Language and Faith

For a while now I’ve been interested in the place of language in faith–how important it is to say the right things, how the vocabulary you have allows you to believe different things.

But for much longer, I’ve been concerned with how faith is spoken, especially the vows we take.

“If a man . . . takes an oath to bind himself . . . he shall not violate his word” (Numbers 30:2).

Jesus said,

“Let your statement be, ‘Yes, yes,’ or ‘No, no'” (Matthew 5:37).

King Solomon wrote,

“It is better that you should not vow than that you should vow and not pay” (Ecclesiastes 5:5).

It’s certainly something I still struggle with, but I’ve mostly made the jump from saying things I don’t believe to not saying much at all–next up is the step of stating what I do believe.

Christianity as a whole will have to make a similar transition as we move into a new world; just as in politics, top-down ideologies don’t cut it anymore.

Turning My Head

For millions of years, we lived on this earth with simply the knowledge of our own experiences. All the people we knew about were those within a few miles of our home; all our knowledge about the world was that which we had learned personally or from those living around us; all the places we knew of (flat earth, anyone?) were those we had personally travelled to.

Technology changes all that, by extending our reach beyond that which we can do ourselves; it’s why I like to think of technology as a “tool”, rather than a “profession”, “savior”, or “trend”. It is merely something available for us to use. The printed page preserved thoughts and archived events; the automobile and airplane brought us further than we could ever walk; television and the internet show us images of things we may never see in the flesh.

The problem with that is that our senses only know how to deal with things as they have for the rest of history. If we see something, we assume it is located within the distance our eyes can perceive–even if it is actually located in a television studio thousands of miles away. Reading about someone else’s experience makes our mind imagine it and believe we’ve had that experience too. This process confuses our simple systems, which despite all their conditioning, are not ready for such conflicting messages.

Robert Wright calls this “culture lag”–the way that human culture struggles to keep pace with the dynamic improvement of technological tools. We simply can’t wrap our minds around all the new things to do and learn. No wonder we’re more stressed out than ever, and feel stretched thin at work and in school. Our bodies weren’t built to deal with this.

Ok, so we’re confused and stressed. If that’s the end of it, we’ve gotten off pretty easily. Take one chill pill, call me in the morning.

Problems arise when emotions that are meant to deal with a small number of local friends are tugged at simultaneously by images from around the world. Those “Sponsor a child” advertisements on tv are prime examples, showing us children that we’d never have known about before the age of television. Yet we feel about them the same way we would feel about a child who showed up on our doorstep with nowhere else to go. McLuhan and his “cold” medium of television be damned–we still can’t tell the difference between virtual and real.

Of course, this is also an opportunity to influence more people’s lives than ever before. Many of my friends cite this as their work mandate: such opportunity cannot be wasted, they argue; we have been put in this situation to use it fully, the argument goes. And certainly they find success and fulfillment in these tasks, for a while at least. By acting on situations half a world away, they are touching people’s lives in new ways.

However, just as often as they find success, their efforts result in at least some confusion, loss of purpose, and demotivation. I believe it is due to the culture lag and its clash with our natural tendencies. Eventually, these friends realize that the pictures of those they are helping are just pictures; that their voice on the telephone is just plastic and metal resonating; that the human, loving bond that is the basis of all other friendships is missing in this case. These relationships, wonderful and beneficial as they are, do not have the same characteristics that we enjoy with in-person relationships.

I believe that we often shut off our minds to things too far away for us to comprehend: Nicholas Kristof’s article in the NYTimes this week asks how we could allow another genocide to take place, after vowing “never again” with Hitler.

Right now, the government of Sudan is engaging in genocide against three large African tribes in its Darfur region here. Some 1,000 people are being killed a week, tribeswomen are being systematically raped, 700,000 people have been driven from their homes, and Sudan’s Army is even bombing the survivors…And the world yawns…

In the same way, we eventually lose interest in things that fail to give us the personal thrill of a relationship. Without that, we cannot truly be effective.

Which is why the future of foreign aid–like the future of politics and the future of most societal change–is grassroots. It lies with the man on the street, who through his interactions with his neighbor creates more joy and love in the world, and who by doing that which he is most gifted at contributes to the world’s progress the best he can. It cannot be the Peace Corps, leaving everything they know to work in a land foreign to them. It cannot be mission workers, country-hopping on jets while their hosts struggle to integrate them into an alien culture. It is each person, doing his part to bring more happiness to the world.

The strongest argument I’ve heard about mission work in the church was “Go in order to have a spiritual experience yourself. Stay here and work if you want to make a difference.” The important choice is not to radically change your life–it’s to make the right next decision, be it eating vegetarian at lunch or cleaning the company break room.

Those who need to make foreign policy decisions will naturally make them as their next move, having already made thousands of smaller moves to bring them to this place. Choosing to leave long-term decisions out of your control is choosing to accept your position in the world, trusting in your talents and skills, and putting faith in your Creator.

As long as we have increasing technology in the world–something I don’t want to lose–we will have to deal with its consequences. But like most things, knowing thy enemy goes a long way toward making rational and intelligent decisions, decisions to effect the world we encounter directly, that are not swayed disproportionately by emotion-tugging images best left to someone better positioned to act on them.

The Passion of the Christ

This movie is a travesty. It is simply a man being beaten and killed for two hours straight. Despite viewing it with excellent company, I couldn’t wait for it to be over. The violence is at an unbelievable level, and by that I mean I did not believe it possible for a man to endure such torture and survive to be crucified. If that is truly what Jesus endured, He was a stronger physical specimen than anyone I have ever seen.

I have heard many evangelical Christians speak of this film excitedly, that it was an opportunity to share their faith with unchurched friends. For those who see themselves doing so, first view the film yourself to see if it truly is the faith you wish to share.

A Chicago reviewer puts it more bluntly:

The charges of anti-Semitism and homophobia being hurled at the movie seem too narrow; its general disgust for humanity is so unrelenting that the military-sounding drums at the end seem to be welcoming the apocalypse…If I were a Christian, I’d be appalled to have this primitive and pornographic bloodbath presume to speak for me.

It worries me as well that Gibson’s portrayal of Christ will speak for all Christians, something I would prefer not happen. His Jesus is not the one I wish to follow or share, not because of what he does, but rather because of what he does not do.

Mel’s Jesus is only shown suffering. The very little background information is delivered as flashbacks, and shows “sound bites” from Biblical stories. You do not see the radical behaviors and incredible philosophy that Jesus used to create Life; you do see him suffering in silence, a humbled king, one defeated by his people. This imbalance renders Mel’s Jesus the savior of the downtrodden, a crutch for the oppressed encouraging them to resign themselves to their position. Jesus’ failure to speak in His own defense comes across as a desire to die, something that may be the case but clashes with the religious viewpoint expressed in the rest of the film.

It is pure suffering, no redemption, no grace, no love, something NYTimes reviewer A.O. Scott put well in his review of The Passion:

The Passion of the Christ is so relentlessly focused on the savagery of Jesus’ final hours that this film seems to arise less from love than from wrath, and to succeed more in assaulting the spirit than in uplifting it. Mr. Gibson has constructed an unnerving and painful spectacle that is also, in the end, a depressing one. It is disheartening to see a film made with evident and abundant religious conviction that is at the same time so utterly lacking in grace.

As a movie it fails as well. Mel seems so insistent that you feel the way he does that he smothers you with the heaviest directing hand I’ve ever seen. Each point is drilled into your head until it is unbearable to watch any more. This is done often by magnifying tiny, Biblically-questionable details from the story, and even by manifesting them out of thin air (think John Woo’s doves in Mission Impossible were bad? Mel’s got crows pecking out eyes!). The acting, perhaps hindered by English-speakers forcing Aramaic, was exaggerated to a cartoon-like level. The intense Catholic rhetoric demands of Mary God-like powers of perception and instinct, and the Jews and Roman soldiers are unbelievably vicious. Other reviewers are correct in detecting a bias for the Roman governors–but if so, it is only because all others are ridiculous. The governors are merely rational.

Gibson’s insistence on absolute Biblical adherence is commendable; but less so his historical perspective. The Aramaic gives us a taste of the reality, but the actors are unconvincingly Caucasian. Another NYTimes article gives us an idea of how far Jim Caviezel is from the real Jesus, simulated here on the far right:

My Christ is the one who lived and breathed, who created a new Life on earth and who lives it today. He is not only the bloodied and beaten corpse that Mel exults in. Though this may be our most accurate picture of what happened for Jesus’ final hours, His suffering is not where my hope lies.

Lessons from JFK

I’m watching JFK: A Presidency Revealed, and there are a number of lessons to be gleaned.

1. JFK always believed he didn’t have long to live–his medical problems were so extensive that he knew his body would fail long before most men–so he accelerated everything he did. When most politicians held back their ambitions until they were older, Kennedy had no such luxury.

   It reminds me of the risk imperative, the idea that to succeed on a phenomenal scale you must risk the highest stakes.

2. After the Bay of Pigs Kennedy immediately took responsibility for the debacle. His brother Edward recalled a phone call to his father afterward:

   And my father told him, “That was probably one of the best speeches you have ever given. Americans understand making mistakes.”

   In contrast, the problem that worries most even-headed critics of Bush is his apparent inability to admit when he is wrong. Most of said critics would restore support of the President if it seemed that he recognized his failures and was determined to change them. Yet Bush continues to repeat faulty conclusions even in the face of overwhelming evidence to the contrary. I’m not sure why that is–I believe that Bush is sincere in his moral and religious convictions, and in principle does desire to do the “right thing”. However, he is seemingly victim to the fallacy of confusing “character” with “personality”. Bush has become so concerned with “being right” and putting the right personality forward (and politically rightly so, as many used that as a reason to vote against stiff Al Gore in 2000) that these continued denials have eroded his character.

   To be fair, even Kennedy failed the character test several times. Says one civil rights leader:

   Kennedy’s legacy is artificial memory…in the real, he simply wasn’t as committed to civil rights as his supporters…say he was.

   Indeed, he had to be pushed repeatedly into introducing a civil rights bill by Martin Luther King and others.

3. You can accomplish very serious and principled goals in several different, often simultaneous ways. During the construction of the Berlin Wall, the U.S. occupied West Berlin and the Soviet Union were in East Berlin. Events proceeded to a conflict at “Checkpoint Charlie”, where neither side was willing show weakness nor trust assurances from the other. While the president negotiated with top Soviet officials, his brother Bobby pursued a backchannel with a Soviet spy he know in Washington. It was through this backchannel that both sides were convinced to lay down arms. Of course this reminded me of the present-day movie The Sum of All Fears, where the backchannel connection with the Soviets prevents nuclear war.

4. Kennedy was an excellent example of an autotelic personality, making action decisions based on the challenge they posed and the thrill of the chase.

   We choose to go to the moon in this decade and do the other things, not because they are easy, but because they are hard, because that goal will serve to organize and measure the best of our energies and skills, because that challenge is one that we are willing to accept, one we are unwilling to postpone, and one which we intend to win, and the others, too.”

   From his Rice University speech, September 12, 1962

   One historian notes:

   He literally wanted to be President of the United States because he believed that was the most exciting profession in the world.

Futureproofing Myself

This is part two of a two-part series, written together. The first part explains how I chose the ultimate destination for my creations. The second part shows how I plan to create them in the first place.

It is rambling, self-indulgent, and without a real conclusion. However, if by some chance a reader makes it through the entire essay, perhaps they will understand why I’m not worried about that.

I wrote about XML in my last entry, and I want to start with it again. Last time I wrote about its “eXtensible” nature; now I want to concentrate on the “Markup Language” part of its name. Like HTML, XML is a system of descriptive and identifying tags that surround information. Like English, XML is a language, with rules and processes to follow. It’s a pretty good language, though, and as I explained before, it is probably the best computer language to come along yet.

For me, it has promised independence from the constant changing of tags and code. When you try to support new technologies in the computer industry, you are constantly learning the slightly-different language of your new realm. In each evolution, you tweak symbols, add descriptive information, remove outdated styles and more. Creating markup is a phenomenal bore, prompting me to often think how easily my job could be replaced by a computer.

Creating content, on the other hand, is quite exciting. Caught up in the passion of writing this essay, for example, notice how seldom I link to documents, underline words, or add styles. I’d much rather concentrate on the concepts than on the language of their framing document. XML promises to make it easier for me to write what I mean, rather than worry about how it will look. If I define once how a quote from someone else will look (in the code and on a computer screen), then I can simply write (quote)”The text of the quote”(/quote). Much simpler than what I wrote for the sentence below, (/p)(p class=”quote”)”The text of the quote”(/p).

But really, it’s just minimizing the code and making it slightly more universal. I still have to decide what merits a “quote” designation, what the reader should focus on first, and what on the wild wild internet they should look at next. What I would really like is to simply write this essay and let the computer figure out what is a quote, what my main idea is, and what the relevant external resources are.

Sergey Brin from Google has said:

Look, putting angle brackets around things is not a technology, by itself. I’d rather make progress by having computers understand what humans write, than by forcing humans to write in ways computers can understand.

Take a look at the bottom of this page (that is, the bottom of the January 30, 2004 A.D. internet webpage version of this essay–more on that distinction in the first part). You’ll see several sections, two of which are titled “Related Entries” and “Related Web Links”. Related Entries are chosen by the Movable Type publishing system I use, by analyzing all the words, markup, and links in the document, comparing it to the words, markup, and links in all my other essays online, and returning the three essays most similar to this one. It’s automatic, requires no work by me, and highly accurate. Related Web Links, on the other hand, requires me to type in a few “keywords” to be associated with this essay, and then searches Google with those words. This process is terribly hard to remember, causes me tremendous difficulty as I try to distill all the content of the assuredly rambling essay into two or three words, and, since I inevitably fail at that, returns links of dubious relevance.

One of those processes is the computer doing the categorization; the other is me doing it. Currently the latter is merely a problem of technological scale, one that will surely be eliminated in the very near future. However, it points out the danger of forcing humans to categorize things and the benefits of making machines understand us as we are.

In the past, I’ve been skeptical of technologies that try to anthropomorphize the electronic world. Everything from speech recognition, to humanoid robots, to Minority Report-style desktops seems to be forcing a square peg through a round hole. My argument has always been to use computers in a way consistent with their nature, which usually means conforming humans into the shapes machines demand. But having spent a tremendous amount of time this year using computers, I find myself no longer using them as a supplementary tool, but rather thinking like a computer in my everyday life.

I search for the “undo” button when I drop a plate; I brainstorm using keywords instead of full sentences; I try to put my daily schedule into the computer and have alarms go off at each milestone. These anecdotes are always good for a laugh with friends, but every silver lining has a dark cloud. I am excellent in Photoshop but have trouble drawing with a pencil. I have refused to spend time with a friend because my electronic organizer beeped at me. I fail to see many forests because my efficient methods insist on examining every tree. Using computers the way they are used best turns out to be a dangerous philosophy.

When I look at this closely, I see how it is more than just a computer problem. The problem is with how we use language to codify the world. This is something I’ve written about before, how the language we know controls how we feel about the world. For the entirely of the human race, we have been limited by our ability to communicate our feelings. Everything in our lives, of course, begins with a feeling. For a scientist, the feeling may be an inclination to experiment in a new way that results in invention. For a politician, it may be a confidence welled up by the support of followers that causes a gutteral howl. For a husband, it may be the deep attraction to his beautiful wife that inspires him to bring flowers home after work. Each of those feelings found its way out through the language and behavioral pathways that the individual person knew how to use. We are forever searching for ways to express how we feel, and those who can express their feelings the best are likely those who are happiest and most productive in this life.

It is merely a thought, a momentary inspiration perhaps, but I would like to propose that in the coming technological world, we concentrate our energies on letting computers do what they do best, and letting humans do what we do best. I would argue that humans are best at creating–creating love, friendships, joy and ideas; and that computers are best at optimizing those creations–categorizing, sorting, connecting and producing. It is a daunting technological task to conceive such a machine, but if there is one thing I have learned about the technology business, it’s to bet on things getting faster and more efficient every day. If you bet on that in the stock market, you’ll be rewarded several times over, and if you bet on it in life, you won’t come up empty-handed.

The fact is, throughout history that which has caused love to increase has succeeded, and that which caused it to decrease has faded away. This trend will continue because of, not in spite of, technological progress. Betting one’s career on the ability to hand off optimization (consulting work), categorization (administration work), sorting (processing work), connecting (communication work), and producing (manufacturing work) to machines is as safe a bet as you can find. And committing one’s career to the tasks of creating (inventors), loving (counselors), befriending (all of us), enjoying (whoever follows their heart), and thinking (who can resist?!) will not disappoint.

My feelings? I’m tired. I’m tired of constantly explaining myself, constantly having to put labels and categories on that which I have created and conceived. Who am I to say how something I have done will be interpreted or used by others? How can I presume to declare a category for something that will live beyond me? It is a task beyond my abilities to produce an optimal product for each person of the human race, and an overwhelming thought to imagine trying to connect my ideas to each person that wants to hear them. What I am good at is feeling–feeling inspiration, experiencing love, enjoying friends and experiences. I have no time, energy, or desire to plug all of that into specific ends and means.

Furthermore, how can one even live with such a complicated system of goals? I’ve typed this while watching the movie Gandhi, and seen him constantly befuddle his adversaries by sticking closely to just one precept–of non-violently resisting that which is evil. This only shows evil that it is so. In contrast, denying your own weaknesses and trying to maintain the status quo leads to a set of irreconcilable contradictions in belief. Gandhi was phenomenally effective because of, not despite, his simple principle of doing what he felt compelled to do.

But now, as I watch the ending of the movie, I realize that not only do we desire to avoid categorizing, we are terrible at doing it when we try. Onscreen, Muslims and Hindus fight entirely along religious lines, performing atrocities to their neighbors. It seems that once one group categorized as “enemy” (the British) is removed, people seek another category to be their “enemy”. Gandhi’s response to the clash? To fast, taking no side; and encouraging transparency of religion and the denial of one’s own categorization.

So what will I do? Do I now stop creating for the web? Do I stop writing? I don’t know. If anything, this experience is teaching me that the last thing I need is to create more categories, even if they are “right” and “wrong”. There is love, and doing that which I love is what I will do now. I cannot sacrifice that which I love for that categorized as “right” by others or myself.

But at times I love the beauty of computer language, am drawn inexplicably to structure and categories and the power that lies within them. It may be a reflection of my selfish desire to be heard, to be productive and to succeed, yet I love the process of it and therefore am not afraid of the symptoms of the conclusion.

And even if everything in the future will find its source in the wellspring of human emotion and be then interpreted and connected by machines, we aren’t there yet. I wrote before that XML is a beautiful language for computers to speak to each other, but they can’t understand our feelings yet, and as long as I feel joy in doing so I will help build the bridge between human feelings and machines that can store, connect, optimize and produce them. By doing so, I can also help create joy and love for others, which allows allow me to share in it. That is reason enough to continue creating, whether as XML or as friendships, and to continue taking joy in it.

Until computers can understand my feelings and communicate them better than my fifth-grade-level vocabulary can, I will need to use them to store my writings and the connections I make by hand. I realize this is a big contradiction; that it seems I am selling out to the very thing I want to avoid. But the beauty of the internet is that it’s much easier to contradict yourself. You can be John Doe in one page, and Jane Smith in another. You can experiment with different personalities, styles, and principles. Of course, you can do this in the physical world as well, but it’s easy to get discouraged by the looks askance you’re sure to get. This may actually be the case online as well for those whose websites are read by many people. Regardless of readership, online there is an extra layer of anonymity and for me, that’s just enough to start arguing with myself. I’m quite unbiased as to which side wins.

So for a while this space may have different views of the same thing. I’m going to experiment with XML as a publishing language, forcing myself to thing like a computer wants to. But I’m also going to publish in ways that computers can’t handle yet. I’ll scan abstract drawings that come out of emotional experiences and put them online. Maybe I’ll breathe into a jar while feeling angry, take a video of it, and encode it into binary, stored in a *.zip file. I don’t know. But what I do know is that no longer will I allow categorical systems to limit the thoughts and experiences I am able to have.

I believe that the primary reason outwardly successful people on this earth are unhappy is that they fail to truly embrace in life those things that God has caused them to love. Instead we choose to categorize ourselves, following a pattern instead of our hearts. The problem I have with writing or living according to categories is not that what is created is so bad. It’s that what could have been created is so good. Without being constricted by labels and categories, paths and channels, any number of new things could be created that instead will never see the light of day. Dean Kamen references this in Codename:Ginger, saying:

If I gave you objectives, you might reach them, and that would be terrible, because it might keep you from doing something really great.

Love: the ultimate futureproofing. It’s ambiguous, general, and utterly impossible to apply to real-world, categorized situations. But it’s the only way to truly succeed and be happy, and you can rest assured that if it is applied in every question and decision, it will not fail. Gandhi knew that he would not fail when he burned his Indian identification card, when he marched to the sea to make salt, when he fasted for peace. For by always acting in love and by his God-inspired mandate, even his death–considered by most the ultimate failure–would cement his victory over those who opposed him with hatred. We’re still talking about him today…

The happiness meme

It is fascinating to me that nearly all my areas of interest are currently pointing in the same direction–toward happiness. In design, the emerging economy is one of experience and transformation, where the user is treated to a personal, customized set of experiences, mediated by specific products and services, in order to become happier at the end of them. In business, the frantic pace of the dotcom days has run its course, and journalists are taking note of the ways people are taking back their lives, finding that business is no longer a source of true fulfillment and happiness for them.

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Downsized

The curious thing about globalization is that our nice cushy jobs will be spread out across the world. The only option to continue our american dominance is by embracing the next tier on the economic ladder, namely experiences. If we do this, we will ensure our spot at the head of the pecking order for a little while longer.

But is this right? Analyzing economics as a Christian would suggest that it is not. In May, Bob Riley, Governor of Alabama, suggested the biggest tax hike in state history, and did so by citing Christian principles; it was suggested that rich citizens pay notably higher taxes in order to help the poor. This was from a Republican conservative governor, who had previously voted consistently against tax increases while in Congress. The idea was shot down, of course, because we rich folks feel that we deserve every bit of our money, as it was given down to us from God on high (or so our Puritan success ethic tells us).

So do we try to stay ahead of the curve or is it better to accept a more modest place in the world? Most of my well-educated friends speak of a desire, nay, a need to change the world. Can’t really do that from an assembly line.

But if the meaning of life is to create happiness, and happiness is what you make it, and you learn to make it anywhere, and you find that happiness comes mostly from relationships and not success, then is it actually better to be unsuccessful?

On Language and Meaning

For a while now, I have been fascinated by the possibility of using metaphor in design. For example, if a process works in the sport of cycling, why not apply it directly to business–“a person is a chain link”. I got started on this path by being unexpectedly fascinated by a panel discussion including George Lakoff, an applied metaphor linguist from Berkeley. He spoke of language in way I’d never thought of: as a fundamental cultural tool, applied to history in order to predict future events.

This got me thinking about language and its role in design. If language can be applied to cultural history to improve the future of culture, surely it can be applied to design history to improve its future. Transparently comparing different fields to improve design seemed an enormously powerful tool, requiring a vast knowledge base and intelligent links between items, both of which I already aimed to build with this site.

So to introduce language to the database, here are two recent observations of remarkable lingual tools, one from church and the other from economic theory–but, in true metaphorical fashion, each very applicable to the other.

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Nature, Nurture, and Nonzero

When I first began to delve into the depths of evolutionary psychology, I (and others) worried that finding physical and evolutionary bases for beliefs would disallow more traditional reasons like God and love. What I (and they) failed to understand was the way that knowledge in this realm leads only to more questioning, greater mystery, and stronger faith in the ideas that stand the test.

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Religious Feelings

Living near San Francisco means I am privy to lots of emerging trends; the area is a blender for innumerable cultures and ideas; the proliferation of academic institutions means new research is produced here daily. You become used to it, ambivalent to even big changes in the culture. Often that’s a great thing, as it avoids panic caused by change and encourages further innovation, but occassionally I notice a disturbing social trend treated with such a casual attitude that it sends shivers down my spine.

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