The Happy Moron

Where then does wisdom come from? Where does understanding dwell?… God understands the way to it and he alone knows where it dwells. — Job 28:20,23 (NIV)

The fear of the LORD is the beginning of knowledge, but fools despise wisdom and discipline. — Proverbs 1:7 (NIV)

The fear of the LORD is the beginning of wisdom, and knowledge of the Holy One is understanding — Proverbs 9:10 (NIV)

The fear of the LORD teaches a man wisdom… Proverbs 15:33 (NIV)

I was thinking a little bit about wisdom the other day. More to the point, I harassed the Bible Study group about it. I pestered them for examples of foolishness and examples of wisdom.

I wasn’t even as far along as, “How do I get any.” I was more in the ballpark of, “What is it?”

In some ways, this is a funny question – everyone knows what wisdom is. Sure, now and again people have a discussion about the difference between wisdom and knowledge, but when someone uses the word, no explanation is required. We all understand what it is, and we all understand well enough that we don’t ever have to talk about it.

But I wanted to stick words to it, and eventually I reached a definition for wisdom that satisfied me.

“It is wise to make a good choice. It is foolish to make a bad choice.”

It’s almost embarrassing  to make a statement this obvious, this redundant, and call it a definition. But bear with me, because there’s something worth thinking about here.

Wise decisions are the ones that  have good outcomes. Generally speaking. In the long run. Most of the time. More of the time.

Foolish decisions have bad outcomes. Foolish decisions that seem to come out okay are merely lucky. They are still foolish, because in no way do they maximize good – over the long term they are a losing strategy. Similarly, not thinking about outcomes at all is also Foolish, because it’s an abysmal strategy if you want Good Outcomes.

Knowledge fits in nicely with this definition. Often Knowledge is required to maximize good. Ignorance can keep us from knowing what will result in something good and what will result in something bad. Still, everyone already knows that wisdom is more than a question of knowledge. But what more?

For me, the most compelling aspect of this definition is that little humongous word, ‘good’.

That simple definition, “It is wise to make a good choice” performs a tremendous thing.

It links wisdom with goodness.

That’s a huge thing. It’s massive. It’s phenomenal, because once you link these two concepts,  all questions about wisdom suddenly depend on what is good.

Is it good to eat cheese? If it’s good to eat cheese, this means something very important for which decisions are wise and which are foolish. Cheese-eating FTW!

Is it good to love someone? Even when you don’t feel like it? (Big questions with a big impact on what is wise.)

Is it good to die?

These are tough questions with tough answers, but they all point to one thing.

If what is wise is utterly dependent on what is good, then the source of all wisdom must necessarily be, above everything else, the indisputable authority on goodness.

The quotes at the start of this post suddenly make new sense to me. The fear of the LORD is the beginning of wisdom because it is the willingness to pay attention to him, and what he has to say about good, and about evil.

What is the core of the fall of man? Isn’t it that he replaced God’s definition of goodness with his own, and God’s definition of evil with his own? This starts to make more sense of why the Bible is so harsh on the Biblical fool. He says in his heart, “There is no God.” There is, then, no Godly definition of goodness. Once goodness is subjective and arbitrary, then the question of wisdom is moot, and not worth the time taken to ask it.

After all, if no one can say what is right, who can say what is wise?

There is no more cataclysmic action than to cling to a version of good which is of human origin. It’s a guaranteed recipe for human suffering.

The reason understanding only dwells with God is because only God knows what is good. This is why God’s wisdom is foolishness to men. This is why the Pharisees couldn’t understand Jesus. Not because they weren’t smart. Not because they were hearing impaired.

There was a difference in what they believed was a Good Thing. Ultimately, the greatest thing we can do to make wise decisions is to value those things that are actually good. This is uncomfortable.

It means that wisdom implies righteousness.

Notice that throughout secular society, you can discuss wisdom all you like – it’s absolutely non-controversial and everyone is happy to talk about it. Even ethics! They’re considered to be God-neutral.

But talk about righteousness, now? Hmm… food for thought.

Talent, well applied, can make big things happen on the internet.

Even if they’re just memes

The internet is a giant magnifying glass; it doesn’t change things, but it makes things ever so much more so.

Great stuff on the internet is ever so much greater than great stuff drawn from a smaller pool. Great stuff makes it bigger on the internet than in front of a smaller audience.

Horrible stuff is so much worse on the internet. Online, you truly do find the worst of the worst.

And the mediocre, unremarkable stuff languishes ever so much more in the doldrums of mediocrity. It is ever so much more average when surrounded by millions of things exactly the same as it. It gets ever so much more so lost in the shuffle.

A collision of headlines on the cbc website

These things tend to happen when human eyeballs are removed from processes. I can’t think of a cost effective way to prevent stuff like this – it must be a real pain to re-evaluate all your currently showing text every time a new story breaks.

From CBC : Federal Transport Minister John Baird is probing whether airlines are following the rules requiring staff to see the faces of all passengers, including those wearing veils.

By now, news stories of police seeing this or that on YouTube and catching stupid criminals are old hat.

The billions of youtube videos and facebook photographs are a new thing for enforcement. I wouldn’t immediately scream Good Thing or Bad Thing, but rather Powerful thing. It magnifies the ability to enforce.

The problem with a magnifier is that it uncovers bad decisions and imbalance.

Enforcement is, by necessity, a selective process. The dirty secret of enforcement is not that we don’t enforce everything because we can’t. It’s that we don’t enforce everything because we don’t want to. If we enforced, without selection, every one of our current suite of laws, our society would crash and burn, or at the very least, grind to a complete halt.

What happens when something we previously couldn’t enforce because we were blind to it, becomes enforceable? The crutch of “can’t” gets taken away, and we’re forced to accept that enforcement is a question of “want”.

If I had to pick a well known example of where our own limited ability served to buffer us from our poor decision making, well…

It would be the tower of Babel.

My guess is that if it’s really that difficult to get airlines to follow a rule, it’s a stupid rule. But more than that, if a high level politician is involved, I’m inclined to be highly skeptical of the “wanting” involved. I suspect the “wanting” has more to do with high level politics than it does with security, freedom, and equality.

Have you heard of George Laraque?

I don’t mean the ice hockey player. I mean the ex-ice hockey player who is now the deputy leader of the Green Party of Canada.

Yikes!

The true work of art is but a shadow of the divine perfection. — Michelangelo

Every beauty which is seen here by persons of perception resembles more than anything else that celestial source from which we all are come. – Michelangelo

If people knew how hard I worked to get my mastery, it wouldn’t seem so wonderful at all. –Michelangelo

I believe that there is a single God who created everything.

I believe, since all things are created by him, that all things were first conceived by him.

I believe that since all things are conceived by him, that all things reflect him and are products of his character and nature.

A beam that keeps a roof above my head is strong; it reflects the strength of God. A swan is graceful; it reflects the beauty of God. The sun is brilliant; it reflects the splendour of God.

But I also believe that the world we see has been corrupted, and that, although it retains the character and nature of God, it has been twisted, bent and warped away from what God originally made. In all things, we see decay, corrosion, frailty, illness and death.

Therefore, the things we see are a blend from two sources, and we must study the nature of God in order to understand and make sense of the things we see, to separate the divine reflection from the dross.

The question I have is stated in the title of this post:

Why are hard things hard?

By Michelangelo’s own testimony, his art is the product of countless hours of hard work. It would have been impossible for him to sculpt and paint the things he did without this.

He who wishes to be rich in a day will be hanged in a year — Leonardo da Vinci

We know that excellence is the product of much effort; that talent requires development; that things of value are hard won. It is foolishness to think otherwise.

But why? What aspect of God’s character does this reflect – this, slow, painstaking (notice the meaning of the word – taking pains) accrual of something worthwhile?

Or is it God’s character at all? Is it perhaps a corruption of sin and death?

Why are hard things hard?

Great video on Chris Blattman’s blog.

Well worth the time.

Jerk Wars are what the Internet is best at.

Westboro Baptist Church vs. Some Nerds.

Recently I commented about a backlash against a cultural church. Well… I guess this is it.

The best description I can come up for this is a war. It is essentially destructive action on both sides, and like any war, there is collateral damage.

Today’s Non Sequitur

The Kingdom of God is such a departure from life as we know it that we can’t even conceive of what it’s like.

That’s one of the reasons that we can’t build such a thing ourselves.

It’s also the reason that “It doesn’t make sense to me” or “I don’t understand how it could possible turn out all right” are not valid excuses for ignoring or disobeying God.

At first, Godblock upset me.

It left me feeling hurt and sad, so much so that I had to put a link to it and see what others thought.

Looking at the site a second time, it could be a joke. Certainly it’s vaporware, because if you try and download it, you get a message saying that it’s not ready yet.

But whether a joke or in earnest, it’s worth looking at.

I don’t think it’s particularly satanic, at least… no more than regular human sinful behaviour is satanic.

I don’t think it’s particularly post-modern.

I interpret Godblock as the result of a particular attitude that is prevalent among many computer programmers and, dare I say, geeks. If you read programming blogs or forums or news sites, you see this attitude popping up all over the place. Just browse any Slashdot thread where intelligent design is mentioned and you’ll see this attitude manifest very, very quickly.

It’s an attitude that values, “smart”. It’s an attitude that attaches no small degree of pride to being smart. It brings a certain belligerence towards the stupid and, ultimately, I think it’s an attitude that comes out of a lot of suffering. I’ll say more on this in a bit, but first…

Why is GodBlock considered smart?

The idea of a filter blocking religious content is clever. It’s clever because it’s ironic. Filtering harmful content is something that religious zealots of all stripes do, so turning the tables on them is a brilliant stroke to be rewarded.

It’s smart because it takes advantage of what a clever person can do with computers. It relies on technical chops.

And finally, it’s smart because it protects smart things.

“Fundamentalist Evangelicals, Mormons, Baptists, Muslims, and Jews have held back progress in science, human rights, civil rights, and protecting our environment.”

Science, human rights, civil rights, protecting the environment… These are considered to be “Smart Things” in programming circles. Especially science. I’m surprised Scientologists don’t get a look in here.

GodBlock is attractive on these grounds.

But at the same time, it’s an example of smart being used as a weapon.

Where the Attitude comes from

I’m not sure I can definitively say where it comes from. It’s not a post-modern attitude. It’s an aggressive, “Science is right and smart is right and stupid need not apply” attitude, which is a great deal different than the post modern one.

In technical or scientific arguments, someone is right and someone is wrong and usually it’s the smarter person who is right. If you pin your career on being smart and on being right, it means that you have to be intolerant of wrong answers and decisive in quashing them. If you ever get involved in technical arguments on the internet, this culture is greatly magnified, because nothing spreads quite so quickly as wrong answers. Stupid people on the internet can do a lot of wrong.

When stupid people win arguments, the logic goes, projects suffer and the work suffers and the smart people suffer under stupid situations. Everybody loses.

The reason I think it’s an attitude born of suffering is because I think across North America, there’s been a great deal of suffering at the hands of a cultural Church which has elevated dogma, culture, and tradition over reason and true faith. There is a huge amount of patronizing, simplistic, false Christian media out there.

A backlash can be expected. Yes, it is ugly. Yes, it is aggressive. Yes, it is misguided. But it’s an understandable backlash and perhaps a predictable backlash, and perhaps even an avoidable backlash. For this reason, I don’t think it’s any more satanic than our regular human delusion is satanic.

There are a lot of techies out there who rail violently against web censorship of any kind, and who understand that, for technical reasons alone, Godblock is futile and useless. It is the wrong answer to the problem. I don’t think Godblock (even if it’s real) will ever get much traction at all from professional computer folk.

But there might be quite a few who would agree that it’s the wrong answer to the right problem.

(If you want to see a good example of what I think is behind Godblock, look at this post by Tim Bray, alpha geek and creator of XML)