Is happiness treason?

"Is happiness treason?" That's one of the questions posed in the commentary to today's Gaping Void cartoon:

At first that question shocked me. After all, our country was founded on "life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness." But note - that's the pursuit of happiness, not the attainment of it.

Capitalism would fall flat on its face if we all decided, today, right now, that we're happy with who we are and happy with the way things are. Think about it. You wouldn't need that shiny new tech toy. You wouldn't need that expensive new pair of shoes. You wouldn't need that sleek new car. The luxury vacation to "get away from it all." And you certainly wouldn't need to sit in front of the TV or computer and soak in advertising-laden mental opiates to distract you from your life, nor would you need the politicians screaming for attention on them, trying to convince you that their brand of hate will make the world a better place than that other brand of hate.

If everyone just decided they were happy then commercial enterprise that wasn't oriented toward supplying food, shelter, basic clothing and health care ("bananas, bedrooms, briefs and biopsies") would collapse. And all of "civilization" along with it.

Yup, happiness is treason, all right.  So, whatever you do, don't be happy - our country depends on your misery.

Who we want to be versus who we are

"Bugs is who we want to be. Daffy is who we are."
- Chuck Jones

"The Dude is who we want to be. Walter (or Donny) is who we are."
- me

Beautiful inscription

I bought a book (Reason for Being: A Meditation on Ecclesiastes) by Jacques Ellul for some "light reading" (joke). To save a bit of money, I bought it used, rated to be in good condition. When the book came today it was indeed in very good condition - no highlighting (I detest other people's highlighting and underlining), the cover is in great shape, and so on. However, inside the front cover is an inscription. It is so well-written I don't mind having it there. In fact, while I love its message it makes me a little sad that the person to whom it was inscribed didn't keep the book. You'll see why (emphasis in the original, and I elided their names for privacy):

3/22/03

J---, 

Congrats on obtaining your architectural license. It is a worthy reward. Wish you continued success as an architect and a designer. Always raise the bar on yourself and challenge yourself with change and chance.

This book is very important to me, and so is the author, Jacques Ellul. He was the world's watchman that was the most authentic voice in the wilderness in the 20th century.

His books are difficult but very rewarding to the Christian who will battle and struggle with Ellul's thoughts. Ellul is my hero, he is Christocentric in his thought and always provides fresh clear insight to who our God is and where he wants us to go. Always exciting & new.

I encourage you to struggle and read to the end.

- L----

Makes you want to read it, eh? My hope is that before "J" sold or otherwise was rid of the book that at least he read it. Although if someone ever gave me a book with such a thoughtful and beautiful inscription as "L" wrote, I would never part with it.

I like that last sentence. It could almost be a motto for life.

"I encourage you to struggle and read to the end."

Amen.

DVDs are dying

That's not what the latest mea culpa email from Netflix says, explicitly, but it is how I read it. Why? Because they have been in business since 1997 shipping DVDs, only got into the streaming business in the last few years, but now, with the name change of the DVD side of the business ("Qwikster?" Really?) they are taking all the "good will" (if there's any left after the past few months) and brand recognition in their name and keeping it on the streaming side and renaming the DVD side of the business.

I like Netflix. I really do. But I cancelled the DVD delivery part of our subscription with the price change, and considering I get Amazon video streaming for free with our Amazon Prime account, I can see not staying around on Netflix forever. Especially if they pull one or two more bozo stunts. Then I will be Gonester. Foreverster. Reallyster.

Squash your appetite

Mom made soup for lunch yesterday, and given the cool, overcast, rainy fall day today, I felt it was a good night for it again. So I invented the following squash soup. It was good, but very rich. Quick and easy, too.

Ingredients

• 1 12 oz. package frozen cooked winter squash (that stuff you probably hated as a kid, but I loved it)
• ½ stick butter
• 1 cup heavy cream (I didn't say this was going to be healthy)
• 1½ cups cooked cheese tortellini
• ½ cup peas
• ½ tsp lavender (a little goes a long way)
• 1 Tbs sage
• coarse ground pepper
• salt
• toasted garlic flakes (made the same way as toasted onion flakes)
• crumbled blue cheese

Directions

Heat squash, butter, cream and seasonings until the soup is bubbling. Add tortellini and peas and heat thoroughly. Serve garnished with garlic and blue cheese, with a side salad and crusty bread. Serves two.

A shameful confession

I have a deep, dark secret, something I am so ashamed of it's taken me this long to come out about it in public. I expect many of you reading this will never talk to me again.

I don't like Stevie Ray Vaughan.

I also don't like Elvis Costello.

There are just some musicians and bands I am told I am supposed to like, either by critics or friends, and try as I might, I just...can't. I revisit them from time to time, trying to see if my tastes have changed with age. Sometimes, it has (Johnny Cash comes to mind). But, like spinach, there are just some artists I can't bring myself to like, no matter how much others tell me I should, no matter how many times I try.

Grateful Dead.

Bruce Springsteen.

Tom Waits (one of my best friends just hated me for this one).

I'm so sorry. I have no excuse. It IS shameful. I feel so bad. Dirty. But...I am who I am, and I just can't seem to change. Will you ever forgive me?

His own crazy way

3. A Leader
     is a fellow
     who refuses to be crazy
     the way everybody else is crazy
     and tries to be crazy
     in his own crazy way.
- Peter Maurin, Five Definitions

Would they stand by you? Would you stand by them?

In response to my post yesterday my friend Donna wrote the following, which I like, a lot:

Would you stand with me if I chose to be in the light of day
to face those that would come take me away?
I hope there are those who would be willing to hide me
but I'd rather have them stand beside me. 

- Donna Ross (used with permission)

Would they hide you? Would you hide them?

I was struck by this:

http://blog.jgc.org/2011/09/disconnected-bedroom.html

The Disconnected Bedroom

A long time ago I banished most electronics from my bedroom as a way of getting a good night's sleep. There's no TV there (what started out as no TV in the bedroom ended up as no TV at all), there are no computers and no cell phones. There is a hard telephone line that only a very few people know the number for (the sort of people who would hide me) and if it rings I want to be woken up...

I followed that second link:

http://blog.jgc.org/2008/02/would-they-hide-me.html

Would they hide me?

This is pretty much exclusively a technical blog, but I was very struck by something legendary investor Warren Buffett said when answering the question "How do you define happiness and what about your life makes you most happy?":

I know a woman in her 80’s, a Polish Jew woman forced into a concentration camp with her family but not all of them came out. She says, “I am slow to make friends because when I look at people, I have one question in mind; would they hide me?” If you get to be my age, or younger for that matter, and have a lot of people that would hide you, then you can feel pretty good about how you’ve lived your life. 

I know people on the Forbes 400 list whose children would not hide them. “He’s in the attic, he’s in the attic.” Some of them keep compensating by joining board seats or getting honorary degrees, but it doesn’t change the fact that no one will give a damn when they are gone. The most powerful force in the world is unconditional love. To hoard it is a terrible mistake in life. The more you try to give it away, the more you get it back.

I like that. I'd like to think I have at least a few people who would hide me. I know of quite a few I'd hide. It's a good metric for the richness of the friendships in your life.

Two sides divided and disputing

"Ordinarily, when speaking of the rise of Christianity, men belonging to one of the existing churches use the word church in the singular, as though there were and had been only one church. But this is absolutely incorrect. The Church, as an institution which asserted that it possessed infallible truth, did not make its appearance singly; there were at least two churches directly this claim was made. While believers were agreed among themselves and the body was one, it had no need to declare itself as a church. It was only when believers were split up into opposing parties, renouncing one another, that it seemed necessary to each party to confirm their own truth by ascribing to themselves infallibility. The conception of one church only arose when there were two sides divided and disputing, who each called the other side heresy, and recognized their own side only as the infallible church. If we knew that there was a church which decided in the year 51 to receive the uncircumcised, it is only so because there was another church—of the Judaists—who decided to keep the uncircumcised out. If there is a Catholic Church now which asserts its own infallibility, that is only because there are churches—Greco-Russian, Old Orthodox, and Lutheran—each asserting its own infallibility and denying that of all other churches. So that the one Church is only a fantastic imagination which has not the least trace of reality about it. As a real historical fact there has existed, and still exist, several bodies of men, each asserting that it is the one Church, founded by Christ, and that all the others who call themselves churches are only sects and heresies."
- Leo Tolstoy, The Kingdom of God Is Within You [emphases mine]

With intellect and decent purpose

"Another factor in maintaining balance involves the element of time. As we peer into society's future, we – you and I, and our government – must avoid the impulse to live only for today, plundering for, for our own ease and convenience, the precious resources of tomorrow. We cannot mortgage the material assets of our grandchildren without asking the loss also of their political and spiritual heritage. We want democracy to survive for all generations to come, not to become the insolvent phantom of tomorrow.
Down the long lane of the history yet to be written America knows that this world of ours, ever growing smaller, must avoid becoming a community of dreadful fear and hate, and be, instead, a proud confederation of mutual trust and respect.
Such a confederation must be one of equals. The weakest must come to the conference table with the same confidence as do we, protected as we are by our moral, economic, and military strength. That table, though scarred by many past frustrations, cannot be abandoned for the certain agony of the battlefield.
Disarmament, with mutual honor and confidence, is a continuing imperative. Together we must learn how to compose differences, not with arms, but with intellect and decent purpose. Because this need is so sharp and apparent I confess that I lay down my official responsibilities in this field with a definite sense of disappointment. As one who has witnessed the horror and the lingering sadness of war – as one who knows that another war could utterly destroy this civilization which has been so slowly and painfully built over thousands of years – I wish I could say tonight that a lasting peace is in sight.
Happily, I can say that war has been avoided. Steady progress toward our ultimate goal has been made. But, so much remains to be done. As a private citizen, I shall never cease to do what little I can to help the world advance along that road."
- Dwight D. Eisenhower, "Farewell Address", January 17. 1961 [emphases mine]

Cross of iron

"Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired signifies, in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed.
This world in arms in not spending money alone.
It is spending the sweat of its laborers, the genius of its scientists, the hopes of its children.
The cost of one modern heavy bomber is this: a modern brick school in more than 30 cities.
It is two electric power plants, each serving a town of 60,000 population.
It is two fine, fully equipped hospitals.
It is some 50 miles of concrete highway.
We pay for a single fighter with a half million bushels of wheat.
We pay for a single destroyer with new homes that could have housed more than 8,000 people.
This, I repeat, is the best way of life to be found on the road the world has been taking.
This is not a way of life at all, in any true sense. Under the cloud of threatening war, it is humanity hanging from a cross of iron."
- Dwight D. Eisenhower, "Chance for Peace" speech, April 16, 1953 (as pointed out to me by Karen Lindsey)

On that day war would be no more

"Yes, indeed, since government assumes the right of annihilating peoples thus, there is nothing surprising in the fact that the peoples assume the right of annihilating governments.
They defend themselves. They are right. No one has an absolute right to govern others. It ought only to be done for the benefit of those who are governed. And it is as much the duty of anyone who governs to avoid war as it is the duty of a captain of a ship to avoid shipwreck.
When a captain has let his ship come to ruin, he is judged and condemned, if he is found guilty of negligence or even incapacity.
Why should not the government be put on its trial after every declaration of war? If the people understood that, if they themselves passed judgment on murderous governments, if they refused to let themselves be killed for nothing, if they would only turn their arms against those who have given them to them for massacre, on that day war would be no more. But that day will never come."
Guy de Maupassant, Sur l'eau, as quoted in Leo Tolstoy's The Kingdom of God Is Within You

And people call peace

"Every government maintains as great an army as it possibly could maintain if its people were threatened with extermination, and people call peace this state of tension of all against all.
...
Fortresses, arsenals, and ships are built, new weapons are constantly being invented, to be replaced in a short time by fresh ones, for, sad to say, science, which ought always to be aiming at the good of humanity, assists in the work of destruction, and is constantly inventing new means for killing the greatest number of men in the shortest time. And to maintain so great a multitude of soldiers and to make such vast preparations for murder, hundreds of millions are spent annually, sums which would be sufficient for the education of the people and for immense works of public utility, and which would make it possible to find a peaceful solution of the social question."
- Montesquieu, as quoted in Leo Tolstoy's The Kingdom of God Is Within You

But still they obey it

"All men are brought up to the habit of obeying the laws of the state before everything. The whole existence of modern times is defined by laws. A man marries and is divorced, educates his children, and even (in many countries) professes his religious faith in accordance with the law. What about the law then which defines our whole existence? Do men believe in it? Do they regard it as good? Not at all. In the majority of cases people of the present time do not believe in the justice of the law, they despise it, but still they obey it. It was very well for the men of the ancient world to observe their laws. They firmly believed that their law (it was generally of a religious character) was the only just law, which everyone ought to obey. But is it so with us? we know and cannot help knowing that the law of our country is not the one eternal law; that it is only one of the many laws of different countries, which are equally imperfect, often obviously wrong and unjust, and are criticised from every point of view in the newspapers. The Jew might well obey his laws, since he had not the slightest doubt that God had written them with his finger; the Roman too might well obey the laws which he thought had been dictated by the nymph Egeria. Men might well observe the laws if they believed the Tzars who made them were God's anointed, or even if they thought they were the work of assemblies of lawgivers who had the power and the desire to make them as good as possible. But we all know how our laws are made. We have all been behind the scenes, we know that they are the product of covetousness, trickery, and party struggles; that there is not and cannot be any real justice in them. And so modern men cannot believe that obedience to civic or political laws can satisfy the demands of the reason or of human nature. Men have long ago recognized that it is irrational to obey a law the justice of which is very doubtful, and so they cannot but suffer in obeying a law which they do not accept as judicious and binding."
- Leo Tolstoy, The Kingdom of God Is Within You [emphases mine]

A matter of degree

"One man may not kill. If he kills a fellow-creature, he is a murderer. If two, ten, a hundred men do so, they, too, are murderers. But a government or a nation may kill as many men as it chooses, and that will not be murder, but a great and noble action. Only gather the people together on a large scale, and a battle of ten thousand men becomes an innocent action. But precisely how many people must there be to make it so?—that is the question. One man cannot plunder and pillage, but a whole nation can. But precisely how many are needed to make it permissible? Why is it that one man, ten, a hundred, may not break the law of God, but a great number may?"
- Adin Ballou, How many Men are Necessary to Change a Crime into a Virtue?, as quoted in Leo Tolstoy's The Kingdom of God Is Within You