Can't Complain

The title of this post is a common response to simple introductions like, "How's it going?" I often give it. When I do, I think of what I'm saying as very meaningful and important. Most people don't share this opinion. Most people don't go beyond, "Well I could, but what's the point?" My feelings are otherwise.

I see these two words in the same vein as "I cannot tell a lie," or "I can't kill another human being." Of course one can do these things (in the first case one is often presented with opportunities to do so, in the second it's sort of assumed that if you're saying this you're in a situation where someone gave you a gun, possibly in an abandoned warehouse with a guy tied to a chair), the capability to do so is there, perhaps even just cause to do so, but doing so would be a terrible violation of one's personal principles. I feel the same way when I say, "I can't complain."

I live in arguable the most prosperous country on earth, and certainly enjoy a number of amenities on a daily basis. I own my own computer, have running water, and live better most kings in history-probably better than anyone alive more than 300 years ago. I find spiritual fulfillment in my faith, have a family that loves me, and am unburdened by sickness or even mild infirmities such as headaches or sore muscles. I'm grateful for these many blessings in my life. That gratitude is important. Gratitude is a key to happiness. If were to complain over trifles such as one isolated incident of a headache I had the other night or a problem on my CS homework that I thought was poorly worded I would be denying the many good things I have and failing in my gratitude. When I say I can't complain I'm saying I will continue to live a life of gratitude for the many good things I enjoy, that I refuse to focus on whatever unfortunate circumstances may befall me and instead will focus on the happy happenstances of my existence. As a grateful person, I can't complain.

"Why is there always money for war, but not education?"

I see a bumper sticker with the above almost everyday on my walk to school. I can feel myself sympathetic with the sentiment sometimes. I often feel that the sentiment is naive, that of a simpleton, and masquerading as something with important meaning while truly hollow, on the other hand. Thinking about it I've (obviously) decided to write a post on the subject, and actually I came up with an answer:
Because war is expensive, education isn't. Even as a college student who is continually hit with the cost of education-a physics major who often thinks, "Man, I wish the phys. dept. could just replace all this lab equipment with newer, nicer stuff," a student who knows how expensive books are, a student who works extensively with computers and wonders if he'd do well at all without his personal computer-I think the need for money in education is overrated. Good education requires more personal involvement on the part of the teacher and the student. That's the most important factor. Everything else is gravy. Shouldn't we have a financial investment and incentive for teachers do be involved then? Yes. Yes, yes, yes. I'd love it if teachers got paid more, because apart from parents they may have the most important job for society.
Then again, soldiers may have the most important job for society. Soldiers bought us freedom from England with blood, nuclear warheads scared us, but may have also saved us from communists during the cold war, and soldiers, TSA, CIA, NSA, and others from the American war machine that seems to have too much money keep those who would kill us all simply because we don't bow to their beliefs. Moreover, soldiers liberates Auschwitz, and have stopped evil time and time again throughout history.
Guns, planes, bombs, and armour cost money though. Keeping these relevant costs more. Finding a good teacher takes, well frankly luck. Actually, it costs character. If our society doesn't cultivate character, no one is going to take a job trying to impart knowledge to others. This number will fall even farther if the students of our society don't have enough humility (which people of good character should have) to learn, instead persecuting those that would dare try to tell them they need to work harder to understand an unknown piece of the world. No one can do more to bring the character to the students of our society than parents. But most parents worry more about their children being smart, successful, or simply docile than they do about having character.
In a perfect world, we would pay teachers would be millionaires, and armies wouldn't exist because there'd be no need. Aside from religious beliefs, we'll never live in that perfect world and we have to live intelligently, according to what really exists and addressing those needs, in the real world. The real world has evil, danger, and societal problems that make education hard, so sometimes it's easier to pretend we live in a perfect world.

What I learned from MMORPGs

Not much, since I don' actually play them. I do play video games when I find one I like enough to pull the time and money away from me. I had a thought recently about video game mentalities and paradigms and a major difference between the MMORPG and the kind I've played. The games I've played, mostly shooters and real time strategy, are level by level, outcome oriented games. You start a mission, play through it, and then start another one until you're done with the game. MMORPGs on the other hand only loosely follow this paradigm. Much more important, as I understand, is the in game character you make. You play the game not so much to finish a level and beat the game but to "level up" your character. Curiously, I think this is a great analogy for life and a good paradigm to live by, even if it's not the type of game I've been playing.

My types of games our outwardly oriented. Your focus is on manipulating the world around you: shooting the bad guys, destroying the enemy nuclear facility, stopping the end of the world. While these make for stories and situations I enjoy, it's not a good way to live your life. A wise word of advice is that you should not set goals for yourself based on other's agency (free will). We should be more concerned with carrying out good actions rather than the outcome of our actions. In an MMORPG is a quest is too hard and you can't get it to work out, you can abondanon it and look for other ways to gain experience. So in life we need to understand that if something isn't working out the way we want it to we can look to other things for fulfillment and joy. It is O.K. when things don't work out the way we'd hope.

"Leveling up" is something we could all stand to take a lesson from, too. Returning again to the concept of a PGF and it's derivative we should all be striving for the next level in our own personal growth. Realizing that there's always a higher level that comes with it's own rewards, or developing skills, abilities, and powers are what keep the MMORPG player playing. Likewise, developing our skills, abilities, and knowledge should keep all of us living.

Not excusable, but understandable

I have been thinking since for a little bit now on the title of this post. I suppose I should say that my thoughts about it might just barely crystallize here as I write them, or maybe not. It's an interesting thing to think about, and has meaning and importance, and it's about time for the monthly post here on my blog so here goes.

I think my idea here is what drives reformation. What drives one to become better? To leave bad habits and grow to be better. This is similar to my previous post on the idea of a PGF. My question here though focuses more on bad habits, or vices. I've been struggling with some of my own lately. Perhaps it may be better to say that a particular struggle has been highlighted recently, as I hope to be continually struggling with my vices and weakness always. Getting to the point, I see the poor decisions I make and I decide that they're not excusable, but sometimes understandable.

This means I seek to understand what drives me to do what my better judgment tells me not to. I look for the conditions and the reasons behind bad decisions, internal and external. I usually find them. I usually find a good explanation for why I don't do what I think I should. Knowing this empowers me to be better, to avoid those pitfalls in the future, and to build situations around and within me that will propel me to good rather than away from it.

Knowing what caused my iniquities, though, doesn't mean that they don't exist. It doesn't mean, to use my hated phrase, "I'm a good person." On the other hand, weeping and feeling sorrow for what I've done wrong won't help either. I can't live in the past, wishing I hadn't done what I've done. I can only accept my previous faults, and strive to make sure they do not become present faults.

Do you really want justice?

I've been thinking recently about a comic book that I'd like to write or something. I'm not a comic book writer and don't really have any connections so I probably won't, but that's not the point. The point is that I've got a cool concept, which I hereby submit to you for comment!
The idea is that a man after learning of horrible evils perpetrated be someone (I've been thinking date rape by some frat boy) wishes to set it straight but can't. He prays for the power to fulfill justice. An angel (though physically and visually just a guy), truth, appears and tells him that there's a slot open for angel of justice and that because of his prayer he'll get to take the position. The really interesting part then starts.
Truth tells this guy that he doesn't want to be justice. I've decided he'd say something along these lines, "To be a force so indiscriminate and powerful, a force so immovable and implacable that God sent His beloved son to suffer and die on earth in order to save the rest of His children from it, do you really think you can want to deal with such an overwhelming strength?"
Well, because it's a comic book he'd say yes, and then be turned into a an fiery, angelic, and vicious engine of punishment. I envision this angel inflicting horrible torture and suffering on those who've done wrong. The man when he comes to (that is to say when the spirit of justice withdraws from him) is horrified by what he's done, what he's become. Throughout the comic he tries to stop it, hold the spirit back, but never can because the burning wrath of justice will always fall upon the wicked!
Anyway, I write this not to say, "hey, wouldn't I make a good comic writer? Isn't this a cool idea?" (though your thoughts as per that subject are welcome) but rather to ask, "What is justice?" My idea for this comic isn't just a cool idea for a cool story, I see justice as an overpowering and indiscriminate force. I think if justice were to have an earthly incarnation it would go around dispensing horrific punishment to those who commit horrific crimes. In the end, her scales when weighted to one side with abominations and evils will demand of Lady Justice to bring down her sword on the other with the same force, won't they?
I see mercy, personally through Christ's atonement, as the only force to offset justice. Do people force mercy into their conceptions of justice? I wonder if this is tied to the decline of religious belief, as Deity can dispense perfect justice but man can't. Perhaps man, without deity's guidance redefines justice for himself so as to seek it in a humane way?
I certainly believe that justice and mercy must work together. A human justice system must allow for mercy to a much greater degree than what one's conception of pure justice may be. Perhaps, though, this is the core of super-heroes. We want to believe in justice, we want to believe that those who do wrong will be punished by a force beyond our mortal abilities (as individuals and a society). The religious have a real belief in such a power in their God, if they envision Him as just. What about the secular? I really don't know, if you read this and do, please leave a comment.

What's the derivative of your PGF?

"They're a good person." This phrase drives me insane. Have you ever heard it used to actually describe someone that does good? Maybe, but much more often it's used to justify a lack of good, to overlook someone's vices. How often do you hear something like, "He may cheat on his girlfriends once in a while, but he's a good person." or "She may stew in envy and bitterness toward her sister, but she's a good person." I propose that this phrase is a deeply flawed and destructive one.
I think the inherent drawback of this phrase is that it is binary. What one is really trying to say, generally, is that so-and-so is not a bad person. The underlying assumption is that people are either good or bad. It's the reinforcement of this idea that may be the most destructive part of this phrase. Good and bad are like and hot and cold. Water may be cold, but not cold enough to drink. Water may be hot, but not hot enough to shower in. We need to stop thinking of this, and many things, as having a dividing line, but rather as a spectrum. Goodness is closeness to perfection, while badness is farther away, or closer to pure wickedness and evil.
All that said, let's cast this in some of the precise terms that I really understand. Let's say that good and evil are like a number line, there's infinity on one side (infinite goodness) and infinity on the other (infinite evil). The number picked on this line defines how good a person you are. Don't take this opportunity to say that anyone with a goodness value below x (typically zero-using negative values to denote evil and positive values to denote goodness), because this is arbitrary. More importantly, let's say that someone's goodness value is defined at any point in time by some function, which I'd like to call one's personal goodness function-or PGF. I think that likely the most important aspect of a person is not the instantaneous value of the PGF, but rather the derivative (or rate of change for you non-mathematicians out there). One who is improving by leaps and bounds, growing, learning to do good and ceasing to do evil I declare is much more worthy of praise than one who may do a great deal of good but is slowly letting wickedness, darkness, hatred, and whatever else you wish to use to describe evil fester in his/her heart and turn him/her into a force for darkness.
The derivative of the PGF also tells us with what zeal one is improving oneself. If someone is slowly growing and becoming better, good for them. If one has such a commitment to overcoming vices and developing virtues that every second seems to teach them how better to perfect themselves, so much the better.
It is by being content with ourselves that we fall into bad habits. It is by letting little flaws live peacefully within us that we learn to ignore the good things we could be doing. Only be commitment to improving, perfecting ourselves can we learn to do all that we need to for the world's problems of greed, hatred, lust, and pride to be overcome. One way we can do this is to constantly ask yourself, "What's the derivative of your PGF?"

War is Hell which brings Heaven

Wow, just the title and I already know I'm stepping on some serious toes. Please, just bear with me a little, take in my ideas, and hopefully you'll see that I'm not quite the warmonger I'm sure you've assumed I am.
Obviously the question I'm trying to tackle here is: Under what circumstances is war justified? Simplified thusly, the answer is easy. I take it from the Book of Mormon: "Inasmuch as ye are not guilty of the first offense, neither the second, ye shall not suffer yourselves to be slain by the hands of your enemies."[Alma 43:46] The principle is clearly taught and widely recognized by most, violence is justified when necessary for self defence. This goes for large states, governments, and organizations. One must be attacked before having legitimate reason for striking back. Thusly, addressing the current war in which the United States is involved, the "Preemptive Strike" is not justifiable. That's right, I want to go on record that I don't believe that a preemptive strike, an attack for the purpose of preventing one, is a valid reason for going to war. Moreover, therefore, that the Iraq war's declaration is justifiable.
Unfortunately, though, there is a however. However, I believe at least some deal of good has come, or at the very least could have had the political and sociological ends been pursued like they should have. A brutal dictator was overthrown and a peolple freed from his tyranny and torture. Remember those first days of whatever the P.R. label for this war is now? Iraqis celbrating in the street, hitting posters of Hussain with their shoes, which gesture as a military interrogation specialist our family knows says is one of such disdain, hatred, and malice that it's akin to saying, "if you ever are able to obtain the resources and opportunity, please hunt down and kill me and my family." That same specialist said that when some Iraqis were questioned upon being released to go back home they broke into tears and were overjoyed, because they were used to the fact being that if you were taken for questioning, you would never be seen again. Did this atmosphere last? Sadly, it seems not to. Perhaps it's just hopeful on my part, but I think that if the Iraqi democracy agenda had been pursued as hard as either candidate's campaign it might have.
The point I've wanted to make here is thus: Was the war justified? No. Was the war evil? No. Or, at the very least it's certainly on a level higher than the parade of sorrows and atrocities that folk like Micheal Moore would have you believe it is. And I think war in general must be recognized for the good that it brings. Of course the suffering brought on by the flood of violence which sweeps a land called, "combat zone" during a war is terrible. But the destruction of Nazis, unjust monarchs, or terrorists (I want to make sure it's pointed out I mean those who'll kill anyone regardless of...well anything but most importantly the worth of human life) brought forth through that sadness is important.
So, I supppose maybe I should sum up my opinion on the Iraq war, as that's where all the ire tends to lie. I think we should never have gone there. I think the reason for the war was not justifiable-though I believe Saddam's threat of W.M.D.'s was real, if only like someone brandishing a gun in your face is real even if it turns out the weapon wasn't loaded. I think the efforts going on now, though, are at least understandable and maybe honorable. And perhaps what I really want to say is just that the best way to honor those soldiers who fight on our country's behalf isn't to show disdain for the venture they're currently engaged in and wish it over, but to hope that the great deal of good which is possible does come from it, and a people learn to live for themselves instead of in fear of a soul crushing government.
War is hell, but as Dante had to pass through hell on his way to heaven, so must some communities pass through times of war to become places where goodness and happiness can abound.