I’m ashamed to be a Canadian this morning.
The nature of Malice
An interesting bit on Russell Peters (BBC).
He makes the nifty point that often people like his racial comedy because it makes them (as a minority) feel acknowledged. It’s a hat-tip; a shout out.
But he also makes the point (although these are my words) is that we all have a natural sense of malice, which he tries to avoid. Russell’s defense is that he is not malicious, and that people largely understand this.
Malice is, I think, intangible, although we have well trained senses to pick it up. It is a manner and an attitude rather than a specific action, and we can be malicious while doing or saying the nicest things. We’re able to pick up malice from someone even when they’re being courteous.
I appreciate Russell’s approach – that, as friends, we can laugh together. He’s a fine example of someone who takes the vocation of a jester seriously, saying the things that can’t otherwise be said.
Mental Energy
Interesting article from the Harvard Business Review.
I can testify that spending all your mental energy being disproportionately anxious about trivial things is a quick and easy path to being tired all the time.
For example, I just spent about 5 minutes trying to get my blog’s spell checker to recognize ‘disproportionally ‘ as a real word. (Ok, ok… it was a real-world 30 seconds but it was a mental 5 minutes, I swear).
How much is a life worth?
Is it worth $110?
Here’s a disturbing story that you’ll probably miss if you don’t read Edmonton news. Well, you probably won’t miss it. It’s rather sad. An inmate in the Remand centre was allegedly murdered by a cellmate.
But why was he locked up and at the mercy of his cellmate to begin with?
“Stewart was in the remand centre for allegedly failing to show proof of payment on the LRT. He pleaded guilty before a justice of the peace and opted to stay in custody instead of paying the $110 fine.”
Reading this, I thought, “This doesn’t make any sense.” Surely any sensible person just pays the fine. But if you ride the train in Edmonton, it becomes clear fairly quickly that many people don’t have a spare $110. Perhaps they don’t have a spare $3, which is why they don’t purchase a fare to begin with.
Is $110 a fair price for a life? How about $3?
As tragedy goes, this story is unremarkable. Hundred dollar lives are cut short every day. So are fifty dollar lives and ten dollar lives. People fall by the wayside all the time. (That’s a loaded phrase, by the way. Any guesses where it comes from?)
But why the focus on money? Maybe the price of his life was a kind word to his cellmate. Is a life worth a kind word?
Of course, if we’re going to try to sort out the worth of a life, we have to ask what a life is. Is it 70 more years? Maybe it’s ten years – or two – or a single day. Is it seventy years of happiness? Misery? Is it better to give someone a day of happiness and let them die tomorrow than 15 years that are not good years? Is a life worth saving? What does it mean to save?
Every day, I make decisions which hinge on the answers to these questions. But maybe, just maybe, there is a deeper level of questioning that is worth paying attention to.
Who does God want to save?
What does God think saving means?
How is God inviting me to help him save people?
If it cost me $110, would I do it?
The Internet
In 1 minute, 17 seconds.
Silas Marner
By George Eliot.
Great book; scary good. A product of its era, though.
Wait, What?
Thank you, LeBron James! But I do not follow. Is it karma, or is it God?
I assure you, the two *are* mutually exclusive. Unless you’re a Hindu.
I don’t really know why I posted this – perhaps because I’ve so often seen people nod and accept when karma is brought up. But the old folk wisdom, “What goes around, comes around” gets conflated with Buddhist karma and Hindu karma and natural consequence and Christian divine consequence.
It all seems a big mess, and some days I’m not sure any of us have it straight in our minds exactly what causes what. The end result is that I can never be quite sure *what* God is going to do and which things I am allowed to blame him for.
There’s more going on
Than just this:
