Here are the articles that caught my attention this last week or so:
This article is old news to those of us in the Christian University business. It is a pretty accurate treatment of the subject, but it is not new information that Baptist universities have been cutting ties with their respective conventions for some time. In the cases of William Jewell, Georgetown College, and Baylor, for instance, the further away they get from Baptist affiliation, the better they do their jobs. It raises the question: can faith and academics be reconciled without compromising one or the other? Read this too.
This op-ed piece by Harvard psychologist, Daniel Gilbert, demonstrates what I am calling the "escalating reciprocity" principle. Fascinating stuff about our natural human propensity to take "an eye for an eyelash." It sheds a great deal of light on our natural escalation toward revenge.
Maybe Gilbert's column is connected to the problems in Baptist higher ed? Hmmm.
Finally, those of you who know me well know that I am a freak for the Tour de France. I have been an off and on cyclist myself for 20 years. Among my greatest sports heroes are Eddie Merckx, Greg Lemond, Miguel Indurain, and, of course, Lance. I was prepared to add this year's winner, Floyd Landis, to that pantheon--partly because we share hip problems--then, dammit, it happened. Doping scandal. It's not completely proven yet, but it doesn't look good.
Sigh.
I'm not sure why I grouped these stories. Each of them contains good news and failure. Maybe it is within the tension of hope and fear that I find meaning. Maybe this is why certain stories don't grab my attention. Stories about pleasantly unified academic communities, perfectly peaceful relationships, and spotless champions don't get much traction with me.
Maybe we all need to live with the sense that whatever we are a part of could be triumphant or disasterous at any given moment: living between the scourge and ascension. Maybe John Mellencamp is our dialectical prophet, living "between a laugh and a tear." In our inexorable progress toward destinations--life without uncertainty, prepackaged formulas with guaranteed results, and uniform perspectives--we lose something essential.
Or, maybe I'm just a freak who needs a powerful serotonin reuptake inhibitor.
Thursday, July 27, 2006
Sunday, July 16, 2006
NOSE JOB
My entire life I have had this problem. I came by it honestly; it's in my DNA. My father has it. My mother has it. From time to time, I see glimpses that suggest I have passed it on to at least one of my children. Is it psoriasis? No. The consumption? No. An overdeveloped sense of moral legalism? Hell no. Dyslexia? On. Body odor? Ew. Liberalism? Eh. A taste for Russian vodka? Nyet. Surrealism? The fish. No, it's none of these.
I have the pokey nose. I am predisposed to poking my nose into things that are none of my damn business.
Most people suffer from the opposite disorder: snub nose. Most people--or at least many people--live life afraid to get involved, fearful of the risks and dangers of drawing fire or attracting responsibility, inspiring an apathetic monotony in their lives. Or, maybe most people just live with an intelligent dose of wisdom that prevents them from enduring a lifetime of grief. They go about their business with noses tucked neatly into their own affairs. I, on the other hand, don't have enough of my own problems; so I create more by meddling. It comes in handy when someone is being dealt an injustice, or there is a need for bold or decisive action. But, most of the time there is no Bat signal beckoning me, no need for a superhero. Too much of the time, I just make trouble for myself.
The symptoms of nose-pokism may include -
1) using phrases like:
"My advice is..."
"I know you didn't ask for it, but my thoughts on the matter are..."
"I couldn't help but overhear..."
"What she needs to do is..."
2) an overdeveloped sense of obligation to be "my brother's keeper."
3) an abundance of expectations and responsibilities, because everyone is happy to let pokey-nose do it, if he is going to act like he knows everything.
4) less serving of others, and more doing for others. (They are not the same.)
5) a prevailing sense of guilt if you are not solving everyone's problems.
If you experience two or more of these symptoms, you may choose to follow my lead (I'm not trying to tell you what to do...really). I have resolved to do something about my nasal aggression. Eventually it may take the influence of prescription medication, but for now I am attempting to change through mindful behavior modification, a bit of a rhetorical rhinoplasty. My nose job does not require a retreat from active involvement in relationships: the world does not need another passive spectator paralyzed by relational inertia. But it does require that my default settings change from heedless action to a more reflective method of existence.
For instance, some neighbors of ours are thinking about moving. I don't want them to move. I heard a rumor about a great house on our street being remodeled, potentially for resale. It would be perfect for them. The old me would rush over the neighbor's house to give them the news and try to broker the deal. Make it happen. It is likely that the rumor would have turned out to be false, the neighbors would have resented me for putting them in an awkward position, and getting their hopes up. The owner of the house would have been a little put out that I was prying into their business, and, apparently wishing they would move away, etc., etc.
The new me--with the nose job--recogizes that it's none of his business, and further sees the wisdom in filtering out those times when intervention is not useful or important.
I suppose my absence from the blog lately has been motivated partly by this newly developed desire for self-censorship, and an effort to measure out my talk in more deliberate doses. Bad news for blog readers, I know. Our culture, particularly blogging communities, draw their life from nose-pokers. I realize that were it not for the pokers, most of us would just have to sit at our desks and get work done. Well, have no fear: I am not going away, and I am NOT turning into a coward, unwilling to speak his own peculiar brand of truth to power, or unwilling to comment on a heretofore overlooked phenomenon. I'm not going to become a humorless, passionless dullard. I'm not giving up blogging for knitting any time soon (even though knitting is very cool right now), I'm just going to work harder to recognize those moments when my intervention, my advocacy, my creativity, or my criticism may be useful. Otherwise, I'm going to shut up. Don't want to be no Cyrano.
I owe thanks to my wife and our friend Sarah for working out some of these thoughts with me. If you are ever in Portland, Oregon, you need to go to Sarah's chocolate shop.
I have the pokey nose. I am predisposed to poking my nose into things that are none of my damn business.
Most people suffer from the opposite disorder: snub nose. Most people--or at least many people--live life afraid to get involved, fearful of the risks and dangers of drawing fire or attracting responsibility, inspiring an apathetic monotony in their lives. Or, maybe most people just live with an intelligent dose of wisdom that prevents them from enduring a lifetime of grief. They go about their business with noses tucked neatly into their own affairs. I, on the other hand, don't have enough of my own problems; so I create more by meddling. It comes in handy when someone is being dealt an injustice, or there is a need for bold or decisive action. But, most of the time there is no Bat signal beckoning me, no need for a superhero. Too much of the time, I just make trouble for myself.
The symptoms of nose-pokism may include -
1) using phrases like:
"My advice is..."
"I know you didn't ask for it, but my thoughts on the matter are..."
"I couldn't help but overhear..."
"What she needs to do is..."
2) an overdeveloped sense of obligation to be "my brother's keeper."
3) an abundance of expectations and responsibilities, because everyone is happy to let pokey-nose do it, if he is going to act like he knows everything.
4) less serving of others, and more doing for others. (They are not the same.)
5) a prevailing sense of guilt if you are not solving everyone's problems.
If you experience two or more of these symptoms, you may choose to follow my lead (I'm not trying to tell you what to do...really). I have resolved to do something about my nasal aggression. Eventually it may take the influence of prescription medication, but for now I am attempting to change through mindful behavior modification, a bit of a rhetorical rhinoplasty. My nose job does not require a retreat from active involvement in relationships: the world does not need another passive spectator paralyzed by relational inertia. But it does require that my default settings change from heedless action to a more reflective method of existence.
For instance, some neighbors of ours are thinking about moving. I don't want them to move. I heard a rumor about a great house on our street being remodeled, potentially for resale. It would be perfect for them. The old me would rush over the neighbor's house to give them the news and try to broker the deal. Make it happen. It is likely that the rumor would have turned out to be false, the neighbors would have resented me for putting them in an awkward position, and getting their hopes up. The owner of the house would have been a little put out that I was prying into their business, and, apparently wishing they would move away, etc., etc.
The new me--with the nose job--recogizes that it's none of his business, and further sees the wisdom in filtering out those times when intervention is not useful or important.
I suppose my absence from the blog lately has been motivated partly by this newly developed desire for self-censorship, and an effort to measure out my talk in more deliberate doses. Bad news for blog readers, I know. Our culture, particularly blogging communities, draw their life from nose-pokers. I realize that were it not for the pokers, most of us would just have to sit at our desks and get work done. Well, have no fear: I am not going away, and I am NOT turning into a coward, unwilling to speak his own peculiar brand of truth to power, or unwilling to comment on a heretofore overlooked phenomenon. I'm not going to become a humorless, passionless dullard. I'm not giving up blogging for knitting any time soon (even though knitting is very cool right now), I'm just going to work harder to recognize those moments when my intervention, my advocacy, my creativity, or my criticism may be useful. Otherwise, I'm going to shut up. Don't want to be no Cyrano.
I owe thanks to my wife and our friend Sarah for working out some of these thoughts with me. If you are ever in Portland, Oregon, you need to go to Sarah's chocolate shop.
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