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...

Clothes Make People Change Their Form of Address

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Last night was my first lecture of the semester, which meant I donned my suit. Since I work in a chemistry lab, it means I have to change clothes, and I encounter people who know that's not what I wore to work originally. This particular time, it generated some unexpected responses and reinforced that the way you dress changes the way people address you. As visual creatures, we depend, sometimes too much and too quickly, on what information our eyes convey. Even if it is true, it's often not the whole truth or is misinterpreted as something it isn't based on our prior experience and personal bias. One of the most annoying things about working in academia is to watch young women fall over themselves fawning over men who look good on the outside but are rotten or empty at their core. I see lots of pretty women on campus; most of them do not see me, and some that do look on me with disdain because I look like, well, I probably look homeless if you don't know I'm a chemist. It was an interesting day.

Another professor assumed I was headed to religious services that evening. Since she is a member of my Faith, she recognized that we usually gussy up for special services and assumed that I only dress to the nines when I'm headed to God's house. I was completely caught off guard, because I will also wear my suit to concerts, lecture, and job interviews, and my previous dean used to assume I was headed to another interview instead. Although my parents sometimes bewail the way I dress and groom myself, in truth I am among the better dressed in the department. Since I spend five days per week in a chemistry lab and one day a week hiking on the mountain, I don't often dress up for work. You run the risk of damage to your clothes in these activities, and i told my class later that night not to wear anything to lab they would hate to ruin. We are so accustomed to lackadaisical dress in academia that a man in a suit is rare and remarkable. The pointy-headed intellectuals all too often dress like French Impressionists rather than Pasteur and Plank, and so they don't really stick out much from the student body except for their age.

On the way home after class, I stopped to pick up a few groceries, and a man in the store told me that he'd vote for me. Now, this particular Smiths is the one where I shop when I think I'm fat, ugly, poor, or undesireable, but I have seen well dressed people there before. Usually I think it's couples on dates, and given that we're only 10 weeks from the election of 2016, I guess it makes sense that he assumed I must be a candidate. I don't really live in a white collar part of town; people who live here work in those fields, but the businesses in the area are not exactly upper crust. The way I dress and comport myself inspires confidence and trust. If you dress smart, you must be smart, and we had a substantive albeit brief exchange, I thanked him for his support and continued to select my victuals.

On my way to class, some young people in a large, expensive truck pulled up beside me and told me that they'd pray for me. I sometimes forget how ugly my Saturn is, and I guess they assumed I was going to a job interview and meant they would pray and hope that I'd get the job! I almost always dress the best I can for job interviews, so it wasn't anything different for me, but imagine the contrasting image of a well-dressed, well-groomed, well-comported man emerging from a 1995 Saturn with peeling clear coat and scratches on the fenders. I must make quite a sight! Then again, I spend enough time around young people to know that they assume that if you own and wear expensive things that you must be desirable, if for no other reason besides you must be rich, right? The clothes make the man, right? I mean, there was this attractive woman near my age with a much older, fatter man, and I can only assume she was with him because he drove an expensive truck. We are so accustomed to people owning expensive things in determining their worth that we assume those without them are poor. I appreciate the sentiment of these people, and I welcome their prayers, but I wasn't really in need of them for the reason they assumed.

I don't usually give a very good first impression. I dress, do, and speak what is practical. I mean, people who actually get to know me realize I'm pretty damn awesome, and my friends are not my friends for what I wear or own. However, I dress in my suit because it commands respect and shows respect. I would never go to church in swimwear or attend a funeral in jogging attire or play racquetball in a labcoat, and I don't own clothing that is offensive or provocative unless you are offended by the color, material, or country of origin. I don't care about those things when I buy it as much as I care about fit and price, and obviously I took good enough care of this suit that I bragged to my class that I've owned and worn it for 17 years. In our modern throw away society, that also commands respect and changes the form of address. I think some of my students found it admirable; the plastic among them probably found it cheap and tawdry, but that just means i learned more about them than they intended to reveal. If you change how you treat people because of how they look, what they wear, or where they live, that tells me things about you. It tells me you haven't really learned to look upon the heart.

Desert Gardening 101: Introduction

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Earlier this summer, I promised to produce, publish, and post videos on backyard desert gardening for the benefit of students in my classes, neighbors, and anyone who happens across this blog. Today, please enjoy the first of these videos, which I finally managed one day after hiking Mt. Charleston when I felt well enough to actually go out back and film something.

Trees CAUSE Smog

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On the way back Monday from my family reunion, I listened to All Things Considered on NPR. I realized something that I already knew but that registered only when this program and its contributors pointed it out to me. During graduate school I researched volatile components released from fruit crops because those play a role in scent and taste. Despite that, during all these years teaching, it never dawned on me while burning snack foods in lab that the components of plants are flammable because they are organic, and that trees actually facilitate smog.

Everything pollutes. Everything creates carbon dioxide. It is a common misconception that plants make energy from the sun. They make SUGAR, and then they burn sugar, just like we do, for energy, releasing carbon dioxide. Of course we don't usually notice this because they consume much more carbon dioxide than they release, but I remember a chlorophyll flourescence assay we did which correlates the carbon fixing ability of a plant to its health. When plants are weak, they fix less because they have to burn more in order to survive or take in less in order to keep from dehydrating, but they always take in more than they release, so nobody notices that. Consequently, if carbon dioxide is a pollutant, then EVERY LIVING THING on earth is killing the planet. Plants and fungi and bacteria are not more virtuous; they are just not creating things or erecting edifices that produce more organic waste than the organisms themselves can manage. We pollute more than anything else because entropy must always increase or in other words the price of progress is pollution. Don't believe me, think about the industrial revolution...

Plants make more organic compounds than humans ever could. During my studies, I focused exclusively on polyphenolics and diterpenoids because those materials are volatile, which means they evaporate into gas quickly, making them the compounds we are most likely to sense when smelling or tasting things. However, the number of volatiles we characterized from Vitis vinifera amounted to fewer than fifty, leaving at least 300 other compounds collected which were present in at least 1ppm concentration. As I listened to the treatise on the reason why the Great Smokey Mountains are smokey, it dawned on me that plants actually accentuate the smog accumulations. Volatiles are released by plants in response to stimuli from their environment, much like when you release pheromones when you find someone attractive or sweat when it's hot, or toot when you eat food that disagrees with your digestive track. Plants use these chemicals to communicate with and influence their environment. They drive away predators, restrict water loss, attract pollinators, and notify other plants of danger. Consequently, plants release hydrocarbons all the time, they're just not politically controversial, so nobody notices because people think "organic" means "makes you healthy".

Organic chemicals are essential to living things everywhere. Most of the famous ones like gasoline, acetone, and turpentine make the water unsafe to drink. Some of the lesser obvious which should be famous like lipids, proteins, and carbohydrates are essential to life, interact with water, and react with it to form other compounds in your body. When you walk out into the forest to collect a Christmas tree and smell the pine forests, you are actually picking up volatile organic chemicals. They are not evil, and they do not have an agenda. Like I tell students- fat is not evil. In fact, when you look at someone and find them attractive, what you essentially mean is that you find the way their fat is arranged to be preferable to that of other people because what you see is fat. The outside of every cell is phospholipids, lipids, are fat, and what you see when you look at someone is the outside or a whole lot of fat. Carbohydrates are not evil. DNA, tree bark, cotton socks, carrots, peaches, ad infinitum are all impossible to make without sugar. The trouble is that plants release volatile chemicals which become gases that then interact with the environment. When there is smog, they attract other "pollutants" because chemistry teaches us that similar things collect together, which means that organic chemicals that are volatile will accumulate, leading to smog and toxic clouds. When there is fog or acid raid or other things, it's because the water has attracted so much to polar organic compounds that it forms droplets and makes rain or fog or dew.

Far too many wizards of smart think that plants don't pollute and that humans are the only problems. The same people know that pine trees constitute a huge problem in wildfires because they explode when burnt. The organic compounds burst out when the tree hits a certain temperature, and because they are made of carbon they are FLAMMABLE. THis is how fires jump fire lines and spread, like the Blue Ridge fire burning out near Baker, CA. Trees and plants are not virtuous any more than humans are villainous. Nothing operates in a vacuum, and some of the things we assume are one way actually constitute an amalgamation of far more influences than we realize. When I mentioned this to my friend from Baltimore, he told me that made sense because you can smell the forests, and he knows enough about chemistry to know that those things are probably polyphenolics and diterpenoids- things you smell and taste. The things I learned in graduate school primarily focused on our senses, but they do other things besides bind your tongue and nose. They bind water, they bind other organic compounds and create clouds that some people consider pollution, and they bind our firemen who are trying to render compounds inflammable that quite frankly always will be.

Please enjoy this picture of a burning Taki, whatever those are...

Hillary Clinton: Long on Talk

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Political advertisements proclaim that Hillary Clinton has an answer for everything. Most of them are retreads, and the rest are vapid. Her economic plan sounds a lot like the one her husband touted in 1992. She dismisses challenges, laughs off criticism, and comes across in every way as an idealogue except to the people who believe her to be the political savior of the hour. Besides lying about Benghazi, private emails, and her husband's decadence in the Oval Office, she also lies about her generosity. Like I pointed out to my Sunday School class this past week, she is one of those deceived by Screwtape whose benevolence towards those she has never met is largely imaginary while her hatred for those she knows is wholly real. She doesn't really care about you, but she has persuaded a large portion of the electorate that she does.

Confusingly, Hillary Clinton talks about jobs as if Obama didn't create as many as she claims. She claims to have a plan to create tons of jobs, especially ones that will pay well, which she proposes to achieve via taxes, regulations and punishment. Assuming that she has a plan, how does any of that incentivize people to hire? Businesses hire people because they need more people because they're doing more business. If that's true, why hasn't she implemented this master plan? She's been in public office my entire life. If that's true, why didn't she share it with Barack Obama? He's been in office as POTUS for almost eight years, and if she has a great plan, why haven't we already implemented it? If she loses the election, will she refuse to share those "brilliant ideas" with Trump? Is she holding us for ransom to elect her or she won't help us? I don't think she knows how to create a job. She has never proved she can create a job outside of government, and she barely held any jobs outside of government, so I think this is all hat and no cattle.

She claims to care about the poor. However, she never bothers to define what poor actually means. They are quick to define rich- which means $250,000 for a family of four, which is hardly a "millionaire" especially compared to her. She "only" earned $10 million last year. She's super rich, but all too often those who demand we do more charity are the least giving among us. What has she done to help the poor? When did she last give anything away or feed the homeless or take in a refugee? No, she insists that OTHER PEOPLE do that while she takes the credit. How diabolical of her! Instead of helping others, the last eight years, she collected money and put it in her pocket. The Boston Globe called on Wednesday that "if she wins she should dissolve her foundation"; she should dissolve it now because it's a criminal enterprise established so that she can get credit for giving money to her favorite charity- herself. The Clinton Foundation doesn't help the poor; it helps her friends. Besides, she doesn't know what poor means; she complained about leaving the White House and being bankrupt; well, she still considers herself poor after she and Bill received $250 MILLION in speaking and book fees since leaving office. Poor Hillary.

Like most liberals, Hillary Clinton lives by the adage do as I say and not as I do and refuses to put her own money where her mouth is. Despite all this money, she has barely given anything to charity (because the Clinton Foundation isn't really a charity no matter what its tax status). She says that we need to build bridges not walls. Her compound has a wall; why not a moat? At least then you could build a bridge. Just make sure to make it a drawbridge or place a portcullis so you can keep out the "little people". When I posted something about that Monday to the internet, within 30 minutes, I received hateful, disdainful, demeaning replies and communiques from 50 or more of her lower lackeys. I didn't direct my comments to these people; in fact, I've never heard of any of them before. However, I received hate mail from people who flew out to defend her. I'm sorry, but if she's so feeble that she has to depend on these people to defend her, how can she govern this great nation? I'm sorry, but if they think that pointing out the mote in another person fixes the beam that is in their own they are mistaken. Who has she hired? Who has she helped? Oh, she makes claims, but she never names names and gives specifics. Like most liberals, she just throws it out there, and if it goes unopposed it must be true. That's what pathological liars do. They take credit and give blame instead of taking blame and giving credit, but I digress.

As selfish as the day is long, Hillary Clinton has been working very hard to help Hillary Clinton. Like most politicians, she is her own favorite constituent, beneficent and beneficiary. She talks about "shared sacrifice" and then she has the gall to say, after earning $250 million, that she's going after "rich" people. Nobody seems interested in the media in asking her to prove anything she says. Now, they won't look at evidence that counters them, which is a sure sign of a demagogue, and she's never required to provide any evidence to support what she claims. People just take her word. If she had answers, why wait until you are 70? If you care about the poor, what have you done to help the people around you? If it's true, there should be evidence to back it up, but like most blowhards, she's long on talk and short on action. Hillary Clinton claims she has all the answers, and she's had 70 years to prove it. Don't believe the hype. If it were true, why wait? She could have enjoyed the fruits all these years. Liberalism is lies.

Welfare, Workfare, and Workers

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As the campaign 2016 moves into full swing, we hear the same claptrap about workers, jobs, and economic prosperity that we always do but that seems elusive no matter whom we elect. About a week ago, I posted something critical of an utterance from Hillary CLinton and received in about an hour about 40 personal attacks from people I didn't know existed and at whom the comments were not directed. That kind of vehement outburst tells you that you've hit your mark, when people you do not know loathe you enough to roast you in print and libel your character based on 140 characters of something you wrote. These are people who do not like the rules and who think that the pirate's code ought to apply because if things were truly equal, they'd reap what they sowed and be absolutely miserable. While they judge you for your weaknesses, they lionize other people who hate you in this parliament jester's foist that distracts you from truth and tugs at your heartstrings. It demands that you be charitable to strangers and enemies while those who require that of you treat you like dirt. It's duplicitous; it's diabolical; it's Democrat dogma.

Far too many young people live for the moment without planning for the future, requiring the world to take care of them when they did nothing to take care of themselves. We all know the story of the grasshopper and the ant, where the grasshopper walks around caring only about right now and talking about how the world owes him a living while the ant stocks away food for the inevitable winter. When the grasshopper runs out and comes to death's door, the ant helps him. The trouble is that the grasshoppers today expect to be rescued and then complain when we don't. On the way home from the grocery Friday night, I passed a trio of black teenagers. As I passed, one of them asked me for a dollar, and when I said nothing shouted, "Hey, I asked you for a dollar". He seems to feel he has a right to what I earn. I have money, he wants money, and so I ought to give him my money. Well, I doubt very much that if the roles were reversed I would be treated with more than scorn and disdain. The welfare state discourages industry and teaches people that they have a right to things simply because they exist and that I by extension have a right to give away what I get because others exist. It is a new form of slavery that indemnifies the industrious to slake the sloth of the indigent and miscreant and then vilifies me if I refuse to give what his lack of industry has not earned.

As an effort to counter this, previous presidents instituted workfare which compensated people for effort at least. Without tying the effort to the rewards, it at least demanded that people do something in order to receive welfare benefits besides making it safely out of the womb or stumbling drunkenly over the border. It's the same program employed at Welfare Square in Salt Lake City, where a homeless man from Reno once told me he was asked to relace shoes before they gave him dinner. Under a workfare arrangement, they don't worry about whether the work pays for the benefits because the point is to require something of them rather than showing up in order to receive benefits. It teaches people to work; it teaches them that "there's no such thing as a free lunch" no matter what the politicians prattle, and asks them to trade something of themselves for something else that they value. That's how life actually ought to work.

However, most of the lion's share of life falls squarely on those who take care of business. As everyone suspects, there are a lot of people in my college who do as little work as humanly possible. Most are the last to arrive and the first to leave, and there do not seem to be any repercussions. Into this dystopia comes our hero- Paul. I first met Paul at the campus gym last summer when he picked up the ID card I dropped and handed it to me. Since his name is easy for me to remember and his face easy to recognize, and since we work in adjacent buildings on campus, I see him and speak with him frequently during the week. Most of our encounters are brief, but they are unique in that he always gives me a high five when we pass in the hallway. Early on, I respected him because when the rest of IT went home early or were AWOL, I could find Paul, and even if he couldn't help me, he was at least there to pass it on personally to his superiors when they arrived the next day. You see, Paul is actually a student worker, and consequently he lacks permission and knowledge to do certain things, but he's an asset because when I need help he's at least willing to try. Paul impressed me with his work ethic. Not only does Paul work in the computer lab, but he also started a few weeks ago on the late night custodial shift. Contrary to most young people, this young man takes on a ton of work. Unlike his contemporaries who want to sit on their duff, smoke pot and still get an A from the professor, Paul is out there working off his keester trying to be self sufficient. He instills me with hope in the rising generation that they don't all expect everything to be handed to them or come easy. Paul is working hard for his money not demanding that other people who work hard give him stuff because he is there.

Ronald Reagan excoriated those who think that the fat man got that way by taking from the thin man. It's not that simple. People receive paychecks who do very little work, and some of the hardest workers on the planet barely eke out an existence. However, when you demand that other people plow and sow and reap so that you can glut yourself from the fruit of their labors, that's essentially slavery. You do not have a right to things you did not earn, even if someone gives it to you. That's charity. You do not have a right to demand charity from me when you decry and disdain the moral code and religious dogma to which I decide to adhere. If your only commandment is that it's only a crime if you get caught, then there are no rules, and nothing protects you from having YOUR fruits taken unless you're in charge. That's not civilized behavior; it's the law of the jungle- bring back food or be food yourself. It's also the philosophy of hell, to take a man's soul and give him NOTHING in return, to devour others to sustain yourself, and it's positively diabolical, and yet people have been convinced that it's noble, virtuous, and praiseworthy to require those of us who work hard to sacrifice for those who would riot in our blood and hunt us from the face of the earth if the tables turned. It's nuts.

Stages of Grief: Acceptance

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Over the past several years, many painful experiences happened to me. Consequently, I tried to wrestle with the stages of grief with respect to many different agitations concurrently. As soon as I made some iota of progress, a new privation built upon the next, and now, I think I'm finally abreast of my grief enough to be in the final stage of acceptance. I feel very funny. Nothing has really changed, and the conclusions I reached resemble those of earlier stages. Contrary to those other posts, I feel differently now, and I know that I have accepted it as well as I can. Maybe people find acceptance difficult to achieve because you must finally give up the illusion of control and admit that it's out of your hands. Maybe people struggle because they don't like how it is and desire to feel like their efforts ought to bear the fruit concomitant with those efforts. Maybe we're just so selfish that we only really care about the outcome that matters to us. Maybe we keep ourselves from progress because we refuse to man up and own things as they really are. I know it's painful, but so much healing seems to start with a cut, and in acceptance we find the power to cut ourselves loose from the past.

I'm not saying I am happy with how it turned out, simply admitting that there was nothing I could do to change it that I was willing to do. Other people may pay whatever price, but I'm not willing to mess with agency or manipulate people in the name of "love". I had an amazing WOW woman.  I still wish it would work out. I know that's not up to me. I'm open to the possibility, and if she's supposed to be important in my life she'll return. For now, I'm letting it go and letting her go because I really do love her. I have learned to love her with an eye single to God's glory- to hope the best for her regardless of whether I benefit from it. This Sunday, I looked back through my old journals for things to share with my Sunday School class and found that I first penned thoughts I shared here in that volume in 2011. I got to read where for the first time I wrote, "There is no virtue in using the Adversary's methods to achieve the Father's plan", and that "virtuous ends only come from virtuous means". Apparently, I've had these beliefs for a long time, and if nothing else, these experiences taught me that I truly believe that.

I've accepted it even though it's not what I like because that's the way it is. One hallmark of adulthood consists in recognizing things as they really are and recognizing ourselves in reference to those things. Yes, it takes two to destroy something, but it also takes two to nurture it, and so, as I know well from my failed marriage, as soon as someone else quits caring for a relationship there is only so much you can do. It doesn't mean you failed; it doesn't mean you quit; it doesn't mean that you don't care. You care enough about yourself to stop throwing good money after bad, cut your losses, and focus your efforts, energy, and ambitions into things you can influence. If it's important, it will come back around, not because you did anything, but because it is right that it should be so. As Michael Buble popularized, "wherever you are, whenever it's right, you'll come out of nowhere and into my life". Maybe it's someone you already know; maybe it's someone you'll be excited you get to know.

I'm doing this because I hope that whatever's best for everyone will happen. Naturally, this outcome isn't the one for which I hoped, on which I planed, and towards which I worked. Keeping to that outcome, regardless of the information, regardless of the prospects, and regardless of other venues for your attention, smacks of selfishness. It is also very naive to assume that what you desire is necessarily for the best. Since when do any of us really know what's really best for us? We might have an inkling, but as long as our information is inaccurate or at least incomplete we can't possibly know enough to with certitude always do the best thing at every crossroad. I still hope good for myself. I also hope that what's best for everyone else will happen, even if I'm not involved or even aware of how their stories progress.

I still feel powerless, frustrated, and disappointed, but I feel less agitated than before. I know that my past and future selves desire me to be happy, and I know that we can't really hope for other people to be happy while we are miserable. A man who desires to uplift others must be in a higher place. As much as I hate cliches, this is now the truth from which I must build a future. The other options for which I hoped are closed, at least for now, from my view, but if they are supposed to be part of my future, they will come around again. We like to try to force things- knives, relationships, bowel movements, and our dreams, but we forget that many of the brightest parts of our lives happened without our expecting them, inviting them, or forcing them. We were open to the possibilities and acted on the opportunities when they arose. I accept that I did the very best I could with what I had. As much as that phrase sticks in my craw, it is true. I'm a great guy, living a great life, and eventually no matter how hard the universe may seem to try, it cannot force us to forgo the things we earn, that we deserve, and the things to which we truly attain. Unlike Mr. Marley of Dickens' fame, I refuse to be bound down by the chains I forged in life. The Author of Perpetual Hope prepared a green pasture for me too, and He will lead me there if I continue to follow His lead. I thought I was on that path. Maybe I never left it. As I read in my journal, a friend told me in 2011, "You remind me that there is never any searching for God; there is just looking up and realizing that He is there". If I were not acceptable in His eyes, I know I would know. So, I have reached acceptance, and He has good gifts to give me when it is right that they should be mine.