizing Christ: The Nationwide Targeting of Homeless - Rev. David R. Henson | God's Politics Blog | Sojourners

Criminalizing Christ: The Nationwide Targeting of Homeless - Rev. David R. Henson | God's Politics Blog | Sojourners:
Cross-post of my response to FB article post from Micah Sapienza:

Hmm...I think the author's heart is in the right place, but his thinking is very cloudy. 

First he seems to be trying to rally a liberal constituency with language like "not just a symptom of conservatism or of the Deep South".   The appeal is, essentially, "Hey now folks.  We know that people with conservative values, including many believers and especially those SOBs down South, are ignorant hateful cretins, but *even* in bastions of progressive reasonableness, such as San Francisco and Berkeley, the homeless are being targeted!"  (And really, is Atlanta, with a Democrat mayor, actually a ''conservative bulwark"?) 

Second, he's running the same play that the Focus on the Family crowd gets lambasted for: Conflating America and The Church and then asserting that it's 'our' (America/The City on A Hill) moral responsibility to use the force of government to solve the dilemma at hand. Government does have a role to play, but it's not because it's a wing of the Church. 

Lastly, the author paints a false view of the issue at hand in an attempt to stack the deck in favor of his argument.  Unfortunately it only reinforces his own ignorance and lack of compassion. Regarding the former, the author's overly-simplistic piece ignores the complicated causes of homelessness, and therefore, the possibility of discussing real solutions. (If you want to pretend your cancer is a contagious viral infection, be my guest.  But your prognosis is going to be very poor).  Many homeless are that way because they choose to be.  This is difficult for many of us to wrap our heads around, but it is the truth nonetheless, and needs to be factored into any solutions that are developed.  Regarding compassion, some of the ordinances in question may be unfair or even unjust.  But none of them seem to preclude one from taking in a homeless person.  The great irony is that this idea - of compassion being dispensed through any mechanism other than a social welfare program - is completely foreign to those such as the author. “Well sure, I’ll volunteer down at the soup kitchen 4 days a week, or lobby for more government intervention, or even get by on a smaller salary to work for a foundation that ‘serves’ the homeless, but you surely don’t expect me to let any of those smelly urchins into *my* house!”  No, in the minds of those like the author, compassion is something that must be dispensed by government agencies in our urban centers, just like Jesus did.  Makes one wonder what the real agenda is.

Cynicism

Cynicism is the candy shell that keeps one's heart from melting with gratitude.  Problem is, I really like candy...

Lev 19:10

And you shall not strip your vineyard bare, neither shall you gather the fallen grapes of your vineyard. You shall leave them for the poor and for the sojourner: I am the LORD your God.

Architecture and Masonry

We spend so much time working on our plans - worrying whether/working to make sure things will go as we desire - that we often forget to focus on, and enjoy, the labor of executing the plans and serendipity of those things that don't go as planned.  

Happy Birthday Grandma

I miss you very much. 

Post Season Fantasy

Ok, with the Niners at 8-1 I can engage in some post-season day dreaming. My dream Niner playoff scenario :

1st Round: Niners over Cowboys
2nd Round/ NFC Championship: Niners over GB
SB: Niners over Pittsburgh

Niners banish playoff ghosts of the past by defeating The 'Boys and GB, and emerge as the winningest team in SB by defeating Pitssburgh.

Beating the Raiders in the SB would be a close second. :)

Fathers

I think the weight of a father's presence and discipline develops a weightiness and density of soul. I missed that growing up.

Weeds and Dreams

I have a childhood memory, perhaps apocryphal, of an instance when I was helping my grandma garden. I was probably four, and had been helping my grandma weed a flowerbed when she asked me to pull out a certain weed.  Now this 'weed' seemed to me to be a perfectly good plant. I didn't want to pull it. In my opinion, it was as legitimate a plant as any of the others she had in her bed.  I let her know that I thought this plant should stay, and in the process of reasserting that it had to go she let me know that weeds were simply plants that were out of place and whose presence choked out the growth of the desired plants.  It's the gardeners prerogative to determine what stays and what goes, she maintained, and he makes these decisions based on his desire to see certain plants flourish.

This morning it occurred to me that this is an analogy for life.  Our life is a flower bed.  God is the gardener, and we are his helper.   Our activities and dreams are the plants in the flowerbed. There are some things in our lives which we hold dear that God wants to remove because they will choke out what he's trying to cultivate.  Our job as his helper is to know his desire, watch him in action, and follow his lead as we assist him in his work.

(This analogy also helps clarify who's life it is to begin with - God's, not ours).