Loss.

Loss.

A warning if you will, this blog will have some of my personal beliefs in it – I present them not for argument or to offend, but because they are my beliefs and that’s all there is to it.

My Grandmother goes in for surgery tomorrow; she is 80 years old and may not come out of it. My Grandfather (on the other side) is similarly aged and is going downhill rapidly. Next weekend all being well, I will go and see him for what may very well be the last time. This will leave me with only one grandparent left alive (my other grandfather having died a few years ago).

Now people may say that I’m heartless or callous, or in fact that my whole family is inclined that way. We tend to celebrate at funerals. Now don’t get me wrong – we are sad and we will miss the person very much, but we know where they are and we know that we WILL see them again. Now most who know me would say that I’m a bit out there, and rightfully so. I’m a weird sort of a guy, it’s true, and part of what makes me that way is my belief in God and his son Jesus Christ. And it is partially this belief and the current situation that I find myself in that has caused me to call into question what it is that others believe and what others feel during such times.

I know that my grandfather, or at least his essence – what we call a spirit - is in Heaven. I will see him again when I die and go to be with Christ; I will also see all those whom I have lost between that time and this who believe in Christ as their saviour. I will not see, however, many of my friends (at least at this time because they are not Christians) who do not believe, this saddens me and I, in my own way, continually try to teach them what I know to be true.

Now many people say that they believe that they will see their loved ones again once they die; others believe that we decay to nothing; and still others believe that we are reincarnated and live our lives once more. These are just some examples; there are many more. But one thing strikes me about all of these beliefs, while they are often espoused at funerals and during life, there seems to be a general lack of conviction behind the proclamations. I say this not because I doubt the faith of the people but rather from what I have observed at funerals of those who do/did not believe as my family and I do – that there is a firm certainty behind our faith, a conviction of truth that allows us to know and not merely hope, to stand strong and not merely offer platitudes.

I have a few questions for these people. These are not questions to be answered publicly but rather questions to be thought over, prayed over (if you are so inclined), and decided upon for your own self-interest. And in my humble opinion, eternal life.

I will only address a few here but I will try to encompass as much as I can in this short piece of writing.

Firstly, to those that believe that we came from nothing and it is to there that we return:

Why does death bother you? Why does human suffering or indeed life itself? Why do you cry when you lose someone? And what have you lost?

To those that claim a belief in heaven – Why do you cry so? If you believe in heaven and that you will see the person again, what causes you such great sadness? Are you afraid that they have not made it into heaven or that you are the one who will not make it? What do you fear lies beyond the grave that causes you such grief?

And lastly, to those that believe in reincarnation, what is your worry, that the person you know and love may not come back? That they may be on a lower order or that you will not know them when you come upon their being once more?

Now it may seem to some, if not many, that I am being overly prosecutorial about all of this. I’m sorry if it offends, but please try to think about what it is that has caused you the offence rather than just feeling the offence itself.

And to those who are interested, I offer an answer to your questions. I believe that God, who created all things, sent his son to die for our sin (which was breaking God’s perfect law)  and serve our sentence because that is the only way we can get to heaven to be with him and live forever as he originally intended. We all meet God when we die and will have to pay the cost for breaking his law. Christ has already paid the cost – we just need to claim it. But please – don’t take my word for it, look it up, do some serious research, ask God to show himself to you. Now I won’t lie by omission here, there is a flip side to all of this: if we don’t live up to God’s perfect standard, and I know none of us can, then we must face God without being able to claim Jesus’ payment for our sins as our own, which means we must pay the cost ourselves – and I DESPRATELY don’t want that for ANY of you.

I would wager that, at this point, I know most of my readers personally, so firstly thanks for reading J but please consider what I am saying here – most of you know that I do take this stuff seriously and that while I am a little wacky, this holds true for my life. So if you do know me and want to talk, just call or text or e-mail me; and if you don’t but still wish to talk, just leave a comment. Failing ALL of those methods of communication, check out this link that will tell you more about what I believe.

I KNOW that I will see my grandparents again. Do you?

Feed pollution.

Feed pollution.

Over the past few weeks I have noticed a disturbing trend on my Facebook news feed. There has all of a sudden been a massive increase in people telling me how they are going to vote and trying to convince me to do the same. While I have no problem with people voting or even telling others how they voted, this ongoing ocular onslaught of red green and blue posts bothers me a great deal – is it not enough that we must endure road signs, radio and television advertisements but also we must now suffer through these ongoing advertisements on our normal everyday Facebook walls?

Now I understand that for a long time politics has tried to infiltrate our every aspect of our lives and that these representatives of the people require us to vote for them so that they may be employed and govern as they see fit so that our country continues to continue. But when did we suddenly become America and become so very polarised as a nation? When did we start to attack our friends for what they believe or say? And why are we doing this?

These times have made people bitter and spiteful, people attacking others openly in the firm belief that their candidate and party are superior to all and are the be all and end all – that their party will cure all of the country’s ills and make this a better place for all to live.

My question is this – how many people do we need in power? And how are they monitored once they get there? Some of you may not remember due to a lack of age but in my years I have seen parliamentarians sleep during debates, advertise underwear prices from their desks and generally act like children.

Is this what we want from our members of parliament? I have heard many people say that they are undecided this election – they have grown tired of all the posturing and pomposity and say that this election is becoming the lesser of who cares. 

So it seems that we have two major sides – Those who don’t care about the election, as it seems to them that whomever we get, things will remain largely the same – and those who are so passionate about their given party that they feel the need to flood our feeds with campaign promises and political ads.

This second group of people, from comments I have heard, are annoying and are beginning to alienate their friends. And for what? I know of no one who has been persuaded one way or the other by this Facebook war, but there are many who have been defriended and many more offended by this flood. My hope is that come Saturday much of this will disappear. I know that the signs and also that the major advertisements will cease but I don’t think that the electoral commission has made any rules around Facebook. 

So what do we do? Do we limit what people can post about with regards to elections? Do we make a law regarding what an individual not directly affiliated with a political party can say?

I guess what I’m asking is, what is a friendship worth and how has this new world of digital communication changed how we relate to others? I don’t remember people being so forward in preaching their opinion before Facebook, and I think that friendships were stronger because of this. But if we are to go digital in our political field, then why not go all the way? Allow us to vote online and have debates online, allowing the voters to see what we want to see and respond accordingly. Or perhaps the answer is an app that simply blocks all political posts.

I don’t really think we will get the law change – and anyway the law moves too slowly for the modern world. But perhaps there is another way to do this entire thing. Perhaps we should rejig the entire system; perhaps we should change the way we elect the new government; perhaps we should have a popularity poll so that we could change the government based on an individual’s popularity, a system that would allow constant change to keep up with a constantly changing country. Perhaps then we could finally have an end to the flood that has overwhelmed us and our news feeds –instead just a constant low hum in the background, just a note, a line in the news feed – Joe Blogs voted for Fred Dagg of the farm party.

Down Time

Down Time.

This tour with Excel has given me two things in equal proportion; very, very busy periods with barely room to eat, and times of abject boredom. It is in the second  of these two instances that I write this essay. I am also writing in a car, so if you‘re prone to motion sickness, you might not like to read any further.

We are currently traveling from Timaru to Oamaru in the South Island – a distance of about 80km. This means that for about an hour I will have very little to do other than to listen to my own playlist (currently Red) and look out the window. This got me to thinking: we all have down time in our lives, and we all need it, but what do we do with it? Many of us, I suspect, spend it watching TV, reading a book or listening to music - in other words, using our down time to watch, read or listen to what others have created. But what do we give back in return? There is an interesting little equation that says that if Bill Gates saw a $100 note blowing across his path, it would not be worth his time to stop and pick it up. This means that  his time is so valuable that it benefits him more to do what he wants to do rather than to do what just about anyone else in the world would do – stop and pick up the note.

This got me thinking – when we watch TV, listen to music, or read a book, we are literally spending our “free” time on purchasing that experience. In addition to that, we will also pay cash money for the experience. We go and buy a book – purchase an album or sit through advertisements to watch our TV program, and so we end up paying twice for the one experience given that our time is worth money as well as the money we spend on the original product.

Here in New Zealand, 90 percent of people live within 40km of a beach, an unlimited free resource to go and enjoy with friends, family or even to walk the dog by yourself. We take this resource so much for granted that few of us seldom even visit a beach during the winter. New Zealand also has some phenomenal natural views, of mountains, lakes, forests, rivers, cliffs, and combinations of all the above. Yet we seem to prefer to wait for the latest two dimensional work of fiction to come out from the United States so that we can sit and absorb every line of dialogue and the sales pitches right along with it – because how many people actually use the mute button for ads anymore?

Now I am aware that not everyone enjoys the views or tramping or swimming or surfing. I am one of those people. But even if you choose to ignore the natural beauty around you, the question remains: how do you choose to spend your time, and what is your time worth to you? Do you value your time at the rate that you are paid at work? Do you have a higher standard for it? For those of you lucky enough to have children, how much time do you spend with them? Is time with them worth more to you than that promotion at work that demands those extra hours? Come to that – how much do you value your job – most people will spend forty hours a week there – is it worth your time?

How much time do you spend with your significant other, or on the search for them? Do you tend to think of your time as infinite? I know I am guilty of this one – I spend time doing things that are ultimately without use to anyone other than lining somebody else’s pockets – time I will never be able to get back. And what do I get for it? Well, in short, wasted time.  It occurs to me that as I approach 10 years of being married to my lovely wife that we have very little to show for it in terms of the material. We now own (well, are paying off) a house, but apart from that we are in much the same position that we were in when we first got married, at least in terms of material goods. But I am pleased to say that we have grown closer to each other and to others around us. We now have friends all across the country whom we keep in regular contact with, and our relationships with our families are all good. How have we done this? We have spent a large amount of our down time investing into others. We have also moved around the country quite a bit, and I’m sure that helps – but we are also both happy, both with our relationship and with our jobs. Neither of us dreads going to work, and when we are not working we also enjoy going to see our friends.

Well, we are now coming to our destination, where I am about to spend time with people I have never met before, to invest my time with them. I hope that you have appreciated the time I have just given to you. It was about an hour of my life. I’ve changed albums now and have travelled the distance between the two towns. I could have done it without thought of others; I could have done it talking to my team whom I travel with; but I thought that you, dear reader, would enjoy some more of my thoughts during this time. So please accept this essay, my time, and my editors. What will do with your down time? I would also like to thank you for giving me some of your time and reading this essay right to the end.

Mascunism.

Hey all, Before I post this here essay (the one that will get me in trouble) I'd like to take a moment to thank Matthew Ferri who edits all my essays - after they are written i send them to him and he does a fantastic ob of making them readable so that you, dear reader, can understand what I'm saying. If you would like him to do any work for YOU contact him through his Facebook pageThanks Matt :D
Rowan
(by the way - he didn't edit this bit - can you tell?)

Mascunism.

Where have all the good men gone and where are all the gods? Where's the streetwise Hercules to fight the rising odds?

You might have recognised the lyrics from I Need a Hero by Bonnie Tyler. But she raises a good question, where have all the good men gone? I consider myself to be an OK man and I hope my wife considers me the same, but the question remains, and I suppose we should first define what a good man is.

I think that this would largely depend on who you ask. Everyone is going to have their own opinion on this, but I’m going to try and forge a reasonable path and you, dear reader, can feel free to agree, disagree or comment as you see fit, but I’m going to go ahead and write this anyway.

I think that the initial roots of the good man existed somewhere around the 1930s. The good man is a gentleman; he opens doors for women and works hard for a living. He is able to fix his own car and he mows his lawns. The good man lends a hand when he is able and helps his friend to move house.

The good man is a little sexist – not because he has a dislike of women but because on some level, I think, most women, however independent, like to be a little spoiled. They like to have the doors opened and chairs pulled out. They like to be told that they are beautiful on average days and that their perfume smells nice when they aren’t wearing any. Problem is that a well-adjusted man – one who treats women as a pure equal, doesn’t do these things.

Feminism has done many great and wonderful things for women. But what came before has had an unintended side effect; some men, having been told that women are equal for many years – some for as long as they have lived, have accepted this as gospel and, shockingly, have started treating women as equals. Not opening doors, not pulling out chairs and not telling them that their hair smells nice. Why? Because they wouldn’t do it for another man.

Men have allowed women to do the jobs that they want to do, to make the laws, to become doctors and to leave the men at home with the kids (when they stick around for more than the announcement of the pregnancy). But in all of this, I think that both men and women have lost something. There was a time - and not so long ago at that - that an announcement of pregnancy spurred a question – not of whether to keep the child but rather one of marriage. Now I don’t deny that contraception in its more modern forms has also had an effect. Not only on the previous situation but also on the inherent goodness that we men seem to have lost. We no longer stick around in relationships, no longer care about the women whom we impregnate, and some are not only no longer good fathers but not fathers at all.

I don’t think that there is any one cause for this sudden lack of good men, but it does seem as though it was inevitable. It is also measurable, I think, but in a strange way – and for this I return to songs – specifically songs of the time. There is an interesting, and not at all scientific, correlation between men’s treatment of women and themselves, and the music of the time. Such a link can be found here. Watch as the years tick by and the language gets worse and worse and the way people are referred to also gets worse and worse.

Men have often referred to themselves and their male friends in friendly but derogatory terms, but have referred to women with some respect, and other wives, mothers, sisters and daughters with more.  I can’t speak for women on this, but when men start treating women as equals, well, to put it quite simply, they get what they ask for. I don’t think the majority of women are ready for that.

It’s the little things that I think will now separate the good man here, but I think that we have to change our attitudes in order to find him again. There are, I think, some jobs that women are unable to do, and while I think that women should be able to choose any job they wish to do, in my industry I have seen only one woman working fulltime. How many women house movers have you seen, or, for that matter, road workers, builders or plumbers? In the same way that men still dominate these jobs (and for a reason), there are some things that men should not do – for very similar reasons.

So, to answer the initial question – the good men have been killed off by society, feminism, medical “advancements” and other reasons too numerous to mention. What can we do to get them back?

I say that we may need another revolution – we’ve had feminism – now perhaps it’s time for the men to stand up for their rights and privileges – to be able to open the door for women without being called a sexist pig, to compliment a woman without being accused of sexual harassment, to counter those parts of feminism that went too far.

Bring on Mascunism

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The Human Condition

The Human Condition.

It has long been the dream – and oftentimes still is – that one would be able to fly From the Greek poets and Icarus to Leonardo da Vinci and his helicopters and fixed wing flight: we have dreamed of soaring like birds – of leaping from rooftops and tops of cliffs to feel the wind in our hair as does Superman, Batman or Storm, of feeling the wind between our knees and that realisation that we are indeed free.

That’s not the only thing we have dreamed of – of being able to breathe underwater, of being able to see through walls, of telepathy and teleportation. As humans we dream of many strange and wondrous things, everyone has the same dream and everyone’s dream is different – we dream of what we see in nature; we dream of what we see portrayed in movies, books or stories told to us by others; we dream of the one to have fun with and the one to grow old with – we dream of the perfect job, the beautiful house and that car.

But there is a problem. We are human, we continue to dream, but we never get to that perfect place, even if we do get what we believe we want. Take for example that pipe dream to fly – we have, after a fashion, achieved that dream – we mastered flight – or, at least, we built something that allowed us to fly. But what if we did gain the ability to fly? What if we all grew wings overnight? Well, for a start, the fashion designers would have a field day – so would the biologists – but the real question is what we as a race would do.

Sure, I think some fun would be had – some new laws written, some mid-air collisions and mid-air other things, but in 50 years when things have settled down, what would we do?

I think that we, as a race, would become accustomed, then bored, and then we would come back full circle; we would return to our current state – we would let our wings sit, we would cease to use them, and they would become a bore. You would start to see people forming flying clubs – you could go out for a morning fly with a small group of friends, and those who didn’t wish to fly at full pace could perhaps join hover groups and become the joggers of the skyways.

And herein lies the problem – we are seldom sited as humans. We always want that next thing, we always want something more. If we could breathe underwater, we would get bored of that, too. The same applies for telepathy – would we really want to hear everyone else’s thoughts?  Rather, would we want our own thoughts to be heard? And wouldn’t seeing through walls get kind of old – especially if others could see us getting changed, and while personally I think teleportation have a more lasting appeal, I’m sure that even it, given time, would get old – and though there would be fewer kidnappings, taxis and bus drivers would be out of business.

So, what do we do about this? At a time when technology is over-running us and people are doing less yet achieving more, when our science fiction is only valid for a year or two at most because the fiction has become fact, what yet remains?. Take Minority report or Star Trek (the original series); what separates us from them? Minority report? Nothing – all the tech exists in different forms – Star Trek? Warp drive and transporters… and we are working on transporters…

What, then, do we do? Do we continue to dream? What dreams may come? What do we do when the dreaming’s done? What do we dream when the dark days come? But I suppose that the real question of all this is, what is the point? What are we really looking for? What drives us?

There have been several attempts in the past to solve this problem – after a fashion, it has been tried by many individuals, governments, and religious organisations. Hitler tired it with the thousand year Rich; Mao tried it with communism; Julius Ceaser tried it with the Roman Empire; and arguably many of the popes have tried it. But what have You done about it? What have you done to help man be fulfilled and realise potential? Perhaps a better question is, are you complete? Do you still have dreams? Are they being realised? Will you have the same dreams in five years’ time or will they have been dealt to.  In short, what are your dreams worth? Are they bettering you as a person or are they just temporary things that once realised will, like wings, get boring and old. What is your Ultimate purpose? What is it that makes your life worth living?