Don't just follow the car in front

It's been a year of cautionary tales ... don't get sunburnt, don't start an online retail site with a huge marketing budget, and today, don't run a red light.

I did so in December, just before Christmas, and I did it because I was concentrating on the car in front of me, rather than the lights. That'll be $150, thanks!

But there's both a laugh and a lesson in it.

The laugh: the way the police infringement notice describes "running a red":

DROVE A VEHICLE ON Wellesley Street East AND DID FAIL TO COMPLY WITH THE INSTRUCTIONS GIVEN BY A STEADY RED SIGNAL IN THE FORM OF A DISC, BEING AN OFFENCE DETECTED BY APPROVED VEHICLE SURVEILLANCE EQUIPMENT.

I'm not sure who the person that wrote that was trying to impress, but it wasn't me. That kind of language is just funny and bizarre.

The lesson? It's in the title of this blog post - don't just let other people be your benchmark, for being good, for doing good, for following your dream. You're special. Follow your own green lights!

(Thanks for Creative-Commons licencing your photo, Dan Barak!)

I'm a freaking Marxist!

GrouchoLisa
Originally uploaded by sandrino

I've started to realise I am becoming a closet lefty. It all started when I was watching Wheel of Fortune with Nofo, my father in law.

Nofo's not an intellectual. English is not his first language. His passions are gambling and gardening.

Nofo didn't see that the words on Wheel of Fortune were forming "The Roman Colloseum". In fact, I'm almost sure he doesn't know what the Roman Colloseum is.

Wouldn't it be great, I thought to myself, if Wheel of Fortune could be an educational programme. Just a little bit. I mean, just a photo of the Colloseum, so you know what it is. Where it is. What happened there.

But no, we just see appliance porn - lovingly crafted shots of fridges, washing machines and wide screen TVs.

All this is, I continued to think to myself, is a conditioning device. Conditioning people like Nofo and like me into knowing the right pieces of information - popular culture - in order to receive the right rewards - consumer appliances. It's all a plot by the capitalists to make us want their things.

Religion is not the opiate of the people. TV is.

I felt a bit better after dinner, but these thoughts kind of stay with you.

What next? Conga dancing in a public place? Or is it public? The security guard seemed pretty sure it was private property - no conga dancing allowed here. Interesting!

(PS: Maybe here's where it really started...)

What's the role of oratory (etc) in a conversation age?

(Warning 1: Pseudo-academic language ahead, from a writer who should know better)

(Warning 2: The actual point of this post is right at the end. Persevere. Or cheat and skip right to the end)

Things are changing. That seems to be the intro to every article I write these days. Mostly because it's true.

The biggest change I see - whether it's in the world of business, leadership, media or even religion- is from one-way message delivery, to two-way message discussion. It's the age of conversation.

Evidence?

In business, witness the proliferation and popularity of books like We Are Smarter Than Me (to which I was one of 3000-odd contributors!) and Join the Conversation.

More specifically, leadership is being deconstructed as an idea. It's early days for this, but the book I'm currently reading, Leadership for the Disillusioned, outlines one academic's efforts to discover a leadership that liberates rather than enslaves. Most of that is done in a dialogical way.

Media has been slowly becoming two-way for about 15 years or more, beginning with talkback radio and now extending to the many channels available on the internet. Now it's becoming mainstream as newspapers, TV and radio make it easier to converse with them through the internet.

And in religion, at least in Christianity, people are simultaneously pressing forward and rediscovering their roots. The book So You Don't Want to Go to Church Anymore portrays a way of thinking that is outcome-focussed, rather than programmatic. It exposes many of the religious institutions we take for granted as driven by guilt and fear, a diagnosis I endorse, having been part of several churches and wondering what we were doing wrong. Fortunately, the book posits a simple but profound answer.

So my question is ... what happens to the old one-way methods?

I know the new barely ever completely replaces the old. Television didn't wipe out radio, for instance, but it did redefine it.

So, what will the next century or so hold for:

• Political speeches
• Blockbuster movies
• Sermons
• TV commercials

?

Why did I write this post? Mainly because I got home from BarCamp last week - one of the most genuinely interactive conference experiences I've ever had - and I really really really really wanted to see a good movie. A real movie. A two-hour long, popcorn movie. And it made me think, will we have movies in twenty years? What will they look like? So there you go.

Now it's your turn. Please comment! :)

What does a real community look like?

This post covers spiritual topics, but it's relevant for anyone who's part of a community - or wants to be, or wishes they weren't.

So you don't want to go to church anymore is by Jake Colsen, a pseudonym for two authors who have opted out of the organised religion game that many people call church.

This book, a fictitious story based on the two authors' experience, does a fantastic job of raising concerns that many people have about church, and offering some solutions that are simple, but very, very scary.

It's not only fantastic reading and thinking in and of itself, it's also a powerful example of storytelling as a way to communicate complex ideas. It's a journey, this book.

And there's a podcast to go with it, appropriately called "The God Journey". Some very good listening to be had.

Don't misunderstand what this book is about. It's not simply saying don't do church in buildings any more. It's saying set aside the shackles of structure and set your relationships free. Advice that's just as much needed for the corporate world as for the church world.

As one of the authors said in a recent podcast, they're not against the "organised" part of organised religion, but against the "religion" part. It's become a cliche, but that doesn't make it any less true: God wants a relationship with us, not for us to try to please him with religion.

What is the 21st Century's A-bomb?

From the 1945 through 1989, the biggest thing in world affairs was the atom bomb. Now, it's religion.

That's actually good news, because while many of us would struggle with nuclear physics, religion is arguably easier to understand. Or at least, we've had more exposure to religion than to radiation.

Like many readers of this blog, I've grown up in a western country, in the Christian tradition. But even as a member of the Bible-believing Open Brethren, I never learnt that much about the history of the Bible.

So it was very interesting to read Karen Armstrong's The Bible: A Biography. It's a whirlwind tour through all the versions of the Bible - the Torah, the Talmud, the New Testament, the Kabbalah... and so on!

Armstrong has done some serious homework here, and made the complex simple. Instead of delving too deeply into theology, Armstrong tells simple stories about people, and what they believed.

It's not an unbiased book. In fact, Armstrong is making a strong case against fundamentalism of all kinds, and a plea for understanding and love, ignoring the parts of the Bible that are negative or harsh, and meditating on the parts that are loving and kind - quoting many theologians, both Jewish and Christian, orthodox and otherwise, through the years, who have also advocated this approach.

I appreciate this book, but tentatively disagree with some of its conclusions. I say "tentatively", because I have no scholarship to base my disagreement on, just a tiny bit of subjective experience, and gut feeling.

And I say "some" of its conclusions because overall I believe Armstrong has written a rational, emotionally intelligent and respectful biography about a book that means so much to so many people, and it's an attitude I agree with.

I'd recommend The Bible: The Biography as a (somehow) very thorough yet very fast tour of one of the books that has shaped western civilisation, and continues to wield a lot of influence today.

I started this post by comparing religion to the atom bomb. Like nuclear power, religion can be a force for good or for evil. It's also the force that's driving world issues - yet unlike the atom bomb, which was a single, big thing, religion is a complex, fragmentary issue. We've got a lot of learning to do.

Want to learn about Islam? Read my review of The Q'uran: A Biography.

Need some other spiritual thoughts? See my posts tagged spirituality, or my old blog Oh God, I think I'm a fundamentalist.

Pretentious post of the day

What I like about postmodernism is its emphasis on dialogue and discovery. What disturbs me is the apparent undercurrent of distrust, many times assuming the worst possible motives of the deliverer of a message.

In postmodernism, things are rarely what they seem. Sometimes that's good, but when things actually are what they seem, it's not good.

(Written in response to an email from a colleague who said my article on the service-dominant logic of marketing showed good balance but, "with some reading between the lines i think there is some hegemonic protectionism kicking in.")

(Disclaimer/Clarification: This is not a direct response to the "hegemonic protectionism" comment, but rather the seed of a thought of an idea that sprang from it)

(and also an excuse to use up my big word quota for the week)

Evan Almighty review - a God who's safe to like

Like most of New Zealand, I took some time away from the computer today and spent some quality time with Marie - including a trip to the movies. We saw Evan Almighty.

I'd heard some pretty iffy reviews, but a comedy seemed the best on offer. (Doesn't say much about what's on at the theatre! The Kingdom wasn't on until late tonight... )

We laughed - and also, surprisingly, felt closer to God. Although the film was generic enough to be spiritually acceptable to people of many faiths (although less generic than Bruce Almighty), it also seemed pretty compatible with the mainstream, fairly orthodox (I guess) Christian faith Marie and I call our own.

Some of my favourite moments:

• God (Morgan Freeman) appearing to Evan's wife Joan as a waiter, with the name tag "Al Mighty" - smart. What he said to her was just inspiring.
• A smarmy journalist asking Evan (Steve Carrell) cynically why God would call him. Evan's answer: "He's called all of us." Yes!
• Evan's little shrug of the shoulders as he holds up his staff and the animals board the ark. He says, without words, "Hey, I have no idea how this is happening. I'm just doing what I do - and this stuff happens!"

I was pleasantly surprised by Steve Carrell's acting. As another reviewer commented, he has a gift for doing "frustrated", but he also has a gift for doing very sincere people caught up in circumstances beyond themselves. That's a sentiment we need to see because, a) a lot of us feel the same way, and b) it gives us hope.

Morgan Freeman was great, as he was in Bruce Almighty. He combines seeming omnipotence with homespun friendliness - which I imagine is not an easy task.

On a theological and philosophical level, I'm reminded of the writings of Adrian Plass, particularly his "controversial" statement that "God is nice and he likes us" ... which is somehow better than we could imagine.

It also reminds me of a conversation heard on The God Journey podcast a few weeks ago. The guys were talking about two Gods: the mean God and the nice God. We desire the nice God, but secretly fear the truth is he's the mean God.

From memory, the conversation went something like this:

So this guy, he tells me he's sticking with the mean God, because he's covering his bases. See, if God is actually nice, but I'm following the mean God, the nice God won't mind. But if God is actually mean, and I'm following the nice God - I'm in big trouble!

So I said to him, would the mean God go to the cross for you? Instinctively, without thinking, he said no. What does that tell you about the mean God?

Finally, this reminded me of the best things I enjoyed about A Generous Orthodoxy, as well as the mystic poetry combined with deep Biblical teaching combined with folk and celtic music that is the catalogue of Michael Card.

Always good to be reminded of something I already knew. Marie and I went and talked to God for quite a bit after seeing this comedy. Who'd have thought.

Why is war so popular?

I have had a fantastic day. It started with a trip to the $1 book sale, where Marie, my mum and I picked up some books on everything from organisational studies to beauty tips to Golda Meir's autobiography to a book about a lion tamer. Good stuff, and a good price!

Later we went to the mall and met Marie's mum and sister. Girl time! So I took the only reasonable course of action - said, "You'll find me in the bookshop" and spent hours reading captions of pictures.

It's interesting what you find interesting and absorbing when you relax. I gravitate to history.

Particularly, I looked at Alan Greenspan's new book, which has a humility of spirit about it that I like. Then I went on to New Zealand history, and found a lot of excellent photos that just summed up moments in our history. These are often familiar images to me, but they fascinate me still.

Then I started to tap a deep vein of war literature, particularly the world wars. This was in the New Zealand section, not the military history section. It was fascinating.

I don't know why, but I find it endlessly fascinating to contemplate the almost senseless bloodbath that was the century in which I was born. To look at the Nazis, to think of how much hope they must have initially offered to their people. To look at the beginning of the holocaust and see the depravity we can all sink to when evil attitudes and behaviour become normal. To look at Stalin and see ambition and drive gone far, far astray. To look at the British and think, yes, the British Empire did a lot of evil in its heyday and it deserved to fade into obscurity, but that at the same time Churchill was so right, that was their ... our ... finest hour. To look at New Zealand's history and think what a confused route we have taken, how there are no good guys and bad guys, but there are good and bad motives.

I guess it was a deep afternoon. And then I topped it off by buying some music - Bob Dylan's "The Times they are a-changing", "Slow Train Coming" and, to make sure I didn't get too serious... Sly and the Family Stone's Greatest Hits!

Maybe Wilf Jarvis was right?

Art of chatting face to face dying | The Daily Telegraph

Quote:

Psychologist, Harvard Business School researcher and etiquette columnist Robin Abrahams says societies have become filled with shrinking violets.

"In the past, only about 40 per cent of people reported being shy in social situations,'' Ms Abrahams said.

"It's now a significant problem affecting about half.''

...

"Society is changing so rapidly it's becoming difficult to navigate. There's no longer a set of rules for appropriate behaviour,'' she said.

"At the same time, technology is enabling us to opt out of difficult situations and causing people to become more insular.

...

Ms Abrahams said the answer was in developing a new approach to teaching social skills.

"It can't be about the memorisation of customs as it was in the past, because there are too many potential situations and too much social change and cultural diversity.

"It needs to be more like chess, based on strategies and general principles.''

Ms Abrahams recommends two key strategies: communication and practice.

"Communicating with others about their expectations is a huge part of feeling comfortable socially,'' she said.

"And so is practice. Social interaction is like anything else: the more you do it the better you become.''

Reminds me of Wilf Jarvis' comments, and also of the need for diversity. Everything is connected.

The Difference between Insanity and Lunacy

Until I started reading Brave New World I had no idea there was a difference between insanity and lunacy. I'm still puzzled what the difference is.

The distinction is in Aldous Huxley's introduction to the 1946 edition of Brave New World, where he criticises his former self (writing in 1931) for only giving a choice between the insane "civilised" society or the lunatic "savage" society, when there was a viable middle ground.

Still, definitions aside, Brave New World is an amazing book. First of all, it creates a future that still rings possibly true, even today.

Secondly, it plays with your thinking. Instinctively I know that this is an upside-down world, a crazy place with no soul. But when I look at the big problems that have been solved in this world: unhappiness, war, unemployment, overemployment, discontent, boredom... it's a perfect world, if happiness is the greatest goal of mankind.

But it's not, is it, and that's one of the big cans of worms that Brave New World opens in a knock-down lay-down philosophical dialogue worthy of Plato or Aristotle. I'm talking about the chapter where the Shakespeare-quoting savage puts his questions to Mustapha Mond, the controller for Western Europe and representative of this "Brave" new world.

Huxley admits that he made the savage far too intelligent for someone of his upbringing, but it shows just how good a platform fiction - and particularly fantasy or science fiction - can be to explore the real issues of here and now.

Other observations about the story:

• I read that Huxley was an advertising copywriter, and he shows the uncomfortable familiarity with manipulative words that we wordsmiths wield. To whom much is given, much is expected.
  
• The characters in classic literature seem to be much more flawed than in popular literature. Just when I started to like Bernard, he does something completely unsympathetic. Just when I think Mustapha Mond shows potential for good, he shows how cynical he really is. There's no archetypical hero in this story; just a bunch of tragic anti-heroes.
• Unlike 1984 where people lived in conscious fear, much like the totalitarian regimes of today, the regime portrayed here is even more chilling - one where everyone is genuinely, superficially happy, and the world is so well-ordered that no real constraints are needed on behaviour or thinking - the pre-birth process has done it all. What hope would there be for such a world?
• Why would an ad agency call themselves Brave New World? Is it naivete or irony?
  

Silent morning

Didn't listen to any podcasts this morning on the bus.

No particular reason, just didn't feel like getting the headphones on.

What a great experience! I'd forgotten what it was like to just sit and observe the world around me. People are so interesting!

Ended up feeling kind of an unplugged euphoria, thinking thoughts like "human race, you are beautiful"! Got to watch that, might end up feeling kindly towards my fellow beings.

Seriously, though, I feel that one of the biggest needs in the infoverload age is balance. If you're an entrepreneur (and if you are, chances are you're that way inclined), look for opportunities to bring balance, perspective and context to people's lives. We've got so much choice today we kind of need a few customised ground rules to help us enjoy life.

Hmm. All of those things - balance, choice, ground rules, customisation - are trends about Generation C. Interesting...

Explore the Universe online

I heard about Universe / by Jonathan Harris on Coolhunting.com.

Amazing stuff. Watch the video - he had some especially interesting stuff to say about how we convey information. "The page," he said, "is already dead." Not "soon to be dead" but already dead. Instead, he shows information in terms of networks and nodes, non-linear information where you can jump in at any point and make sense of it.

I like it; now where's the software package that helps me portray information that way? If Word and PowerPoint helped us create linear information, how do we create networks and nodes? OmniGraffle is the closest I've seen. Any other suggestions?

Facing the fear

An article I wrote in the current Idealog is coming back to haunt me - in a good way.

It's called "What I've learned about ... beating fear", a conversation I had with improv expert and general inspiring guy Wade Jackson (in the centre with the gun). He talked about how to deal with stage fright - perhaps the ultimate fear for some, and a good metaphor for all kinds of fear that we face.

Since then I've signed the lease for a pretty fancy office in the heart of Auckland City. It's a little different from the corner next to the fridge at home that has served as my office in the last 3 years.

It's part of a number of big changes in my business this year. Changes that can be frightening as well as exhilirating. Wade's words come back to me and remind me:

Stage fright is purely losing connection with your audience. If you focus on the people you’re there to serve, you’ll do well. The same is true for business. Stage fright for an entrepreneur is simply when he or she loses connection with the reason for being in business.

As someone who's done a bit of acting in the past, it's a helpful metaphor: business as performance.

Marie (my wife and collaborator) has been reading Fish! A Remarkable Way to Boost Morale and Improve Results this evening. It sounds like the chapters on "Play" are telling us the same thing.

Love your work.

Inspiring quote via Chicago, Taiwan and Auckland

At last week's New Thinking Week I was truly inspired by the story of Colyn Devereux-Kay, founder of Les Floralies and Egg Maternity.

She mentioned a quote she'd read on the wall of a supplier in Taiwan, and noted down. I've googled it and found the origin of the quote - an architect called Daniel Burnham.

Here's the quote:

Make no little plans; they have no magic to stir men's blood and probably themselves will not be realized. Make big plans; aim high in hope and work, remembering that a noble, logical diagram once recorded will not die, but long after we are gone be a living thing, asserting itself with ever-growing insistence. Remember that our sons and our grandsons are going to do things that would stagger us. Let your watchword be order and your beacon beauty.

The title of the first "additional reference" is nearly as long as the quote.

What gives you life?

It's such a busy time, but I couldn't do without my walk.

Five hours' sleep last night, and plenty to get on with today, but walking is one of those things that gives me life.

Walking reminds me I am alive. The fresh air, the movement, and the other people on the road. Saw some great smiles this morning!

I also love the opportunity to listen to podcasts while I walk. This morning I heard two motivating, inspiring interviews:

1. How to influence upward - Anna Farmery's interview with Marshall Goldsmith, who wrote the book How to influence upward. Did you know that people spend an average of 10-15 hours a month complaining about their boss? Marshall talks about how that energy can be redistributed more productively.
2. From the author of Fish!, a new book, Cats! The Knowledge Gym's Mike Doughty interviewed Dr Steven Lundin about stimulating genuine innovation and fun at work. I really like where this guy's coming from. Why Cats? Because they're curious, and according to Dr. Lundin, that's the best place to start with innovation!

I'm discovering that I can't afford not to partake in these life-restoring activities like walking, prayer, listening to music, and even making some of my own (okay, so sometimes the result is not pretty, but it's therapy, okay?)

Have a great day, and don't forget to do what gives you life!

An amazing story about cable TV and love

Jason Harper is a pastor somewhere in America. He preached a message about the importance of "getting into the gutter" with people, only to be chastised by an old lady in his church.

"How can you talk about getting into the gutter when you work in a church all the time?" she asked.

It got to him, and Jason set about looking for one of the hardest jobs he could take. He wanted to keep it legal, so drug dealing or pimping was out of the question, but debt collection seemed to fit the criteria of "despised profession".

His experiment: to see if he could do the job, and also bring the reality of the gospel message into people's lives.

How did he go? Can you do the work successfully, as well as loving people?

Find out.

How seeing God as judge could cause world peace

I've been reading with interest some of the comments and columns following Auckland Anglican Archbishop Richard Randerson's admission of agnosticism.

I particularly enjoyed Keith Rowe's piece on a "chance to renew a sense of God". But I had to pause at this paragraph:

Some want to recapture a sense of God as the all-powerful being whose chief work is that of judge. It is the very image of God that has authored wars, crusades and intolerance.

I see where he's coming from, but I disagree.

What Keith may be drawing on are the times in history when men took themselves to be God's natural agents of judgement, and did really stupid things that had less to do with God and perhaps more to do with the politics of the day.

He's not seeing the other times in history when great good came from people becoming aware of God's judgement. The English revival spearheaded by the Wesley brothers helped prevent a revolution in England like the one in France. The Welsh revival of 1905 had such a powerful effect on society that the police had to form a choir for lack of law enforcement work. The principles of law became internalised, as people met the Source of all truly just laws.

When God is judge, that means I am not. Nor is anyone else on this earth. Yes, there is social responsibility and leadership at all levels of society, but it is all delegated authority. That means there is an element of stewardship - responsibility that goes along with every privilege.

I have had experiences where I have known the utter fear of God. There's no other word for it - it is genuine fear. But it is a fear that liberates as well as convicts. It's very hard to describe unless you've experienced it. And the counterfeit - fear of God as imposed by humans - is truly awful.

Those times when I have experienced the fear of God stay with me. They remind me of my responsibility not just to other people, who can't watch my every move, but to God who chooses to live inside me.

If we really could grasp who God is, the judge and the healer, this world would truly be a better place. But that can only happen one person at a time. And for right now, I guess that one person is me.

Book reviews!

I've managed - miraculously - to finish three books at once! (Well, on the same weekend anyway)

It's particularly gratifying to finish The Sundance Kids: How the Mavericks Took Back Hollywood, a great mix of behind-the-scenes storytelling with thematic analysis of the films mentioned. Sundance Kids is a massive book - I think I've been reading it for six months on and off.

Every time I read this book, I want to watch more movies. And make some. It's a great read.

The Question of God: C.S. Lewis and Sigmund Freud Debate God, Love, Sex, and the Meaning of Life was a very interesting read, pitting the competing views of Sigmund Freud and CS Lewis together. It's billed as a debate, but it's at the same time worse and better than that.

Worse, in that the author, Harvard Psychology professor Armand Nicholi, can only speculate about what a debate between the two would have been like. Better, in that the book compares not only the words but the lives of these two.

Since I bought this book in a Christian bookshop, I was expecting a somewhat biased view in favour of the Christian worldview. While Lewis' Christian faith does appear to come out as the lifestyle that leads to the best psychological results, the book doesn't try to force the issue, instead simply presenting each man's view and biography, and letting the reader decide.

Even then, some may decide that's ingenuous, that the author/editor has the power to subtly make each side appear right or wrong. Having not read a lot about Freud or Lewis, I don't know. But if that is the case, I would also point to other material that does the opposite - champions Freud's views without comparison to any alternative worldview.

Finally, A Tale of Two Cities. Wow. No wonder it's a classic story. I'm going to make some very basic comments because a) I'm new to reading fiction (though not to watching it) and b) this post is getting too long.

• Dickens really knows how to set up and pay off - every detail in this book is connected.
• He also uses suspense really well in a way that would be difficult or impossible on film. His particular trick is to describe someone doing something, and then reveal their identity - letting your brain put all the pieces together.
• I have heard Dickens criticised in the past for being too saccharine in his descriptions of some characters. Or at least too sentimental. His descriptions of joyous family life certainly come across a bit unreal in the cynical 21st century.
• However, in general his characters are very 3D, and hard to put into boxes. The political background to the story makes this even more so - who is on who's side? Why? And are they really what they seem.

Overall, I loved it. And I'm glad that I started on this journey of reading "great" literature. Not sure what's next, but really looking forward to it.

Worldviews again

It's always a good time to be learning about worldviews - the ones we hold, sometimes unconsciously, and those of other people.

(I've written on this subject before here and here. Seth Godin's also mentioned it a lot too!)

Russell Brown's latest post talks in scathing terms about Dinesh D'Souza's latest book,The Enemy At Home: The Cultural Left and Its Responsibility for 9/11.

D'Souza is accusing the "cultural left" of creating a godless culture that offends "traditional societies" around the world. I suspect he's partly right. 50 Facts that Should Change the World tells me that America spends as much on porn as it does on foreign aid. (Although I guess that's calculated through different channels; I'm not aware of a US Government porn fund.)

I haven't read D'Souza's book, but if Russell Brown has interpreted it correctly, he's suggesting that if we all got a little more godly, the likes of Osama bin Laden would leave us alone.

I really suspect that's not an accurate summary of the book; the so-called Christian right has some of its strongest voices advocating a zero-tolerance approach to Muslim terrorists. Maybe D'Souza is talking about other muslims who are not terrorists, but still take their faith literally and seriously.

There's a lot of fear and ignorance out there on both sides. All three sides.

• Muslims in the middle east fear the imperialist crusaders, come to impose Christianity, Coca Cola and porn on them.
• "Blue-state" Americans fear the conservative Christians, come to impose Pat Robertson and Benny Hinn on them, and (mostly) to take away their freedom of thought and expression.
• "Red-state" Americans fear the liberal establishment, come to take away their freedom of expressing their faith in the public square.

I don't think many liberals understand this last point. This article by Rabbi Daniel Lapin comes across just a little alarmist (!) but he does make this interesting point:

Phase one in this war is to make Christianity, well, sort of socially unacceptable. Something only foolish, poor and ugly people could turn to.

That's probably the one thing I'd definitely agree with in his article. Normally I'd give my liberal fellow human beings the benefit of the doubt - after all, liberal means 'generous', doesn't it? - but just as I've come across Christians who have unthought-through stereotypes about other people, so I have come across educated, liberal people who have the same kind of stereotypes about Christians.

Because I'm trying to learn the art of being genuinely open-minded until I really know a thing, I'll end this on a series of questions:

• Why is it so hard to stay open-minded?
• Why do I find myself so tempted towards polarising language (on both sides, by the way) when writing about these issues?
• Why does literature place so much emphasis on Freudian and Marxist philosophy when the fields of psychology, economics and philosophy have so many other thinkers?
• Is Freudian/Marxist/liberal thought influential because it's all that's taught, or because it's the best reflector of reality?
  

Memory, Loss and Value

I spent this morning putting my entire academic history into a small box.

It's part of the tortuous ongoing preparations for Marie and I to move in with my mum, for a whole bunch of reasons. It's been a great process so far.

As I sorted through the flotsam and jetsam of my school years, I thought about memory, loss and value.

Some of this stuff was vaguely in my mind, yet rediscovering it was like finding hidden treasure. Why is that?

I also found some of my old history notes. Since high school, I've found out I'm descended from royalty on both sides of my family - one legitimately, one not. I wondered to myself, "would I have paid more attention in studying, say, Charlemagne, if I knew he was my great-great-great... etc. grandfather?" Probably not.

I didn't get so passionately interested in family history until I faced a shaking of all other foundations in my life a few years ago. I needed roots, I needed some sense of belonging. And the "lostness" of the family tree information on both sides just made it all the more important to get hold of.

I heard an interview on NPR's On the Media about Life Logging, which is apparently becoming more and more do-able and affordable by the minute. Although the big challenge seems to be managing the stacks of information for easy access - which is the same problem with non-virtual memory.

It makes you think - or makes me think, anyway - about the nature of memory and whether such a function could be literally outsourced. What would happen? Would it free up our brains for something more useful? Or would it be just another machine-dependence? The NPR piece pointed out that already as a culture we don't know phone numbers anymore, we just enter them once into our mobile and never need to remember them.

Anyway my point... I think ... was that the problem, and perhaps the solution, with memory is that we forget what we know. Our short term memory just doesn't seem to have too much capacity, and maybe that's a good thing. Maybe rediscovery is one of the keys to joy in life.

Or maybe I just need some sleep! :)