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seadonkey21
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Name: Nathan
Country: United States
State: Minnesota
Metro: Minneapolis
Birthday: 3/31/1983
Interests: I guess I like tons of stuff. I like, good books, yerba mate, ethnic stuff, Europe, riding my bike through cities and country sides, good books, good movies, good music, my guitar, good music, my guitar, long walks on.......hmmmm........ camping, being outside, good music, people, riding my bike .......people.......what God is doing in the world (missions)......I guess I like what I am doing when I am with people I love.....so I could be going to Jewel and have a better time than doing what I love alone......sorta........
Expertise: Saying stupid things
randomness
over-analyising life.....although I am getting worse at this one
I am a mediocre dancer (like swing and merranga (sp?))
eating
Occupation: students
Message: message me
Website: visit my website
AIM:  meshach21
MSN: meshach21@hotmail.com
Member Since:
4/8/2005
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| In the past few days, I watched Michael Phelps dominate his sport and capture the world's attention. It is true that this man has and will continue to have his day in the sun. He is, after all, an amazing athlete. This guy is on par with people named Lance, Rodger, and Tiger. But I heard an interesting term associated with his astonishing achievement. Bob Costas made a comment that was really interesting. It relates to the whole sporting experience. Costas said something along the lines of: this is the most fulfilled that someone can experience in sports.
This word rang a bell in my mind. Mostly because when it comes to fulfillment, I struggle with the world's definitions of fulfillment and how the world seeks to obtain them. First definition. Ultimately, the world is defining fulfillment in terms of large accomplishment. Whether it is athletic or economic success, fulfillment is tied to an event. The problem is that events fade. Phelps will one day no longer be able to defend his records. To link fulfillment to a single event limits the ability of fulfillment to be a pervasive element in our life. This momentary fulfillment is not tied to an internal reality. True fulfillment is not based on circumstances. | | |
| I rewatched The Dark Knight again on IMAX and I guess I feel ready to think out loud about it.
The first time I watched the film I was mostly just creeped out by Heath Ledger's performance and taken aback by the breadth of the piece. I guess Christopher Nolan is nothing if not ambishious in this film. Oddly enough it was the IMAX viewing that for me began to drive home the philisophical underpinnings of the film. For when you undertake a piece as epic as this, you really must wrestle with life's biggest questions, such as: what is the nature of humanity and why are we here any way? As one person I talked to said, the movie is basically about four men and their interactions with evil. However, through these four men three worldviews of evil and humanity emerge, worldviews that we would be remise to not engage.
Batman and Comissioner Gordon hold to the first worldview. This is perhaps the most comonly held worldview in America today. The basic tenets go something like this. Humanity is basically good and is worthy of faith. Those who do evil have only suplanted control because the ordinary good people have stood by. They were not willing to stand up to evil and so they are now rulled by it. One of the central themes of the film centers around this worldview. Is Batman (or anyone for that matter) willing to pay the sacrifice neccessary to stop evil? This sacrafice meant different things to different characters in the film. For Bruce Wayne it meant giving up love and a childhood friend. For the convict on the ferry it meant sacrificing his own life. In this worldview the locus of evil rests within a few individuals that for a miriad of reasons (psycosis, yielded to temptation, etc) who have done evil actions. Another common locus of evil in this worldview is in social systems. Broken societies produce broken people that must be stopped by the generally good people everywhere else.
The problem with this worldview is that it is fundamentally wrong. This worldview is called humanism and is contrary to scripture. While this is not the place to be able to completely disect humanism as a worldview, a few comments will have to suffice. One of the largest problems with humanism is the locus of evil. Scripture is clear that everyone has turned from God. In doing so they have commited unspeakable evil. Further more the capacity for evil resides chiefly within the soul of willful beings. Therefore, society is only as corrupt as those that have created it. Ultimately the proported worldview of the good guys comes up short.
The second worldview that emerges is that of Harvey Dent or Two Face. Dent goes through a radical transformation through out the course of the film. Through out most of the film he is fighting on the side of the good. He is turned though when the cruelty and chaos of the world becomes too much for him. He no longer see s the world as a place where good people can live out their lives and evil people are punished for their deeds. Ultimately this drives him to trust blind chance as the only morality. The interesting thing is that he takes on the mantle of the agent of this morality, in as much as he puts himself in a position where he alows chance to "have its day in the sun." More than anything, I see this as a unique and interesting variation on the theme.
The final worldview in perhaps the most interesting of them all. This worldview is given voice by the Joker. He believes that the locus of evil truely does rest in every human soul. People are mostly evil in as much as people are primarily fixed on preserving their own self interestes. The Joker sees this as the most basic part of a person. Therefore any externally selfless acts are only regulated by culture. This is seens as highly hypocritical on the part of humanity. Evil is culturally acceptable in many circumstances (the examples he gives are a gang member or a group of soldgers dying) and are not acceptable in others (say a hospital being blown up). He sees people as evil, and anarchy as a means to bring humanity to a point where they recognise their truest identity.
The Joker is not condemned based on his anthropology but by his soteriology. He has a point in that people are primarily inclinded to selfishness and evil, however I would say that the solution is not to seek to bring people to live they way they are.
So why are these philisophical ramblings important? Why are the nuances and criticisms of these worldviews meaningful at all? The main reason is that society is telling us that these are our options. Man kind is either fundamentally good (or at worst neutral and culturally imprinted) or he is evil and chaos reigns supreme. None of these worldviews are Christian. On a servey of which was best, most christians would struggle to pick "other", let alone aritculate what exactly this "other." This is where true media discernment lands. Not on, should I watch this movie yes or no scale, but on a scale of "how well can I discern what the worldview of this piece of art is protraying and how does it line up with the Christian worldview?"
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| I miss my presbyterian friends. They were great. Recently BV and I headed out to her cousin's house in Aurora for dinner. I tried to keep my expectations low, basically because I wasn't sure what would happen. It was great. We sat and talked, bonded over pipe smoking. But during this night of bonding with her extended family, her cousin said something that cut me in half.
We live both in the joy and the anticipation of future events, and in the present breath by breath. This life must be a "future and present" life. It can not be only one. C.S. Lewis in "The Great Divorce" makes the statement that we live in an ever present now. When we say, "oh I will do that later" it is putting it off to another now. We constantly make choices about what we will do "now." But the problem is that there is no such thing as later. It does not exist it is only in the realm of possibility. So then if I purpose to do some thing and don't do it now, what have I really done?
By now some have stopped reading, but the application here is that if we think about something and say "that is important to do" or "I should do that" if we don't actually put forth effort to make that happen, it won't happen. Now this seems pretty basic cause and effect, but the problem comes when I look at the pile of clothes in front of my closet. They are clean and should be put away, but every time I walk by it I say, "I will do that later." Actually I am saying, I won't do that right now. This time belongs to _____ and then I go about filling the blank. I can say to myself all day long, "I value cleanliness" or "things should stay in order," but if I walk my said pile and do nothing about it, do I really value cleanliness? Not as much as I tell myself I do.
We can further apply this in places like prayer. I can say to someone else, "you should pray" or "prayer is important" I can be speaking truth, but it can have little effect on what I actually do with my time. Some how we have learned to live in such a cognitively dissonant world. We can not do all actions that we value at the same time. But if we fail to act at all on the things that we claim to value, then ultimately we don't value those things.
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| It all started with a simple comment. We were talking about cheese. Specifically cheese that comes with pieces of paper in between. She said that she had made a sandwich before and forgot to take some of the paper off of the cheese. At the moment I thought it was kind of funny, the thought of someone eating paper. The second thought that crossed my mind was,
"glad that I wouldn't ever do a thing like that. I mean after all, who forgets to take the wrapper off of the cheese?"
Well beyond that I thought nothing of it. Until this afternoon, when I wanted to make my lunch. I was in a bit of a hurry, and I began to set the items that would go in my sandwich. A bit of Romaine lettus, some really nice multi-grain bread, deli sliced ham, oh and colby cheese. I had just opened the bread and I used the heal to make my sandwich. But as I bit into my sandwich I began to taste some thing rough. After the first bit I thought it was just the heal. After the second I began to wonder what was wrong with my bread, and after the fourth bite I looked closer at my paper and realized that I had take four large bites of a ham, cheese, and paper sandwich.
At a moment like this I would usually have just felt really dumb. I try to not take myself seriously enough that these sorts of things would actually bother me. Besides, a little bit of paper isn't going to hurt anyone anyway. But, I remembered what I had thought earlier, a comment made on a whim. And in that moment I didn't feel shame or humiliation, but a deflating feeling. It has been said before that some times the best thing to realize about yourself in exactly how rediculous you really are. Not by way of condiscention, but simply to remember your own need.
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| Various events in my life
recently have caused me to evaluate my media consumption. I have begun
to ask questions, which I guess is the key to thought (or so some dead
Greeks thought). Questions like:
- At what point do we say, "the possible or actual value of putting
this media into my brain is out weighed by the portrayal of sin in said
media"?
- Is this the correct question we should be asking when seeking to discern which media to consume?
- How do we treat those among us that have 'crossed the line' ?
- How can I or the ones around me tell if we are simply using my freedom as an excuse to indulge?
I guess ultimately how do I consider this topic with out choosing
sides? I want to think about media consumption in an environment that
call one another to purity and wisdom. My struggle is this, would I go
see a mini series graphically displaying the narrative portions of the
Old Testament? How close to a Matrix Reloaded style orgy was the calf
worship at Mount Sinai by the people of Israel while Moses was speaking
to God? Ultimately we each have our own accountability to God. I wish
things were more black and white...
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