Author Archives: Josiah

Content. Part II

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When I read this over, I got to thinking that some of my readers are probably tired of me going on and on about myself, my feelings, my beliefs, and my ideas. To these readers, I say first that I don’t encourage consistent, widespread, or active readership for the very reason that I find it extremely hindering to worry about what my readers might think. Secondly, I have made it quite clear that this blog is not a representation (or even a reasonable sampling) of everything I think about or consider important. It is at present nothing more than a psychological gate through which I offload matters which are weighing on my active thought patterns so that I can more easily concentrate on other things. So don’t read too much into this.

I do not really enjoy exploring my own mind. I find the ideas and personality of others far more interesting. However, I do find it necessary to do a fair bit of self-assessment of my own psychology before I can perform my life tasks with any degree of clarity and efficiency. A portion of the “relationship” folder of my psychological profile follows:

Over the course of my life, I’ve had four distinct attitudes toward being single.

  1. None.
  2. That it’s something to be ashamed of and avoided at all costs.
  3. That it is the only thing that makes any sense for anyone.
  4. That while romance is beautiful, I, personally, am quite content to remain single.

The first stage lasted throughout my childhood. Romance was something for grown-ups. Of course, there were certain girls I thought prettier or funnier than others, and sometimes imagined what it would be like when (at that time, “if” had not yet entered my vocabulary with respect to the future), to get married and raise a family. But, these were nothing more than daydreams. The day-to-day thinking, when it came to girls was how best to annoy or frighten them.

But, the time came when pulling pigtails and dropping spiders down backs gave way to a deep awe and respect for this wondrous and inexplicable creature known as woman. I had some degree of a crush on virtually every girl I spent any amount of time with, and felt incredibly jealous of my friends who were even then beginning to “pair off,” as my parents would put it. Deep down, I knew I wasn’t mature enough to make an actual relationship work and it was silly of me to pine away for the girlfriend I didn’t have. I knew it was merely the status of not being single that I desired most and the girl herself was almost an afterthought. I recognized the selfishness, shallowness, and immaturity of these feelings and resolved to subdue them with a conscious effort.

Unfortunately, the implementation details of this effort did not take the form of healthy patience awaiting the arrival of emotional maturity. Angered by several early relationship failures, I drew on my extremely well-developed willpower to adjust my entire conception of relationships. Rather than accepting that my current position in life was less than ideal and learning to deal with it, I simply altered my conception of the ideal to match my present situation. After a couple of years of practice, I had thoroughly convinced all but my most private self that the entire concept of romantic love was silly and ill-advised. Moreover, I had undertaken such an extensive redirection of my feelings that I believed myself totally incapable of experiencing or participating in romance in any meaningful sense. On good days, this deduction did nothing but to strengthen my convictions that love was a waste of time. On bad days, this conclusion depressed me beyond description because it indicated a fundamental flaw in my makeup that rendered inaccessible many of the experiences defining what it means to be human.

This state of mind persisted for a good many years. I have many weaknesses, but irresoluteness is not one of them. Once I resolve to head in a direction, I pay little heed to obstacles, roadblocks, warning signs, or brick walls. Unless I become thoroughly convinced my original decision was in grave error, it is not until I have exhausted all possibilities and have nearly killed myself attempting the impossibilities that I will throw up my hands and punch in a new heading. It sounds silly to say, but I think that it was my love of movies, more than anything else that brought about a reassessment of my anti-romance attitudes. I don’t remember what film it was — or even the particular scene, but I remember my eyes welling up for the first time in years and allowing a flood of beautiful emotions to wash over me. As time went by, I slowly began to come to grips with the fact that two humans falling in love was something inherently magnificent — like a sunset or a well-crafted poem, but beautiful on a deeper, almost spiritual level.

Perhaps my years of practiced observation and disdain for people unwilling to appreciate life without a mate has obscured my perception of myself. Or, perhaps God has loaned me a bit of maturity on a discretionary basis to see what I will do with it. Either way, I am very pleased that my recognition and acknowledgement of the beauty of romance has not been accompanied by any strong feelings of discontent with regard to my current singleness or singleness in my foreseeable future. Of course, I will continue developing meaningful relationships with the people that come into my life. Singleness clearly need not be aloneness, and I refuse to be ashamed of it! I am not resolved to remain single, but I am quite determined to remain content in and grateful for my life with the people I love, whether or not that group ever includes a wife.

Content. Part I

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In the past week or so, I’ve have had a couple of amusing experiences that have got me thinking about my attitudes toward being single.

First, after going on about his girl for a while, a friend asked me why I never talked about my girlfriend. When I told him I didn’t currently have one, he was astonished. “Dude what’s wrong with you? You really need to get on that ASAP!” he said. After five minutes of him decrying how selfish I was being with all my charms, I had to remind him that he was trying to convince me to start dating again, not to start dating him.

Second, I was taking a group of 2nd and 3rd graders up the elevator to the tutoring I help with on Tuesday nights, when out of the blue, one of the girls came over and patted me on the back. “Don’t worry Mr. Josiah. You’ll find that special lady someday!” She was dead serious. Looking up at me with eyes full of compassionate concern. Despite it being the cutest thing ever, the statement was so off-the-wall that it struck me as hilarious. She was so sincere that I kept a straight face as I thanked her for her comfort. An hour later, I was still laughing to myself about the incident. What was funny once has now become moderately annoying for me and one of my friends who is also a tutor — since much of the class has made it their mission to get us together. The extensive giggles and whispering that occurs whenever she and I are in the same room makes our task of teaching math and science significantly more difficult.

Last, I was at a dinner/Bible study with some friends, and one of them mentioned his new girlfriend. Another friend at the table mentioned that it would be nice to have another girl at the study and he should bring her. “Or, you could find a girlfriend and bring her!” she gestured to the guy sitting next to me. “Or maybe even,” she looked at me and hesitated. Her husband immediately jokingly emphasized the word: “Or maybe even you Josiah!” She looked embarrassed, thinking I would be offended. Thoroughly enjoying her discomfort, I mustered my tersest frown and said in my haughtiest voice “Maybe I’m just such a catch that all the girls are intimidated by me.” We all thought this was funny, but a couple of days later, I received my very first “I have this single friend who…” e-mail from my female Bible study friend.

At first, I passed the incidents off as being the droll artifacts of well-intentioned but misdirected kindness and thought nothing more of them. But further consideration in light of the fact that so many of my peers are getting engaged and married has caused me to seriously question first why it is that I am not actively pursuing a romantic relationship and second why I am so content to remain single at this point in my life. Part II contains the results of that journey into my own subconscious.

Findings on my Four-day Facebook Fast

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  1. It was super hard. I experienced Facebook cravings an average of once every fifteen minutes.
  2. My productivity did not change. Judging from my Internet history, there was roughly the same amount of school/work related web activity, and I got about as much work done as I have gotten done in previous weeks.
  3. I severely overestimated the number of notifications I would receive when I logged back in. I was thinking around 50. I got only

The verdict? A very clear NOT WORTH IT.

Politics: What I think and why it doesn’t matter that much.

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A couple of years ago, I made a post that ended with “the legally-recognized institution of marriage … makes no sense.” Let’s talk about the politics behind that statement for a while. But first, you need to understand that while I find my current political views (Libertarian) to be extremely reasonable and self-consistent, I happily place my politics in the highly erratic category of personal preference. I am no more defined by Libertarianism than I am defined by my current distaste for atonal music.

At this point, you might be wondering how I can be so admittedly capricious about as important a topic as my vote. I’m glad you asked! Like most of my worldview, even my lack of strong political convictions is rooted in my understanding of the Bible:

  1. The ways in which humans organize themselves (government and social structure) are of moderately low importance to God.
  2. Christians are given a very particular standard of behavior and attitudes that are honoring to God. It is possible, almost without exception, to fulfill one’s God-given role without sanctioning (or disturbing!) any government and social structure.

Under Item 1, all information that I can find (more specifically, all of the information I can’t find!) seems to indicate a surprising indifference from God’s perspective of how humans choose to govern themselves. The nation of Israel had a number of different God-sanctioned forms of civil government. Tribal chief-ship (Abraham), Dictatorship (Moses and Judges), and Monarchy. Eventually, God allowed His people to be ruled by governments which did not actively honor and in some cases opposed His commands. One example of God’s indifference to organizational structure is the standard Luke 20 passage about “render unto Caesar.” Another example I came across recently is Exodus 18. Apparently Moses never received any specific instructions from God about who exactly was supposed to enforce the Law. The entire civil government structure of ancient Israel was founded on the off-hand advice of Moses’ father-in-law! On the other hand, God did put a lot of care and specifics into describing the details of how His people were to undertake their relationship with Him. Sure, God cares about temporary physical suffering and so certainly doesn’t approve of bad governments or oppressive social constructs. But He’s vastly more interested in preventing the eternal spiritual pain of being separated from Him. That’s where the big picture of the universe is.

Now, for Item 2. The reason I do vote and I am involved in trying to build a better society is that these are two ways in which I can live out a part of my particular God-given role. You can’t accomplish as big a plan as God has for the universe without an extremely diverse division of labor. That’s where the individual roles of Christians come in. So, while I don’t know whether or not large-scale social change is part of God’s plan, I do know that my job for right now involves helping meet the needs of others (“needs” as self-defined by others where my help does not contradict the other aspects of my role). So, I try to take advantage of the relevant opportunities that present themselves. That’s my perspective on some political issues too. I try to vote for people who will make my role easier and I generally vote against people who will make that role more difficult.

Nonetheless, for the majority of political issues, I hearken back to Item 1 so that I can freely admit that much of my current mindset is based on my likes and dislikes about the current and past governments of the United States. In sum, my political view is as follows:

Give the government no more power than is absolutely necessary to maximize individual freedom.

To me, the only absolutely necessary powers are to:

  1. Protect natural resources from abuse.
  2. Protect citizens and property from abuse.

However, I will entertain arguments that “Protect economic environment” should be added to the list. Anyway, I am quite happy to support a well-equipped military (not an excessive one like we have now), extensive national parks, a strong police force, and an efficient judicial system. Pretty much any other function currently attributed to the government can and should be taken care of by the natural social infrastructure.

I can give many examples of the “can” part of this. But for now we will only consider the “should”: The Interstate Highway System (and the resulting boom in the energy-gulping, CO2-belching auto industry) was clearly a bad idea. Had the central government devoted some time and energy to protecting natural land resources rather than willy-nilly accepting any project that the public deemed convenient at the time, it is likely that efficient railways would have naturally become the primary mode of transportation, cities would have automatically grown up rather than out, and people would tend to get more exercise. The natural social infrastructure certainly will make societal mistakes, but since these blunders are largely passive, they are more easily corrected than the misdirected actions of a broadly powerful and organized government.

I have particular beef with the government stepping in to mandate or otherwise interfere with socially-defined relationship constructs. If parents and children agree that working conditions are safe, what right has the government to mandate that children cannot enter into a full-time employee-employer relationship? If my company and your company happen to control all of the sugar imports between us, what right has the government to say that our companies cannot merge? If we don’t give the government power to prescribe our realm of friendship, why give lawmakers power over deeper unions like marriage and family? If you use “family” to mean “biologically related people,” while I use the term to indicate “members of the same household,” what right does the government have to comment on the validity of either construct? Certainly, I can see the value in coining a new term to avoid ambiguity, but it is not the government’s realm to mandate the social units that help us define ourselves.