I have learned in my life that the following statements are true:
1. Nothing is free.
2. This too shall pass.
3. Everything is authentic. It may be mis-advertised, but it is what it is.
4. There is an inverse relationship between how creatively a child's name is spelled and the likelihood that the child will graduate from High School.
5. The greatest privilege a young human can be afforded in this lifetime is to be born to, and raised by, his or her own married mother and father. Any cultural trend or political policy which decreases the number of children who are afforded this privilege should be opposed.
6. If you start a sentence with the word "Whereas" or "While" you are about to write a sentence which is too long and will need to be split into two sentences.
7. Good mechanics, good lawyers, and good doctors, make most of their money from people who should have hired them sooner.
8. Power corrupts, and tends to be welded by the incompetent.
9. Most legislation is stupid, unconstitutional, overly expensive, geared towards special interests and therefore in violation of equal protection principles, and likely to do more harm than good. The best legislators are those unsung heroes who have spent most of their time blocking bad laws, rather than worrying about the much less important task of passing good ones.
10. Having what you believe to be high-minded political opinions does not make you a virtuous person, nor excuse you from the real-world work of becoming a decent human being, treating others with respect, and living by the same rules of kindness and integrity as everyone else. Ditto for your wealth, your athleticism, your talent, your good looks, or your intelligence. If you believe otherwise, stop it.
11. Human nature is such that every society will eventually fall and fail and topple, either to foreign invasion, or to internal conflict and revolution, or to unsustainable public expenditure and corruption, or to apathy and dissolution. No tribe, no city-state, no nation-state, no empire, has ever put off this fate forever. But some societies, which are especially unfortunate or whose leaders are especially corrupt or unwise, get there more quickly than they have to. The best that can be hoped for is some lengthy and relatively stable duration between a nation's dawn and its death. If you live in a time and a place which is mostly peaceful, mostly prosperous, and mostly free, then gratitude for the past and pessimism about the future are both appropriate.
12. No one will ever care about someone else's well-being and happiness as much as that person's mother.
13. The charge to you will always be more than the provider's cost. Where there is no competition, the gap between the cost and the charge will be larger. Where the government provides, the gap will be largest.
14. Government subsidies cause exponential inflation. See skyrocketing college tuition rates. Ignorance by the consumer of the actual price being charged also causes exponential inflation. See skyrocketing health care costs. Ignorance by the consumer of the price being paid, coupled with government subsidies, causes exponential inflation cubed. See, anything the government claims it is providing you for free or helping to make "more affordable."
15. Think twice before doing business with a company that has the word "Honest" in its name.
16. Nature abhors a vacuum. A society's values, legal and political traditions, and cultural customs cannot be negated without being replaced.
17. Correlation does not necessarily equal causation.
18. Wealth is not necessarily a sign of virtue or competence.
19. Aristotle was right about the golden mean: finding the proper balance and median between excess and deficiency, is the key to everything.
20. Most stupid ideas are good ideas taken too far. Every virtue, if taken to an excess, becomes a vice. Every truth, over-extended, can become a falsehood.
21. Inequality is the price of liberty. Totalitarianism is the price of equality.
22. Human beings come in two sexes. Not one. Not twenty-seven. Two. These sexes are objectively and scientifically determinable, based on one's chromosomes. They are not "assigned" and are not subjective and are not capable of being altered via cosmetic surgical intervention. Our society's recent decision to deny these fundamental scientific truths, and the harshness with which any dissent from the new unscientific orthodoxy is punished, proves that the story of The Emperor's New Clothes was one of the wisest parables about human nature ever written.
23. Men and women are very different.
24. Men and women are very similar.
25. Change should not be confused with progress.
25. When the Judge agrees with you, sit down and shut up.
26. Virtually every hot savory dish can be improved by adding sauteed mushrooms and sauteed onions; and virtually every dessert can be improved by adding whipped cream.
27. A calorie may be a calorie may be a calorie, but I've never had to start dieting because I'd been eating too many fruits and vegetables.
28. The scientific method is an incredibly powerful tool for unlocking certain kinds of truth and developing certain types of technology. It does not and cannot however answer the questions of ultimate meaning and purpose.
29. You will never be as great as you could be, at anything that you do for some other reason than the intrinsic love of the intrinsic value of the thing itself.
30. Most of us judge other people in accordance with our own strengths. Thus, the rich tend to be appreciative of wealth, the athletic tend to admire athleticism, the intelligent are impressed by intelligence, and so forth. If we can break free of that tendency, the range of people whose gifts and talents we can appreciate and admire will grow exponentially.
31. It's a good idea to understand the basics of how aperture priority mode and shutter priority mode work on your camera.
32. It is hard to be depressed when you are busy, and have people to see and things to get done.
33. Science is performed by humans, and its results are reported by humans, which means it's just as prone to error and politicization and dogma and logical fallacies and blindspots as any other human endeavor. Take nothing on faith except Faith. At least half of what you read "studies have shown" will be wrong.
34. People who talk during plays and movies should be given a fair trial before they are shot.
35. Blessed beyond measure is the person who can look in the mirror and say "I love what I do and I'm really good at it."
36. Everything is more fun if you have taken the time and made the effort to get good at it when it wasn't fun.
37. We would all love to be trust fund beneficiaries. But when two 45 year-olds meet at a reunion, one of whom has been taken care of, and one of whom has grinded away, paying their dues to become quietly capable in their profession, the latter is going to be the happier and more confident person.
38. If you sometimes don't recognize the people on the magazine covers as you are standing in line for the cashier at the grocery store, and are often unsure who they are, or why they are famous, you are doing something right.
39. Believers tend to be happier than atheists.
40. The educated and well-read tend to be happier than the ignorant.
41. The married tend to be happier than the single.
42. People who read tend to be happier than people who watch television.
43. Participants tend to be happier than spectators.
44. The gainfully employed tend to be happier than the unemployed, even when the unemployed have generous means of support.
45. The talented, competent, and skilled tend to be happier than the untalented, incompetent, and unskilled.
46. When a society stops believing in God, it has about 125 years left before its expiration date. When it stops believing in free will, it has about 50 years left before its expiration date.
47. Money spent on experiences is better spent than money spent on things.
48. Nothing will cause us more joy, nor bring us more sorrow, than our relationships with others. So it's a good idea to keep in contact with your friends; to write a thank you letter to someone who mentored you or taught you or coached you or led you when you were young; to volunteer in ways that allow you to play those roles for others; to go on dates with your spouse and to invite family members to dinner. If you don't have time for these things, why wake up in the morning?
49. Whenever large numbers of politicians promise the electorate that they are going to make something "more affordable" that something (be it health care or higher education) will soon become much more expensive, far outstripping inflation in all other areas of the economy. If they ever start promising to make food "more affordable" find another place to live before everyone starts starving to death.
50. Cicero was right when he said that "Gratitude is the parent of all the other virtues." It is the soil from which all the other virtues take root and can grow.
51. Just because your bitterness and anger are justified, doesn't mean they are healthy.
52. Selfishness is the root of all evil.
53. Morality means treating other people as ends and not as means.
Tuesday, August 30, 2016
Saturday, August 6, 2016
Is Natural Beauty an Evidence of God?
This is the view of the Lauterbrunnen Valley, as seen from just outside the largest church building in the car-free hilltop village of Wengen, Switzerland.
Lauterbrunnen was the inspiration for J.R.R. Tolkien's Rivendell, and this view of it is, in my opinion, perhaps the most beautiful view on planet earth. But then, I am partial to Switzerland.
Near the Church stands a plaque containing a written prayer, composed by one Arnold Lunn. [Endnote 1]
I won’t attempt a word for word translation. But the gist, if my rusty LDS Missionary German is still any good to me at all, is essentially as follows: The author and offeror of the prayer thanks his dear Lord for the beloved mountains of his youth, the call of their peaks and the tracks in their snow; for the friends who were the companions of his youth, and for his other blessings. But most of all, he thanks the Lord for the ongoing revelation he feels he receives every time he views the beauty of the mountains around him, the timebound beauty of which strengthens his faith in the eternal beauty of God, which shall not end.
I love this little prayer. Indeed, just the word timebound (“zeitgebund”), was worth the journey to that Church, almost as much as the view. What an incredibly great word, especially when placed in juxtaposition to the word eternal (“ewig”), to describe that not bound in time: so much more evocative than “temporal” or the German “zeitlich” into which it is generally translated. But I mainly love this poem because, like Lunn, whose faith in eternal beauties was strengthened by their earthly counterparts, I see evidence of God’s design when I am confronted by natural beauty. Indeed, the Doctrine and Covenants, at Section 59:18, teaches that the purposes of God's creations include "to please the eye and to gladden the heart."
I can already hear my more scientism-oriented acquaintances raising their objections. [2] The beauty of the Lauterbrunnen Valley, of the entire Berner Oberland which surrounds it, is, after all, wholly subjective, and therefore presumably has nothing to teach us. What’s more, everything which Lunn found so strengthening to his faith in God has a non-religious, natural explanation. The valley of the Lauterbrunnen was carved by a glacier in the last ice age. The hills and the alps which rise above that valley arose through tectonic forces. The waterfalls which grace the cliffsides are the inevitable result of the water cycle in action: As the winds of Europe hit the Swiss Alps, they release the moisture evaporated from below and snow it upon their lofty peaks, where it melts into the waterfalls, as the melting water seeks the sea through the force of gravity. Every disappointed Zermatt tourist who has ever cursed the cloud blocking his view of the Matterhorn has seen this process in action. While the water cycle and its ongoing recycling of fresh water is incredibly important to human and all other forms of life, and while perpetual waterfalls are a lovely way of being reminded of this important natural phenomenon, it is, after all, a natural phenomenon, and the waterfalls are, in the end, merely places where lots of water happens to plunge over a cliff, on a journey to the sea no more or less important than that of any other water taking any other route.
And I get all of that. I understand (not well, but in its basic fundamentals) the science. I even understand the social science, political and economic, that explains why the citizens of Lauterbrunnen built a multi-story automobile garage for the tourists to utilize, and then put grass on its roof so it wouldn’t spoil those tourists’ view.
Nevertheless, I cannot look upon the Lauterbrunnen Valley without persisting in my belief that I am seeing the handiwork of God. The same is true of many other natural scenic wonders which I count among my favorite places on earth, both in Switzerland, and in the American West: Appenzellerland; Ebenalp; Seealpsee; Hoher Kasten; Oeschinensee; the waterfall in Yellowstone; Red Rock, on the Western side of the Las Vegas, Nevada valley, in the morning when the sun is shining on its red and white and vermillion colors; Zion National Park; Mount Timpanogos. Like C.S. Lewis, who defended the objectively sublime nature of waterfalls in his masterpiece, The Abolition of Man, I just can’t bring myself to look upon such beauty and see only an uncreated place, exhibiting purely natural phenomena, and of purely utilitarian interest.
Or if I can, I can’t take the next step. The bottom line, for me, is this: I could perhaps believe, if I absolutely had to, that a place like the Lauterbrunnen Valley might come to exist for purely natural reasons, which neither require nor allow for any explanation involving any metaphysical agency or intent or design. But what I can’t believe is that such a place would haphazardly come to exist in the same Universe where someone like Arnold Lunn, or myself, could also, equally haphazardly, come to exist, and, looking upon the Lauterbrunnen, would call it beautiful. Indeed, it is not so much that it is impossible to conceive of the Lauterbrunnen Valley in a Godless universe. It is, rather, more so, that it is impossible for me to conceive of a Godless universe whose inhabitants have a word which means “beauty.” The Lauterbrunnen Valley may or may not evidence the design of God, but poetry about Lauterbrunnen surely does.
Endnote 1: I assumed Lunn was a local boy, but Wikipedia advises he was the inventor of the slalom ski race, founder of the Alpine Ski Club which encouraged skiing in the Swiss Alps, a youthful agnostic who later wrote defenses of the Catholic faith, and an anti-Communist writer for National Review. No wonder I loved his written prayer, it's as though two of my favorite writers, G.K. Chesterton and William F. Buckley, were combined into someone who also loved two of my favorite things in the world: Switzerland and Snow-Skiing.
Endnote 2: For the difference between science and scientism, see The Restitution of Man: C.S. Lewis and the Case Against Scientism by Michael D. Aeschliman.
Lauterbrunnen was the inspiration for J.R.R. Tolkien's Rivendell, and this view of it is, in my opinion, perhaps the most beautiful view on planet earth. But then, I am partial to Switzerland.
Near the Church stands a plaque containing a written prayer, composed by one Arnold Lunn. [Endnote 1]
I won’t attempt a word for word translation. But the gist, if my rusty LDS Missionary German is still any good to me at all, is essentially as follows: The author and offeror of the prayer thanks his dear Lord for the beloved mountains of his youth, the call of their peaks and the tracks in their snow; for the friends who were the companions of his youth, and for his other blessings. But most of all, he thanks the Lord for the ongoing revelation he feels he receives every time he views the beauty of the mountains around him, the timebound beauty of which strengthens his faith in the eternal beauty of God, which shall not end.
I love this little prayer. Indeed, just the word timebound (“zeitgebund”), was worth the journey to that Church, almost as much as the view. What an incredibly great word, especially when placed in juxtaposition to the word eternal (“ewig”), to describe that not bound in time: so much more evocative than “temporal” or the German “zeitlich” into which it is generally translated. But I mainly love this poem because, like Lunn, whose faith in eternal beauties was strengthened by their earthly counterparts, I see evidence of God’s design when I am confronted by natural beauty. Indeed, the Doctrine and Covenants, at Section 59:18, teaches that the purposes of God's creations include "to please the eye and to gladden the heart."
I can already hear my more scientism-oriented acquaintances raising their objections. [2] The beauty of the Lauterbrunnen Valley, of the entire Berner Oberland which surrounds it, is, after all, wholly subjective, and therefore presumably has nothing to teach us. What’s more, everything which Lunn found so strengthening to his faith in God has a non-religious, natural explanation. The valley of the Lauterbrunnen was carved by a glacier in the last ice age. The hills and the alps which rise above that valley arose through tectonic forces. The waterfalls which grace the cliffsides are the inevitable result of the water cycle in action: As the winds of Europe hit the Swiss Alps, they release the moisture evaporated from below and snow it upon their lofty peaks, where it melts into the waterfalls, as the melting water seeks the sea through the force of gravity. Every disappointed Zermatt tourist who has ever cursed the cloud blocking his view of the Matterhorn has seen this process in action. While the water cycle and its ongoing recycling of fresh water is incredibly important to human and all other forms of life, and while perpetual waterfalls are a lovely way of being reminded of this important natural phenomenon, it is, after all, a natural phenomenon, and the waterfalls are, in the end, merely places where lots of water happens to plunge over a cliff, on a journey to the sea no more or less important than that of any other water taking any other route.
And I get all of that. I understand (not well, but in its basic fundamentals) the science. I even understand the social science, political and economic, that explains why the citizens of Lauterbrunnen built a multi-story automobile garage for the tourists to utilize, and then put grass on its roof so it wouldn’t spoil those tourists’ view.
Nevertheless, I cannot look upon the Lauterbrunnen Valley without persisting in my belief that I am seeing the handiwork of God. The same is true of many other natural scenic wonders which I count among my favorite places on earth, both in Switzerland, and in the American West: Appenzellerland; Ebenalp; Seealpsee; Hoher Kasten; Oeschinensee; the waterfall in Yellowstone; Red Rock, on the Western side of the Las Vegas, Nevada valley, in the morning when the sun is shining on its red and white and vermillion colors; Zion National Park; Mount Timpanogos. Like C.S. Lewis, who defended the objectively sublime nature of waterfalls in his masterpiece, The Abolition of Man, I just can’t bring myself to look upon such beauty and see only an uncreated place, exhibiting purely natural phenomena, and of purely utilitarian interest.
Or if I can, I can’t take the next step. The bottom line, for me, is this: I could perhaps believe, if I absolutely had to, that a place like the Lauterbrunnen Valley might come to exist for purely natural reasons, which neither require nor allow for any explanation involving any metaphysical agency or intent or design. But what I can’t believe is that such a place would haphazardly come to exist in the same Universe where someone like Arnold Lunn, or myself, could also, equally haphazardly, come to exist, and, looking upon the Lauterbrunnen, would call it beautiful. Indeed, it is not so much that it is impossible to conceive of the Lauterbrunnen Valley in a Godless universe. It is, rather, more so, that it is impossible for me to conceive of a Godless universe whose inhabitants have a word which means “beauty.” The Lauterbrunnen Valley may or may not evidence the design of God, but poetry about Lauterbrunnen surely does.
Endnote 1: I assumed Lunn was a local boy, but Wikipedia advises he was the inventor of the slalom ski race, founder of the Alpine Ski Club which encouraged skiing in the Swiss Alps, a youthful agnostic who later wrote defenses of the Catholic faith, and an anti-Communist writer for National Review. No wonder I loved his written prayer, it's as though two of my favorite writers, G.K. Chesterton and William F. Buckley, were combined into someone who also loved two of my favorite things in the world: Switzerland and Snow-Skiing.
Endnote 2: For the difference between science and scientism, see The Restitution of Man: C.S. Lewis and the Case Against Scientism by Michael D. Aeschliman.
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