It's OK if You're Not OK

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The more I experience and the older I get, the more I realize that most people struggle and that struggle is normal. Of course we don't always feel that way, especially when we watch other people, especially undeservedly, reap things we feel that we earned and that we know God promised us. It doesn't help that some people try to distract us from the pain by telling us that things will get better, because that's not necessarily true. I am concerned that some of these Polyannas do us a disservice by implying that it's all about attitude or simplicity or will power in order to be happy, to be whole, and to have peace. Sure, you can have serenity and choose to see things one way, but when the pain you feel in your heart, mind and sometimes body sears in a very real way, it's difficult to ignore and pretend that you were not hurt, that you did not lose, and that things vary a great deal from what other people or even God led you to expect. I could show you conversations I had with people that are no longer valid, promises they made that they never will probably keep, and even things they shared of personal revelation that they ignored that stymied my life because they chose a different path than the one they promised. In fact, almost everything I would change about my life comes from my action on either incomplete or inaccurate information, which is why I'm ok with what I did for my part. I might be ok, but I'm not fine at all. I don't appreciate cliches, especially from people who already achieved that which is currently denied me. I don't appreciate the blind optimist who compares me to non sequitors; yes, I know I'm not trapped in a mine in Chile, but I never would be because I'm not a miner and I've never been to Chile, so that's irrelevant. I don't appreciate that people who already have their happy ending when the path I tred and the level of difficulty I face makes theirs look paltry. God accommodates for the difficulty of the task, and He judges you based on what you do and not what happens to you while His children rack and stack you based on what you achieve even if you are lucky or privileged or both compared to others. Consequently, the rest of us are likely to ask what's wrong with us, what we did wrong, even if there is nothing wrong because those who imply there might be never have and never could actually walk in our shoes.

Most of the glib, trite, cliches are spoken by people in a position of strength. People like to think about and hope for happy endings because they are hoping it will be true for them. Some people do it for karma points, whereby they think that if they think enough "happy thoughts" or use "the secret" that good things will come into their lives. Some of them do it because they are in a better place and don't remember what it was like before they overcame the struggle you currently face. In the early days after I was divorced, the privations continued, mounted, and increased, and my best friend told me once "Well, at least it can't get any worse" except that IT DID. Now, the "Sunshine Affair" has closed with a positive outcome, but it took over a year to resolve itself and created some very tepid moments, but Thom walked back his notion to feed me cliches. Interested albeit unaffected individuals who don't know how to help you like to feed you trite aphorisms, share cliches and memes, and spout glib and shallow advice. I know they mean well; they are not intimately affected, and all too often they are not suffering from the same thing and maybe never have. I know better than to try to empathize with someone who loses a child, comes down with cancer, or injures themself severely. Praise God, none of those things have happened to me. I offer them my friendship, spend time with them, and reassure them that I care. When my friend Cody became a paraplegic after an automobile accident when I was a freshman in high school, I went over to visit him periodically until he died. His parents told me at his funeral how much they appreciated my feeble efforts because Cody lost all of his other friends. When was the last time someone told you to hang in there who was still suffering from the same thing as you? Most of the people who offer advice, lend comfort, and suggest action are people who already saw their way through, overcame the issue, and moved forward, because the rest of people know better than to blithely talk as if they have all the answers. More than three years after the perfect woman for me broke my heart, I still ache. I'm still not over her, I'm still not over it, and I'm still not ok. I wish I knew what I was supposed to do now, because although the reasonable period of mourning has officially passed more than a year past, I feel no better off or clear on the outcome than I did on 9 August 2013 when I got the news.

All too often in history, people spend most of their lives wandering around in the desert. Owing at least in part to the prevalance of social media whereupon people parade around the best parts of their lives in an advanced game of one-upmanship, we feel like everyone else is living the dream. Celebrities and actors and captains of industry festoon the covers of periodicals and occupy the seats in interviews and give the impression that if you're not living the good life or that if you're "boring" then you're a loser. If things aren't going well, you must have done something wrong. I read this week the opining of a former member of my Faith who ached because young but unaccomplished married people are held up as paragons and examples of "how things ought to be". If you look at MY life, it does indeed look like I'm doing everything wrong. However, Todd told me at church months back that I am one of the best members of the congregation because he knows I am there because I really believe. Well, if I didn't have a testimony I would have left the church a long time ago. Plenty of things came along that gave me cause, excuse, and impetus to conclude erroneously that God abandoned me and that this somehow gave me permission to abandon Him. Rather than do that and leave, I went to my Bishop and confessed my sins, and I have never left the LDS church, because it is true. The tribes of Israel wandered around in the Sinai desert for 40 years, and almost none of those who entered the desert ever actually got to enter the Land of Promise. Sometimes the trek to a better place takes a lot longer and comes with far more privation than we like. CS Lewis wrote in the Screwtape Letters that the Deceiver will attempt to convince us to abandon the utility of faith when we surpass what we feel is a "reasonable period of suffering" and quit just before victory and success was ours. It is difficult, when you thirst physically or spiritually to prime the pump of faith and take steps into the unknown. It is difficult to hold on week after week, month after month, year after year, when you feel like you're spinning your wheels and getting nowhere quickly.

The happy ending sometimes doesn't come until the ending. Life has lots of ends, but in the end, there is an end to this phase of life just like there is to every story we know. When stories have happy endings, the good things only come when they can be enjoyed "happily ever after" which means that all the struggle, trial, and complication must first clear up. We never leave patients with open cuts and tell them that the surgery was a success so all is well, and we never walk away from a war after we win the first battle, because that may not be a safe place to leave things. However, all too often, people who reach THEIR end of THEIR trials act as if unless you act like they did in the same place that you're doing it incorrectly. Well, everyone has their very own personalized set of privations and tribulations, artisinally and organically fashioned to fit you, so nobody else's solutions or process or attitude may work for you. They had their own; you have yours. As I wrote years ago in lies about grief, people who don't want to relive their pain often hope to rush you through yours so they can ignore the memories or help you so they can pat themselves on the back for helping you "get to a better place". Well, I am not going to tell you that "I'm in a better place" or that "all the lessons make sense" or that "the blessings are better than I expected". I'm not to the top of the mountain yet. I haven't seen the reason why the hurt, the pain, the rejection, and the delay needed to be or were preferrable to the outcome I expected. I'm still climbing the mountain, and I'm still out of breathe, and my legs still ache, and I'm running out of Living Water, and I'm still baking in the sun. I haven't reached the top yet to see the sunrise or to see the beautiful view. I don't know what I was supposed to learn from this. I don't know if God will actually send something better. I hope He does. I don't know what people mean by "fixing" what they broke. Maybe some of the people for whom things turn around quickly are people who, if they were asked to suffer longer, would buckle and falter. Unless there is a harvest now, it would be bad for them physically, or if they are denied a harvest they will quit trying. God knows I will keep on keeping on, as well as I can for as long as I can, even if the promised harvest doesn't come because I've been doing it for a decade now trying to be ok after I was divorced, trying to be ok after my engagement fell apart, and trying to be ok while everyone around me moves forward with life and I go home alone to an empty house.

Maybe I'm just this way because I'm a practical man who insist on calling a spade a spade, but I do think that it's ok if you're not ok. I believe that's part of the Atonement of Christ we sometimes ignore, that Jesus suffered for all of our pains and tears and heartache and disappointment. He knew what it was like to be betrayed by those he loved, to be sold for 20 pieces of silver or be unfriended by Simon, to even be literally left alone by His Father God in Gethsemane to drink the bitter cup alone. If you're not ok, that's part of His mission too, and if you turn to Him, I testify that you will feel peace and comfort, even if it's just long enough for you to pass away into blissful and restful slumber for the night. You see, it's NORMAL that men suffer. On a statistical measure, most people today are still poor and sick and miserable, eking out a living each day and hoping to have enough to last them until tomorrow. In order for us to be who God wills us to be, He must take away His hand, and if even the will to walk is there He is pleased with our stumblings.  Wrote CS Lewis:

He [God] will set them off with communications of His presence which, though faint, seem great to them, with emotional sweetness, and easy conquest over temptation. But He never allows this state of affairs to last long. Sooner or later He withdraws, if not in fact, at least from their conscious experience, all those supports and incentives. He leaves the creature to stand up on its own legs—to carry out from the will alone duties which have lost all relish. It is during such trough periods, much more than during the peak periods, that it is growing into the sort of creature He wants it to be. Hence the prayers offered in the state of dryness are those which please Him best. We can drag our patients along by continual tempting, because we design them only for the table, and the more their will is interfered with the better. He cannot “tempt” to virtue as we do to vice. He wants them to learn to walk and must therefore take away His hand; and if only the will to walk is really there He is pleased even with their stumbles. Do not be deceived, Wormwood. Our cause is never more in danger, than when a human, no longer desiring, but intending, to do our Enemy’s will, looks round upon a universe from which every trace of Him seems to have vanished, and asks why he has been forsaken, and still obeys.

God never allows the blessed state to last long, because He is trying to help us grow. If we do not take tests, we do not study, and if we do not study, we do not learn, and if we do not learn, then the purpose of creation would be frustrated and God would cease to be God.

I intend to keep going as long and as well as I can, because I'm starting to believe that my life is not actually to be a dad and raise a family but to be an example to YOU so that you will know in your troubles that you are not alone, that it doesn't always work out to a happy ending, and that it's OK if you're not yet OK. For this reason, I think Elijah is my favorite prophet. You may remember that he lived alone in the desert, scared that the king would slay him if he were caught, and that at least once he thought he was the last person who listened to and cared about what God said. God fed him, kept him going, but not enough that Elijah felt confident enough to not ask God to kill him. Even after the miracles, Elijah still didn't see things turn around, and he spent his entire life as an outcast, in fear for his life, and mostly alone. If anyone empathizes with you about the suffering, about doing the right thing and having nothing to show, and about the spiritual struggle to keep it together and to stay true, Elijah does. If you didn't have to struggle and hope and have faith when things don't work out in the timing or the way you might hope, if everything came up roses, if everything you did created utopia, what need would you have for a Savior? The scriptures are rife with examples of chastisement for the people of God, not because He didn't love them, but because they were slow to remember Him and forgot that with Him they could do more and go further than they could alone. I don't walk in your shoes, and I don't walk in theirs. I don't have all the answers, and I'm not even really sure if the answers I have are correct or even meaningful. I don't know what my failed engagement was supposed to teach me; I'm not sure if there will be a replacement let alone an upgrade. I don't know if God has something better for me that is in the same category. Maybe it's "better" not to be married to someone better but to not be married at all. I do know that about a year ago, I felt impressed that I am right where He would have me be doing what He would have me do, and last month I felt impressed that teaching Sunday School to the teenagers in my congregation is more useful to Him than if I were consumed by infants of my own. I get that. Doesn't mean that I like it... I still do not know why these things must be, but I do know that God loves me, and He would not allow these things to happen if they were not somehow calculated to my best good eventually. God's promises like His love for us are certain. Their timing, details, and implications on your life are not necessarily going to be what you prefer. I'm doing the best I can. I think I'm doing OK even if I don't feel OK, and that's OK. You're not alone if you're not where you would like to be; you're right there with me, and that's normal.

"His success was that he continued in the absence of success." --John Taylor to Wilfred Woodruff in his exit interview when Wilfred returned from a mission in Japan

Philosophy of Hell

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For my 14th birthday and at my request, my parents gave me the complete works of CS Lewis, which I read with great relish. They transformed my life in ways I didn't fully comprehend at the time, but many of the ideas, attitudes, and opinions I hold link back in some way to the works of that great man. Of course like most kids, I first loved him for his fiction, but as I grew I understood those books to be allegorical, allusions to the tenants of faith and his Faith, and I longed to know more. Inside the front cover of one of those books, I wrote the following note: "Nothing convinced me more that liberalism was the philosophy of hell than reading this book [The Screwtape Letters]." When I went back to read it last month in preparation for a Sunday School lesson, I sat there stunned briefly as I read those words and then perused the volume. Although during intervening years I reread the book many times, I know some of the notes are from the original reading when I, at the tender age of 14, turned the pages and studied the adversary of truth. As election day draws near, read "Screwtape Proposes a Toast" and decide for yourself which political philosophy promises poverty, misery, and death. The conversation points out how the devil, and hell and every evil force on earth works its very best to obscure, obfuscate, and obliviate truth. Screwtape's advice is calculated to "take the man's soul and give him nothing in return" promising him pleasure without the happiness that makes it sweet. Ultimately all of this discourse, deception, and diversion aims to make men fit for nothing more than consumption, binding them in darkness by using their mortal foibles against them.

Adversary of Truth

Liberals deal mostly in half truths and whole lies. They do not bother to worry about whether it is true as most of them in politics are lawyers, and in law you are taught rhetoric which says that the best argument wins regardless of its veracity. For that reason, in court, a person is found "not guilty" which is significantly different from "innocent. Mostly, they deal in character assassination, but when they can, they will try pseudo-philosophy based on jargon and rhetoric, for "Jargon, not argument, is your best ally in keeping him from the Church" and from its virtues. You notice that liberals claim to be charitable but only to people they have never met while barking at, firing, and assaulting people they know and ostensibly love. Wrote Lewis on the subject: "direct the malice to his immediate neighbors whom he meets every day and thrust his benevolence out to the remote circumference, to people he does not know. The malice then becomes wholly real and the benevolence largely imaginary". On the auspices that they care about other people more than you do, they equate everything they do with "for the children" when it is actually done TO the children. They forget what Lewis calls the law of undulation: they will instead insist that the way things are either defy ideal (gay marriage) or constitute it (global warming) ignoring the fact that what appears to be chaos is often simply the search for equilibrium. Frequently, they get away with this because they are able to redefine words, to rename things, and to create new special constituencies based on the notion that "the whole philosophy of hell rests on recognition of the axium that one thing is not another thing..." In doing this, they bully men of virtue, principle, and faith, doing things in the name of virtuous and noble causes without actually meaning it. In these crusades they "make men treat Christianity as a means; preferably of course, as a means to their own advancement, but failing that as a means to social justice...". Liberals routinely appeal to Christianity, not because they really believe but because they think you do. Everything they advocate is simply a smokescreen for their true aim which is power. Everything they advocate is temporary, emotional, and vacuous, although they will pretend that it's monumental and that their decisions are based entirely in rational and logical thought. Like Screwtape, "we direct the fashionable outcry of each generation against those vices of which it is least in danger" Yes, because the biggest problems we have are gay marriage, transgender bathrooms, and gays in the military. Young people have this morbid fascination with rebellion which constitutes essentially nothing more than adopting some outlandishly fashionable ideal to horrify their parents. The great paradox of this all is that eventually they come to feel about it as they grow older essentially the same way their parents did, making their rebellion at best insignificant and at worst a setback to their own prospects and happiness in maturity. All too often liberals talk about utopia, make promises, and offer the usual pablum because they know what you want to hear, and then they flip you the bird after the election, even if you are one of their constituencies. Their activities and plans are always shrouded in mystery in the least transparent administrations ever, and they hope that it can be said of the voter: "the one question he never asks is whether it is true".

Adversary of Freedom

One of the greatest tools in the adversary's arsenal is the notion that the commandments make life harder when in fact they make it easier. Lewis opines how "Mephistopheles helped strengthen the illusion that evil is liberating" because it encourages men to do things that propriety, respect, and dignity otherwise restrain men from doing. Liberals are obsessed with race and sex, and it shows in their pet projects, their political policies, and their fundraising. Most of their money comes from groups that engage openly in things that used to be done behind closed doors if people dared do them at all. Liberals chiefly fall into one of two groups regarding how they feel about human interactions: "the first sort joke about sex because it gives rise to many incongruities; the second cultivate incongruities because they afford a pretext for talking about sex" What is actually the purpose of sex? To draw two people together and then to bind them to the offspring that result from such liasons. If that were not so, then oxytocin would have neither presence nor significance in the intimacy of any two people, and we would like no friend or woman more than the next. Later, Lewis writes that relationships "obediently entered into too often will produce affection and the family" (emphasis in original) which is odd since liberals are also trying to redefine what family really means as well as its purpose and benefits to civil society. With the promise of peace and prosperity, they chip away at your freedoms and opportunities. For years, I have maintained that liberals will always think you have too much freedom and too much money until you have none at all of either. Apparently, they listen to Screwtape who suggests that "our best method, at this stage, of attaching them to Earth is to make them believe that Earth can be turned into heaven at some future date by politics or eugenics or "science" or psychology". Thus it binds them to earth and convinces them to attempt to make earth, which is fallen, the utopia that heaven alone can sustain. It attempts to build a quality product with degraded ingredients, to create something better than the sum of its parts, which in every realm they decry is a fallacy but is gospel when it comes to their sacred cows. There is no such thing as a free lunch unless liberals promise that they will feed everyone, give everyone a well-paid job, and provide health care at no or low cost regardless of your choices. They do this because they do not like people. I am not even convinced that they like their own families. I don't believe they like themselves. Lewis writes that the quest for equality is usually perpetrated by those who feel in some way slighted, and yet the liberals are often old, white, rich people who aren't slighted in any way compared to the average voter. They do not trust or like the electorate, which is one reason they cannot abide anything the citizens believe or desire. Unlike liberals, conservativism truly practiced is the plan of the Almighty. Said Screwtape "He really loves the hairy bipeds (emphasis in original)...He cannot tempt to virtue as we can to vice. Be not deceived, Wormwood, our cause is never more in jeopardy than when a human, no longer desiring but still intending to do our Enemy's will, looks round upon a universe in which every trace of Him seems to have vanished, and asks why he has been forsaken, and still obeys.” Good men do right things for the right reasons. Liberals do them because it's advantageous to them personally and immediately. As Screwtape reminds us: "the justice of hell is purely realistic and concerned only with results. Bring us back food or be food yourself"

Adversary of Happiness

Particularly in the modern era, the hedonist, the narcissist, the nihilist, and the Nehor all reign because everyone has what Dieter Uchtdorf once called Center of the Universe Syndrome. Indeed, "Hell is a state where everyone is perpetually concerned about his own dignity and advancement, where everyone has a grievance, and where everyone lives the deadly serious passions of ency, self-importance, and resentment". Liberals use whatever they can to gain ground, claiming to be offended, to be owed, to be hurt, and to be important when in reality most people, however relevant, are actually redundant. I spend enough time in academia to know that there is nothing unique about the students by and large. They are essentially a great recycling of ideas, attitudes, and abilities amalgamated by centuries of successful genetic exchange manifest in the modern era. Many modern manifestations and attitudes are the ones of yesteryear, in which people engage in wickedness expecting to be happy and then are greatly disappointed that their time and effort are spent in pursuit of things with no real worth that cannot satisfy. It's an older code, suggested by Screwtape that "all we can do is to encourage the humans to take pleasures which our Enemy has produced at times, or in ways, or in degrees , which He has forbidden". Liberal programs have the semblance and speech of heaven, but because of the philosophies of men, which are fallen, they cannot attain any utopia. Between sexual liberation and the so-called "women's movement", liberals have destroyed the value of many women, reducing them to nothing more than playthings. I forget which James Bond or spy movie said it, but one character opines that American women are only good for spending their husband's money. I see it on campus, men led around like lapdogs on the promise of intimacy which ultimately doesn't lead to true connection, because it is half truth or whole lie, and leaves them emptier than if they abstain. Women are encouraged to throw away the things of eternity and consequence and become selfish. Then the men are led about by Screwtape's minions out there "encouraging the race to breed chiefly from the most arrogant and prodigal women". You can see them all around, like I do on campus, where they fight tooth and nail to gain and keep the attention of those who mistreat them and mistreat those worthy of their attention. If we refuse to view them as equals after they wallow in their sop, we are being judgmental. Isn't it arrogant and judgmental to say that I am arrogant and judgmental? Far too many young people "fall out of love" because they were never IN love. A student worker in the computer lab suggested I take dates to things that create an adrenaline rush which would bind them to me, but I'm smart enough to know that they will actually be addicted to the adrenaline rush and get bored when time comes to settle down and make a life. These girls flit from man to man, continuing to seek one-upmanship in their quest for entertainment, becoming more arrogant and prodigal, prodigious even. One girl I took out twice told me that her ex boyfriend paid for everything. This leads to vanity and greed because "the pleasure of novelty is by very nature more subject than any other to the law of diminishing returns, and continued novelty costs money, so the desire for it spells avarice, unhappiness or both". Closely related to the notion of picking arrogant and prodigal women, we find far too many people who are interested in associations clearly for the chance to be entertained. Most of the aversion to things that bring happiness and drive towards Pleasure Island is driven by a desire not to do what is right but to be cool. "He wants men to be concerned with what they do; our business is to keep them thinking about what will happen to them". Well, the trouble with Pleasure Island is that like PInocchio eventually you become an ass. In order to move people to action to change their plight, they pit people against one another. Screwtape reminds us that liberals believe "To be means to be in competition". Ronald Reagan famously opined the liberal paradox that a fat man cannot get fat unless he took from the thin man beside him. The philosophy of hell in "The Great Divorce" preaches that you expand by thrusting others aside, which is odd since liberal scientists admit that the universe is expanding. There truly is going to be more for everyone, even if you don't get everything you like. Finally, they attack your ideals of society and faith on the auspices that unless you get EVERYTHING you demand then you must be wrong, nevermind that liberalism rarely delivers on its promises to anyone. In the words of Screwtape: "don't forget to use the heads I win, tails you lose argument. if the thing he prays for doesn't happen, then that is proof that petitionary prayers do not work; if it does happen, he will of course be able to see ...it would have happened anyway". Unless Conservativism creates utopia it's worthless; unless religion creates utopia it's worthless; if something good happens, it's coincidence, unless of course with liberalism, to which they unjustly ascribe virtuous outcomes and at which they never lay blame for its consistently reliable and inevitable failure.

Special notes on the term "democracy"

The demagogues in politics frequently bandy about the word Democracy without bothering to explain what it is that they actually mean by it. Like so many other words, they use them knowing that you attach a meaning to it while they attach a different, frequently tangential, and often deleterious denotation, all the while letting you believe that it means what you think it means. As previously written, I inquired after two politicians once who, claiming they would fix things would not address whether they meant fix as in "to make permanent or rig" or as in "to repair", the former meaning which only after 1905 came to be attached to the word according to the Oxford English Dictionary. In 1965, CS Lewis wrote about democracy and put these words in Screwtape's mouth. "In his perfect democracy, you remember (Rousseau), only the state religion is permitted, slavery is restored, and the individual is told that he has really willed (though he didn't know it) whatever the government tells him to do". That is precisely what liberals mean when they talk about Democracy- where the will of the people is dictated by the elites among them, where rights, responsibilities, and conditions are dictated by Government rather than by God, where we worship government as our benefactor. Lewis continues: "Democracy is the word with which you must lead them by the nose". You see this in the nationalist-populist-agrarian movement personified in the Trump candidacy (hat tip to Mark Levin for the hyphenated nomenclature) being careful to never give this word a clear and definable meaning because "it is a name they venerate and of course it is connected with the political ideal that men should be equally treated". We all think we desire equality, but they mean equality as in death, as in the gutter, that we're all side by side, equally poor and miserable picking rice in the fields like in the socialist utopias like Cuba and North Korea over which they fawn and to which they point as panacea. Ultimately, that is their aim with liberal democracy where they "Allow no preeminence among your subjects. Let no man live who is wiser or better or more famous or even handsomer than the mass. Cut them all down to a level; all slaves, all ciphers, all nobodies. All equals. Thus tyrants could practice in a sense "democracy"". Listen to their rhetoric, what they promise. You won't have to think or work or worry or compare yourself to others. Everyone will get a "liveable wage" and have "universal health care" and get trophies for participation. Later on, they will promise free college: "entrance examinations must be framed so that all, or nearly all, citizens can go to universities, whether they have any power or wish to profit by higher education or not". When everyone has a college education, nobody will. "All incentives to learn and all penalties for not learning will vanish". This is a diabolical philosophy that actually promises to fill the world with ciphers, a "nation without great men, a nation mainly of subliterates, full of the cocksureness which flattery breeds on ignorance, and quick to snarl or whimper at the first hint of criticism". Do you recognize this as the call for "safe zones", "free speech zones", and the like? This is the spectre of human blindness that cannot lead to utopia because it lakes all of the states of mind that ultimately lead to paradise. That's what the Great Deceiver does, and his mortal minions preach it from every pulpit to which they can gain access.

When I reread these passages last month, I shook my head knowing that many political leaders, regardless of alleged party affiliation, tout the principles endorsed by Screwtape. I don't know if they do this by design or because they are kept from the truth because they know not where to find it. In my Faith, we preach that many of the elect will be blinded by the subtle craftiness of men, preach for doctrines the commandments of men, and attempt to exalt themselves, and nowhere is that better illustrated than in modern liberalism. Whether unwilling to delineate what "the definition of 'is' is" or calling something democratic when it is anything but, liberalism survives, grows, and thrives on lies. Whether creating safe spaces where people won't feel threatened by ideas they find contrarian or attempting to claim power to take away rights given us by our Creator, liberalism views people as chattel, fit only for consumption. Whether touting things that are of no worth and cannot satisfy or encouraging us to take advantage of them in ways or to degrees that cause decadence and degradation, liberalism is only interested in power. For all of the fancy rhetoric, the populist pageantry, and the nationalistic hegemony, the liberal actually preaches the whole philosophy of hell where one gains only by thrusting another aside, where each is concerned only with his own all the while claiming to do it for "the children" or "the poor" or "world peace" while they envy and hate their own children, ignore the beggar that puts up his petition and sow discord among brethren. Beware when politicians prattle the principles of Christian charity, because they do that, not because they really mean it, but because they hope you do and they hope to manipulate you into doing right things for the wrong reasons.

DMV Integrity

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Nobody really likes the DMV because it's the posterboy for government inefficiency. The people who work there do not seem to be the most motivated, the most educated, the best looking, or the most capable, but boy are they paid well considering their work. We all trudge in, forced from time to time to appear in person and stand in line with people we don't know and with people we might otherwise avoid at all costs to talk to people who don't give a flying pinwheel about our plight and hate their jobs. What makes me even more annoyed is when I am allowed to do something from afar in silico and STILL have to visit the DMV because they made a mistake. Most government agencies are not renowned for their integrity (security) or for the integrity of those who work there. Everyone makes mistakes, but it does not fix their mistake for me to make another, and so knowing that their lack of integrity called me to prove mine, I bowed my head and went in when I had every right to simply transact anonymously online and fade away.

When I went to pay my vehicle renewal, I found an error in the fees. I was elated to see the price only to realize it must be because someone erroneously credited a registration remainder to my account. I was not really surprised. The large majority of clerks when I visit the DMV look like they are tired or incapable or just miserable, and so I think when you hate your job it becomes more likely that you make mistakes. Unlike Monopoly, when the bank makes an error in your favor and you collect money, I worried that this might come back to bite me. I didn't make the mistake, but someone did. It seems silly to trade away my integrity for a matter of $40, but it's equally silly to have someone at the DMV fired because they made a $40 error. I think they are paid more than they are worth, but they are paid, and they do actually go to work, and it's not like they can get away and pass the work to others, so since I have no personal animus towards them, I knew what I had to do. It was easy, because nobody else is inconvenienced by this, and so the choice only affects me, but I addressed it to the DMV so that they could fix the error.

When I paid the fee, I knew that I needed to address it because the DMV hurt someone else in order to make this error. Somewhere out there someone returned plates, transferred them to another car, and then expected a refund. Somewhere out there, that person didn't get a credit for fees already paid. They maybe didn't notice like most people didn't when they raised the fees although Governor Gibbons promised "no new taxes", but I did. When your fee is only 25% of what you expect, you don't complain. Most people are only interested in justice when it hurts them but pocket the teller fee when it favors them. I claim that you only truly mean something if you fight for what is right when it hurts people you don't know or don't like, and even if this is a credit due my ex wife, it's not due me. If I were the one due the credit, I would probably demand it, and as much as I think the state of Nevada pisses away plenty of money, it's not my decision to piss it away in duplicate credits, and so I set it right.

When I made this decision, I knew it would cost me before I ever benefit, if I ever benefit at all. Sure as shooting, I was charged the extra money immediately. I don't know if the other person will ever get their credit. I guess I'm lucky technically speaking that I didn't have to pay interest, a late fee, or a fine since it wasn't correct. I'm one of those guys who drives the speed limit anyway because I expect to be caught and because I'm not very amicable with authority figures. Most people would think if they never had to pay the difference that they got away with it. It's technically stealing. God would know, and God would know that I knew, and that was enough for me.

I really hate when I do the right thing and suffer. However, I still believe like Ender Wiggen that the way we win matters. I still believe that an honest C beats an A earned fraudulently. All too often, however, I don't get a C; I get an F, and then it looks like no good deed goes unpunished. That being said, I also believe that the Lord that seeth in secret shall reward thee openly. I don't know when; I don't know how; but I know God will bless me somehow. Watch and you'll see, someday I'll be blessed for integrity. The systems at the DMV and the people who work there do not seem to be of much integrity; they seem to be very interested in justice, and if it's justice with which you threaten me, I am not threatened. I did right by the state, by the stranger owed the credit, and by my own conscience. I got to pay the full measure, and it cost me time and effort to go fix a problem I didn't create. That's how it usually works, that it annoys you and others when you fix someone else's mistake and then don't get any special credit for it. Tonight, I will sleep well. Tomorrow I won't worry driving around that NHP will harass me for cheating the DMV. If it ever matters in any other arena, I will be able to say that I made it right. Maybe one day God will make it up to me. Maybe it was just so that you and I will know that I practice what I preach.

Women Choose

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Although men may pursue, ultimately the woman chooses. It surprises me often what women choose because I noticed from a young age that women chose the crappy guys who abused them all too often and bent over backwards to make things work. As an adult, I watched women I know put up with abuse and infidelity because they "knew he would change" but really because that was what they wanted to happen. They have this narrative in their head that they don't share, and if you aren't in the cast you don't get on stage, and if you go off script you don't make it to opening night. From the very beginning, they choose whose attentions they permit. In courtship they decide whose attentions may persist. In mating, they decide who gets to rehearse for fatherhood and who ultimately gets the part. It's like Cee-Lo Green opines in "Forget You" that if he were richer he'd still be with her. It's like Forrest Gump who finally gets the girl only after he's rich and who gets to have a bastard son with her because she wants him to be the father but wants to play around with other men. I used to think these were just fictional stories, but they have proven to be all too true as women chose men with better bodies, different affinities to their Faith, different jobs, different locations, different cars, different houses, ad infinitum. I don't understand what they choose, but I understand that they are the ones who ultimately do the choosing, and so they get what they truly desire. It frustrates me, but I don't have to live with the consequences, or do I?

A woman chooses which men's attention she permits. Like it or not, in the modern era, women are free to turn away any invitation. The reasons vary widely, and many of them are simply a matter of disinterest for whatever reason. People have their preferences, and if the guy doesn't meet them, he doesn't really stand a chance, and that's ok. I have decided on enough dates myself that I didn't desire a second. Women are not obligated to return calls, to accept the date, to accept another date, or to accept any level of affection with which they are not comfortable, and the law corroborates that with provisions against unwelcome advances. Sometimes these provisions put men in awkward positions, but if it were my own wife or daughter, I would desire her protection as well, and so I abide by the terms and hope to be exonerated if I mistakenly communicate something unwelcome beyond the mark. My sister is wise and nice enough to not accept a date just to get a free meal or go do something she always wanted to, and so she turned down a fair few invitations so as not to lead men to believe their odds were greater than truth. Women have MORP which is prom in which the women ask and Sadie Hawkins, neither one of which I was asked to attend by a woman, but then again I was a nerdy, pimply, creepy dork. I even had to ask more than one woman to prom as the first said no. We have the appearance of choice, but when a woman likes a guy, she will give him chances and opportunities, because she knows who she wants. As a man, I appreciate that and the opportunity to not waste money on some other man's future wife. However, all too often the metrics by which women disregard men seem arbitrary or immature. When a dork is attractive, they love dorks, but if he looks like Comic Book Guy from The Simpsons then he's gross, creepy, and unwelcome. At a Christmas party one year, the woman to whom I was speaking lost all interest when a friend showed up who was "going to be a doctor" because his future potential is superior to my present as a chemistry professor. I notice a lot of it is shallow and superficial, semblance over substance, about how rich or ripped he is rather than about character because the girls are immature. They get what they truly desire.

The woman chooses which men's proposal she accepts and under what terms. You date for a while, and either you decide to marry them or they decide to manipulate you into marriage. I know people who were told "we get married or we break up", and very few break up. For months now, the story has circulated the internet of an asian fellow who made a large mural of his beloved from rubics cubes only to be rebuffed. "I'm just not ready for marriage". My neighbor dated this smoking hot chick who he thought was perfect until she said she was afraid of commitment. Even after marriage the woman is in charge all too often. What's good for the goose is good for the gander is the historic version of "happy wife, happy life", but it implies that the man submits himself to whatever the wife demands in order to be happy. People tell me that the most important phrase isn't "I love you" but "Yes, dear", as if falling in line even if I disagree and oppose the notion necessarily leads to happiness and satisfaction. If the marriage fails, she claims title to half your stuff even if she did absolutely nothing to help you achieve or acquire it. Simply marrying you is enough to entitle her to your substance, and you get to pay in monthly installments, forever if you impregnate her.

Each woman's body decides which ovum she accepts. In "The Selfish Gene" Richard Dawkins explains how women's anatomy chooses the father regardless of her relationship status. By this phenomenon, many men are duped into raising children they didn't sire because the woman is more likely to be impregnated by a stranger in a tryst than by her lawful husband after years of drudgery. Physiology dominates, which is why it's so risky for young women who are not married, because in the excitement and danger of the moment, she's playing with fire and risks impregnation with a greater computational certainty than in a monogamous relationship. Many young people walking around campus assume that they were born because they were the first sperm cell to arrive at the ovum. A recent scientific video I watched showed a human ovum (in vitro) surrounded by several dozen attached sperm attempting to penetrate the egg's outer layer. Once one sperm cell manages to reach the inside, the rest slough off and die. The race doesn't go to the swift or the strong but to those who are found chemically acceptable to the ovum. Yes, many don't stand a chance, but even the ovum decides whether or not a sperm that arrives actually has a chance. Some sort of chemistry is involved in all levels of dating and intimacy. You may know a couple that seems a strange match when it's simply a matter of pheromone compatibility that keeps them together or because they are physically intimate so that oxytocin has created a bond between them that would otherwise be otherwise. From then until conception, it's also chemistry until ultimately the ovum coat decides by compatibility which sperm to accept. Men are often blamed for the gender of a child, and while it isn't possible for women to provide the chromosomal complement to produce a male offspring, the ovum she deposits may still be able to reject all potential males, particularly if the woman is under stress or duress, since female children are more likely to survive and more essential for the perpetuation of the species. After all, it really only takes one viral male lion in a pride to perpetuate his line, but each female can breed with much lower frequency since she must bear and nurture the cub.

Society often blames men who are single for their plight. Many men are picky, this is true, but just as frequently if not moreso women reward members of the Lucky Sperm Club rather than men of character. In her groundbreaking roast, Tracy McMillan makes the case that women are to blame for the choices they make. I do not see any criticism in her work or in the writings of Dr. Laura Schlessinger of men. In fact both of these female writers excoriate women for the way they choose, what they choose, and what they do about their choices, and my own opinions and attitudes about courtship admittedly derive at least in part from a study of these two works. Couple that with my own experiences (and I will tell you stories in my autobiography when I finish), and you understand why this frustrates me and frustrates true potential for success and civil society. While empowered to choose, women have not been educated so to do and are done just as much a disservice by this emancipation as the Christian congregation was when Guttenberg made the Bible available without educating people on how to read it or how to learn from it. I understand people have their choice, and I understand that most of the women we date will eventually marry other men. I also know that I don't understand or agree with their choices in most cases and that the things so many of them pursue will not necessarily lead to good, happy marriages. Then again, I didn't make those choices, so I shouldn't have to deal with the consequences, right? No? Great. Lucky me.

Weather Vain

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This week I discovered that my colleague who teaches weather also thinks manmade climate change is bunk. I was surprised because that's not the politically correct opinion or the common sobriquet in academia. She made some good points, and I shared my recent observations, calculations, and remonstrations that point out that on average things are average. This means that as many days come in below average as come in above. I notice that they get apoplectic about microdeviations in excess of average and then say absolutely nothing about deviations below average. No mention is made about our ability to capture weather data or capture it with more frequency or precision than in aforetime. Sometimes they pick what appear to arbitrary standards, random places, or silly references to which to compare. How can we possible know what the average was before we started measuring?

Barb pointed out that some of the claims depend on new technology. As our measurements become both more precise and more frequent, people jump to conclusions about micro shifts in weather. Just yesterday, a band of rain ripped across the Las Vegas valley, and it was spectacular, but unless it hit the airport, the news will report that we got "no rain". That's interesting when any tiny fraction of a degree over a previous record is considered "record breaking" but when it was only 67F in June this year, the news heads didn't seem to think that warranted a special mention. Below Hoover Dam on the Colorado river you can see the remnants of the station where, twice per day, a gauger would go take depth measurements, but that was only twice per day assuming he didn't just fabricate them. There is plenty of data fabrication today, and if your equipment isn't accurate your measurements won't be either. Our equipment now measures accurately and for a reasonable price deviations to the 1000th decimal place, but if we were still using mercury thermometers most people wouldn't be able to tell if it was 98.4F or 98.5F without a trained eye. Is it really different or have we been able to detect the differences? Let's also not forget the paradox that you change the outcome by measuring it!

Last Saturday I found a tree that constitutes a much better weather vane than the ones touted by science and pseudoscience. On the south side of Fletcher Peak in the Spring Mountains where I volunteer there is a 29 year old white fir tree alongside a regularly albeit not heavily used trail. This particular tree shows that in the 29 years of measurable growth each node grew an average amount with two exceptions. The first exception is that, the year before the Mt. Charleston fire, the tree grew only 40% of normal. The second exception is this year where the growth node is 300% of normal. In the case of the first deviation, it illustrates the conditions that led to the fire- bad water, low growth, and possibly lots of dead underbrush, and in the case of the second it tells me that although it rained very little in the valley in June that the mountain got a lot more rain than usual. Sure, you could get into the details and show that the nodes vary in size, and if we're talking a 5mm differential on a 30mm node, that's 19% variance, but an honest and cursory glance at the internodes shows that they are essentially uniform and that these two are the only interesting outliers. This tree, which I will show below, tells me that the weather on Mt. Charleston has been more or less the same for the last 30 years despite what they may claim about "hottest year ever" or "driest year ever" because the trees don't seem to get all that excited about microdeviations.

Since I watch the weather each day, I am aware of what actually happens and what happened in antiquity. If you look at the record temperatures in Las Vegas, you will notice that a large majority of high temperatures were recorded in the 1940s. I wonder what happened here back then to cause a change in the balance of energy leading to higher temperatures... I am currently doing the math, but every month except May this year actually came in below the average for all days compared to history. We even had fewer 110F+ days than average (10 instead of 14), but the news made a big deal out of the fact that eight of them were in a row, and they said nothing about the fact that it never broke 107F in August and twice barely made it into the 80s. Sure, the summer is hot, but summer is SUPPOSED to be hot, and it's supposed to be hot in the DESERT anyway, so it comes as no real surprise. As of last month, we had 4" of annual rainfall, putting us on track to hit our average rain even though we only got 0.2" in June which is our "monsoon" month. If you average it out, I bet this year comes up completely average. There will be fluctuations from the normal, but that's also normal. Said the mathmetician: "what appears to be chaos is often nothing more than the search for equilibrium". That, I believe, says it all. All life has balance, but if you only look at a tiny fraction you can find deviations that corroborate your agenda. Let's not forget that these same people also "know" that the earth is 450 million years old and that, if you go back far enough, the average temperature, average CO2 concentration, and average population of life forms varied widely from what it does now. Who decided to compare it to fossil records? Did everything fossilize equally? If not, their sampling is biased by the fossil record and therefore only as reliable as the odds are that what we leave behind survives the magma, the meteorites, and cosmic rays.

The world is full of junk science and scientific facts of which we are not aware. That does not make them not true. It makes them not known. I love how scientists look back with condescension on the theorems of yesteryear but insist that they cannot possibly be victim of anything fallacious, that they must be right because they are scientists, as if scientists are never wrong. At one time we knew things that everyone knows are not true; what was normal yesterday isn't normal now; average means that it is just as likely to be below average on average as it will be above average. That's how it works. Small deviations are made newsworthy, and whoever selects the news likes to leave out things that don't corroborate their forgotten conclusions. We are so vain to think that we understand weather, that we know what weather "ought" to be, and that we can control weather. If the earth wants, it can shake us off like a bad case of fleas (George Carlin). We are so vain about our weather. Today is another beautiful day in Vegas...