Blithe Hope: You're Already Dead

My brother got me the Band of Brothers and The Pacific series for Christmas. I've finally had time to start watching and have been working my way through Band of Brothers over the past few days. In one of the episodes there is a private named Blithe who survived the D-Day drop by hiding in a ditch. Later in the episode one of the officers, Lt. Spiers, is talking to him about his actions. During the conversation Spiers told this to the private: "You crawled into that ditch because you think there's still hope, but the only hope you have is to accept the fact that you're already dead. The sooner you accept that, the sooner you'll be able to function as a soldier is supposed to function: without mercy, without compassion, without remorse. All war depends upon it." 

We used tanning beds to punish people

I came across the following quote from Olivia Wilde a while ago and it struck me as being particularly insightful: 

In a thousand years archeologists will dig up tanning beds and think we fried people as punishment.

The reason why I think this is insightful is because I think it characterizes the fragmentary nature with which we view the ancient past. We have a few texts and artifacts from the ancient past and from these we must somehow reconstruct their culture.

This is not to call into question the conclusions that we have made from archaeological discoveries and ancient texts concerning their cultures. In fact I think the majority of these conclusions are correct. But sometimes I wonder if someone from the ancient past were to visit us today, and we described their culture to them, how many of our conclusions about their culture would strike them as silly as the conclusion Ms. Wilde describes strikes us? I think it would be more than we think. We are too confident in our own conclusions sometimes I think.

Quick Update

Here's a quick update on what I've been up to these last few months.

I started taking seminary courses this semester with Hermeneutics and Old Testament Prophets. I've also been working full-time for the majority of the year so far. So between these two I have had very little time to think or write. Things are calming down though so I should be back to posting here with some regularity pretty soon. 

I am planning on moving to Dallas in August in order to complete seminary. I'm pretty excited about this and looking forward to it. 

Between now and then I am taking one summer course. Planning on starting to study biblical Greek for the purposes of deciding whether or not I want to move into the ThM program (this would be a 4-year program and I am in a 2-year program now). And play around with all the features of Joomla! and integrate into my site. 

So that's it for now Internet land. If you're curious I'm planing on writing about a quote I came across from Olivia Wilde. I thought it was pretty insightful personally.

Wonder. Or, It's all just too whimsical isn't it?

Sometime ago I was watching a movie called Agora. I remember a scene where Hypatia and her students are discussing (or debating might be more accurate) whether the Earth was the center of the universe, or whether the Earth revolved around something. During the scene one of her students makes the comment: "It's all just too whimsical isn't it?," referring to the theory that the Earth revolved around something and was not the center of the universe. 


I didn't make much of the comment at first, but lately I've realized just how profoundly insightful that comment really is.

World's Meanest Mother

My mom had a copy of this poem called "The Meanest Mother " a while ago, but threw it out. I liked it however and wanted to find a copy of it one day, and today I did! 

Since I like this so much I decided to share it with the Internet. Hope you like it. 

Final Thoughts on Monkery

I embarked on this experiment intending to disengage from the busyness of everyday life, but I quickly found that this would not be an easy goal to attain. I found myself burdened by obligations and other things that "had to be done." It was because of this that I had to change my experiment to only two meditations instead of three, and even after I changed the experiment I still found it quite difficult to even do the two! Apparently carving out two to three hours a day to spend in meditation and prayer is an impossible task these days.

Open Question: Why don't I (we) do what brings me (us) the most pleasure?

I've been thinking about this for a few days and I have absolutely no idea why this is, so I thought I would ask you all for some input on this. 

This past Monday I was trying to decide between doing two things in the evening: reading some more of The Idiot or watching Monday Night Football. In the long run I knew that reading would bring me more pleasure and satisfaction than watching football, especially since the game probably wasn't going to be very good, but it was still such a strong temptation to watch the game even though I knew that I would be more satisfied by reading. On this particular occasion I ended up reading, but only because I realized what was going on and took the time to think through what was happening. 

I would like to know if anyone can relate to this and has any idea as to why we decide to do the thing that we know won't satisfy us long term. Sure it might bring us short term satisfaction, but if we know ahead of time that something else will bring us more satisfaction in the long run, why do the other thing? 

Sometimes we have obligations that take us away from doing the things that will bring us that long term satisfaction, but those are not the situations I am talking about here. What I am talking about here is those situations where there are no obligations that prevent you from doing something. I am talking about those situations where there is nothing preventing you from choosing either one.

Anyone?