What's in a Name?

What we call something can have a significant impact on the way we perceive it. This is why marketing works. This is why we couch what we say in euphemisms. Words really do matter, because they shape and carry our meaning to others.

Historically, the naming of a child was a joyful and serious matter. It was an opportunity to set the direction for the child, to declare the parents' love and affection for it - and often to declare many other things, such as allegiances, ties, fealties and oaths. Simply naming a child after a favorite uncle could have significant repercussions through the life of that child. The uncle might dote on the child, and the child may be given to paying a little more attention to that uncle and his behavior.

But if the child is told that they were named after that uncle and he turns out to be a criminal, what will the child think? An impressionable child might take that as an indication of his or her own nature, and believe that they too are destined to lean towards a life of crime. We don't name our children after Charles Manson, John Wilkes Boothe, Adolf Hitler or Joseph Stalin because we don't want our children identifying with those men. We name our children after the best and finest that we know, people that we admire. That is why so many freed slaves took the names of famous presidents. How many Lincolns and Washingtons are there among the African American population?

Christians traditionally choose names that come from the Bible, or that are the names of saints. When a child learns that they were named after someone who was known for their virtue, they have a lifelong opportunity to identify with that virtue. A child may also be named directly after a virtue, to provide a constant reminder of that virtue. Children have also been named after towns and cities from the Bible where miracles happened, or where famous events of virtuous people took place. All of these offer that lifelong bond to virtue and goodness.

Given this backdrop, it has dismayed me to see so many children being named in rather vain and meaningless ways. Naming of children has become like naming family pets; we pick names that sound good to us. Or we just plain make up a sound and slap it on a child. Worse still are cases where a parent names a child by their favorite store, or a sports hero, or a car. The child will forever carry a reminder that their parent assigned them a name - that most intimate means of identification - that conveys a message of frivolity or simplemindedness. That is the legacy of an ill-chosen name.

When you are blessed with children, consider the name that you give to each one of them. The saints are great examples of virtue, and telling a child that they are named after someone who exemplifies goodness can be a wonderful gift. Or name a child after a famous man or woman from history who did great things so that your child can have some notion of who to emulate. In any case, choose your names wisely because your child will have a lifetime to consider who they are, and their name is a natural starting point.

Homosexuality

I'm a heterosexual man. An attractive woman turns my head. An attractive man does not. Why? Because that's what my body tells me to do. I didn't take Heterosexuality 101 in grade school so that when I hit puberty I'd be attracted to girls. I was built to be heterosexual.

Of course, we know that people vary due to genetic and developmental forces. We also know that those variations affect our physical and mental abilities. Some variations produce mild effects, such as a preference for a particular color or spiciness in foods. Some are more pronounced, such as photographic memories, predisposition towards addiction, great physical prowess and so on. No matter the intensity, they all come to us unbidden. We don't take Addiction 101 or Memory 311 in college. Our basic physical and intellectual makeup are conferred upon us by circumstance.

That brings us to homosexuality. It is a builtin sexual desire for members of the same sex. It is an instinct that is conferred upon certain people by circumstance. They don't take Homosexuality 101 to learn how to become homosexuals. They have a sincere attraction to people who are the same sex. So what's the big deal?

Well, let's take a look at what sexuality is all about.

Sexuality is about propagation of the species. That's why we have it. That is sex's raison de etre. People take the raw act of creating new members of our species and fill it out to be much more complete. We bond as husbands and wives because that is the fulfillment of the act of love that is most advantageous to the family when they create new life. Without the bond, men and women would separate after sex, just like animals do, leaving the women to deal with the birth of the child. Clearly nobody would do that, because we're so much better than the animals. Right?

That little jab at sex outside of marriage is made possible because people separate their animal instinct for procreative sex from the human instinct for that loving bond. In a similar way, homosexuality seems to make sense because it has everything that a healthy relationship seeks except for the creation of a child. That's why homosexuality fools so many people into believing that it's a healthy thing - it looks a lot like a healthy thing.

It's not healthy because it excludes the possibility of creating life. Remember the very purpose of sex? To create new life? Homosexuality precludes that possibility. Oh, we might be able to artificially accomplish something to permit homosexual couples to physically create a new life, but their sexual congress isn't going to be the source of that life.

Well, who says sex has to create new life? It's not in anybody's operating manual about how to be human. Heterosexual couples use birth control to do pretty much the same thing; they take the possibility of creating new life out of the act of sex, retaining only the physical bond and possibly the emotional bond between the couple. It's just like homosexuality, and it probably covers the majority of the population in America.

To understand it, I'll use the Olympics as a metaphor.

Imagine if athletes came from all over the world to assemble in one city. They were all incredibly well-trained and capable. Fans flooded in as well, buying up hot dogs, program guides, painting their faces with their national flags and hooting and hollering to support thier athletes. They all assembled in the olympic stadium. The runners are at the starting line. The official raises his hand to start the race. A hush falls over the stadium. Then everyone goes home.

The fundamental element to the Olympics is the competition. It's why the athletes trained. It's what the fans came to see. Oh, they also got a chance to meet people from all over the world, see a new city, try new foods, be involved in the sheer experience of the Olympics. But without the competition, there are no Olympics. The meetings might continue, but they would turn into something that isn't the Olympic experience.

So it is with human sexuality. Without the very purpose behind sexuality as an integral part of the act, it is incomplete in a very fundamental way. That incompleteness causes our perception of the act to change and restructure. The changes take place slowly as the new perceptions are institutionalized for later generations. We know what happens when heterosexuals forget about the fundamental purpose of sex when we look around and see so many families lacking fathers. We'll learn in the coming decades what perils are part of institutionalized homosexuality.

Homosexuality is an unfortunate flaw in the genetic and developmental forces that go into our makeup. It becomes part of the instincts of an apparently non-trivial fraction of our population, and we are a planet of people largely dominated by our instincts. If I were to present this argument to a homosexual, I would appear to be chopping at the foundation of their existence. Imagine if I were to tell you that heterosexuality was unhealthy for you. That it was leading you to an unhappy end. If you thought that anything could come of my claim, you'd be pretty motivated to shove that argument down my throat. That's how strong these particular instincts are.

But that's all they are; instincts. There are healthy ones and there are unhealthy ones. Homosexuality is an unhealthy instinct because it attempts to reinforce the notion that sex devoid of the possibility of the creation of life is a healthy attitude. It is the same attitude that encourages the use of contraception and, ultimately, abortion.

In time, technology will give us two avenues that people can walk down. The first is for homosexuals to have children. The second is to reset the instincts of a homosexual to those of a heterosexual. The path that we choose will tell us much about ourselves.

The Great Struggle

A maturing experience is one in which we are faced with a situation that requires that we make some difficult choices. Those choices are about things that cause us to decide what's important in life. They help us to discover our priorities and to then hone them. The ultimate goal of maturing, of course, is to become better men and women.

The process of maturation is the one thing that is truly timeless. Every man or woman ever born was faced with it. As a result, there is no more unifying experience than that of maturing. Older members are still maturing, but they are likely ahead of those who are younger. This means that there is a very natural mentoring relationship between the older and the younger members of a society.

When children are focused on the process of maturation, they can look to those who are older for guidance and help. As they get older themselves, they can provide basic aid and direction to those slightly younger then they are. Indeed, even helping peers will be valuable given that some learn about the lessons of life more quickly than others.

In ages past, old and young alike were busied with the task of simply staying alive. Finding food, shelter and clothing have been the primary activities of human beings until only very recently. Those are maturing activities. They cause people to face the fact that we are human, and that there is value in the cardinal virtues. Humility, chastity, charity, moderation, zeal, etc., all have clear purpose and meaning in a society that must work together in order to survive. A successful society will naturally move towards those values. A society that does not will tend to fragment, falter and crumble.

Does this mean that when we were struggling to feed, clothe and house our families that we were in some kind of nirvana? Hardly. We are human and we have always been creatures infected with sloth, greed and the other capital sins. However, the hardships of life tend to demand that we make clear choices about whether we choose vice or virtue.

Now consider the choices that we make in modern America, particularly the children's choices. Can they get the new cell phone with the television-on-demand or do they have to stay with the out-of-date phone? Are low-riders still in fashion? Will they go out for track or for soccer this year? How can they work their schedule so they can watch the latest episode of The Simpsons?

That's just the consumerist side of American life. There is a far darker side that gives children choices about who their marijuana supplier is going to be, or where they'll steal their music and movie downloads, or how to sneak down to the tattoo shop. That's the rebellious side, and it's even more frivolous and wasteful of human life than is the consumerist.

The decisions that face us, whether we are 15 or 55, are simply no longer significant. We are lost in a sea of frivolity, of meaningless choices. The people of America were once great because of the challenges that we faced. We were building a nation from a wilderness. That demanded that people take stock of that which was important to them because there were sacrifices to be made, and that required people to decide. Will I sacrifice this, or will I sacrifice that? That decision is the cornerstone of building a sense of ethics and morality.

Great nations seem to invariably fade away, either because someone with more resolve comes along, or because they collapse from within. What makes a nation great is the struggle that it faces in order to stay a nation. The very timbre of the people of that nation is defined by the struggle.

America is at the top of the heap of nations on this planet if we measure such things in terms of industrial, technological and military might. That too will fade away if we, as a nation, do not choose to undertake some great struggle.

What might that struggle be? Should it be ivory tower noble, or gritty effective? Should it be the sort that stirs the people into a frenzy of desire, or one that speaks softly to their contemplative side? If you were to set a direction for this nation, what would it be? Clean up the environment? Achieve a 100% literacy rate? Install democratic governments in every nation?

Tell me what you thing. Let me know what struggle is before us that would not only occupy the energies of the entire nation, but would also give us an opportunity to shape the character of our young people so that they will be finer individuals than we are. Think big. Think of the well-being of the nation and indeed of the entire planet. We are all neighbors here, whether we like it or not. Will we struggle against them or will be struggle with them against a common foe?

The Oldest You've Ever Been

Today you are the oldest you've ever been. You've never been this old before. You've never had all the experiences and insights that you have right at this very moment. When something gets thrown at you, you have a certain storehouse of wisdom, determination and skill to deal with it. Or even to enjoy it. Each day brings you new challenges and new opportunities. Some of them you know what to do, and others you just kinda make it up as you go along. Nobody's perfect, and you're doing the best you can.

That was true when you were 10 years old, it's true now, and it'll be true when you're 80 years old. It's true of everyone else as well.

Everyone is the oldest they've ever been. Imagine someone who is 80 years old. They've never been 80 before. Sure, they were 79 before that, and 78 two years earlier. But now they're 80 and they have zero experience with being 80. It is a unique situation to have 80 years of experiences and to know that there is probably only a few years remaining to gather new ones. The body doesn't work as well as it once did, and it's only going to get worse.

All of that is a new experience for the 80 year old. That person has never been 80 before. It's true of parents. Each day is a new experience. They've never raised a 16 year old before. If they have, then they have an older child who is now 18, and they've never dealt with having an 18 year old and a 16 year old at the same time. Every day is new to us, and none of us - I repeat none of us - has ever experienced today before.

Oh sure, we may go into work each day and feel like we're living the true life version of Groundhog Day, but really we're a day older each day, and it's the first time we've ever been 8,803 days old. It's not that different from Day 8,802, but as those days accumulate, we're sure to run into something new and different.

What's the point of an article that is saying that every day is a new day? To suggest that maybe we can lessen the generation gap to those older or younger than ourselves. We all share the fact that we're as old as we've ever been. That we're all figuring out life as we go. That we're all human.

We might just realize that the older generations have figured some things out before us. Maybe, just maybe, they could tell us a thing or two about something timeless. Not about cell phones, pop stars or fuel injection, but perhaps a bit about what it is to deal with life a couple years farther down the road than you've gone. Being your age is old hat, but they're still figuring out how to be their age. They've never been that old before.

Just like you.

Pride and Humility

While Envy and Charity was a difficult capital pairing for me to address, this one is like shooting ducks in a barrel. We're 21st century Americans. We practically define pride.

The sin of pride is that of assigning disproportionate value to yourself or to your accomplishments, possessions, etc. So if I'm a baseball phenom, does that mean that I'm better than other people? In baseball, yes. In life, no. But all too often, we believe our own press. We listen to the admiring acclaim of friends and even strangers, and that acclaim tempts us into thinking that we're somehow more special than other people. The temptation is genuine because on any given scale, we are more capable, more talented, more well-known, more this, more than - than other people. But that just doesn't justify the idea that we're have greater inherent value than anyone else.

To contrast the sin, let's look at the virtue. The virtue of humility is possessed by those who understand their worth relative to other people. Interestingly, it is exactly the same as everyone else in the world. We are all equally worthy of respect, honor and dignity. Such a mindset can only exist when we have a loving attitude about other people. We love others, so we assign them a position that is equal to our own. We don't get fooled into thinking that because we drive a fancy car and have lots of possessions that we're somehow better than they are. We know, deep down, that we're all fundamentally equal.

Why does that take humility? Because of the automatic temptation to believe that we're better, based entirely on our circumstances. We all too often think that the trappings of our lives define who we are. Humility tells us to strip ourselves down, almost literally, to Who We Are. Not What We Own, or Who We Know or any other metric. Just the barest of notions of identity.

When a Christian, Jew or Muslim considers that stripped notion of identity, they turn to their relationship with God. They are a creation of God's will. That realization alone is enough to put everything into perspective. They exist only because God chose to create them. They believe in a life after death, and that this life is a temporary thing. God is so vastly superior to them that they can always look to God for a final sanity check about their place in the universe.

Again, that helps them to see right through the possessions, the positions of power, the physical abilities and successes. They are things of this world, while they have their eye firmly fixed on eternity. It lets them assign a proportionate value to themselves and to their accomplishments, possessions, etc.

To those who do not look to God for a sense of their role in the universe, the task of finding humility is rather more difficult. If God is not a force in their lives, then what is it that will help them discover a sense of humility? An easy way to tackle that is to simply look around at the universe that they live in. Look up at the night sky while in the country to see how impossibly huge the universe is. Look back through time to see the prideful who have risen to great power only to fall to ashes. No man lives forever, and our pride is just a fleeting insistence on our own self-importance. I would think that the only people capable of pride are those who look no farther than the people who tell them how wonderful they are.

If we have somehow sidestepped all the pitfalls of pride, what have we gained in our humility? Is that somehow a statement of "Oh, I'm just not worth anything anymore." Not at all. Remember that humility is based in an assumption that everyone is worthy of equal respect, honor and dignity. Of equal love. That includes you and me. If we think that we're not worthy of the same love that everyone else is, then we're falling into the same trap that has already been described; if I am less than others, then we're right back to people having varying degrees of worth. If I'm less, then others are more. And that means that there are others who are probably less than even me. Blam. Right back to a prideful way of thinking, speaking and behaving.

Whoops. I never answered the question. What have we gained in our humility? For one thing, we've gained a rock solid footing in reality. All the trappings of our lives become translucent as we look around ourselves for substance. What stays solid and real is the people that we meet and that we know and love. We are all peers. Brothers and sisters. We are all capable of and worth of giving and receiving real love. Pride blinds us to that possibility, while humility opens us up to it.

The capital sins and capital virtues are paired as they are because our days are spent choosing between ourselves or other people. Look at each capital sin and you will see a decision to embrace ourselves before we embrace others. Look at each capital virtue and you will see the reverse. Pride is a terrible sin because it sets us up to consciously choose ourselves over others. When we rationalize a sinful way, it is in some ways far more difficult to correct than those temptations that come from our base instincts, such as lust or gluttony.

No matter the source, be sure that the capital virtues are the means to a more fulfilling and happier life. As much as we turn a blind eye to the capital sins, or as much as we tolerate them, or as much as we embrace them, we are only damaging our potential for that fulfillment during our brief lives. Study how to love and you will find the virtues. Indulge your earthly desires and whims and you will find the sins. It's your choice.

Envy and Charity

This article is significantly delayed not only because it's spring and there's lots of things that need doing at this time of year, but also because I was honestly stumped on this one. I've started this article many times without being able to work through any plausible logic. I've covered greed and generosity, so it's not a simpleminded issue of wanting something for yourself versus a willingness to give to others. Something else is involved.

The theological virtues are faith, hope and love. That last one, love, is the cornerstone of understanding these capital virtues. At the same time, the third theological virtue is often expressed as "charity". It would seem to suggest that envy is a pretty nasty sin, if it's the categorical opposite of a theological virtue.

The best I've come up with is this: the capital virtue of charity has to do with the ability to relish the fact that others have possessions, traits and abilities that have an inherent beauty and goodness to them. Envy, as the opposing sin, is the desire for you to have them - at the cost of whoever has them.

It's important to establish that envy is not just about wanting beauty and goodness for yourself. Everyone pursues that. We wouldn't want to get into heaven otherwise. Envy is about depriving others of it.

So we don't envy someone else's car. We want to have one just like it, but that's not envy. We can go buy an identical car. Envy has taken hold when there's a something that someone else has and you want it for yourself. That specific something that they have.

Let's say that you have a popular friend. Everyone likes her because she's so pretty and friendly. But nobody notices you because in the intense brightness of her personality, you just aren't seen. If you fall into the trap of envy, you start thinking that you should be the pretty one, not her. You should be the one that everyone notices, not her. Charity says that instead of wanting her gifts, you are thrilled for her. Whatever she has was given to her and you are happy that such a gift even exists in the world.

What's the root cause of envious thinking? A lack of love, of course. When we love those around us, we want only the best for them. We would no more strip someone we love of the beauty in their life than we would strike them. The difficulty that most people have with love, and that leaves us open to temptation the most, is not permitting ourselves to grasp the notion of love as applied to strangers. All too many people see their neighbors as competitors, rivals, non-entities, slaves, or oppressors. When that is the way we see our neighbors, we will naturally fall into sinful thinking and acts. If my neighbor is an oppressor, why would I love them? We start from the assumption that they are no worthy of our love, and then apply unloving thinking to them. We fall into the capital sins. Like envy.

I know that this is all repetitious, but all of our choices to do sinful things are rooted in the fact that we just don't believe that other people are worthy of our love or that we ourselves are not worthy to give love. Without a hope of real love, we turn to other things to fill the void. Greed, lust, envy and so on. The sins. We turn away from love and all we're left with is the capital sins.

The next installment of this series is about Pride and Humility, the final capital pairing.

Wrath and Meekness

Before I start this article, I have to confess that I botched this series. I said that I would be talking about the cardinal virtues. In fact, I am discussing the capital virtues and capital sins. The cardinal virtues are those of prudence, justice, temperance and fortitude. And the big boys of virtue, the theological virtues, are faith, hope and love (or charity).

The capital sin of wrath is a pretty easy thing to understand. We see it all the time. People are just so dumb sometimes, aren't they? They make you mad. They make me mad. There's a very natural inclination towards venting that fury at somebody or something. We yell, we scream, we turn silent, we brood, we walk off, we get in somebody's face. We do lots of things that we normally wouldn't do, and usually end up apologizing for, all because somebody pushed our buttons.

Just what is a button, anyway? I don't mean by example. We all have many examples of these sorts of buttons. I mean categorically, what's a button? A button is an action or a situation that causes a person to reaction emotionally. Vehemently so. Getting mad is one reaction to having a button pushed. That's wrath stuff.

So how does that relate to meekness? When I think of meek people, I think of "meek and mild". Boring. Without any drive, or energy. Except that we just learned in the last article, that lacking drive is a form of sloth. Combine zeal with meekness and you've got something.

Meekness is a kind of forbearance. A tolerance. An ability to suffer the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune without blowing up in somebody's face about it. Bending without breaking. Practiced perfectly, it means that when some man calls a woman fat, the woman looks at her body, considers where it is fat, and accepts whatever truth there might be in his words. That, despite the fact that he's calling her fat in order to push her buttons. He wants her mad. He wants to hurt her. Meekness says that she won't go there.

This is classic vice/virtue stuff. A vice is predicated in temptation to do something that is not loving, but somehow viscerally satisfying. A virtue is predicated in looking beyond the temptation and in seeing some kind of truth that is better and finer - and ultimately more rewarding - than giving into the temptation of the moment. Meekness overcomes wrath just as chastity overcomes lust, or any virtue overcomes any vice.

So how do we develop our sense of meekness, given our desire for wrath? You know the answer, because it's always the same in these discussions: love. Why do we not get mad? Because it isn't a loving act. And while we're not getting mad, we can do something useful, such as respond to that mean-spirited man with a comment that actually helps him in some way. Instead of the wrathful means of responding with "Oh yeah, well you suck!", you could say something like "You're trying to make me mad, aren't you?" That may seem like a dumb comeback, but the purpose of the response is not to score points in an unpleasant exchange. That's still wrath poking its head out for a look. The purpose of any response from a meek individual is to reach out to the one who is pushing their buttons. Clearly, if they're trying to push somebody else's buttons, then they must be on Button Time themselves. They had a bad day at the office and they're venting. So help them to recognize that as well as you can and nudge them towards meekness.

I don't want to go too far into the topic of trying to reach out to others because it requires a lot of skill to do right. But ultimately this remains a discussion of love. The meek understand that Button Time gets you nowhere useful. It's a bit like Random Time, because wrath can send you just about anywhere. You get mad, you vent, somebody else gets mad, they vent back, things get emotional, friends try to soothe things out, and the soap opera is off and running. It's a terrible waste of time that could be used for loving acts. Those loving acts would try to consciously help others towards a specific destination, instead of some random, all-over-the-place kind of experience. Those soap operas just go around and around, like a carousel. Loving acts try to steer straight to a goal of greatest happiness.

Before closing, I should undoubtedly allay any thoughts of the practice of meekness being one of letting people walk all over you. If you are letting people walk all over you, you aren't helping them. They have a problem with respect and with loving others. If you have any sense of loving your fellow man, you'll do something to get them on the right track. Insisting on respect from them would be a good start. For both of you.

The next time somebody starts pushing one or more of your buttons, practice your meekness. Think of how to do something constructive in the situation. Constructive. Loving. Don't spend that thinking time coming up with a clever comeback that puts the other person down. Use your virtue of meekness to consider how to best bring out the best in those who push your buttons. "Love your enemies."

Sloth and Zeal

Given the topic, this article should have followed hard on the heels of the last one, but I was busy with other things. You'll have to take my word on that.

So now the vice of interest is sloth. What is sloth? As always, look to the virtue to understand it. Zeal is a forcefulness, an enthusiasm, a drive. But for what? In the virtuous sense, zeal is an enthusiasm for love, for other people, for their happiness. The most dynamic people in the world have that virtue. They don't just hope that somebody has good things happen, they act to make sure that they do happen.

If that's zeal, sloth becomes pretty obvious. Vices are the absence of virtue, so someone without any enthusiasm and drive to pursue the well-being of others is being slothful. The vice of sloth is usually associated with some lazy good-for-nothing who sits on the couch all day. Sure, that's slothful, but not just because that person is being physically lazy. The physical side is a lesser sin. The complete lack of interest in acting in a loving way towards others is the greater sin. It is far more debilitating than simple laxity.

Consider the man who is constantly on the go, running his business and seeking out new ways to improve his product. A man of great passion and zeal, right? Not if he's doing it all because it just fills his time. If he just wants the money. That might be greed, but it's also sloth. When it comes to acting in a loving way towards others, the man is a couch potato. In truth, sloth covers a lot of ground because it is so fundamentally a simple lack of love. There's no maliciousness or hatred involved. Just a lack of love. It's a tragic vice.

So why have zeal? How could anyone develop zeal for loving other people? It's hard enough trying to deal with just one person or a family. Loving everyone is a ludicrously tall order. Isn't it?

Of course not. All it takes is the right beliefs. I've said it before and I'll say it again. If you view other people as a collection of cells run by a computer, how much credit are you giving people? They're just fancy machines running some computer program, devoid of any true virtue or greatness. If they're not machines, then they're mean, nasty, often explosive crazies. Or they're emotionless robots that can look right through you and ignore you. You might be thinking "Which one of those am I supposed to have zeal for?"

Have zeal for all of them. Why? Because of the potential that each one holds. Just as a child has the potential to become an Einstein, a Mozart or a Mother Theresa, any person you meet has the potential for zeal, modesty, generosity, chastity and so on. We love others because we know that they have that potential and that it is simply unrealized. The more firmly we hold that belief, the greater the zeal that we have for loving others. Mother Theresa of Calcutta had it. Pope John Paul II had it. Ghandi had it. And those are only the most public figures. Surely you know people who have great zeal for loving other people. It pours out of them like a flood no matter where they go. That's because they see people as inherently worthy of their efforts - making it no effort at all.

The next time you're faced with the decision about whether or not to greet the guy or gal you walk by every day on your way to work, summon your zeal and not only greet them, but put a sparkle in your eye and a smile on your face. Show them the magnificence of being human.

Greed and Generosity

As was mentioned in Lust and Chastity, there is the wanting and there is the having. Gluttony is the actual indulgence in what you want or what you have. Because greed is the sin of having, it covers all manner of excessive possession, hoarding or control. Greed is a matter of keeping things of this world under your control. So you might be greedy to have money, but you might also be greedy to have some collectible or even some experience that you want to keep for yourself. You love that front seat on the roller coaster, and you'll be pretty sneaky to make sure that you get it and that nobody else does. Greed.

By comparison, generosity is not so much about making sure that we control something, but more about offering it to other people so that they can use it. It's about the idea that other people are as important to us as we ourselves are. That's what love is, after all. When we have that general sense about other people, we're happy to turn over that front seat to somebody else because we're happy for them. Yes, I know that sounds terribly altruistic, but it's entirely possible to develop that mindset and experience life that way.

A big part of developing that mindset, and of developing any virtuous mindset, is to be greedy for the benefits of the virtue instead of the vice. When the virtuous outcome is more pleasing to us than the outcome that we achieve through the vice, we aren't as tempted by the vice. The person who has their heart set on that front seat is focusing on greedy goals. Once set in their heart, it's difficult to just stop and turn on a dime and act virtuously. It's necessary to say to ourselves from the very start that when we go to the amusement park, we're not just there for our own enjoyment. That would be greedy. We're there for everyone's enjoyment. That's being generous.

The cynical reader is thinking how idiotic that approach to life is. Everyone at the amusement park is going to take full advantage of their generosity and offer nothing in return. While that may be true, there is a certain sense of self-respect that comes with the genuine practice of the virtues. Most people are so shamed by their own activity that they have no sense of what it is like to have a sense of self-respect. Self-respect is reinforced every time we do something that is virtuous. Never do anything virtuous and you never get that reinforcement. People's character will erode if not reinforced.

So when you practice virtues such as generosity, you are presenting an example of virtue, and that removes a tiny speck of erosive vice that blasts at us every day by people who no longer believe in the value of virtue. When you practice virtue, you lessen the impact of the world's collective vices. So virtues are worth the effort, even if every person you demonstrate a virtue to doesn't reciprocate.

Practice your generosity. What do you have in abundance that someone else might not have? Are you particularly talented with tools? A gifted voice? Are you tall? Are you short? Do you organize well? Are you artistic? Are you wealthy? Do you know everyone in town? No matter the gift, possession, skill or trait that you have, a small application of generosity can produce wonderful results. Other people get to witness your generous spirit and you gain in character for having found the means to demonstrate it.

One thing that will help you to practice your virtues is the realization that everyone else has the same capacity for virtue that you do. When you embrace that notion, all of the virtues, including generosity, will flow from you very easily. It's what happens when you love.

Gluttony and Moderation

Gluttony is over-indulgence in something. The most frequent association to gluttony is to food and drink, but gluttony can really be about anything. Sex, gardening, crossword puzzles, travel, movies, prayer, electronics, anything. When we focus on our desire in some experience, whether physical, intellectual, emotional or spiritual, then we have turned our back on others and are devoid of love. We are gluttons.

Americans are good at gluttony. We have more self-indulgences than any other group on the face of the Earth. And we still want more. We've turned it into a way of dealing with life. Instead of facing the pain of the world, we all too often dodge reality by wrapping ourselves up in some indulgence. An extra pint of ice cream that helps us forget how painful our current relationship is. Some extreme sports to distract us from a bad family situation. An expensive meal at a four star restaurant to transport us away from a rotten work situation. We're invited to gluttony by every advertising executive out there. Americans are just really good at the gluttony game.

So what does moderation look like, if it's such a wonderful thing? Does it mean living like monks in 8' by 4' stone cells on wooden slat beds? Is that moderation? No, that's asceticism, which can be like a form a gluttony in reverse. Moderation is all about balance and health. Instead of the relative sense of going for as much as you can in an effort to turn your back on something unpleasant, moderation is the absolute sense of focusing on what would be best. Indulgence isn't categorically wrong, but it has the nasty tendency to encourage more and more of it once you get started on the practice.

The gluttonous crossword puzzle solver spends too much time on crossword puzzles and not enough time on his friends and family. The crosswords are a place to hide, to be distracted from his life. This means that he is not thinking in loving terms, but rather in selfish terms. As with lust, gluttony is usually rooted in circumstances that encouraged the person to think of their vice as something normal and natural. This is especially true when gluttonous parents turn their backs on their children. The children learn that self-indulgence is what people do, so they grow up living that lie. Gluttony is normal for them.

Moderation isn't easy. Temptation to gluttony is everywhere in our society. Gluttony of music, of food, of possessions, of clothing. These are all things that we are encouraged into by our society. Moderation says that we won't buy those new shoes. Why? Because we don't have any real need for them. Gluttony says that we'll buy it because it's "fun" or it would be a great match for that handbag you just bought. The rationalization isn't important. Only that you are investing of your time and attention in selfish pleasures instead of thinking in terms of whether or not you need what you are indulging yourself in.

Yes, I know that the notion of "need" is foreign to so many Americans. But "need" is the root of a loving attitude when it comes to turning away from gluttony. When we embrace moderation, we indulge in material things and in activities only so much as we have need for. If we focused on needs instead of wants, we would be far better practiced in self-restraint and the ability to act willfully through conscious choice. Moderation is the incredibly loving act of will that says I will do a certain thing because it is good for me and for others. I will not do the gluttonous thing because it is not good for me and for others. Those who practice moderation have a sense of love of themselves and of others. That is their motivation; to have the greatest good come from their acts. As opposed to the gluttonous attitude that says "I'm going to focus on my petty desires for now."

Take some time to examine your favorite indulgences and figure out whether you're doing them out of a sense of the value that they bring to your life and to the lives of those you love - or if you're just hiding in a cocoon of indulgence that succeeds in shutting out the world. Where it's the latter, you're not doing yourself any favors.

Lust and Chastity

The first vice-virtue pair is not just about sexuality. Most generally, the pair is about the craving that drives someone to desire something. We can lust after sex, of course, but we also lust after other things. Power is a traditional focus of lust, but these days I suspect a lust for fame is pretty common as well. Certainly there are other things that we lust after.

If you're thinking that this all sounds a lot like greed, then you go to the head of the class. They're quite similar. The way to contrast lust and greed is to consider their paired virtues: chastity and generosity. Lust and chastity are about how we handle the wanting of something. Greed and generosity are about how we handle the having of something. The two are clearly closely related, but as I said in the introductory article, all the vices are fundamentally related because they are rooted in a lack of ability to love.

Those who lust have decided that something is more important than love. Sex, power, fame, etc., are so important to these people that when push comes to shove, their craving for whatever they're after will win out over doing something loving.

For example, let's say that I meet a pretty girl at a party. The loving thing to do is to treat her like I would anyone else that I respect greatly. That should be my starting point. She is capable of great depth of conversation, insights into life and love, the pursuit of a relationship with others and with God - the whole nine yards. That's the loving thing. That's the chaste thing.

But I'm not chaste. I'm a luster, so I "check her out", admiring her body. After all, I don't know anyone capable of great depth of conversation and all that drivel. What I implicitly know is that people use each other, and that she'd be fun to "use". That's just the way things are. She's just interested in using me back of course, so it all works out. From there, I approach her to begin my conquest.

Kinda sad, isn't it? The worst of it is when she acts in a way consistent with his lustful attitudes because she isn't any more chaste than he is.

The luster doesn't have the starting point of acting in a loving way because he doesn't see the chaste promise of the girl at the party. Even if she's is a "bimbo" or a "slut", she retains the capacity to do all the things I listed. A fun exposition of that idea is the Judy Holliday movie "Born Yesterday". We get a glimpse of a woman who begins to realize her potential only when she gets the word as an adult.

When I'm talking about capacity or promise, I'm talking about up-to-and-including love. Even the luster has the capacity, but he is so blinded by lust (and other delusions) that love isn't even on his radar. That's why he cannot imagine pursuing chastity. To him, chastity is an absence of lust. Without love, lust is all there is when we consider human sexuality. But what happens when we truly understand love?

Chastity is what happens. Chastity isn't just saying that you won't abuse sex, power or fame. It's saying that you will actively employ them for the gifts that they are. They are gifts because they are a means by which we can love one another. Remember; love involves acting for the best interests of everyone.

We employ sexuality as a gift when we use it as a means of creating children. I don't mean that we do this in the dark, with grim faces and in as brief a time as possible. Sexuality is something that a married couple uses as a celebration of their union. They rejoice in being physically one person as much as you can be, and look forward to the creation of new life. That second part is key because it dwarfs the purely physical part. The desire for new life is a statement of lifelong commitment to their union, of intertwining of not only limbs but of intertwining their identities in each other.

That is what chastity is about: realizing the vast potential of the human experience. The lustful people stop at the point of intertwining their bodies, while the chaste intertwine themselves body and soul. That requires great love, and it is something that the lustful are simply blind to.

This applies to power, fame and another other thing that can be lusted after. The chaste man or woman who holds power or fame understands that it is an opportunity to love others. Power is a way to move the mountains that stand in the way of love. Fame is a way to reach out lovingly to many more people than you normally could. Those who lust after power use it for selfish gain, and those who lust for fame simply self-aggrandize, reminding us of how famous they are.

Lust is a self-limiting attitude and as a result it damages us. It holds us back. It is not loving of others and it is not loving of ourselves. Chastity is the exact opposite, letting us realize a greater experience of love and life. Often the only thing standing in the way of chastity is understanding. Sometimes it just takes a leap of faith that chastity can work. You'll find that this is the pattern of all the vice-virtue pairs.

Vices and Virtues

John A has again prodded me into an article or two. Or seven. He brought up the topic of the seven deadly sins and the corresponding virtues. I figured I'd take a stab at that topic.

First, we have to figure out what a sin is. "A sin is something that's 'bad'" is the usual understanding. In fact, a sin is an offense against God. Sure, breaking the law is a sin. But that's not a bottom-line measure of sin, because there are many things that are completely legal (especially in America) that are sinful. They are things that we do that are effectively a thumbing of our noses at God. And at the world in general. But why should we care?

As it turns out, God wants the very best for us. He loves us dearly. We're all His kids, after all. Would you want anything bad for your kids? Of course not. You may want them to endure certain trials and tribulations, but only as a means of building their character, having perspective and a bit of a sense of reality in their lives. But I digress.

If a sin is an offense against God and God only wants the very best for us, you can see how a sin is categorically a bad thing. It is an action that does something that isn't good for us. The worse the action, the more serious the sin. It's not a case of getting gold stars in a ledger in heaven, jumping through hoops and dotting the requisite 'i's. It's a case of living a joyful, loving, exultant experience while we spend our days as mortal beings. When you're doing that, you're living a virtuous life. When you're at the other end of the spectrum, living an unhappy, contemptuous and asocial existence devoid of love, you are living a sinful life.

I'm trying to work around to the cardinal virtues and deadly sins. To do that, we have to realize that this whole sinning business is about love. When we're acting in ways that don't exhibit love for others, we're in the sinning space. When we're acting in ways that DO exhibit love for others, we're in the virtue space. And that brings us around to the categorization of actions that the seven cardinal virtues and seven deadly sins represents. It's a way of looking at our actions to figure out if they're loving or not.

The cardinal virtues and deadly sins are really one and the same. Each virtue is paired with a sin. The virtue is an act of loving and the sin is an act of not loving. For example, let's take the pair of Gluttony and Moderation. Gluttony is the sin and Moderation is the virtue. The man who practices gluttony is the one who seeks to overindulge in whatever it is that he's a glutton about. That might be excessive eating, but it might also be excessive time at the beach. Any kind of overindulgence in a selfish pursuit is, by definition, something that is focused on "self" and not on others.

That statement should jump out at you. If your action is not predicated in loving others, then it is sinful. Not loving. Sinful. Get it? A virtuous act is something that demonstrates love for others. A sinful act is something that is devoid of love for others. We don't often have actions that are purely virtuous or purely sinful, so don't stand back at 100 feet and declare something sinful or virtuous. Take some time to look closely and see the mix of the two in any act.

Here's the list of pairs of sins and virtues:

Lust	Chastity
Gluttony	Moderation
Greed	Generosity
Sloth	Zeal
Wrath	Meekness
Envy	Charity
Pride	Humility

I don't know about you, but those strike me as being powerful words. They jump to the heart of any motivation that we might have for doing pretty much anything. Imagine somebody with all the sins and none of the virtues. That would be one Walking Nightmare. Would you want them living your neighborhood, around your kids? But what about the other end of the spectrum? Someone with all those traits would seem to be your typical Christian Killjoy. Chastity, moderation, meekness AND humility? Give me a break. What do they do for fun? Rearrange their holy card collection?

That's the funny thing about the vices and virtues listed. We're all drawn to our favorite vices in the here and now, while realizing that the virtues are probably best for us in the long term. But the virtues are invariably boring, so we continue to dabble in a vice or three. The trick to life is figuring out how to see that stack of virtues as a wonderful place to be. (That's the column on the right, for those of you who are having difficulty with this) Maybe such a person wouldn't be a complete weenie, but instead could be someone as remarkable as Pope John Paul II. Or Ghandi. I'm sure you can think of other powerful, dynamic and motivated people who realized great power and influence, yet didn't turn into a hedonistic, self-aggrandizing imbecile. A jerk.

I was going to do an article on winning a lottery a while back. That article was going to touch on the fact that our ability to indulge in vices and virtues is magnified when we do something like win a lottery. We attain more power, and our inclinations to vice or virtue are put on steroids. So instead of the choice of giving $100 to a charity or blowing it on a nice meal, we have the choice of giving $100,000 to charity or renovating the entire house. Your choices of virtues and vices may be working for you now, but what would happen if you were tempted on a grander scale? Would your acts be loving or despising of those around you? Of God Himself?

In the coming articles, I'll talk a bit about each vice/virtue pair. A lot of it is going to be trying to open your eyes to why the virtues are worth pursuing. It can be tough to imagine it when the environment we're in is dominated by so much of the vice.

A Kindness

We are often extolled by Christian virtue to commit charitable acts for the benefit of others. When we hear that, we think of doing things like volunteering or giving money to charities. There is a level of this that frequently sneaks under our radar, perhaps because it is so personal, so intimate. We don't often talk about this sort of thing anymore, perhaps because of the wide range of social customs and mores that are active in America these days. I'm talking about social pleasantries. Well, more than that, really, because the saying that I'm trying to work around to is this:

"A Kindness Accepted is a Kindness Offered"

Have you ever held a door for someone as you walked into or out of a building, only to have them insist that you go through? Waited to let someone with fewer items go ahead of you at the grocery store, only to have them decline? You offered a kindness and they didn't accept the kindness. Ever had a stranger offer to help you carry something - and turned them down as nicely as you could because you don't really trust strangers?

Those are examples of kindnesses being offered, but not accepted. The point of this article is to remind you that to accept a kindness is to offer one in return. Why do we hold doors open for each other? Much of the time, it's just because we're trying to be nice and neighborly. I know that I'm more inclined to open a door for a pretty woman than anyone else, but that door gets held open for many other reasons as well. I am offering a kindness, and most of the time, it is accepted. I get eye contact from the recipient of my gift, and they offer some simple thanks.

That acceptance is a kindness that they have offered back to me. It is a way of declaring the value of the kindness of opening the door in the first place.

Do you find yourself declining kindnesses from other people? I know that I did for the better part of my life. I was raised to be an independent, self-sufficient American man. What I didn't understand was that by accepting a simple kindness from someone, I was doing something kind for them in return.

We live in a society where we don't really need anyone else in our day to day. Most anyone in the world can work even the most basic of jobs and live the life of a comfortable hermit. There's plenty of food, water and shelter for such a person. We don't really NEED other people. Except that we do, of course. We need our friends, our family, our greater community, because we are social beings. Yet when we walk down the street and someone makes eye contact with us, do we glance away or do we smile?

A smile would seem foolish. It's a stranger. If it's a single person walking down the street, they could be nutty as an almond factory. But by odds, 99% of the time that other person is just going to be another normal person. Yet we turn our back on the mainstream because we're terrified of the slim possibility of the Almond Factory Scenario. We're making a declaration that people just aren't worth the risk.

This continues throughout our society which is fascinated with Train Wrecks. We no longer view each other as neighbors, but as strange sorts of adversaries. We have so many dissimilar views that it's nearly impossible to find anyone who can confess to sharing the same life experience that you have. With all that in mind, maybe it's time to get back to that basic human practice of offering - and accepting - those simple social kindnesses that neighbors offer each other. I suspect that it is at the core of why America can operate as a melting pot of so many cultures. Deep down, we just want to be neighbors.

Cold?

I am. Winter is decidedly not my favorite time of the year. I like late spring, early summer, here in the D.C. area. I'll take a summer in Seattle any day. But winter? It should be fired. Oh sure, it gives the Australians an excuse to have summer, but whose idea was it to tilt the planet anyway? That was a Bad Move in my opinion. If the planet just spun upright, we'd have these bands of perfect temperature in the northern and southern hemisphere. We'd just put a whole bunch of solar power generators at the equator and leave it at that. But I digress.

This article isn't about improving yourself. It's not about sociological factors that go into a preference for peanut butter over jelly. It's not even about axiomatic elements of a belief that the world is, in fact, flat. It's about my gift to you of a little warmth.

How good is your imagination? Can you feel the hot sand on the soles of your feet, forcing you to ouchouchouchouch your way back to your blanket? Can you feel the sun forcing you to squint against the glare of a hot summer sun, holding your hand to shade your eyes while you bemoan the fact that your sunglasses are either in the car or on the counter at home. Can you feel the heat of the sun beating down on you, making your skin hot to the touch? Can you smell the spring and summer flowers bursting their way into full bloom? Fragrances of honeysuckle and lavender, mixed with that unique rainy smell of a storm on-the-way.

No? Remember that last trip to the water park to battle the summer heat? Standing in lines in your bathing suit with the sun drying the water from the last ride you went on? The smell of chlorine everywhere, and the feel of the warm white concrete walkways as you walk from ride to ride?

No? Still stuck for a feeling of being warm? Okay, it's time to break out the big guns. Modern technology to the rescue, I give you a roaring fire.

Stay warm.

Brain Civil War

It's complicated, but regions of the brain do different things for us. The Amygdala (we have two of them) regulate our emotions. The Cerebrum is where our perception, imagination, thought, judgment, and decision occur. The Amygdala is part of our primitive brain, while the Cerebrum is the latest addition to our brains, according to the thinking of evolution. The Cerebrum occupies 85% of the brain, while the Amygdala are the size of almonds.

The Amygdala tells us what to do based on our environment. We're happy, sad, afraid, excited - emotional - because our Amygdala tells us to be. Look at a child and you will see the operation of the Amygdala in full force. When the child is happy, you know it. When sad, you know it. Everything goes directly from Amygdala into action. That's because the Cerebrum isn't yet trained to intervene.

Look at what adults can do. No matter the situation, they can do things like "stick to their guns". Soldiers may be terrified, but good ones will still perform their duty. A good parent may be tired and unhappy, but they will still give their child their attention.

Why do we do these things? Because we have learned that there is greater value in doing what is right for everyone concerned than just in reacting to what our bodies are telling us to do. Some people don't receive such training and remain dominated by their emotions. Their Amygdala is running unchecked. Their Cerebrum, the region constituting the vast majority of our brains, hasn't been trained to deal with the wild swings of the Amygdala, those little almonds of brain matter.

Chapter 13 of the first book of Corinthians contains an oft-quoted verse:

When I was a child, I used to talk as a child, think as a child, reason as a child; when I became a man, I put aside childish things.

This is classic brain civil war, with St. Paul telling us that when we become adults we have set aside reflexively instinctive actions, to replace them with well-considered actions that serve a higher, virtuous purpose. Corinthians was written around 54 A.D., and you can be sure that communities have understood the need for people to become more than instinctive beasts for thousands of years before that. Civilization just doesn't happen if people remain bestial in their behavior.

The Catholic faith describes cardinal virtues and cardinal sins. The cardinal virtues are those of prudence, justice, fortitude and temperance. Now those are the sorts of things that we wish other people would practice. But they're a lot of work. The cardinal sins are much more fun. They are pride, envy, wrath, sloth, greed, gluttony and lust. Those are the backbone of American culture. If you doubt this, look at where and why Americans spend their money.

The sins are our Amygdala talking. The virtues are what you get with a properly-trained Cerebrum.

Can we improperly train a mind? Sure. Look at any number of people who don't just react emotionally and commit cardinal sins, but actually plan ahead to commit them. Terrorists are planning acts of wrath. Bank robbers are planning acts of greed. The pornography industry does the same for acts of lust. Stalin, Hitler, and many more. These are examples of improperly trained Cerebrums. These people are acting against the cardinal virtues. Those virtues are really only practical if the Cerebrum is trained properly.

What we face is a set of instincts that often drive us towards cardinal sins, when what we need is to be trained to pursue cardinal virtues. This is the ultimate theme for most articles posted to Opinion Dump; believe that there is rightness and wrongness inherent to actions, and that by applying one's self to discovering rightness and wrongness, the whole world becomes a better place.

Unfortunately, as a society we talk as children, think as children and reason as children.

Virtue can win the civil war of your mind. Put aside childish things.

How Much Is Enough?

The law of supply and demand says roughly that the two forces will equalize. If there is a greater demand than supply, prices will go up until an equilibrium is reached. If there is a greater supply than demand, prices will go down until an equilibrium is reached. The changing price alters the demand for a product. Lower prices increase demand and higher prices decrease it.

Perhaps a hundred years ago, neither demand nor supply was particularly great. People mostly lived in a rural setting, not in cities, and there weren't any mass-produced goods. People saved their money until they had enough for a purchase, and then they went and bought what they were after.

One of the first notables of mass production was the Model T automobile, which was targetted specifically for the common man. It sold initially at a third and later a tenth of the price of the competitors. The price of a car dropped hugely, so demand increased hugely. That's how Henry Ford made his money. By applying the simple law of supply and demand. By the way, when you bought a Model T, you paid cash.

Demand is a funny thing, however. If a family doubles its income it wins greatly. It can buy twice the goods that it could before. And it can buy more expensive luxury items that weren't within reach before. All the other families are ensuring that prices on regular items remain low because they won't pay more. They don't have more money, so they won't pay more.

But what happens when more and more families see what that first family did? They figure out how to double their income too. They want those luxury items too. Pretty soon, lots and lots of people have doubled their income and are buying luxury items right and left. Interestingly, they're also willing to pay a little more for the basics. Vendors sell milk for a penny or two more per carton. Families aren't thrilled about it, but they pay it because they have the extra money. They might cut back on some of the luxuries, but that's not a great sacrifice.

So prices are going up. What about the families that didn't double their income? They have to pay the higher prices too. Their budgets get tighter. Any luxuries that they might have enjoyed are quickly being eaten up by those higher prices. There is pressure to find more income.

Meanwhile, the double-income families are busy enjoying luxuries. In fact, so many people are enjoying certain luxuries that those luxuries are becoming ubiquitous. They're everywhere. People are starting to assume that other people have those luxuries. The Model T is the perfect example of this. What started out as a luxury, permitting enjoyable day trips to see new places eventually became a mandatory part of American life. The vast majority of Americans assume that they are going to own a car. That's because all of American society has adapted to the existence of that luxury. It is a necessity.

A college education is becoming a necessity. Advanced health care is becoming a necessity. These are not things that we get for free, and they make demands on our incomes.

Families with double incomes are the norm now. Two working adults is typical, though there are still plenty of families with just one working adult. They are frequently challenged to provide all the necessities for their family - both the traditional necessities of food, shelter and clothing as well as the more recent 'necessities' of cars, advanced education, insurance, health care and so much more.

Automation and mass production have certainly done their part to drive down prices. Some necessities and even luxuries are available in greater abundance than ever before. But with the advent of new necessities and the trend in society to get ahead of the pack by having more available cash, the pressure remains on the income laggards.

Note that the laggards are the ones that are unwilling or unable to have two adults working. Or are unwilling or unable to take other steps to bring in more income. One such step is the use of credit cards.

A credit card is a means of buying things on credit. That is, taking out a loan. The buyer borrows money from a lender and pays it back over time, plus interest. The statistics on credit cards are astonishing.

• 80% of households have at least one credit card
• 60% of credit card holders carry a balance from month to month
• $10,000 is the average debt for households that carry balances from month to month

Credit cards enter the discussion at this point because it is another means of adding to the available income of a household. Take a loan, buy things, then pay the minimum payment each month.

But not everyone is using credit cards to add to their purchasing power. Twenty percent of the population doesn't use credit cards, and a further 32% of the population doesn't carry a balance. That still means that nearly half the population carries a credit card balance. They are willing to pay for things with money that they don't even have! Given the laws of supply and demand, they are artificially increasing demand, which is going to result in higher prices. If not higher prices, then a continued shift of luxuries to necessities.

All of this is applying constant pressure on American families to find income so that they can operate in the resulting society. The lower income a family is, the more they rely on credit cards to permit them to make purchases. What they're buying is up for debate, but remember that yesterday's luxuries are today's necessities. Can a family operate today without cell phones, computers and cable television? Having them provides a competitive advantage in our society. Lacking them means more work for that family to be contacted by their employer, prepare information for school or work, etc.

Now set the clock back again to the days of people paying cash for everything, including cars. If the only way that people could buy a car was if they had the cash in hand, do you think that automobile manufacturers could charge the prices that they do? Would all cars be equipped with so many bells and whistles, or would cars be available that were stripped down to the necessities?

Ultimately, our society is pushing ever harder to get ahead of the curve. Unfortunately, that just pushes the curve farther and farther in the direction of luxuries. We call this "improving the standard of living", yet the means of accomplishing it involves having two adults per family working, buying necessities on credit, and now we're to the point where college students have credit card debt - and children are starting to carry credit cards.

Now go beyond the individual and look at government actions. Each time the government subsidizes an industry by giving money to citizens, the net result is going to be either price inflation or a shift of more luxuries into the perception of necessities. Once that happens, the government program becomes a necessity. To take it away would mean the loss of apparent necessities, and people will not stand for that.

The root of all of this is a demand for a better standard of life at any cost. Too few Americans have a sense of denying themselves any luxury. "Living within one's means" is a dying ethic, to be replaced by "Just Do It". Those who attempt to live within their means are finding that their necessities are creeping ever farther and farther afield, demanding that they pay more money, either for their original necessities, or for new ones.

Take some time to think about what you really need versus what you just want. Each time you indulge yourself with a want, you are making things just that much more costly. Should we stop all advances in medicine, electronics and other areas of progress? Certainly not. There is a question of appropriate pace, however, and if the pace is too great, families will be left behind, stretching the fabric of society, and ultimately producing a tear when the pressure becomes too great.

Revolutions are born of tears in the fabric of society. I'd rather have a peaceful evolution of society than be able to watch television on my cell phone. Assuming I could remember where I left it.

Train Wreck Television

There has long been a chicken and egg debate over entertainment. Does entertainment reflect a changing culture, or does culture reflect changing entertainment? Certainly the two are intertwined, which is why such a debate even exists, but when I look to movement in a society, I point clearly to the entertainment. Rather, to media in general.

Changes to a society take place for two reasons: fundamental flaws that impinge on the happiness of the mainstream, and changes that somebody thinks up and then advocates to others. There are any number of blendings of the two reasons, but those are the two primary motive forces.

At the time of the American Revolution, discontent about British rule was widespread. It was far from universal, but there were enough people unhappy about how the colonies were being treated to demand a radical change. Interestingly, it took visionaries to turn the colonies into a democratic society instead of a clone of the British empire. That is a case where fundamental flaws were a motive force for social change, and the change become something unexpected because of the imagination of a select few.

As suggested in Five Sigmas, as a population increases, the numbers of people who hold extreme views increases. When enough people who share an extreme view congregate, they form a community that feeds upon itself, reinforcing its views and encouraging exploration of even the fringes of those already extreme views. Such is the case with the entertainment industry.

Entertainment has long occupied itself, at least in part, with showing the unusual, the new, the different. Zoos and museums are assemblages of things that people rarely get a chance to see: animals from foreign lands, artwork, machines, clothing, weapons, and all manner of paraphernalia. As the world opened up routes of travel and trade, there was a constant and fascinating stream of apparent oddities and strangness.

The darker side of entertainment has been found in things such as freak shows, gladiatorial games, public executions and the like. These are things that call to us at a visceral level. People cannot take their eyes away from survival situations because there is something deep within us that insists that we learn what we can from them so that we can hope to survive them if they should happen to us. A train wrecks, and people want to watch the mayhem. Not because they like to see suffering, but because it is important to them at that deep level to know what happens in a train wreck. Who was hurt? Who survived? Were parents and children separated? Human drama.

Modern entertainment is predicated more on train wrecks and less on museums. This is because we've seen most everything that there is to see on our planet. We have video cameras by the millions, and still cameras by the billions. There is little that we have not seen that simply exists, unless we look very closely. Countless discoveries are taking place at the scale of the solar system and the molecule, but few are interested in such things because there is no direct tie to their own lives. Nothing calls to the mainstream of society at a visceral level when it comes to Mars rovers or nanotechnology. It takes a threat such as global warming to awaken our fascination.

This all leads back to entertainment. How is the mainstream of America entertained? The most effective means of drawing someone into your entertainment is to call to them at a visceral level. Train wrecks and dancing girls. Violence and sex. Unless we consciously turn away, we will remain fascinated by the crunching of metal and the sensuous show of skin. Those interested in grabbing our attention know this simple formula.

Note that reality shows, soap operas and the like are just calling to us at slightly higher than a visceral level. In Relationship PIES, relationships were presented as having four facets: physical, emotional, intellectual and spiritual. Entertainment may be viewed in the same way. The visceral is the most primitive way of being entertained; it relates to us at the physical level. Reality shows, soap operas and such as calling to us at the emotional level as well as the physical.

Is there entertainment that call to us at the intellectual and spiritual level? Certainly. Any reputable documentary is calling to us at the intellectual level. Spiritual entertainment is that which we turn to in order to reinforce and affirm our ethics, morality and our faith.

What does all this have to do with the chicken and egg problem described above? Those outside of the mainstream possess views that fascinate the mainstream because they are different. Their views of reality are like seeing elephants from Africa for the first time. Or watching a Japanese kabuki dance for the first time. Non-mainstream views are like seeing a far-off land that a mainstream mind would never have imagined. They call to us at any number of levels. We call the originators of such shows geniuses and visionaries because they are showing us something that is new, different - and entertaining. Lucille Ball. The Beatles. Johnny Carson.

Unfortunately, we run into a problem. We've seen "I Love Lucy". We've seen "The Tonight Show". We want something that is new and different. How about some reality television? We've never seen that before. That's an entirely new genre of entertainment. Within existing genres, we can have things that we've never seen before as well. Television dramas can start to use cruder language. That's shockingly new. They can also start to address issues that were never considered tolerable before. Rape. Incest. Child abuse. Murder. Not to serve as an intellectual means of addressing issues, but purely for its value as shock entertainment. Writers and producers are interested in "pushing the envelope" ever farther. This has become our entertainment because it is about things that don't just call to us at a visceral level, but scream at us. It is Train Wreck Television. We cannot look away unless we will it.

We are a society that is being exposed to this ever more extreme form of entertainment, and it is dragging the mainstream around with it. This happens because the lives of the youth of America are dominated by their pursuit of entertainment. They don't work the farm. They don't even have chores to handle around the home. Free time in abundance and nothing to do with it. So they turn to entertainment to fill their time. Because entertainment is dominated by a desire to scream at the visceral side of each young person, our youth is being ever more strongly dragged into extremist positions.

In the challenge to understand the chicken and egg problem of which is pushing which, entertainment or society, the finger must be pointed firmly at our entertainment pushing our society around. That entertainment is affecting - perhaps even infecting - our youth with ever more extreme views, all in the name of bringing something new and different to the masses. Untrained minds are being drawn off into beliefs that are completely unwholesome to them and to the society that they belong to. Extremism is mainstream.

What should America do about such things? Should we simply pass laws stating that shows should never include murder as a point of entertainment? Should we call for legislation insisting that everyone in media be fully clothed at all times? An Ounce of Prevention suggests that such solutions are ill-considered. Invariably, reacting to problems by trying to push hard in an opposing direction leads to extremism in the other direction: a complete intolerance to departures from the mainstream (or extremism "on the other side of" the mainstream).

The solution is the ounce of prevention already described. Train the minds of our young to be discerning of ethics and morality so that when the time comes for them to make decisions about their own ethics and morality - or the ethics and morality of their children - that they are properly equipped to make a conscious decision. That, instead of following their gut instinct towards a dream of wealth and fame.

Nobility

C.S. Lewis wrote a series of books that describe events that take place in the mythical land of Narnia. In the movie adaptation of "The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe", one of the final scenes shows the crowning of the four child heroes. As each is crowned, Aslan, the wise and powerful lion lord, declares their title.

To the glistening eastern sea, I give you Queen Lucy the Valiant. To the great western woods, King Edmund the Just. To the radiant southern sun, Queen Susan the Gentle. And to the clear northern skies, I give you King Peter the Magnificent. May your wisdom grace us until the stars rain down from the heavens.

Much of Opinion Dump is devoted to pushing, nudging and cajoling people into recognizing the potential for greatness within themselves, and to strive for ever greater happiness. This time, you are invited to look at yourself in a mirror, whether literally or simply in your mind's eye, and consider what it is that is best about you. What is your defining trait that has most developed towards kingship or queenship?

Everyone has their flaws, and the children of C.S. Lewis's tale were no different. The cynic might have proclaimed the children as "King Peter the Bossy", "Queen Susan the Nag", "King Edmund the Traitor" and "Queen Lucy the Smartypants". You are not invited to play the cynic here. You are invited to offer a toast to yourself, to embrace that which is the very best within you.

Whether "King Henry the Resourceful" or "Queen Ruth the Kind", turn a blind eye to your faults for once and underscore that kingly or queenly virtue that you have always held close to yourself, that no one has ever been able to sully. Perhaps your greatness has been in the very fact that you have never given up in your struggle with some flaw. That is nobility defined.

May your wisdom grace us until the stars rain down from the heavens.

Peasant Versus King

The Happy Peasant and The Philosopher King have been mentioned in past articles. John A., author of the Araujo Arts blog, observed that there seemed to be a conflict in the two messages. Aren't the messages that of "Be happy with what you have" and "Date to try"? In fact, the two messages are that of "Happiness is an achievable, simple thing" and "Lasting happiness takes work on everyone's part".

In "The Happy Peasant", you'll find the following:

"Instead, this article is an invitation to examine your own life, to see if the dream that you hold in your mind's eye is something that will actually bring you happiness."

Then, in "Potential for Happiness":

"My idealistic pursuit is firmly rooted in the idea that to pursue a world of philosopher kings is to pursue nirvana, or heaven, or paradise - whatever you want to call it."

Both are talking about achieving great happiness.

The happy peasant has tripped through pure accident into the right mix of goodness to have happiness in his life. This is why happy peasants are found only here or there. Few are happy all the time because of the ephemeral nature of happiness in life. Something invariably intrudes on our happiness, or we sabotage it ourselves for various unintended reasons. The message of the Happy Peasant is not to be happy with what you have, but that there is a right mix that will bring lasting happiness. Few find it, and fewer still recognize it and nurture it.

The philosopher king actively seeks that right mix of goodness that brings happiness. While any king will seek happiness for themselves, as Napoleon surely did, philosopher kings seek it for every life that they impact. As often comes up in Opinion Dump articles, figuring out what will bring happiness is a key task for anyone, and philosopher kings occupy themselves with that challenge.

The philosopher king does not create a world of happy peasants. A world of philosopher kings creates a world of happy peasants. That's because the mix that brings happiness must be actively pursued. Our instincts, our passions and the world itself are constantly conspiring to move us away from the balance that brings happiness. And so it requires the developed philosophical skills of the philosopher kings to push back and stay at the balance point that brings happiness.

This is why it is my hope that America can realize its potential as a nation of philosopher kings, pushing for the greater good both here at home and around the world, using the tremendous might of the nation to help craft that world of philosopher kings.

Producing a world of happy peasants.

Technology Visit

While most articles here on Opinion Dump are rather somber and serious, sometimes you'll find one that's a bit more on the fun side. Well, fun if you're into technology.

There are any number of sites on the internet that talk about technology. Here are some gems that you may not have heard of.

1. A team at the New York University Media Research lab has come up with an interesting way to interact with a computer by using a large touch screen that permits you to use all ten fingers in a very natural way. No more mouse. They even have a way to use an on-screen keyboard (you get to use all ten fingers on the screen after all). There's a nice video showing exactly how it works.

2. There is an effort underway to create what boils down to a time-lapse video of the entire night sky. Imagine seeing the planets moving about, with comets and other celestial bodies streaking by, all in one vast video.

3. It's been around for a couple decades, but Aerogel is now starting to get some use as a practical material. Nicknamed "frozen smoke", it's odd stuff. It's incredibly light and an excellent insulator - among other things.

4. Likely in the "too good to be true" category, the company EEStor isn't saying much about its ultra-capacitor product (i.e. a battery) other than some claims about being able to provide a very short charge time and hold a huge amount of power. Nay-sayers suggest that it's unlikely to actually work.

5. Returning to the land of the real, Sony has a gadget that works like an electronic book. You carry the thing around with you like you would a book, and read a page at a time from its neato-whizbang screen. That screen is possible because of electronic paper, which is a thin sheet of stuff that can be electronically drawn to over and over again, unlike actual paper. It's not like a computer monitor because once it has been drawn onto, it keeps whatever was drawn even when the power is turned off. It really does work like paper.

6. Although fuel cells, electric cars and such are fascinating technologies that piles and piles of people are trying to get going, here's an alternative: a rather different take on the bicycle that is stable, safe and fast. It will actually get the rider up to 50 MPH. It's called the Hyperbike.

7. Thoroughly impactical and likely something you haven't heard about, NASA has a mission to Pluto well underway. The spaceship New Horizons will be passing Jupiter in the next month or two, and then it's on past the orbits of Saturn, Uranus and Neptune, ultimately zipping by what it now referred to as the Pluto System. That little guy has been sitting out there for a long time and we've never been able to look closely at it. Now the science books can have real pictures of the cold little ball.

There are countless more advances in genetics research, artificial limbs, direct brain-to-computer interfaces, spacecraft engines, understanding animal behavior, countless electronic gadgets, machine intelligence, fuel cells, stem cells, and many, many more areas besides. Mankind is pursuing seemingly every avenue of understanding that we can think of. It can be awe-inspiring to witness and follow.

Once upon a time, someone who made a new discovery was hailed for weeks, months or even years. These days, most inventors and discoverers receive recognition for only moments before the next invention or discovery is announced. When computers cease being tools and become the actual investigators, the pace of discovery will stun even the most ambitious visionary.

I wonder what we'll do with all our newfound powers.

Unique Fixer-Uppers

When a real estate agent has a house for sale that looks absolutely awful, but the fundamental structure of the building is solid, they consider it an opportunity for renovation by the buyer. They call these sales "fixer-uppers". When the owner obtains the property, they fix it.

What does it mean to fix something? Well, it's not taking something that is raw materials and turning it into something else. That's an act of creation. Fixing is similar, but fundamentally different because fixing something implies that you're returning it to its full potential.

When applied to people, newborns are raw materials, while everyone else is a kind of "fixer-upper" opportunity as we stumble, make mistakes and so on. Consider an adult who is so flawed that nobody even wants to go near them. Now THAT is a fixer-upper. But we can only view such a person as a fixer-upper because they are fundamentally sound. They are a glorious creation, a human being.

The wise buyer of homes looks to the foundation and structure of the home when considering it as a purchase. The wise man or woman looks to the foundation and structure of the person when considering a relationship with them. Not everyone is suited to stepping into a house that has been ravaged by time and poor care and renovating it back to its full potential. Similarly, not everyone is geared to stepping into the life of another person who has been similarly ravaged. It takes skill and a lot of affection. But the important point to remember is that every person has a rock solid foundation. Housing companies build homes, and they can vary considerably in fundamental issues of quality. But God created all the people, and while we see variation in the outward signs, the foundations are always rock solid.

Many don't believe in the idea that all people have rock solid foundations. They don't believe in themselves and they don't believe in others. There's no need to expect anyone to fix them up, nor should they be expected to fix anyone else up. They can relax into a casual attitude about human beings, making it easy to lie, cheat and steal, because they don't have a notion of the potential of the human being. They only see the surface. They see the shutters hanging off the windows, the peeling paint and the terrible odors.

Such a person feels free to throw rocks at the remnants of the glass windows, or to go stomping through the house, using it for whatever petty purposes they care to. The renovator, on the other hand, can see the house as it once was, or as it could be in the future. They have an image of wonderful possibilities, of new shutters and windows, freshly painted interiors, carpets and flooring, with a happy family and friends filling the rooms with laughter, good food and good times.

Some people simply lack the imagination to assign such wonders to old, dilapidated buildings. Others have never seen such things. They have only seen the broken windows and rooms in disrepair. So too is it with people. Some people have experienced the joys of life, of friends and family, but cannot use their imagination to place the unhealthy people around them into that universe. Other people simply have never witnessed or experienced a healthy home life or the companionship of good friends. These people are simply challenged to understand what can be.

The thing to consider here is what you will choose to do when you see an old shutter hanging by one hinge. Do you pull it down, reveling in your ability to confirm your cynicism about the world, that it is all doomed to destruction and pain? Or do you adjust it upright, confident in the knowledge that every little bit that you do to renovate the world around you is a step back towards goodness and, in fact, normalcy?

When someone cheats you, pity them. Theirs is a world of broken windows and ill-hung shutters, devoid of the ability to imagine anything better. When someone lies to you, mourn the fact that their view of humanity is bereft of a sense of glorious potential in every life that surrounds them. These are the viewpoints that let people treat other people as cattle, as machines, as objects. Such viewpoints are like a disease that moves from unsuspecting victim to victim.

Be strong for yourself and those that you love. Be the house on the street that everyone can admire and hope to emulate. Be the goal of their renovation projects.

An Ounce of Prevention

The old saying goes "An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure." Traditionally, that observation is applied to the world of health care. We recognize that if we avoid a health problem in the first place, we're saving ourselves a lot of pain and suffering down the road. Dress warmly when it's cold and you won't catch a cold. Eat a proper diet and your body will get what it needs. Brush your teeth and you won't wear dentures.

The rising costs of health care is a popular subject of debate these days. It's really expensive to go from being sick to being well, whether it's a visit to the doctor, dentist, therapist or pharmacy. The more advanced the malady, the more expensive the cure. And that, of course, is the source of the saying; the farther into a disease we get, the more difficult it is to get out again.

This pattern is true of many other areas of our lives, of course. Get a company on the wrong track and it's a mighty difficult thing to get it back on course. Ignore maintenance on your car and it's going to break down, requiring costly repairs. Raise a child the wrong way and it's going to cost the resulting man or woman a lifetime of pain.

It's that last one that I want to underscore. That is, the realization that it really matters how children are raised. After all, they become the adults of tomorrow. Think of adults that you admire and ponder how they were raised. Think of adults that you make you cringe at their antics and ponder their childhoods as well.

Those antics often take individuals into unexplored or ill-defined legal areas. Society's cure for this is to create new laws, to tell people that it's bad to go into those areas. Sarbanes-Oxley is an example of this. Men running a major corporation didn't feel obliged to run their company in a responsible way. They took advantage of the financial situation that they were in, and it resulted in a disaster for everyone involved. Sarbanes-Oxley is legislation that was created in an effort to stop those who would be tempted into repeating something like that. It is one pound of cure.

Another simple example that comes to mind for me is Airsoft. Airsoft is an activity that involves what are referred to as "replica firearms". They look just like real weapons, but are actually spring-powered devices that fire plastic pellets the size of a pea. Mind you, they can sting if you're hit by a pellet, and certainly they can blind you if you're hit in an eye. They're serious, but in no way lethal.

Why does Airsoft come up? Because children and young adults don't have the sense to understand the significance of showing such a replica in public. Taking what looks like an AK47 battle rifle to a high school to show it to friends is just a really bad idea. Running around the neighborhood shooting at each other with what look like real 9mm pistols is crazy. These acts are going to cause people to call the police. The police are going to show up and assume that the replicas are real. They're certainly being brandished as though they were. One boy died and there have been a number of scares.

Society's answer? Outlaw Airsoft. It would seem a simple solution, but it's another pound of cure for us all. Airsoft is also used by countless responsible young adults and adults to play war games. If you're male and you're an American, you played wargames at some point in your life. You probably used sticks as your guns and died inventive deaths, but you played wargames. Airsoft is used to play at a higher level. There's really no reason to outlaw the things - except that some people are fools, scaring other people.

Ultimately, we live in a society where we respond to problems by creating new laws to fence people into an ever-tighter area. Don't do 'this' and don't do 'that' because an irresponsible few among the population went far beyond 'this' and 'that' and produced some intolerable situation as a result. We simply cannot continue to outlaw every action, substance and location to ensure that our society will work. As with anti-biotics, the disease tends to adapt to the cure, making it less and less effective. Disease has a way of finding the gaps, just as the criminally-minded find the loopholes in the law.

It's time for an ounce of prevention. Returning to the Anarchy is Best premise, America needs to focus on training our children to want healthy things and to reject unhealthy things. A big part of that is focusing on altruism. Someone who is concerning themselves with the well-being of the rest of the community - their neighbors - is going to think before they do pretty much anything new.

Before getting into a position of corporate governance, people would consider the merits of the path they were starting down, remaining focused on how their new position would benefit the society around them instead of how it would benefit just them or them and their family. An ever-widening scope of inclusion of others in our thinking will produce the very best from us.

Before buying that Airsoft replica weapon, people would consider how other people are going to react to seeing something that looks like a lethal weapon. They won't stay focused on just their own thrills and joys, but will temper that enthusiasm with a need to respect the concerns of those around them.

How is that done? By putting in a curriculum of philosophy, logic and ethics into the schools. By returning to the days of discipline in the schools, instilling respect for others in the children. The ounce of prevention is simply to place the developing minds of children into an environment that causes them to view the world as a place to contribute to, not get something out of. If parents were doing that, there would be no call for it in the schools, but it's clear that just letting things take a natural course isn't going to do the trick.

John F. Kennedy once inspired this nation with one simple statement: "Ask not what your country can do for you, ask what you can do for your country." That is our ounce of prevention. The law books are far too heavy with pound upon pound of cure.