Month: June 2011

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Why I do not cease to tweet and blog: with apologies to Menno and Diogenes

#Trust30 Prompt: Imitation is Suicide. Insist on yourself; never imitate. – Ralph Waldo Emerson. Write down in which areas of your life you have to overcome these suicidal tendencies of imitation, and how you can transform them into a newborn you – one that doesn’t hide its uniqueness, but thrives on it. There is a “divine idea which each of us represents” – which is yours?

Many of my more serious-minded friends ask why I spend so much time twittering, facebooking, and blogging. Their argument is that this activity is a profound waste of time with no apparent object. There is much in what they say. Unless one’s friends are for the most part immersed in the same social networking circles, all messages sent are a ping without a pong. Then there are friends who are lurkers: they scan but make no comment. The only way to entice a lurker to participate in the dialogue is to post a picture of a baby human or domesticated animal, or to relate a mundane life event with a slapstick or scatological flavor. I set a personal record for Facebook comments when I confessed that I was having a bad morning because I dropped my toothbrush and razor into the toilet.

Receiving these interactions did not encourage me. I felt that I was not being offered deep relationship, but a surface nod because I touched a place of safe commonality. My hope was that this was a starting point for dialogue, but alas, these Facebook friends apparently had no aspirations for our relationship beyond the tub-sink-commode triangle.

But consider the potential of this nascent media! Like Diogenes I cannot help but carry my lantern through the productions of amazing technology looking, not just for an honest man, but for any sign of intelligent life that might be willing to discuss mostly noble, and a few less-than-noble, thoughts. Now others express strong opinions based on irrational self-interest (and of course I do as well, but the hope for any growing human is to root these out without becoming dispassionate about truth and beauty), but I am hoping for powerful thinking based on truth, reason, and evidence. I don’t hear the word truth used much anymore. I suspect it is because it does not pair well with irrational self-interest.

I hope you hear a passionate lament in all of this. Diogenes has not given up.

Here is the point related to Emerson’s thoughts on imitation of suicide, or compromising whoness–our values and gifts–to kill the Muse and Genius for a mess of pottage. The “red stuff” for which one would sell one’s soul in this case is shallow connection as better than no connection at all. I have friends who urge me to adopt strategies of people whose videos have gone viral or whose blogs attract millions of eyeballs. I wish I could say that out of some conviction I have always refused this advice as imitation of another rather than trusting myself. I am willing to try an ethical means to accelerate my lantern-walk. What I will not do is use a popular or innocuous message to garner dittos: “just be yourself,” “trust your [frankly distended narcissistic] gut,” “follow your bliss,” and so on. I am being myself right now, but it is probably offensive to most. I trust my gut when I have learned self-control, and I don’t even use the word “bliss” in normal conversation.

I don’t tweet and blog to be heard at any cost, and I won’t imitate the more successful types who are heard. Like Jacob, I am a mess, but I refuse to become Esau. Like Menno, I will not cease to use whatever means are available to the truth. Like Diogenes I will be content to carry my lamp in a dark place. Will you join me here?

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Stop kidding yourself

#Trust30 Prompt: What is burning deep inside of you? If you could spread your personal message RIGHT NOW to 1 million people, what would you say?

Stop kidding yourself.
You who hated to be judged: Do you judge?
You who hate thoughtlessness: Do you think?
You cry out for democracy to be spread, but what elitism will you tolerate to bring it about?
You cry out for justice, but do you even know what justice is?
Would you be willing to be treated justly, just as you demand that the unjust be punished?
You want justice for the poor, but do you give freely?
You want the rich to pay more of their share, and yet are you not greedy?
You deny that there is evil while the concentration camps still stand.
You cannot love the earth and hate people, and you cannot even hate haters and live on the earth.

You have opinions, but you cannot think.
You need righteousness, and yet your opinions are so strong you cannot ask for it.
You hate being called a sinner and yet you beg for forgiveness; from what?
You control by being out of control.
You mistake being out of control for freedom; how pitiful.
You shoehorn your idea of a savior into a hipster, morphing hubris into character.
You are an expert in things you know nothing about.
Your voice is infallible though it has never gotten anything right.
You are an authority on how to live, but you have never truly lived even one day.
You will never see yourself in these sentences, because you are blind.

There is only one piece of good news but you will never hear it reported.
Perhaps you are deaf also?
It was clever to make history subjective: then it could begin when you were born.
You are certainly deaf to any tradition, and banish the old to oblivion.
You can feel good about trusting your gut, but the transcendentalists are dead.
Their antebellum self-reliance could do no more than self-actualize them.
When slavery and civil war came they saw the shallowness of withdrawal into their minds.
Help from outside us must come or bondage and bloodshed will be dragged inside.
What we could not do for ourselves he did for us.
So, stop kidding yourself.

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Who’s Afraid of Prof. Arkoudas?

#Trust30 Prompt: “Always do what you are afraid to do,” Emerson said. What is ‘too scary’ to write about? Try doing it now.

I admit that I have been afraid to make my Professor Arkoudas character incarnate. He has always remained in my brain, though occasionally I have scratched out a sentence here or there to remember a fertile idea. So now I am going to write a little more of a dialogue to flesh out Arkoudas. My fear stems from giving life to a fictional character that is a meld of friends and mentors that I genuinely respect. I want them to live on in my stories so others can enjoy them as much as I do.

Arkoudas was giving me one of those looks that are part of the peculiar arsenal of curmudgeons. His eyes were mere slits that looked like the lowest row of a number of furrows in his brow. The hint of a smile mocked me. “What are you making now?” He asked.

“I don’t like plain tortilla chips without something to dip them in, ” I explained. I take this Always Save ranch dressing and mix in these spices from the rack.”

“What spices?” He accused. He obviously thought me incompetent in the kitchen.

“I ground up these dried red peppers with salt, sugar, and citric acid…”

“Citric acid? Are you kidding? Who uses that?”

Three questions in staccato should be prohibited by law. I should have said, “Yes, no, me,” but I am not quick enough. So I explained, “It is possible to have it on hand without being an apothecary.”

“But that’s the kind of ingredient you only see on product labels,” he protested.

“So what are you saying? Do you mean citric acid doesn’t really exist because it’s on ingredient labels?”

“Yes, exactly.”

“Exactly? You say exactly? Why, that’s outrageous!” I really couldn’t believe an educated person would deny the existence of something that was so common.

“Not at all. Citric acid doesn’t exist because it is on ingredient labels, my friend. It is on ingredient labels because it is a real commodity and part of the recipe of the product in the jar.” He paused for effect. “Now I see your jaw has dropped nearly onto your chest. Such a habit is really not healthy–so hard on the jaw and the salivary glands all at the same time.”

I blinked in disbelief. He continued.

“You are so imprecise in the way you ask questions. I really wonder how you could have written a defensible dissertation with such ambiguity. But tempus fugit, and please bring those chips along with this very strange dip into the living room and let’s get down to business.” Then he picked up the bowl of tortilla chips and the citric acid dip and left the kitchen.

Before I had a chance to gather up my lower jaw and consider my next physical movement, he popped his head back into the doorway of the kitchen. “Oh say, I think we could use a pressful of coffee if you could make it. What kind of beans do you have today?”

“Starbucks Verona,” I sputtered out.

“Starbucks, eh? Well, I suppose that will have to do. Remember to pour in water that has not begun to boil and press it after two minutes.” The head popped out.

The head popped in. “Oh, and I suppose you know you would be courting disaster if you used a metal spoon to stir the press coffee? Wooden spoons are best.”

“Yes, I know that.” I said.

“Good man,” he said. This time the head, and his body, stayed in the living room. When I brought in the French press I found him ensconced in my favorite leather chair.

“One more thing,” he said without looking up from the document he was reading. “Where do you get this curious idea that inanimate things like citric acid exist?”

Now I understood what he was getting at. At times like this I reverted to something about my ethnicity. As far as I knew, Arkoudas never employed ethnic slurs. He did not think one nationality was superior to any other. In fact, though he loved his country he thought America as melting pot provided compelling evidence that all ethnic backgrounds displayed ridiculous behavior equally well.

“Oh, you know us Celtic people. We have a long tradition of ascribing existence to rocks, plants, and water…” I said, breaking the sentence off in such as way that I invited him to add to the list. He declined the invitation, but the strategy worked nevertheless.

“Ah, yes. I suppose I could have employed an understanding of general circumstances. That was a tendency of the Celts. But really, old fellow, trees are one thing, but your ancestors had no knowledge of the ingredients of chili powder.”

He was right. Citric acid was sometimes added to the blend of spices in chili powder. He knew I could have saved time by adding chili powder to the ranch dressing. So that was that, and we moved on to more important things.