The Climb

The western slopes of the Bitterroot mountains grow with each step toward my ridge. What began as an evening hunt for morel mushrooms blossomed into a 3,000-foot climb toward an unknown destination with unknown aesthetic pleasures. Formerly, I wielded trail slogans to drag myself over each steep portion of a trail. I might have said, “Don’t worry, this trail was built by people for people. Eventually, it will flatten.” I now know there is a more precise route to the top of each towering ridgeline or mountain that a trail would not dare travel. A trail for each of us to blaze.
            I am often lazy. If not physically, certainly mentally and spiritually. I, like all people, perceive potential threats to my fragile sense of self and truth, then pack them away in a deep, dark corner of my mind. “A problem for a future occasion.” Of course, just because they are packed away does not mean there is no need to address them. In this moment, as the sun begins to set, my water is back at camp a couple thousand feet down the mountain, dinner is waiting to be eaten, and my logic tells me to turn around. It is getting dark and I have been awake since four in the morning. I am hungry, a little dehydrated and probably not thinking clearly. However, something else is factoring into the equation. Something deeper, stronger, freer, more profound. It is that thing that tells you to go for what you want, even though there is a cost. That thing that tells you what is safe is not always what is best. That thing that begs you to venture into the unknown with no safety net, no vision, no destination.
            Somehow, that thing wins this day. It doesn’t win all days. How could it? If it did, we might never work in an office, clean our bedrooms, wash the dishes, or go to class. The routines of our lives, however monotonous, prove ourselves intent on establishing order within our lives. But as order grows, it competes with that little voice of chaos begging us to say, “Fuck it, I’m going a different way.” That voice that tells us even though we can’t see it from the river bottom, there might be something better on the other side of that ridge. That voice, that thing, the human spirit.
            It can be hard at times to force ourselves up and out. It can feel like our future is bound to the sins of our past. At times, it might even seem like there is no future. A pandemic sweeps our little planet and sends it into political chaos; the lingering blisters of racism in a nation open and re-open, threatening to never heal. Our jobs, friendships, love interests, don’t quite turn out the way we had imagined in our mind. Does this mean we stop imagining? Does this mean we settle for the same thing over and over, like dogs waiting to be fed cheap dogfood? Sometimes, the only answer might be to starve in the interest of getting something better. Something you deserve in life. There is no salvation to be found within the pits of complacency. Your value is not tied to what’s happening around you, it’s tied to what you do about it. So, what are you doing about it?
            I reach a false summit. A massive elk antler catches my eye in the middle of a meadow. I use the direction of the wind to sneak behind a beaded group of bull elk in velvet. The spring snow crunches beneath my feet. My legs shake like jelly in a jar as I posthole forward, thoughts of turning back now buried beneath the scree miles behind where I now stand. Another false summit, but I welcome it. I’m beginning to feel like I’m not prepared to reach my goal, whatever that is. But eventually I do. I reach the summit. Behind me, the emotionless stares of the surrounding peaks and valleys. Below me, the river bottom from which I came. Ahead, mountains as far as the eye can see.
            The summit of a high ridge or mountain top, to me, never fails to serve as a concrete reminder of our physical dependence on overcoming our own helplessness. We are, in the end, either defined by our limitations or our determination to conquer our limitations, test our boundaries, and evolve. Our grasp on our own independence and freedom causally relates to our ambition to achieve what we deserve. It is not given to us. Our value is not tied to the results or even the opportunities, but our willingness to pursue and create results and opportunities. I believe in a potential for greatness. I believe in a future, better than my imagination can conjure. I believe the path less followed is often harder. It requires us to look at ourselves critically. It challenges us to question the routines and truths we cling to for a false sense of safety and comfort. We cannot guarantee when we get to the top there won’t be more mountains to climb. What we can almost certainly count on, however, is that the climb will yield a result that lights a fire inside us we never knew possible. A fire that burns away the old and useless and leaves new growth to take its place.

Honor Among Thieves

Dale is a large man. He stands over six feet tall, his hair is long, and his eyes squint toward you as if he hadn’t time for pleasantries. It is nearing 12 o’clock and his girlfriend still sleeps beneath a pile of blankets underneath a Tacoma November sky. Should it rain, their home, a highway underpass near Pacific Ave, should shield them from the onslaught of Western Washington’s late autumn moisture. Like rain in Seattle, the homeless in Western Washington are a mainstay. Dale, who has weathered harassment from police, violence from other homeless people, no money, and dependence on drugs, is no exception. He tells us tales of murder, drugs, and theft. He expresses his hatred for the United States government and its corruption, all of which is hard to disagree with. All Dale sees in himself and the world is evil. Is he wrong?

As Dale walks away to roll himself a cigarette, it is hard not to examine his rather large collection of clothing, dishware, and miscellaneous belongings, many of which he watches for other homeless folks for a small price. Dale has enough to his name that he could fill a small house should he find the motivation to turn his life around. When I ask if he needs any food, clothing, or toiletries, he says he has all he needs. When I ask what’s next for him however, he simply answers, “You’re looking at it.” As Dale’s toothless drug dealer pulls up in a beaten down car, the answer to my question is clear.

You get the sense that these people not only operate with disregard to societal law, but moral law as well. You have the feeling as though they have sinned so habitually that they have no regard for wrong or right at all, and the code to which they honor is dictated only by the means required to achieve their next high. It is easy to say, “It’s their choice to be where they are,” mostly because if you say that you’d nearly always be right. And if you’d ask Dale, he would probably agree.

After listening to Dale confess his troubles and his hopeless aspirations, essentially to bide his time until death, I offer to pray over him. His reply, “better not—pray for me, but not with me. I’m too far gone.”

In contrast, a large man, also named Dale, drives his early seventies Chevelle into a gym parking lot 120 miles to the North of this underpass. This Dale, by his admission, owns a large house. He gloats about his four vehicles: a Harley, a Ford F-350 lifted, a 2016 Mustang, and of course, his navy-blue pristine Chevelle. A couple months prior, Dale slept with his friend’s girlfriend, who moved in with him, which he later left for another mistress. He spends much of his time at the gym watching himself with awe in the mirror, as his recently injected testosterone pumps through his uselessly muscular frame. He is his own God.

While the two Dales seem to be equally as guilty in their own way, a third person comes to mind. Kate, a personal trainer. She is charismatic, engaged in people’s lives, beautiful, married to her college sweetheart, and has a young son not quite a year old. Kate is ambitious, with aim to grow her travel business, help her husband grow his real-estate business, and grow a training division at the gym in her spare time. She tells me about her ambitious intent, prays that God bless her finances and businesses, and prays continually for God to “lead her to prosperity.”

It is easy to get on my knees before I go to bed, close my fingers together, bow my head, and pray for the needy. It is easy to create a hierarchy of sinners, placing the generic “good person” at or near the bottom and placing people my culture deems as “wicked” toward the top. If I wanted to pray for the innocent and needy person, which of these three would qualify? The man believes God has forgotten him, the man who believes he is God, or the woman who believes God is her financial advisor? What if I throw myself into the equation? Where do I fit in the hierarchy of “good people?”

Honor among thieves. It is the scenario where the gang member and murderer sentenced to life in prison brutally assaults the accused child molester. It is the moment the wicked man disassociates himself with the wicked-er man. A more ground-level understanding of honor among thieves might be a Hollywood adult-film star accusing a reality TV star/business-man turned president of the United States of paying her to keep silent about their affair. Maybe it is a husband yelling at a wife for nagging because he didn’t take out the trash during the football game. Honor among thieves—there is not such a thing. Only hypocrites telling hypocrites they are hypocrites.

When a man tells me he isn’t worthy of God’s grace because, as he puts it, “all the shit I’ve done,” I can only agree with him. The truth is—he isn’t. We all like to say, regarding our own faults, “Well, no one is perfect,” but how imperfect do we have to become to consider ourselves “a bad person?” When Dale tells me this on this cold morning beneath the underpass, I find myself humbled. Not because of my gratitude at my good fortune in life, but because while I have a car, a job, a home, and a career—I have more in common with Dale than not; I also am not worthy of God’s grace. Not I, not the Dale’s, not Kate, not anyone. We are neither good people nor bad people—we are just people—constantly under threat of corruption, and often succumbing.

We are all subject to sin. Whether it be too much coffee, too much fast-food, too much TV, too much pornography, too much sex, too much to drink, too many drugs—we are all just searching for a means to achieve our next high. Some of us stumble in silence, some of us stumble noisily. In between moments of righteousness are moments of wickedness, and visa-versa. What has been sold as a moral yin-yang is truly a poor justification for being constantly overcome by our inadequacies. However, we cannot justify our inadequacies. By ourselves, are sins are like rain in Western Washington, they are a mainstay. No one deserves Gods justification, he gives it at a cost. But not to anyone, only those humble enough to know they need it. Only those willing to pursue a relationship with him. It is not our job to give it nor make judgement on who needs it. It is simply our job to retrieve it and let others know it can be had.     

 “Two men went up to the temple to pray, one a Pharisee and the other a tax collector. ¹¹ The Pharisee stood by himself and prayed: ‘God, I thank you that I am not like other people—robbers, evildoers, adulterers—or even like this tax collector. ¹² I fast twice a week and give a tenth of all I get.’

¹³ “But the tax collector stood at a distance. He would not even look up to heaven, but beat his breast and said, ‘God, have mercy on me, a sinner.’

¹⁴ “I tell you that this man, rather than the other, went home justified before God. For all those who exalt themselves will be humbled, and those who humble themselves will be exalted.”

  

  

Transcendental Law- The Amorality of Natural Law

What do I know?

Minutes ago, the sun was glaring at me through the lens of a blue sky, but I watched the clouds roll over the top of the surrounding peaks and avalanche down the empty slopes toward me. I shuffled my feet and staggered toward the nearest tree cover, just as the wind began to throw hail into my eyes. I sat behind the tree, patiently awaiting the passing storm. After only five minutes or so, the ground was covered with a quarter-inch layer of what looks like nickel sized clumps of sea-salt. As the rays of sun reach around the trees base, these clumps of hail melted into the late Spring soil, promising lush vegetation for the coming months.

Now, however, I lower my baseball cap over my eyes and lay my head against the pillowtop stone surface, with my feet sloping down the mountainside and the breeze sifting through the meadow. My binoculars hang by their string from my wrist and follow gravity toward the bottom of the valley, but the pull of the long day summons my eyelids to their closing, and a calm dream replaces the world I live in with the world that lives in me.

As I wake, I clumsily trek back down the mountain, momentarily losing my way and stumbling into a rocky creek bed. “Wake up and watch your step,” I mutter to myself. My voice is the only audible human voice I have heard over the course of the last three days, and I’m beginning to cherish my input.

I am tired, so I sleep. I am hungry, so I eat. I am thirsty, so I drink. But if there is work to be done, I cannot sleep. If there is no more food, I cannot eat. If there is no stream, I cannot drink. Sometimes this world avails me with what I need to be comfortable, sometimes it does not. What it never fails in, however, is honesty. As the eagle does not lament the passing of the gopher, nor does a flame the burning of a cedar tree, nor does the heat mourn the shriveling grass in late August, nor shall this world be burdened by the passing of my final breath. It giveth as it taketh away. The good does not hide the bad, instead the good coexists with the bad.

I do not know how the sun came to be, nor the eagle, nor the flame. Was it chance? Maybe. I hope that is not the case, nor will I live as though it is. For I know that the sun questions not its shine, the eagle likely questions not its flight, and the flame questions not its burning. No, these things only are. They are as they are. Therefore, no time shall I waste amongst them confused as to my place within their existence. I just am as well—I find no virtue in claiming to be as I am not. I find no virtue in self-invention, self-discovery, but only self-fulfillment.

            What burden we carry! The burden of self-realization, the burden of self-pity, the burden of self-hatred, the burden of self-love. It could be said that all seasons of the earth can be found within the self. What burden is the self! Do the trees of the earth refuse to sway with the winters wind? Do the birds of the sky refuse to hunt for the sake of fast? Do the trees wither and die for fear of the future? Does the tide rest after a long, hard day? Does it refuse the order of the moon?

            It is not that I cannot exist in this place, instead it is that I have found myself with a choice to either succumb to Nature’s Law or Man’s Law, assuming that, because they are known, they are all that can be true. But if Nature’s Law is that which exists without man, then Natural Law requires not that I perceive it or perceive at all. It does not lie to me when it strikes me with beauty or slays me with brutality. If it holds nothing back from my perception of it and requires not my perception of it to still act truthfully, then I can learn to apply the principal of perception to Man’s Law as well. In this case, the Law of Man, with war, theft, sexual deviance, and even deceit, evidences its intent with alarming transparency. It has the capacity to be as beautiful or as ruthless as Nature’s Law, which tells me I may have created a false distinction between the two forms of Law. Thus, Man’s Law acts homogeneously with Nature’s Law. Evidently, they are one and the same.

            To this I propose, that while humanity may not willingly admit to the truth of Nature’s Law as it applies to man, it is observably true that mankind is bound to the Laws of Nature. While evidence shows this to be true, humankind tells a lie: some humans are good, some are bad. But to be a human is neither righteous nor unrighteous if the only laws to which we are bound are the Laws of Nature. No more are we good or evil than the lion who kills the cubs of another pride. If, by the Laws of Nature, we conduct ourselves, our recognizing of a potential to overcome the constraints of Natural Law with the attainment of righteousness means either that we recognize another law which governs goodness and badness, or we lie that goodness and badness truly exist.

            What is a world without good and evil? Of course, it is a world without evil, but it then must also be a world without good; for one cannot exist without the other. Therefore, concepts of good and evil within human societies transcend Natural Law, despite our proclivity to reflect Natural Laws in our communal and individual actions. The best evidence that our ponderings of ethics are an anomaly is that we ponder ethics. The moment that we question whether what we do is right or wrong is the very moment we should question whether our place in the universe is by chance, or if we are in fact governed by another, transcendental law, which  the law's of man and nature cannot achieve. 

The great burden of the open and thoughtful atheist or agnostic is an inability to transcend moral relativity (morality governed by culture and circumstance) and establish a credible basis for any moral standard. You can live a primarily moral life as a proclaimed atheist just as well as you can live a predominantly immoral life while staking claim in a religion. Still, there is no philosophically sound argument for an objective morality outside of religion for the following reasons:
        1) For right and wrong to exist there must be a governing authority to establish its boundaries outside of subjective interpretation. Even the most rational of human's are subject to biases and moral blind-spots. There must be an established Law, or else no on can be rewarded or punished for their actions with consistency.
        2) Natural Law is amoral. Competing acts of nature (a forest fire, the death of vegetation in autumn, beaver dams...) are in constant conflict with one-another. As expressed above, this law is the only observable governing law. Even the most progressive moral societies are bound to the Laws of Nature. But Nature's Law does not require we are monogamous, we treat other's with respect, or we accept deviations from that which is socially abnormal. If we concede to Nature's Law, we concede to amorality.
        3) Every principal you carry with you in your life is either dictated by nature, culture, or religion. If you abandon your religion, you act either by culture or nature. As expressed above, cultures, without an objective law, act by nature. Therefore, without an objective moral truth, you are bound to act only by nature.
        These points are secularly acknowledged, but are unanswerable. You can claim moral principals are defined by an enlightened society, as many materialist intellectuals do, but this does not account for the philosophical inconsistencies mentioned above; it only disregards them. What enlightenment philosophers feared with the death of God was the death of moral objectivity. For moral objectivity to continue to exist, it must be credible foundationally for the sake of future generations. The present state of humanity is at its most desirable currently, but the moral truths at stake have never been so endangered. With further development of nuclear arms, artificial intelligence, genetic modification, virtual reality, and data infringement, the stakes are at their highest.
You can also claim that you have no interest in whether you are righteous or not, you just do the best you can. This will work for you in your lifetime, but consider this: those of us who have thought most deeply on issues of right and wrong and expressed our respective beliefs publicly and genealogically (through our families and children) are the ones who will have a say in the moral truths of the future. Simply not caring about moral truth, if there is any, is a shallow understanding of your place and responsibility as an individual within societies; especially democratic republics such as ours. It is always worth it, in my opinion, to consider what you believe, how you got there, and how you can best impact future generations positively. In my opinion, there is no excuse for moral complacency.
But, what do I know?

The Greatest Purpose Principal

I’ve previously proposed that there is no need to spend energy wandering through space and time with intentions of self-discovery. Self-discovery is, in my estimation, an aimless pursuit. The “self,” if there is such a thing, lies somewhere between our clothes, haircuts, tattoos, and the environment we are surrounded by. If our ideas of ourselves are almost entirely constructed, but there is, at least I hope, a deeply rooted “self” to be fortified (not discovered), then where is the beloved journey of self-discovery and purposeful pursuit?

            First, we must differentiate between determinism and purpose. While there is a purpose within determinism, you can neither fulfill it (the act of fulfilling requires agency) or obstruct it, it is only actionable through staying alive and requires no agency.  Purpose does not presuppose a deterministic existence, but a deterministic existence requires purpose because each sentient being can be boiled down to their biological (whether it be genetic or environmental) purpose. We know, for example, that each organism in an ecosystem serves many distinct ecological functions in the whole of the ecosystem and tend to act as such with little or no deviation. Because humans have such capacity for environmental alterations, it is challenging to differentiate what is biologically innate and what is societally constructible. It is my observation that we either quantify actions, such as the birthing and nurturing capacity primarily associated with females, as accordant with natural law by default or in accordance with societal construction by default. Of course, defaulting to one or the other discounts any potential agency and responsibility for an outcome as a consequence of agency. Therefore, I contend that humans act both intentionally and deterministically; our actions are a culmination of both biological and societal construction, but only to the point of a heightened-potential for influence on a decision.

As for how our free-will acts on our purpose, we can navigate this question by defining what a secular purpose might look like at its most profound:

            First, shed the conception of purpose as an enigmatic, profound, and impactful individual career purpose. Not every purpose within our human ecosystem, either biological or constructed, will manifest in your career; second, consider what you do now—once again, not as a career, but habitually. Consider your eating, sleeping, hygeinic, exercise, interactive, and intellectual routines as the best observable accounts of who you are and what you do; thirdly, consider everything you do as universal and applicable to everything that you physically perceive and the majority of everything that you cannot perceive. In other words, when you make your bed in the morning, you can physically see that your bed is made. The order that you, through agency, have applied to your life is perceivable to you and whoever else may see your orderly bed, but the psychological ripples created in the process of your willful productivity exponentiate indirectly and universally in ways that may be imperceivable by you.

            Abstaining from the metaphysical, this is the most evident purpose to be uncovered, and it is neglected regularly on many fronts.

            In this sense, we are born with a purpose, our actions affect it, and our actions provide potential outcomes with varying levels of desirability. Whether we positively or negatively impact ourselves and therefore those we interact with is our purpose. Our purpose within our society is as instrumental as each musician’s role in an orchestra. There is an element of freedom to deviate from order, but to deviate too far is to fail at fulfillment of your greatest potential purpose and risk excising yourself from the orchestra. We operate within our human ecosystem to the beat of a metronome, no different than the plants and animals of the forest.

            Consider a stream. It flows only in one direction. Of course, a stream has no agency, but it an be acted upon. If the stream is dammed, for example, its direction dictated by nature, or purpose of greatest value, is altered by a competing act of nature. If it is dammed to the extent that fish can no longer swim to their spawning grounds, it is fulfilling a purpose still, but not its greatest potential purpose as determined by natural law. In the case of the human purpose, our agency can often dam our greatest potential purpose.

            So, to the question of whether we are born with the purpose or we develop into our purpose, the answer is the former, with the caveat that we may fail at fulfilling our greatest potential purpose. We may be born with a biological purpose and forfeit it. This does not mean that we no longer have purpose, it just means that our purpose, or role, is of no value to us and we prefer to enact on another, less meaningful purpose. Therefore, there is a highest potential purpose for the individual within a community and every action or lack of action detracts from fulfillment of the potential; thus, leaving the purpose to be fulfilled by another agent or not at all.  

            As with any philosophical conundrum, whether we are born with a specific purpose or we discover our purpose is a small dilemma with large implications. If, for example, we deny entirely that there is a superior role for individuals to fulfill within a functioning society, we invite all the instruments to solo at once. This is a piece with little listening value. Even in Jazz, there must be an element of conformity in deviations. It is best to construct when and how the deviations will occur to maintain something listenable. So also, is our role within a society. When we trivialize roles that genders, body types, personality types, and innate talents play within society, we risk trivializing values which helped to construct benevolent societies in the first place.

We do not entirely need to alter our innate qualities to create environments without conflict. Conflicting philosophies, theologies, and purposes fulfill a greater purpose, even beyond that of a peaceful society. Recognition of someone’s innate qualities may, whether they like it or not, thrust them into a purpose they did not intend. But our intentions for our own purpose are not all that enact on the purpose we fulfill. If your intention is to be an astronaut but you are born with little intelligence or ability to act competently under pressure, your purpose might be janitorial work at NASA.

As harsh as that sounds, it goes to show how little of our potential is a product of our agency. What we do, what we say, what we value, and who we surround ourselves with, matters immensely. We may be born with a profound purpose, but pursue a lesser purpose.

So, if our greatest potential purpose is inherent and if there is a risk of either fulfilling it or succumbing to a lesser purpose, how can we go about discovering our purpose? Firstly, look at ourselves honestly and stop complaining about what you do not have. If you are not highly intelligent but are large and brutishly strong, do not try to become an outstanding intellectual. This does not mean that you cannot attempt to overcome inherited challenges, it means that you were born with a specific skillset that you can ride to the top of an adjoining hierarchy should you pursue it fervently. It does not mean that your skills and lack of skills define everything you do; it means do not habitually envy what others have and you do not. Striving to overcome challenges and failing or succeeding is the best way to measure what our talents are, but do not be sunken by your lack of inherent value as opposed to another. If everyone was an intellectual, we would have a whole society of ideas and very little of them would come to fruition.

This brings me full-circle: that we do have a purposeful role to fulfill, we do not always attain its end, we spend far too much time seeking or admiring purpose and not enough time fortifying it. What causes talent to manifest within an individual is not a necessary point to reason. Pondering what utopian societal conditions might create equality potentially propels us to attempt to create an environment that births total equal opportunity and equally valuable purpose from person-to-person. This is impossible. Instead, it should be our intention to nurture the good qualities and strengthen the bad within each of us so that we may provide the most useful version of ourselves to ourselves; and with that, value to others; and with that, a profound greatest purpose.

The Devil You Know: the State of the Church or the Church of the State?

It must be noted that the word ‘church’ can be used to define either a singular institution of faith or all carriers of the faith itself. It can be used to mean “a place I go to profess my faith,” or it can be used to mean “the faith we hold.” For the purpose of this article, we will be discussing ‘church’ as the state of a faith (in this case Christianity) versus the state of the institution. The distinction is minor, but with the many various forms of Christianity, it can be challenging to hold accountable the Catholic church and the United Church of Christ simultaneously accounting for their considerable deviations from biblical teachings. The Churches will not be specifically discussed, instead it is all those who claim the doctrine of the Christian faith (The Old and New Testaments.)

How long do we have to flip through the news stations to hear a story about our president sleeping with a porn star and paying to keep her quiet? With a story like this, two things are happening: left-leaning news and entertainment enhance the flavor by giving it more air-time than it deserves; right-leaning media and, since there are very few outspoken right-wing entertainers, conservative supporters point their fingers at the bias of the left-leaning news media and liberal politicians who historically have done the same thing. "It's a distraction from the real issues," they might say. On one hand, left wing atheists cry “hypocrisy from the religious right!”, and on the opposite hand the religious right hypocritically backs clearly immoral politicians and business owners because “at least they don’t suck-up to these snowflakes on the left.”

            How is this a Christian nation?

            “In God We Trust” is on our currency. When we say the pledge of allegiance, we have the audacity to say, “one nation under God.” Which God are we serving? Are we serving the God of the republic? Are we serving the God of the Tea Party? Is this the same God who told Peter “He who lives by the sword must die by the sword”? Is this the same God who said “render unto Caesar what is Caesar’s. Render unto God what is God’s”? Is this the same God who said “Watch out for the teachers of the law. They like to walk around in flowing robes and be greeted in the marketplaces and have the most important seats in the synagogues and the places of honor at banquets. They devour widows’ houses and for show make lengthy prayers. Such men will be punished most severely."?

            These are not kind words for those who claim the law of the Abrahamic God. If you are looking for a God that values narcissistic, hypocritic, self-serving, judgmental, money-grubbing, shameless, earthly, egotistical, adulterous and unrepentant false Christians, don’t open the New Testament; you will not find that God. The God you will find meets very little of the criteria of the Republican Party, which claims this God most outspokenly.

             It can be made an easy task to point our fingers at the opposition who do not believe in the God of the Jews and say “this is a Christian nation. If you don’t like it, get out.” If you believe in Biblical sin, it isn’t hard to find someone who doesn’t and point out their sins. But we know those who do not believe will not follow. It isn’t our job to force them to; it is our job to follow and lead the willing. This is no easy task when the majority of “Christians” in this nation will throw their core doctrinal values to the wind as soon as some orange haired gorilla  promises to build a retaining wall and lower taxes. If you believe in Jesus with your tongue but not your feet, don’t expect someone who does not believe in Jesus to act in accordance with your doctrinal values. Don’t claim to live in a Christian nation when the churches are hardly even Christian.

            The truth is, there is no room for Christianity in our state. There is no room socially, there is no room economically, and there is no room internationally. Jesus was not a warrior. Jesus had no interest in condemnation for non-believers. They condemn themselves. Jesus and his followers were hardly materialistic, yet we live among the most material and economically driven nations in the world. We have more military bases around the world than any other country—and it isn’t even close.

           How are we a Christian nation?

           I am not claiming that the United States would be better-off to abandon its global materialism and accept foreign malevolence, but I am saying this: if you think you are a Christian and claim to follow the gospels, if you think the United States is Christian, if you think any form of your government is Christian, then you might think about reading Matthew through Revelation. Jesus does not spend a lot of time talking about nationalism, governmental law, foreign policy, or enforcing Jewish Law on Gentiles. Jesus was quite opposite of any recent major American politicians—and it isn’t even close.

           Unfortunately, God is dying, much like Nietzsche predicted. But it isn’t non-believers that killed him; it is believers. It's the Devil we know... I cannot fathom why anyone who doesn’t believe in a Christ would start believing if they looked at the examples of modern or historical Christians or “Christian nations.” The reason to keep the church separate from the state is not because the church should not be in the state, it is because the inevitable folly of man cannot be left out of the church. We cannot, in good faith, continue to claim our righteousness as reasoning for our political convictions. It is not our convictions that suffer but our righteousness. Humans are made to evolve, and so does the state, but if a state coincides with the church then the church too would evolve alongside the state. If the churches evolve, and I would argue the churches met their folly upon their creation, then righteousness and law begin to merge. As soon as biblical virtue evolves with modern moral norms, its importance dies.

            An atheist would find no harm in the devaluation of many Christian ethics, nor should they, they do not believe it. But if you claim it as your belief, you are then also accountable for upholding the belief and challenging those who falsely claim your belief. If you claim to be a believer but do not challenge divisive and immoral behavior within the church and within your supposed representatives, you are complicit in the killing of your God. This damage is irreparable and, if you believe it, you will stand trial. If this bothers you, consider these options: change your political support habits or don’t claim the Christian belief.  

            It is true, this nation has built some Christian values into its philosophy, but the values of material wealth, moral liberalism, and sexual exploitation have paved the way for a nation that is far more interested in its subjective welbeing than serving the most-high God. It’s hard to imagine Donald Trump and Jesus of Nazareth agreeing on much. Every time we accept the immorality of our peers within the church we deny God, and this is not to be taken lightly. It doesn’t mean you cannot challenge the sins of the opposition in defense of your faith, and it does not mean you cannot love your country as well; what it means is what and who we back matters. What it means is when you submit the church to the will of the immoral state you render unto Caesar what is Gods. The leaders we stand by publicly and what moral laws we are comfortable parting ways with in favor of our cognitive dissonance will be held against us.

But, you know… only if you believe that sort of thing.

“You foolish person, do you want evidence that faith without deeds is useless? Was not our father Abraham considered righteous for what he did when he offered his son Isaac on the altar? You see that his faith and his actions were working together, and his faith was made complete by what he did. And the scripture was fulfilled that says, “Abraham believed God and it was credited to him as righteousness,” and he was called God’s friend. You see that a person is considered righteous by what they do and not faith alone.” James 2: 20-24

Little White Lies: A Compilation of Identities

Our character’s name is Max. Max wears a Cincinatti Reds baseball cap backwards. The cap rests on top of Max’s spiked crop-cut. Max wears a grey polo one size too large and a pair of kaki-pants two sizes too wide. Max is not outspoken, but has a soft and feminine voice with a tinge of urban masculinity. Max is a male, born a female.

Our character reminds me of a poster on the wall in my ninth grade teen leadership class which read “Be Yourself!” Many hours in this class I stared at this poster wondering what the implications could have been if we lived in a world where everyone was unapolligetically themselves. Would this be a desirable world? Would we “coexist” as simply as a bumper sticker spread across the rear window of your neighbors Toyota Prius would lead you to believe? Would the driver of the raised Ford F-350 with the confederate flag gliding through the thick summer air have any objections to everyone being themselves?

These questions may seem like rhetoricals, but they are not. Every person we see carries the wieght of their identity, hopes either outwardly or inwardly to be accepted by those around them, and is in a constant state of identity reckoning. But what is most curious about our idenity, as we percieve it to be, is that we construct it almost entirely.

Generally speaking, when we shop for clothes, get a haircut, buy a car, buy a house, or choose a sexual partner, either consiously or subconsiously we choose what we choose based on an idea of who we are, what use these things are to us, and how we are portrayed by these things to the others. We are rarely who we actually are. In reality, we construct ourselves from the bottom up with hopes of finding the perfect accent to how we feel about ourselves within a given period on the timeline of our lives. Max, at the age of nineteen, wakes up in the morning, puts on a grey collared shirt and kaki pants, puts a Cincinatti Reds hat on, and goes about the day. But Max is not a Cincinatti Reds player, Max is not the grey polo, the kaki pants, the $120 Jordans, nor is Max a boy. When it is all stripped away, Max, just like you and I, is just another consious meatball floating through space hoping to be something to someone or themeselves. Max has an idea of who Max is, but it is in constant evolution and is not to be taken without a pinch of salt.

Lets be clear, when it’s said “be yourself,” it is more than what we think of ourselves and what we choose as material representatives that define us, it is the content of our character. In a country deeply stricken by the virus of identity politics, (both right and left wings) it’s hard to know for sure if it is our beliefs that define our character, or if it is our actions. The “things” we use to portray who we are, weather it be tattoes, cars, or distinct fashion choices, act more on our beliefs than our beliefs act on them. The clothes you wear very minimally alter your character, and I would argue nearly always negatively. What gender you interpret yourself to be, what sexuality you are, what your skin color is, how much you love weed, or what sports team you represent are not representaions of who you are, you are representations for them.

Unfortunately, as I said before, your character can be altered by these things. “Power works both in us and through us” as my philosophy instructor would say. If that is the case, the influences around us are not so different from the things we use to influence others about ourselves. In this case, we should all be victim to our surroundings and our notions given to us about us. But simply existing in an atmosphere, if free-will exists, is not wholly enough to influence our decisions.

The danger of identity politics is the claim that our identity, whether it be our own percieved identity or the identity of our group, is who we are. I would argue we are much more than our appearance, we are far greater than our ubringing, and we always have a choice. If that  is the truth, then you are accountable for who you are. You cannot use your upringing or self-interpretation as an excuse for your shallow character. Instead of taking people at their word for who they are, take them at face value. If we take people at face value, we might see that they value, often narcassistically, representing themselves more than they value the content of their decisions. If your actions best represent how you identify yourself, which is often very far from who we are naturally, then your actions are in peril of being self-serving and shallow. You don’t need clothes, tattoos, or green hair to be you, you already are you. What defines you is your impact, your desire for purpose, and how you act on your purpose.

I heard a quote from Oprah Whinfrey once that said something along the lines of “find your truth.” It’s a widely propegated idea that we should always be in search for what is true to us and self-discovery. However, who we are when we are born is true. What we do and how we are perieved is true. We don’t have to search for our truth because truth doesn’t need us. We habitually tell ourselves little white lies about who we truly are, but we were truly who we are before we had any understanding that we were anything at all. Stop trying to invent yourself. Stop trying to invent your truth. The one thing we don’t have to do in life, yet still waste our time trying to do, is find ourselves. Take your clothes off, shut your mouth, and look in the mirror. That’s who you are. Accept it, put your clothes back on so we don’t have to see you naked, and go be great.

“There is nothing from without a man, that entering into him can defile him: but the things that come out of him, those are they that defile the man” Mark 7:15

Malware

As I read the essay on feminist ethics two questions come to my mind: what is the end goal? Is it achievable? Maybe more importantly would be the question; do we want to achieve it? This is a classic case of what you want may not actually be what is best for you or your society.

I would imagine that the end goal for the feminist, if indeed the feminist is the torch bearer for all oppressed peoples as the writer states, is an equal and pleasurable society. A counter to this might be that the idea of an equal and pleasurable society is utopian and unachievable, but I do not take that stance. Hopeless submission to tyranny is a poor argument to make, and it is tyranny that feminists claim to be obstructed by (patriarchy, white privilege, cist privilege, heterosexuality, dominant hierarchies= tyrannical groups). So, a proper and moral argument would be to first concede that a world free of tyranny is a world worth hoping for and fighting for. The question worth asking is, “what is equity?” We can all agree that total equality is neither useful nor achievable, so an intellectually honest feminist might answer “equal opportunity,” but he or she will most likely instead answer “lack of oppression.” They likely then will conclude that oppression and poor treatment of minority groups and women—lets just say anything that is not a white, straight, male—is not equality, therefore equality might be lack of oppression.

So, this may answer our first question as it relates to equality; the end goal is equality and therefore absence of oppression. Since any rationally minded person can agree that absence of oppression is “good” in our society, we then must ask the second question: “Is it achievable?”

I can only think of one means that could potentially achieve equality: government and law. Since we cannot, even as much as we try, police thought, we must then police actions in hopes to get to the thought. If we cannot train our pets to be polite to guests, we must train them to fear punishment for poor manners. To police actions, we must have a government willing to forego the liberty of the individual, therefore a government willing to police thoughts through policing actions. A government such as this must be willing to implement their viewpoints on their citizens and must then take the responsibility of achieving equity into their own hands. Thus, our thoughts would then be adequately policed through our actions which were governed not by liberty but by law.

The above explanation also then answers the question of whether or not this is worth achieving: No. If we are to place the responsibility of our own critical thought in the hands of a governing party, we have submitted all liberty and free-will (if you’re into that sort of thing), subsequently giving permissions to access our hard-drives of belief. I will grant that a lawless society is a dangerous society, but loss of liberty is not to be taken lightly. Arguing in favor of identity politics is an argument that a government should govern on merit of sex, skin color, or sexual orientation. Furthermore, it does not protect the individuals right to choose how they might perceive their surrounding environment, and this is not even a law God would impose.

The Courtrooms of Reason

It is another sleepless night. We all know the feeling. The very first time I remember being sleepless was at the age of four-years-old. My sisters slept soundly in adjacent rooms, and I sat wide-eyed and wide awake, awaiting what would come next. It seemed such an odd feeling, going to sleep. Why would we sleep when there was so much to be done? I wanted so badly to draw pictures and play soccer and ride my bike. There was purpose in the day! Why should that cease with the night?

I stared at the dark ceiling with only the dim light of the night light casting its protective glow. Above me shadows waved back and forth with a pace similar to that of waving tree-tops in the wind. As I watched the shadows morph and move, they began to be characterized by evil. They began to hiss and tease and toy with me, and all I could think to do was pull my covers over my head and hope to fall asleep. To no avail… As I unclenched my eyelids I slowly pulled the covers under my nose. And there they were, as if waiting for my emergence. What would such evil beings gain from my torment in the night? What authority do they have over me? Were they to kill me, wouldn’t they have done it by now?

With that I leapt from my bed. I stood amongst them and raised my finger toward the ceiling. “Get out of my house!” I told them. “In the name of God, I cast you out!”

Who knows how long I stood and chanted. Who knows how many sleepless nights I spent casting shadows from my ceilings.

Many ticks the clock has ticked since that night. Many shadows have crawled along my ceilings, and my tents, and my trails. It is hard now to do anything but rationalize each and everything that I see or feel. Sadness can be weakness. Anger can be shortsightedness. Happiness can be ignorance. Shadows on the walls? They are only shadows. The truth is, the character of the shadows in the night will give way to the comfort of the inanimate objects I recognize in the light.

As I look back to the many interesting metaphysical occurrences in my life, I find great ease in the rationalization of such moments. I wonder now if the idea that ghosts and demons do not exist would have been enough to deter my fears and send me deep into sleep. I wonder if it would have mattered at all. If you believe something to be true, how true it can be! As soon as we rationalize our existence and minimalize our experiences to helpless subjectivity, fear of the unknown ceases to be. How could you fear the unknown if the unknown is known? If I know what is under my bed, my fear turns to preparation and action. It is the question of “if” that leaves me to seek the 'is'. If 'it' only 'is' and 'if' always 'isn't,' 'I' only 'am' and cannot 'become.' ‘If’ leaves me to discover. ‘Is’ leaves me only to observe.

But what also must be abandoned should we depart from the unknown? Curiosity? Excitement? If I watch a video of each future wilderness journey, the bubble of my angst and elation is popped with the needle of rationality. This leaves me to wonder, where is the place for rationality? Is it always necessary?

I ponder now what other anomalies I presently rationalize that I did not as a boy. There was a time when I believed in love, in truth, in happiness, in compassion. Not because I understood it, but instead because I felt it and never questioned whether or not it was real. As I saw roadkill I felt sad, as I saw a homeless person I felt compassion. As I saw my parents and my siblings I felt a deep love. These things can be rationalized as instinctual or psychological. I could rationalize to the point where love and compassion does not truly exist, it is merely a response to a herd instinct or genetic sexual preferences. But why would I? I would therefore deprive myself of the very existential pleasures that make me an excited, thoughtful, and curious human-being. Can I not entertain beliefs outside of my realm of understanding because of their irrationality?

Here is the hard truth that we avoid intellectualizing when we make claims that we are either ‘atheist’ or ‘agnostic’ or ‘religious’: There are only two options for our existence— a) If we do not believe in a creator, we cannot then believe in right or wrong because everything we see and know happened as a result of chance. Our decisions only carry consequences equal to the harm they cause to others, and harm to others can be ‘rationalized’ as okay providing the circumstance allows the action. The only ‘rational’ possibility for existence is that everything that has happened or will happen is a domino being tipped by the preceding domino, therefore all life, technology, feeling, or action is only a consequence of what lead up to its occurrence. B) If we do believe in a creator, our rationality must be tapered by our imaginations. If there is a creator and the creator is conscious, the creator must also have intentions, feelings, and actions. Therefore, everything we do or say is the most important thing we will ever do. That means our lives are not just lottery balls bouncing at random. That means that our choices are REAL choices and not just reactions to other reactions reacting to reactions.

A claim that there is no creative force of the Universe is a claim that there is no freedom of choice.  No right and wrong, happiness, sadness, or fear. In essence, that freedom is an illusion and we are all slave to chance. A belief in a creative force of the Universe is the claim that everything has purpose. It grants us responsibility. It grants us authority over our decisions. No means no and yes means yes. There is no such room for ‘it doesn’t matter.’

When I now think back to those shadows on the walls, I feel as though I once saw something that I now cannot see. I saw things through the eyes of more than just a functioning and stable member of a society. I relied on more than what I was taught or how I was taught to think. There was a purity in my naivety. To survive in our world, there is very little room for anything outside our realm of understanding until someone comes to understand it and tells us it is okay to believe it. But by our belief in only rationality and what is ‘known,’ we rob ourselves of so much. Our freedom to love, to be happy, to care. With only what is known and what is rationalized, we are only left with illusions of feelings and no feelings actually exist. If this is true, then so be it. But if you, like me, find no refuge in a world where nothing carries meaning, I believe it necessary to reconsider your stance on the metaphysical. If it is freedom and purpose you seek, it cannot be found in the courtrooms of reason.

Musical Chairs: A Chair for Influence

The way we view our father shapes the entirety of our lives. It is easy enough to make a judgement on the character strengths and weaknesses of those around us should we have the mind to be at least minimally attentive to others. Despite our ability as adults and conscious individuals to make decisions on how we act and how we are perceived, the way we treat ourselves and others is often rhythmic. If we conduct personal experiments on our own mannerisms, thought patterns, and interactive patterns, we will undoubtedly find that many of them can be directly correlated to our parents. This is not some abstract and revelatory phenomena, but it is deeply weighted nevertheless. How parents treat their children, the value they place on their roles within their lives, and the degree of conscientiousness with which they approach their roles in their children’s lives not only effects themselves and their children, but also every single person they interact with throughout their life. How you act will most certainly effect how they treat their kids, and their kids after them. Generation upon generation has the potential to project aspects of your personality exponentially through time. Therefore, there are few responsibility’s greater than that of a parent. 

So, what is the role of a father? It seems these days that our ‘roles’ as individuals are under attack. It may be more modern and appealing to act as if all the ‘roles’ that were once delegated to us by our birthplace, our gender, or our living circumstances are only societal constructs, but in observance of the natural world this claim can be easily debunked. The role of every species on the planet is hyper impactful to each respective occupied ecosystem. So much so that if a single organism were to be extirpated, the identity of an entire living space can be altered.

In our ecosystem, the ‘nuclear family’ comes to mind when many of us imagine a good and functional living space. I have no interest in the variety of opinions that may arise if I were to exemplify the role of each character within the ‘nuclear family,’ but I do think each character has an important role. Even greater, I believe their role is often not a matter of choice, instead it is inherited naturally by the above stated conditions (birthplace, gender, living circumstances, etc.). Each role is integral to the functionality of the home and the eventual budding of the children within the home. A good husband and father, in my opinion, should carry the following responsibilities:

To his wife—He would be a leader, not a dictator. He would be kind, gentle, vulnerable, and honest. He would be attentive, respectful, and present. He would be strong, watchful, and protective. He would not choose friends, sports, or even work over his wife. He would always have an ear to listen and would not relinquish that responsibility to in-laws, friends, or predatory men. He would always be selfless, chivalrous, virtuous, and always at least attempt romance. He would take his role as man of the household seriously and would hold an expectation of himself and of his wife to continually push one another to be flawless, despite a guaranteed failure at such a task. There would be no woman in the world more important to he than her. Even as they grew old, less attractive, and every story had been told and heard to an infinite extent, he would be interested in all the details of who she was and who he transformed into through her. 

It is easy enough to break down how a couple should coexist by simplifying it to “loyalty and communication,” but a man can be loyal to his wife despite his lust of another. He can communicate his disgust with her and eventually they can communicate a divorce. Choosing to be a husband is a commitment for your life. If you do not value that commitment, you should save your knee, skip over the fancy diamonds, and keep hunting at the club. There are women out there who might enjoy your lack of discipline and dependability. If you are not yet a man, do not trick a woman into believing that you are.

It is important to note what a good husband is before attempting to explain what a good father must also be, because they go hand-in-hand. The way a man treats the mother of his children will eventually be mimicked by his son’s and daughters. It is also important because if the husband plays his role adequately, one of the two stabilizing pillars of the household is in place. To commit to marriage, sex, and parenthood is a demanding commitment that requires both parents carrying their load. If both pillars are in place, there is still no guarantee that a child will excel in society. Since this is the case, it takes both parents to consistently evaluate their strengths and weaknesses while working together to uphold the home. Only this will give your child the best possibility of success. No amount of love, coddling, spoiling, punishment, or freedom will compensate for attentiveness, discipline, and leadership in your child’s life. Likewise, a good husband provides everything necessary for a wife to be equally good. If she is not, then at least he will have held his end of the bargain. If she carries the necessary traits of a good wife and he does not match her commitment, the imbalance is a product of his error.

To his children— He would be attentive and present. He would be knowledgeable and therefore wise. He would not rely on aggressiveness and fear to earn respect, but instead on patience, integrity, and truth. He would do as he says and direct his children to do the same. He would direct his sons to treat women with respect and stand up for them. He would direct his daughters to not rely on men for happiness or confidence. He would never outsource his protective responsibilities and would always be engaged in the development of his children’s intellect and talent. He would always encourage his kids to fulfill their potential but never encourage their affliction. He would be forthright about his mistakes, ask for forgiveness when needed, and most importantly learn from them. 

While it may be easy to say a father should ‘be there’ for his children, it is important to know the difference between watching them spiral out of control and being there to wipe their tears, and being there to recognize their missteps and find the best way to help them navigate challenging terrains. While it may seem obvious that he must ‘protect’ his children, its invaluable to recognize that protecting them from the reality of the world is not actually protecting them. In reality, what they don’t know will hurt them. He must be honest and he must not be silent in their turmoil.

I do not spend time attempting to describe how he will achieve each of these traits, because every man is different, and every child is different. How a father might react to one child over another may differ depending on the child’s personality and the father’s capability of having an impact on the child’s behavior. While it may not be easy to understand how to react to your children’s inevitable struggles, it is far easier when he carries the traits detailed above.

It is not to say women and mothers are incapable of offering these traits. We often find that people with particularly strong characteristics may fill the role of the opposite sex better than the average. A mother may very well carry many or all of these traits to an extent, but biologically speaking she may be more well-versed in nurturing and attending to her children’s personalities and feelings more effectively than that of a father. A mother has carried her children in her womb for nine months. Her connection with them and understanding of their individuality has the capability of being much deeper than that of the father, who’s duty in the pregnancy is along the lines of stability for the mother. 

I am not a father. I am not a husband. I am not a lot of things at this point in my life, but some day, god willing, I will be. With that said, when I see things like men mistreating women, children not thinking critically, teenagers feeling unimportant and disassociated with those around them, I see a manifestation of poor parenting. I recognize this because I have mistreated women (including my mother), I have been misled, and I have felt unimportant and disassociated. It is not to say that my father is responsible for my shortcomings, but rather that I recognize what roles could have been played in my life as a child that could potentially have deterred those faults. Additionally, I see these faults in young men surrounding me and know that many of them could be corrected by having a sufficient and consistent leader in their life. 

This is a pivotal time for mankind. Valuable truths have blossomed within modern Western culture, and equally many valuable truths have been disavowed and are at risk of extirpation. For the health and prosperity of the human ecosystem, the ‘role’ of the father and the man must not be underestimated, devalued, or destroyed. It is too important. It is too prevalent. From Kim Kardashian to mass shootings, voids in leadership, attentiveness, authenticity, and virtue are quickly filled with the opposite. Like a game of characteristic musical chairs, the exemplifications of how to act, how to be, and who to be are floating around, waiting for a chance to land in the minds of our future generations. The characteristics you value now may grow to have an impact long after your death. When your children look to you, who and what will they emulate? When the music stops, what character roles will you fill?

A Ransom for Truth

It is an odd and uncomfortable time to be alive. As a species we are either in a period of ethical transformation or ethical evolution and it is unclear which of these is actually the case. It is indeed unlikely to have the acute awareness to be both conscious of the current state of mankind’s relations with ethics while simultaneously cognizant of its direction, but one thing to me seems clear: it is a slow and painful process to endure, it seems to move laterally, and we die before we are given the chance to witness a pinnacle. While I tend to live a moderately optimistic life, I find myself concerned that society as a whole understands the “what I feel about this” portion of consciousness, but not the “why this is.” It is a fear that we get caught in the crosshairs of a battle between objective truth and subjective truth; as a repercussion, truth is held hostage by our volatile emotions.

            To set a parameter from which this essay can be carved, it must first be concluded that truth does exist and is not subject to perspective. Before there were telephones, airplanes, social media, and virtual reality (oh boy…), the thought of these being within the realm of scientific probability was likely laughable. Despite their laughability, their capability to exist and the truth of that very capability never wavered, it was only yet to be discovered. Despite our current outward social musings of ‘what is true?’, truth still exists without our interpretations. While the self-helping tendencies of our society may state that each of us need to “find our truth” or “recognize we are enough,” the fact-of-the matter is that “our” truth is watered down by “our” feelings. We are not enough. If we were, there would be no need to achieve anything greater than birth. Science is incomplete, we are incomplete, and our understanding of truth is incomplete. Truth still exists.

            While awareness of self and feeling is a gift to be cherished, it could also be regarded as a burden. If it were not for moments of joy and excitement, life would be a continuous momentum of discomfort, stringing together a path of suffering and confusion, climaxing with our death. The continual event of individual discontent shared by all humans drives us to both innovation and dehumanization alike. Our awareness of ourselves within our kingdom walls can either propel us to build them greater or compel us to undermine them at the core. To achieve this, we sacrifice virtuous constructs in order to appease a never-ending flow of discontent.

            If consciousness is awareness of self and feeling on a moment-to-moment basis, then it could be argued that most humans only flirt with consciousness and never adequately develop means for consistently valuing the importance of themselves or their actions. In many ways, an objective perspective on human consciousness could determine that only a measure of us truly achieve awareness of the “why” in our actions while a greater portion of us only act in accordance to the fleeting comfort of our emotions. To put that in perspective, an ant may carry sticks and pebbles to its colony because it is wired to do so, not because it has chosen to or not to; a human may choose to work at a factory to afford a vacation or a new car, never truly knowing why it wanted the car or questioning the impact they are to have while working at the factory; another human may recognize the impact of their actions and feel empathy or anger towards one another or an entity, but never look at the big-picture with appropriate objectivity so as to act responsibly; or a human may look at things or events, evaluate their importance or lack of, determine how they feel about them after considerable evaluation, then choose to act in an effective and calculated manner. To simplify even further, levels of consciousness could be boiled to four distinct states: instinctual (driven by instinct), apathetic (driven by reward), cognizant (contemplative but potentially blinded by subjectivity), and disciplined (contemplative and virtuous).

This manifests itself in how we handle ourselves (or don’t) within our society to a great extent. It takes no courage for an ant to act on its instinctual reasoning, if an ant has any capacity to reason. It takes very little courage to work an uninteresting career and have a minimal positive impact in your existence, but instead to do exactly as you’re told and never question why. It takes a bit of courage and a good bit of intellect to challenge the pillars of civilization and the moral structures which guide our laws and authority. However, in my view the greatest measure of intellectual courage is to recognize what you’re doing, ask yourself why you’re doing what you’re doing, question authority and challenge the boundaries of right and wrong, and still do what is right, no matter what the consequences are to your subjective reasoning. It is the difference between an open mind with an open mouth, and a disciplined mind with a disciplined tongue. It means that we recognize our feelings as fleeting and often misleading, and act within virtuous parameters at all cost, no matter the consequence. It means we reinforce the staples of virtue that fulfill the greatest version of ourselves, and do not live by the lie of our intuitions. No matter what the continually fluctuating moral trends dictate or how much social reward is granted through activism or rebellion, your state of virtue remains steadfast. Furthermore, our personal virtues are not a point to be made and an opinion to be heard, but a highly refined description of who we are and how we conduct ourselves.

We find ourselves in a peculiar moment in time. Everything is in front of us; from economics, God, gender, liberty, and ultimately truth, all the intricacies of ethics are under the contemplative microscope of the liberal West. Every imaginable moral conflict is cooking within the ovens of our educational, governmental, scientific, and religious institutions—and the table is set. It’s easy to recognize genocide, enslavement, and blatant oppression. But there remains a subtle and invaluable measure of courage in our seeking and standing for what is true. Moral issues as basic as how we treat someone we disagree with, how we handle failure, or even greater; how we combat our own patterns of emotional bias as they obstruct us from what is right. Moral decisions are rarely as recognizable as confronting malevolent dictatorships. Instead, they are day-to-day, moment-to-moment decisions. Decisions that impact more than just your social standing. Decisions that cannot be summarized by YouTube “gotcha” moments or silly lopsided memes. There is no cost too great that should drive us to cease in our defending of virtue. There is no virtue too small to be brushed under the colorful rug of subjectivity.

Walking With Leppers

Every day we encounter multiple instances when our ethics are put to a test. Whether it be kindness to the person driving ten miles under the speed limit in the fast lane, or not telling your boss they are full of shit, there is no shortage of circumstance in which we are given an option of treating a situation gracefully or errantly. Of the times we treat situations errantly, only a portion of those render negative consequences. Of the negative consequences, only a portion of those bring your character into question to others. If only a fraction of potential ethical missteps actually result in negative consequences, at what point in the process do we assume accountability? Where is the entry point of misconduct. Is it in thought, action, or consequence?

 When the word ‘sin’ is used, a majority of conversational avenues become closed. It is either because a) a person is committing a particular sin being referenced in said conversation and has no interest in admitting fault to their actions (when your Aunt says sex before marriage is sinful at a family reunion, but you and your girlfriend have three kids), or b) a person doesn’t believe in the verb ‘sin’ because he/she holds the belief that all actions are neutral, that there is no governing force of morality, and that all morality is simply a matter of perspective. If either of these are the case than there is no basis for making the proclamation that there is any such thing as an immoral act, therefore something as heinous as ‘sexual misconduct’ is only determined on a societal level and only wrong based on circumstance. While that may be true, and there is no scientific evidence to refute that claim, it leaves a major gap for excusing people for their shortcomings.

                While situational morality is something I don’t believe in, I also understand how easily it can be to find yourself determining how you feel about the actions of yourself or someone you admire based on your feelings of affection toward yourself or someone you admire. For example, when it comes out that a politician has been convicted of sexual misconduct, I find myself easily saying “throw them to the hounds”, but when someone I admire like Louis C.K. is exposed for behaving inappropriately toward women, I find myself looking for the easiest escape route, hoping to avoid making a moral judgement about his character. A frustrating example comes to mind when people who consider themselves politically left or right harshly criticize or attempt to downplay politicians who face allegations of misconduct (either sexual or other) as long as it is politically convenient at the time (cough cough Roy Moore/Bill Clinton).

                When you make a moral judgement as to the credibility of ones’ character based on instances of misconduct (sin) you are making what could be described as an evolutionary decision, based on its potential consequences to you or your family in its recurrence. In other words, if someone you know borrows money from you but fails to pay you back, you would be wise to no longer lend money to the individual. If you continued to do so, you would most certainly lose all your money, as the lack of remorse that individual had toward their neglect of repayment would provide them no ethical consequence for having never repaid their debts. In terms of survival only, it is never in our best interest to lend anyone money, or provide charity in any way. Scientifically, the only benefit to regarding sin as existent is in terms of its consequences on our survival. But if that’s the case, is there an evolutionary benefit to charity, grace, or forgiveness?

                The argument could be made that the dopamine release response to an act of charity is an evolutionary benefit. You could claim that the act of forgiveness relieves you of any negative and potentially harmful harbored feelings toward another, or that maintaining a relationship with someone who plays an important role in your well-being is worthwhile evolutionarily. But do either of these benefits outweigh the benefit of having never committed an act of charity? Scientifically, ethics are cold, brash, and baseless.

                The idea of ‘sin’ is simple, yet nowadays its nearly a sin just saying the word itself. It does, however, require that you view morality as something more than just determined by circumstance, and it also assumes that there is such a thing as free will. Of course our relation to sin as it aligns to religion is that it is the antithesis of Gods will and is a tool for Satan’s stranglehold on your spiritual well-being, but there is a more secularly digestible format in which to understand its significance— It is the idea that all animals on this planet commit acts of atrocity toward one another either reactionarily (emotionally) or instinctually in the name of survival—but humans are the only animals (that we can prove) have a recognition of these actions, their effect on others, the consequences they have on our own life, and an ability to make a conscious decision to deny these actions despite our emotions or instincts. (House pets, which humans trained, being the only exception.) At its core, the idea of sin is that we are given an opportunity to make a choice to do either right or wrong, and we choose to do wrong. We can make claims of other species' decision making based on ethics, but we cannot accurately determine whether it is based off of a moral code, or because it is evolutionarily advantageous. In the sense that there is provable, testable ethical decision making, we stand alone.

                While that isn’t so hard to understand (assuming you can first admit there is such a thing as right and wrong and that free will does indeed exist), the people who tend to use the term ‘sin’ in our society, most commonly, come across as judgmental, causing a reasonable defiance of their belief system and throwing out the simple idea that there is indeed a wrong way of dong things. There are many consequences on a societal level of dismissing the notion of sin—variations in a common right and wrong, denial of any right and wrong, lack of accountability for misconduct, etc. But what has caught my eye most recently is the magnification of sins committed by those whom we disagree with but disregarded when acted out by those who seemingly share rudimentary and convenient values with us. (politicians, actors, athletes. Friends, family, ourselves.)

                The flaw begins with the idea that it is our actions that define our character. That we can say one person is a “good” person because they have committed no obvious harmful actions, and another is “bad” because they have. You can never gain anything from judging a human or any other animal on this planet solely on their actions, nor would you be wise to be caught by surprise when a human or animal acts in a way that you deem immoral or unjust. While it may be evolutionarily beneficial to make a judgement as to potential action, there is no gain from judging their character wholly and independently based on actions. If you judge them only on past actions, you leave no room for the potential of reform. If a vicious wolf is kept in a cage and cannot bite you, does it cease to be vicious? If Hitler were to live a life of anti-Semitism, racism, and overall hatred, but were to have never stumbled upon the resources to act on his malice, would he then be a good man with incredible speech-making ability and leadership skills?

                No matter the nature of your upbringing, your career, your deicisions, or your actions, you are guaranteed to encounter thoughts and actions in yourself that you know are contrary to the well-being of your character. It is in our animalistic nature, even as children, to feel hatred, lust, jealousy, or malcontent. We feel this inevitably at some point within out lives. It is merely a matter of catching these inherent qualities as they occur, choosing not to act on them, and making an attempt to correct the soiled thought process that ushered their occurence before it becomes habitual. Worst case scenario, they continually occur and the inner-warfare of ethical thought continues with them. Best case scenario, they become secondary reactions This in itself is no grand statement or revelation in human psychology, but it does reveal a crucial point that is scientifically observable about sin.

                  Sin begins with thought. Bad actions are a product of bad thought. Good actions are not always a product of good thought, but rather a disregard for bad thought. It is an ugly reality, but it is a reality. The ability to do wrong dwells at the core of all of us as living creatures on this earth. The ability to recognize that, refuse to act on it, and work intently on redirecting and limiting those ill-thoughts is a beautiful opportunity that should not be taken for granted. And when it comes to making a judgement on another’s actions, recognizing their remorse, and eventually forgiving them for their actions, understanding the nature of sin within all of us (atheist, agnostic, religious, or whatever identity you lay claim to) makes for an easy point of reference. A point of reference necessary for understanding first the potential for sin in yourself, the potential for sin in others, and the ability to combat it and eventually conquer it.
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Half Empty

In 2003, the worldwide phenomenon of social media was brought to the light of public eye. After meddling with email, instant messaging boards, and the beginning stages of text messaging, society took a new leap (or some might say stumble) and a new tool of self-expression, Myspace, was created. A year later, Facebook lassoed our attention spans, and a year after that, Twitter. Eventually, a few years later, Instagram took hold, shortly followed by Snapchat.

While social media is most definitely a valuable tool to interact in many ways, it seems to unfortunately bring out, not only the worst in many of us, but also the most childish. It can often be used for pictures and quick statements. Initially, most of us were sold on the idea that it would be a 21^st century way of interacting with distant friends or relatives. Now somehow it mirrors a loneliness and lack of quality thought that I might have never known ran so rampantly within our peers. It serves as a panic room for our most exaggerated fears, a mediator for groups in disagreement to jab at one another, and it allows people who might never meet to provide either discouragement or affirmation of ideas. Within its first fifteen years of public access, it has become the center of many of our paradigms. A stop-gap for our own loneliness, lack of voice in social situations, and in many cases, a platform to illustrate our own mental misfiring’s publicly.

………….

When a bachelor cooks a meal he cooks for himself. When he shops he shops for one, and when he eats he gets his fill, assuming he has the time to finish his food. He may walk through the grocery store and find himself stricken by sadness at the family in the aisle beside him with the screaming children and the overburdened parents. Maybe the parents are well-off. They buy a mixture of healthy name brand foods and late-night junk food for the teenagers staying up late fiddling their fingers on an X-Box control pad—maybe they are pulling out the food stamps and divvying out calories evenly. Packages of block cheddar cheese, frozen apple juice, fat free milk, a tub of peanut butter, a couple cartons of eggs, and a box of Ramen Noodles might occupy the space around the child squatting in the grocery cart.

                The bachelor may find company with his friends. On a better night, he may find himself drunken on the dance floor with a girl he hardly knows who shares the same quiet yearning and emptiness as he. They may hope both of their negatives can converge to form a positive. They shuffle into a group of young people once regarded as “the future” of our species. Every adult had once warned them about the sharpness of a cold reality, which they now dull by gluttonous alcohol intake and slurred conversations about social justice and the nature of ethics. 

“Adulthood” used to have a grandiosity attached to it. It used to sparkle and glisten with the naivety and excitement only observed through the blissful eyes of the inexperienced. Like a Christmas present under a tree to a child, wrapped neatly are the contents of independence, freedom, and self-reliance. As a child you believe that once unpackaged it would most certainly be the key to a revelation of purpose and calling—right? Instead it was five days of hitting snooze on the alarm clock, sitting in traffic, getting stuck at the same intersections, cursing your career choice (or lack-of), all leading to a reward of mindless indulgences disguised as “youth”, which scientifically relate to an animalistic need for spreading your DNA in hopes to achieve some sort of physical immortality in the form of genetics.

Is this all?

The bachelor may never feel sadness when he sees the family beside him. He may only quickly glance over, only to continue his life the way it was as he entered the store. It is of course very likely he may go home, stare at his Facebook feed, engage in a dead-end debate with someone who disagrees on how we interpret the 2^nd amendment, and find himself in a technology fueled half sleep. It lasts seven hours, until the alarm breaks the slide show of random imagery telling stories of seemingly miscellaneous interactions and events that either happened, will happen, did not happen, or happened in a fashion entirely different than he had perceived in the time of its occurrence.

As the word “dream” drifts through his mind, his day dream ends, and his work continues. He sits in traffic on the way home and the dream lives on. It’s a dream of a new road, a new scene, a new city, a new apartment, a new girlfriend. Maybe a dream of the purity he once felt as a child staring at that present under the tree. It seems now as though when he had opened the seemingly innocent gift, the powers it granted him overtook him. His lack of preparation for the responsibility that comes with that big word “adulthood” seem to place him consistently behind the eight ball in his life, and what may now be “youth” and was once “childhood” will soon be “elderly” and eventually “deceased.”

Is this all?

If he were to have felt sadness while sitting in this grocery line it could have been either a sadness for the parents or an envy at their life. In all likelihood whichever it was, it was probably a little bit of both. He probably hasn’t the capacity of on-the-spot sensitivity to recognize what he feels. If he feels indifferent to his surroundings in the monotony of the moment, he suffers from the same ailment as if he were to feel sadness. Oddly enough, however, if he could suddenly uncover a hidden capability of reading another’s mind he might see that he is not alone in this ailment. What seems like jealousy, indifference, contentment, or sadness is actually rampant amongst the fellow shoppers. He might see that the family beside him is struggling financially, or maybe that they have so much money they’ve lost touch with necessity and recognition of each other. He might see that not only the father and mother feel this, but so do the children. He might turn and see that this is common with the customer in front of him, behind him, the one walking out the door, and even the cashier.

“Is this all?” They might all be asking. He might realize that it is not only he who desires more, but everyone he encounters.

The truth is none of us have ever or will meet someone who has it all figured out. The beauty of the human state is that we have such variety in temperament, feeling, personality, circumstance, and potential decisions. We are all within a spectrum of imagining and reimagining ourselves, how we view each-other, and how we view the world around us. We are in a constant state of coming and going, our society is evolving at a faster rate with each passing decade than it ever has prior, and every decision we make has deep implications for the future of us all and the generations to come.

Somehow we require so little of our interactions with each-other. For some reason far beyond my understanding, we have an entirely too low standard for those who’s views we align with our own. And for those whom we disagree, we meet on a hypothetical never-ending battlefield of social media and major networks. We gallop on the backs of bandwidth, wielding keyboards and shallow acronyms as our weapons of choice. But it is not our divisive opinions that are slaughtered in the process, instead it is our wit, integrity, and our responsibility as adults to lead our brothers and sisters of the human race, as well as the generations of keyboard wielding warriors to come.

Most importantly, however, we have very little requirements in the extent to which we achieve our max capacity as highly intelligent and capable beings on an individual level. We instead stoop our intellect to a level just above Chimpanzee. We exist just enough to pay the bills or buy into (or simply purchase) an excess of attractively packaged mindlessness that contributes nothing to either our evolutionary or spiritual character. Our society, science, and technology moves at such a pace that it could develop an ability to harness its own intelligence before we ever give ourselves the chance to recognize the potential of our own. Many of us have no intent to provide any contributions to our own well-being, let alone our families’, fellow countrymen’s, our species’, or planets. We dwell within our own contentment, malcontent, or envy so deeply that our thoughts and actions are immovably shallow.

This is not all.

It is not some peculiar and unfamiliar challenge we face. It is a problem of having a glass capable of holding eight ounces of water that is rarely filled past four ounces. It is not a problem of capacity, it is a problem of substance. Many of us have no problem talking, though nearly all of us portray ourselves as disinterested in consciously listening. It seems we poor the glass out before we can fill it up. While it could be simply labeled as a lack of thought put into individual actions, it is more a lack of quality thought, which is not insurmountable. We all desire more from ourselves, whether we recognize it or not. When we do not strive to grasp the reigns of our own pursuit, we find ourselves offering our inadequacies as reflections of ourselves in interaction.

Often, I thought this was solely a product of poor parenting. It is not. I could claim it is a lack of education, but I would still likely be wrong. And while those are most definitely contributing factors, improvements in those avenues and others like them only assist in preparation for the contents of the neatly wrapped gifts of “adulthood”. Adulthood is an achievement, much like old age. independence, freedom, and self-reliance are absolutely something to be excited about within your adolescence. But they are in themselves gifts earned through experiences who wield power, requiring responsibility, accountability, rational thinking, humility, and truth. Without these accompanying traits we are all bound to the slavery of our own pathl

essness and insufficiency.

When we get to the point of being an adult, we must require a base level of attentiveness and self-awareness from ourselves and each-other. After all, as a child, you aspire to have those characteristics in your back pocket as an adult. We are not victims of social media. It is not the inventions fault that we are disinterested in interacting with each other in an adultlike and responsible manner. Every one of us is capable of contributing more to the pot of human interaction than we put forth, and it is the pursuit of fulfilling those capabilities that will drive us away from the strife and divisiveness we encounter on these platforms. The gaps in our own mental, physical, and spiritual development are waiting to be filled by our desire to listen, learn, and grow—not to be exemplified by hatred and discouragement towards our brothers and sisters. We are capable of more. We are called for more.

We use the word “dream” to describe aspirations, but our aspirations for our own lives are far from measly dreams. They are not abstract and filled with miscellaneous content outside of our ability to guide. They are not theoretical and frail, able to be crumbled by circumstance or obstacles. They are attainable, they exist in all of us, and it is one of the great and exciting opportunities of life that we be granted the “gift” of pursuit. Find your capacity and exceed it. Fill your cup. It deserves all eight ounces of your being, not four. You aren’t chained to your job, you aren’t chained to your apartment, and the life you live now can ALWAYS be enhanced. As long as you are alive you can dream. As long as you can dream you can achieve.