Over the past year or two I have thought about a subject that has penetrated deeper into my life: personal apostasy. I've had family members leave the church, but that was a while ago. In the past few years I've had several roommates leave the church, some declare they were homosexual, etc. I've really thought long and hard about why people leave the church. That is not exactly why I'm writing here today.
Sometimes when people leave the church they become antagonistic towards it and religion in general. Back when I checked Facebook more regularly I was always disappointed in friends posting huge essays (along with daily smaller comments) about religion being stupid or some intellectual reasoning against religion. Also many essays on homosexuality, anti-mormon propaganda (kinderhook plates, temple ceremonies, etc.) and other things.
It was as if the social network was not only good for keeping in contact with friends, but spreading beliefs be they true or untrue. I have often thought to combat this.
I was religion writer for the newspaper at BYU and I wrote for LDS Living. I've come into contact with uber amounts of anti-mormon propaganda, interviewed religion specialists from across the country. I think it could be a good thing for me to do, given a certain amount of dedication.
Most recently I heard of a couple I knew very well from high school. I even had a crush on the girl for a while. I thought these individuals were spectacular and that together they were amazing. They have now left the church and are somewhat anti-religion. They have made me think more about this project. I often thought about doing it alone, but decided I'd throw it on here for thoughts.
What if we started an essay blog or essay collection on facebook. We could call it Writers for Religion or something. If we had more time, we could do a podcast. Basically, this would be like a religion column in the paper, like the ones Orson Scott Card does for Deseret News. It would be about religious topics that we feel are pertinent to our time. One major one I would want to do is the logic of God. If our faith is to be tested, would God give us a 100% fool-proof scientifically proven test? Would there be questions about ceremonies, archaeology, the Book of Abraham? I've written some about this because I had a roommate who loved logic, but couldn't see this simple logic for why we have unanswered questions about our church.
Any thoughts on the subject? It could be another project we toss in the trash can, but I might still do it alone....sometime in the future. I see the great value of it and what it could become. It would just take some effort.
Sunday, December 4, 2011
Tuesday, October 25, 2011
Thursday, October 6, 2011
A Man
Like a good many historical figures who've come and gone on this Earth, I think Steve Jobs gets a good deal more reverence than he actually deserves from people who don't even know him. However, he's a person I've thought about a lot (not just in the last two days), and I think I'd like to distill some of those thoughts here. I hope you don't mind.
I have to admit that the sudden passing of Steve Jobs had more of an effect on me than I expected it would. While I have been what might be called an Apple Fanboy for a very long time now, I've really only owned about four Apple devices in my lifetime: my current MacBook Pro, the PowerMac G5 that Gemini bought, a 1st gen iPod Touch (2nd-hand), and an Apple //c I picked up at DI a few years back so I could remember the good ol' days. I've never met the guy, only seen him in video clips from the heady beginning days of the personal computer industry and at the more recent product launches. We have known for a while that he was ill, that he was going to die sooner than later, but even so, I was surprised at how sad I was to think that he'd actually gone.
Steve Jobs was an influential person. That much can not be argued. I take issue with the idea that he singlehandedly "invented" the iPad, iPod, or the iPhone. Even the original Macintosh was not purely his brainchild. However, it's easy to imagine a world without Steve as a world without any of those things. His broader influence is more difficult to measure. Many innovations have been attributed (sometimes accurately) to him: the Graphical User Interface. Good computer typography. The Personal Computer itself, as a really personal, usable thing. What would things have been like without his influence? If he hadn't built the NeXT computer, would Tim Berners-Lee have had a platform on which to invent HyperText and the World Wide Web? What would the Internet look like today if that hadn't happened when it did? Would the good guys have defeated the aliens in Independence Day if Dave didn't have a PowerBook? It is my guess that most of this stuff would have happened anyway, eventually. Progress is not one man. When people have needs, they solve them. Stuff gets done. People like Steve Jobs, though, are somehow ahead of the game. They know what we're going to need before we get there. They accelerate progress. That makes it sound like only really good marketing, which Apple certainly had nailed, but real innovation is more than convincing us we need to drink more soda and get fat. You can't argue that the stuff that came out of Apple didn't change the way we live, and not in a way that makes us fatter.
I think Steve Jobs had a different kind of influence on me though. I appreciate the ubiquity of smart phones, and the freedom normal people have to make movies at home. These are wonders of technology, but the person who was Steve Jobs was so much more than a great technological thinker, and I've spent a lot of time thinking about how the man's mind worked. This was a guy who got stuff done. If his interest had been transportation instead of personal computing, the kinds of vehicles we'd be using now won't be thought of for another 20 years. He seemed to transform the reality around him to fit what he thought it should be. The Reality Distortion Field actually worked in reality -- your reality. I don't think there is a name for that quality. Some have called it charisma, but I think it goes way beyond that. Maybe manic charisma or something. However you slice it, Steve Jobs was effective, in a way that I dream about being. He had a complicated personality, and I can't say that much of what he did personally I would find emulable. His ability to pull vision into reality, though, will always be inspiring.
Really influential people are all over in history. We read about them in books. They invented light bulbs. They advanced science and thought. They sat under apple trees. The things they did influenced the way we live our lives today. Usually, though, such figures of genius are just stories in books. They aren't even real. They may be written in history, their feats cataloged in textbooks, but how does that make them any more tangible than figures of Greek Mythos? Characters like this are not mere humans. Their feats are unattainable because they are made of different stuff than we are. They are immortal.
Jobs has already been compared to a number of these figures, and in some ways rightly so. What's unique about him, in my frame of reference, is that he was alive last week. I shared 27 solar revolutions with this creative genius, and am among the most immediate recipients of his passion and work. He wasn't in my textbooks growing up, he was on the news. I watched the things he did change the world radically before my eyes. I remember a time before Pixar, and have him, in part, to thank for some of the best movies I think have ever been made. It's a silly thing to say out loud, but Steve Jobs was mortal. Putting his accomplishments next to Newton and Galileo and Edison and the others reminds me that they were mortal too, and that is inspiring to me.
This is probably the question I most commonly ask myself when thinking about Apple and Jobs: what can I learn from him about being that effective? Is there an essence of "genius" in there somewhere that can be distilled and drank? The answer changes from time to time, and mostly revolves around hard work, but I'm grateful to have such historical figures to remind me that it's possible. Jobs is probably even more inspiring to me because he is so current.
It's no good to think of what might have been had he lived another 10 years, and to do so would be completely out of character with his philosophy of living. Still, it's sad to see him go so young, and a little depressing to think that he'll never again walk out on stage in his blue jeans to take forever to make a dramatic product announcement.
But, there are other geniuses out there. More people who will change the game in some way or another. More figures to be written into the history books. I imagine that somebody else will captivate our imagination and strike involuntary awe in our hearts. It won't do, though, so sit around and see who they are and what they come up with. They're not.
Steve Jobs was bold. He was inventive, influential, fearless, and effective. He was a man.
And so am I.
May he be remembered for the good he brought to the world, and in a way that inspires us to be so passionate about what we love. May his legacy for us be that we too can be among the crazy ones.
I have to admit that the sudden passing of Steve Jobs had more of an effect on me than I expected it would. While I have been what might be called an Apple Fanboy for a very long time now, I've really only owned about four Apple devices in my lifetime: my current MacBook Pro, the PowerMac G5 that Gemini bought, a 1st gen iPod Touch (2nd-hand), and an Apple //c I picked up at DI a few years back so I could remember the good ol' days. I've never met the guy, only seen him in video clips from the heady beginning days of the personal computer industry and at the more recent product launches. We have known for a while that he was ill, that he was going to die sooner than later, but even so, I was surprised at how sad I was to think that he'd actually gone.
Steve Jobs was an influential person. That much can not be argued. I take issue with the idea that he singlehandedly "invented" the iPad, iPod, or the iPhone. Even the original Macintosh was not purely his brainchild. However, it's easy to imagine a world without Steve as a world without any of those things. His broader influence is more difficult to measure. Many innovations have been attributed (sometimes accurately) to him: the Graphical User Interface. Good computer typography. The Personal Computer itself, as a really personal, usable thing. What would things have been like without his influence? If he hadn't built the NeXT computer, would Tim Berners-Lee have had a platform on which to invent HyperText and the World Wide Web? What would the Internet look like today if that hadn't happened when it did? Would the good guys have defeated the aliens in Independence Day if Dave didn't have a PowerBook? It is my guess that most of this stuff would have happened anyway, eventually. Progress is not one man. When people have needs, they solve them. Stuff gets done. People like Steve Jobs, though, are somehow ahead of the game. They know what we're going to need before we get there. They accelerate progress. That makes it sound like only really good marketing, which Apple certainly had nailed, but real innovation is more than convincing us we need to drink more soda and get fat. You can't argue that the stuff that came out of Apple didn't change the way we live, and not in a way that makes us fatter.
I think Steve Jobs had a different kind of influence on me though. I appreciate the ubiquity of smart phones, and the freedom normal people have to make movies at home. These are wonders of technology, but the person who was Steve Jobs was so much more than a great technological thinker, and I've spent a lot of time thinking about how the man's mind worked. This was a guy who got stuff done. If his interest had been transportation instead of personal computing, the kinds of vehicles we'd be using now won't be thought of for another 20 years. He seemed to transform the reality around him to fit what he thought it should be. The Reality Distortion Field actually worked in reality -- your reality. I don't think there is a name for that quality. Some have called it charisma, but I think it goes way beyond that. Maybe manic charisma or something. However you slice it, Steve Jobs was effective, in a way that I dream about being. He had a complicated personality, and I can't say that much of what he did personally I would find emulable. His ability to pull vision into reality, though, will always be inspiring.
Really influential people are all over in history. We read about them in books. They invented light bulbs. They advanced science and thought. They sat under apple trees. The things they did influenced the way we live our lives today. Usually, though, such figures of genius are just stories in books. They aren't even real. They may be written in history, their feats cataloged in textbooks, but how does that make them any more tangible than figures of Greek Mythos? Characters like this are not mere humans. Their feats are unattainable because they are made of different stuff than we are. They are immortal.
Jobs has already been compared to a number of these figures, and in some ways rightly so. What's unique about him, in my frame of reference, is that he was alive last week. I shared 27 solar revolutions with this creative genius, and am among the most immediate recipients of his passion and work. He wasn't in my textbooks growing up, he was on the news. I watched the things he did change the world radically before my eyes. I remember a time before Pixar, and have him, in part, to thank for some of the best movies I think have ever been made. It's a silly thing to say out loud, but Steve Jobs was mortal. Putting his accomplishments next to Newton and Galileo and Edison and the others reminds me that they were mortal too, and that is inspiring to me.
This is probably the question I most commonly ask myself when thinking about Apple and Jobs: what can I learn from him about being that effective? Is there an essence of "genius" in there somewhere that can be distilled and drank? The answer changes from time to time, and mostly revolves around hard work, but I'm grateful to have such historical figures to remind me that it's possible. Jobs is probably even more inspiring to me because he is so current.
It's no good to think of what might have been had he lived another 10 years, and to do so would be completely out of character with his philosophy of living. Still, it's sad to see him go so young, and a little depressing to think that he'll never again walk out on stage in his blue jeans to take forever to make a dramatic product announcement.
But, there are other geniuses out there. More people who will change the game in some way or another. More figures to be written into the history books. I imagine that somebody else will captivate our imagination and strike involuntary awe in our hearts. It won't do, though, so sit around and see who they are and what they come up with. They're not.
Steve Jobs was bold. He was inventive, influential, fearless, and effective. He was a man.
And so am I.
May he be remembered for the good he brought to the world, and in a way that inspires us to be so passionate about what we love. May his legacy for us be that we too can be among the crazy ones.
Wednesday, September 28, 2011
I touched beauty today
The title says it all. I touched it. I got to hold it and use it. What am I talking about? The Wacom
Cintiq 21 UX. Creativity flowed through my fingers and into photoshop. No keyboard, no mouse. Just me, the pen, and the screen. Heaven felt closer.
The end.
Cintiq 21 UX. Creativity flowed through my fingers and into photoshop. No keyboard, no mouse. Just me, the pen, and the screen. Heaven felt closer.
The end.
Friday, September 2, 2011
Calling All Nerds for Help!!
Setting aside all silly semantic conversations about faith, I'd like to get your views and input on a very serious subject. (P.S. I've not yet read the extra comments on the faith discussion)
Nude models. I'll just put it out there.
A free class has them and a class I may be required to take has them. Yes, I may be a mature adult, but I don't want to necessarily go around drawing naked women as a married man. Don't want to remember those images, even as mature as I may be.
Lots of people think it's the only way to learn to draw the figure. The professor who is really sticking to that point also said to be weary of absolutes. If that is the only way, that's an absolute.
Pros
Do it and get a degree (which I don't necessarily need)
Don't take those classes, work harder with real, clothed people (who may not pose) and not get the degree. This might not matter because my ultimate goal is an MFA and I only need so many upper division courses of a BFA to apply and get in. Hopefully. Portfolio would be the largest criteria for acceptance. At BYU, where I would love to attend again, has life drawing, but guess what? They are more clothed. You still get a pretty good view of the proportions, just not the nether regions.
It's not that I'm trying to be prudish or "holier than thou." I just kind of don't want to have to deal with that.
What are your thoughts? What does your wife say? How would she feel if you had to draw a bunch of naked women? They may be old, ugly or they may not be. Oh, and I'm not so concerned about the male figures. But maybe a married woman would be.
Thanks ahead of time. I know we may differ on semantics, dreams, and almost everything, but I k now we can have good, intellectual, supportive conversations.
Nude models. I'll just put it out there.
A free class has them and a class I may be required to take has them. Yes, I may be a mature adult, but I don't want to necessarily go around drawing naked women as a married man. Don't want to remember those images, even as mature as I may be.
Lots of people think it's the only way to learn to draw the figure. The professor who is really sticking to that point also said to be weary of absolutes. If that is the only way, that's an absolute.
Pros
- I have a model who poses for a long time
- It is live. Photos are worse for drawing
- Drawing enhances the memory of something and so I have a memory of naked woman (other than my wife) in my brain
- Awkwardness
- I'll never show those pictures to anyone
Do it and get a degree (which I don't necessarily need)
Don't take those classes, work harder with real, clothed people (who may not pose) and not get the degree. This might not matter because my ultimate goal is an MFA and I only need so many upper division courses of a BFA to apply and get in. Hopefully. Portfolio would be the largest criteria for acceptance. At BYU, where I would love to attend again, has life drawing, but guess what? They are more clothed. You still get a pretty good view of the proportions, just not the nether regions.
It's not that I'm trying to be prudish or "holier than thou." I just kind of don't want to have to deal with that.
What are your thoughts? What does your wife say? How would she feel if you had to draw a bunch of naked women? They may be old, ugly or they may not be. Oh, and I'm not so concerned about the male figures. But maybe a married woman would be.
Thanks ahead of time. I know we may differ on semantics, dreams, and almost everything, but I k now we can have good, intellectual, supportive conversations.
Wednesday, August 31, 2011
The Weekend
I have it on good authority that Nate et al will be down this way this weekend. It has been suggested we might do something fun together. Like eat.
If that is to be, I'm available Saturday late afternoon (anybody interested in an early-morning mountain hike behind sheep is invited), and we might be able to work something Monday.
What'c'all think? Can one use two apostrophes in a single word?
If that is to be, I'm available Saturday late afternoon (anybody interested in an early-morning mountain hike behind sheep is invited), and we might be able to work something Monday.
What'c'all think? Can one use two apostrophes in a single word?
Monday, August 29, 2011
Erised, Vision, Faith, and Identity
Also published in the U.K under the title “The Long-windedness of Ked”
I also engage the long-ness alert!
vision |ˈvi zh ən| noun
1 the faculty or state of being able to see
• the ability to think about or plan the future with imagination or wisdom
• a mental image of what the future will or could be like
faith |fāθ| noun
1 complete trust or confidence in someone or something
Elder Oaks, on visiting our mission answered a missionary's question on faith by saying that it is trust, just like above, so I like this definition.
I tried to simply everything you said by making an equation. So, if I summarize correctly, your equation would be
vision + faith = success
Now, we should probably clarify each section of the equation.
Vision is the ability to plan or imagine what the future will be or could be. In an address to Harvard, J.K. Rowling talked about imagination. She didn't speak about it terms of creating whimsical fantasies. She worked for a place like Amnesty International where refugees came in. She said that imagination was important because it allowed people to hope for a better world. It allowed Britains to think of a better world for refugees and it allowed the refugees to dream of a better life than war, famine, and political turmoil. Change came after imagination and I must say that with that imagination came hope.
Yes, I believe vision is important. “Where there is no vision, the people perish (Proverbs 29:18).” Sure this may be centrally about revelation, but I think there is a correlation. If you have no vision, your goals aren't as clear as they could be and really you aren't going anywhere. Like Alice. If you don't know where you want to go, it really doesn't matter where you go. Stephen R. Covey says start with the end in mind.
So, vision incorporates imagination and hope to some extent. Well, I think most of us try to imagine good things.
Now faith. When I first read the Lectures on Faith I was surprised that Joseph Smith used such a basic example of a someone planting seeds and having faith that they would grow. So, as I have thought for a long time there are two kinds of faith. Sort of. The first is trusting that as we do what is asked of us then we will be blessed and eventually we will be saved and exalted. The other faith is not necessarily more secular but less tied to eternal salvation. It is believing that somehow we can accomplish something. However, I still do not think that this version wholly separates from religion. It is a principle of power in the eternities to believe in something that is not yet or something that can be. So, while the thing being undertaken is not essential to our salvation, it requires an element of faith to actually complete it. Perhaps it is faith that, in our status of being children of God and with the help of the Atonement to overcome our weakness, we can accomplish anything we really need to and want to (if it's righteous). I don't know. But I do know that many non-religious people know that faith is important. Look at psychology. They teach people to change their thinking and believe that things are going to happen. This is true for addiction, depression, etc. If you believe you are going to lapse again then suddenly WHAM! It happens. However, it is when they believe a change is coming that actual things start to happen. A change in the brain to have a more faithful attitude and eventually even alters brain chemistry. Whoa. Heavenly Father hardwired our brains to use faith. So, I guess there is one faith to salvation and the other is to accomplish things.
In 1 Nephi 5:5 Lehi says”But behold, I have obtained a land of promise, in the which things I do rejoice.” Lehi has already claimed the promised land before he's gotten there! What great faith! So, maybe we should say “What a great radio show we did!” Also a thought! Perhaps he also had vision of it. Perhaps he simply had great faith and said “let's go!”
But we know that faith needs work. Without it it's...finito, kicked the bucket, gone to the great ice cream shop in the sky, pushing daisies, do not pass go and do not collect $200, dead as a doornail (where did that come from anyway?). Does finito work? It just sounds cool. So, Lehi got a promised land and then packed up his gear to head towards it.
So is this modified correctly? vision + faith + works = success
But it seems like something is missing. These things could lead us to success. But what about the motivation part? You said yourself that the rewards for a radio show should motivate you enough. Should the rewards alone produce the faith necessary?
My brother once worked for a company that built amusement park rides. A customer company asked them to build a roller coaster with a “whisper quiet” ascension device. Maybe you've been on one of those roller coasters where you ascend and it goes CLACK! CLACK! CLACK! Well, my brother's company signed the contract saying they'd build that. Hmmm....Nobody had such a thing. The technology hadn't been invented yet. However, they knew they could figure it out. Simple faith that it could be done. Why not? Their incentive was a lucrative deal. Was that what produced their faith? Or encouraged their faith? Or was it the fact that they knew the power of invention and that was their faith while the money was the motivation? Something to think about.
Sometimes motivation comes from what we want. What would you see in the Mirror of Erised from Harry Potter? However, have there been things that I've thought I wanted and just didn't have what it took (motivation) to get them? Yes. Herein I've discovered something else that may come in to play. I shall give an example from my own life.
Numerous times in my life I have had the desire to write novels.I've had some great ideas. One idea caught me like fire and for months I couldn't stop thinking about it. I kept a little notebook and wrote some sixty pages of notes on ideas for the story. In about five months time how many pages had I written? None. I'd only done a few warm-up writing exercises.
Can I write? I'd like to think so. I've written for a newspaper, the Rollins Center for eBusiness, for an online blog, and for LDS Living Magazine. I had several teachers tell me I wrote well. I took several creative writing classes. There have been many times where I have thought to make a career out of writing.
However, I learned something pretty fascinating about myself. One time, when my parents came to visit me in Provo, I showed them lots of schoolwork I'd done and hobby work.. Did I show them any articles that I'd written? No. What did I show? I showed photos from my photojournalism class, costumes I'd made, sculptures, and videos I'd created. I realized I didn't care about the writing. I cared more about the visual stuff I'd made. I have a hard time getting up in the morning and writing. Yet, somehow I can get up and draw, sculpt, or photograph for hours if I want to. I don't feel it is something I simply like, but I feel it is part of who I am.
So, some of my motivation comes from desires that are also aligned properly with who I really am. I think it would be hard for someone who doesn't care about money to work in a money-centric industry. It would be hard for a shy person to become...president of the United States or a boisterous public speaker.
Can we change who we are? Yes and no. Who are we really? We're children of God and thereby have unlimited potential. Can't change that, but we can change things about ourselves and can change our natures to some extent. Could a shy person become the President? Yes. Could I write a book? Yes, and someday I still hope to. It's just not on my the top of my list of priorities. I have other things that I do better and other things I want to spend my time doing.
That's another thing. Priorities. Sometimes there are things I really want to do, but other priorities step in the way. Family. Earning money so we can say...eat. So that motivation may be stronger (as it sometimes should be).
So, what did I really try to say in all this? Currently my motivation for projects I'm working on and schooling come from my vision of what I can be, what I want life to be like in the future, who I really am inside and from priorities that I have right now.
Ooh! One more thought. Goals. Elder Ballard has a quote in Preach My Gospel and he says that if we don't learn goal setting we will miss out on our potential. This is another thing I think I need some work on. I could get more done if I set goals and worked for them. Sometimes we have good ideas, but we don't really set the goals necessary to provide a path to work on them. Ideas sound great by themselves, but they are like seeds that sit in the packets. Absolutely useless (except for to sit on the shelf and show that something is in stock at the store). Ideas that have turned into creations are the bomb diggity. Bridging the gap is what matters. It is the hardest part. That's why so many people never do it.
Vision + Faith + Works = success
Is there something missing? Is the radio show simply something that's not a priority? Is it something we think we want, but really isn't lined up with who we are? Or is one of the things in the equation missing? Do we not have the vision, faith, or works to back it up? Or is this equation even complete?
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