Recently in Profound Category
One Good Thing Every Day | Blood-Cancer.com
Some great self-care advice for anyone, but particularly those dealing with long-term health challenges, by Connie Connely, who was one of my mom's colleagues at Catoosa Elementary and her dear friend: Write down one good thing that happened every day. Set small goals and plan for activities to look forward to. Reach out to a friend. List things that are bothering you. Be alert to decision fatigue. Drink water and eat healthy meals. Get enough sleep.
You're Morally Obligated to Do Remarkable Things - Dr Jordan B Peterson | Facebook
"You're Morally Obligated to Do Remarkable Things. Why?
"Well, partly because life is so difficult and challenging that unless you give it everything you have, the chances are very high that it will embitter you. And then you'll be a force for darkness. That's not good. Also, the fact that life is short and can be brutal can terrify you into hiding. But you can flip that on its head and understand that since you're all in, you might as well take the adventurous risks. That's a very good thing to understand.
"What is also useful to understand is that there isn't anything more adventurous than the truth. This is something that took me a long time to figure out. You can craft your words to get what you want.
"If you're attempting to say what you believe to be true and attempting to act in the manner that you think is most appropriate, that's genuinely you. If you're trying to live in the truth, you have the force of reality behind you, and that seems like a good deal. You have the reality and the adventure.
"So, why is that a moral obligation? Well, if you hide and you don't let what's inside of you out--and you don't bring into the world what you could bring--you become cynical and bitter. Not only will you not add to the world what you could add, but you'll start being jealous of people who are competent and doing well and work to destroy them.
"That's the pathway to hell."
There Is No Indispensable Man | The Art of Manliness
"...when Ike returned to Normandy for the 20th anniversary of D-Day and was asked to give a speech at a dinner commemorating the invasion, rather than use the occasion to wax poetic about his role in executing one of the most monumental military operations in history, this man of singular eminence instead used the opportunity to read -- 'The Indispensable Man.'...
"As Eisenhower replied to a reporter who asked whether the prevailing 'view that you are indispensable to a party victory' would influence Ike's decision to run for a second term as president: 'Did you ever think of what a fate civilization would suffer if there were such a thing as an indispensable man? When he went the way of all the flesh, what would happen? It would be a calamity, wouldn't it? I don't think we need to fear that.'"
Principles, Linear Existence, and Deep Space Nine
Some deep thoughts from Juliette Ochieng (aka Baldilocks) on the Star Trek: Deep Space Nine pilot: "And it demonstrates something essential about the relationship between inner-core beliefs/principles and the fallen nature of humanity: temporarily falling away from the former doesn't make them any less true or correct ... and doesn't make them any less yours. And the great part about principles which are solid and true is that returning to them will help you dig yourself out of the ditch into which life has deposited you."
Punishment in Search of a Crime - The European Conservative
Theodore Dalrymple: "One of the perplexing characteristics of modern intellectual life--or so, at least, it seems to me--is the inordinate amount of time and energy one must expend on arguing against the most obvious rubbish. One is continually faced by a dilemma: either to waste time and energy on argument, or to let the rubbish spread its baleful influence. Worse still, the doubt persists that, however conclusive one's arguments, they will have no practical effect and the ship of state will continue on its course towards the rocks. It is tempting to retreat into a private world and cultivate one's garden."
Jordan Peterson returns » MercatorNet
"Helping people bridge the gap between what they profoundly intuit but cannot articulate seems to be a reasonable and valuable function for a public intellectual." -- Jordan B. Peterson. (This was the genius of Rush Limbaugh and the heart of his success.)
'It's a Superpower': How Walking Makes Us Healthier, Happier and Brainier
"'Our sensory systems work at their best when they're moving about the world,' says [Neuroscientist Shane] O'Mara. He cites a 2018 study that tracked participants' activity levels and personality traits over 20 years, and found that those who moved the least showed malign personality changes, scoring lower in the positive traits: openness, extraversion and agreeableness. There is substantial data showing that walkers have lower rates of depression, too. And we know, says O'Mara, 'from the scientific literature, that getting people to engage in physical activity before they engage in a creative act is very powerful. My notion - and we need to test this - is that the activation that occurs across the whole of the brain during problem-solving becomes much greater almost as an accident of walking demanding lots of neural resources.'
"O'Mara's enthusiasm for walking ties in with both of his main interests as a professor of experimental brain research: stress, depression and anxiety; and learning, memory and cognition. 'It turns out that the brain systems that support learning, memory and cognition are the same ones that are very badly affected by stress and depression,' he says. 'And by a quirk of evolution, these brain systems also support functions such as cognitive mapping,' by which he means our internal GPS system. But these aren't the only overlaps between movement and mental and cognitive health that neuroscience has identified."
BillHendricks.net: Is It a Calling Or a Whim?
Bill Hendricks of the Giftedness Center in Dallas lists and elaborates on five signs a path you're considering may be your calling:
"It fits your giftedness. ... You feel drawn to it again and again over time. ... It meets with encouragement and confirmation from those who know you well and who have your best interests at heart. ... You conclude you cannot do otherwise. ... You've made it a regular item in your prayers and you have received either (a) a strong indication from God that you should pursue it, and/or (b) no good indication that you should not pursue it. ... "
He also lists seven signs that it likely is more of a whim than a calling:
"Your envisioned future keeps changing. ... It's a recent idea and you have not given it much serious thought over time. ... You have not explored what it really entails, what it would really cost, and what you would really have to do to to make it happen. ... It involves grandiosity. ... It requires strengths and motivations you simply don't have. ... Those who know you well do not affirm it. ... It's a difficult path for which you are neither talented nor motivated. ..."
The Giftedness Center offers an online step-by-step guide to discovering your giftedness. I have some more links on giftedness and vocation on a blog entry from 2008.
The Sorry State of Evangelical Rhetoric - Sovereign Nations
Stephen Wolfe writes:
"The social justice talk in evangelicalism is remarkable for the absence of systematic thinking on the pertinent questions of justice. One rarely encounters precise and detailed theories of justice and careful applications.... The actual moral conclusion or determination precedes the moral principle. So their reasoning has a two-step sequence:
"1) Have a negative, moral reaction to something, a reaction that one is socialized to perform (perhaps on social media) upon encountering some event.
"2) Christianize the moral impression by confidently stating an extremely broad principle or statement from the Bible ('love your neighbor') or some other Christian-like statement without any attempt to make distinctions or qualifications or systematize or consider competing goods....
"...it is irrelevant that a consistent application of the principle would lead to all sorts of absurd outcomes, policies, actions, etc. For example, if one were to react to a restrictive immigration policy by affirming, without any distinctions or nuance, "the universal dignity of all people" or by saying that Christians ought to "love your neighbor," then how can any immigration restriction or even the illegality of border crossing stand up to the demands of Christian morality? But the logical consequences of the supplied principle are irrelevant, because it doesn't function in their reasoning as the determinate of their moral conclusions....
"...It is effective and expedient rhetoric, but wholly unprincipled. Even worse, it forms habits of thinking among evangelicals that are bad for them. Indeed, it is an abuse of the mind. The social justice evangelicals use and enforce rhetoric that harms people...."
"The two-step process of evangelical moral reasoning does very little, and perhaps nothing, that enables evangelicals to resist the world's moral influence. They will shift and progress with the moral doctrines of the world; and the superstructure of christianizing devices, which are extremely broad in the possibilities of their application, will always fulfill its purpose, regardless of the impression--it will always christianize and elevate moral conclusions into Christian morality. "
Pastor Steven Wedgeworth offers a pithy summary, a pattern I've noticed in articles that seem aimed at dislodging Christians from their support for conservative politicians:
"1) Decry a position that no one holds, 2) Affirm a position everyone supports, 3) Declare that this proves a different, more contentious point."
The Importance of 'No-Men' - Daily Signal - Cal Thomas
Cal Thomas writes of a meeting with disgraced televangelist Jim Bakker after Bakker's release from prison:
"'When did you start to go wrong?' I asked Bakker.
"His answer was instructive: 'When I began to surround myself with people who told me only what I wanted to hear.'...
"The key to great leadership is to not overly regard yourself, to understand you don't know everything, realize that, like everyone else, you are flawed and can make bad judgments, and to surround yourself with people who think well enough of you to tell you the truth from their perspective, even when it disagrees with yours.
"As long as the objective is to help you succeed with your agenda, such advice can be valuable and even humbling, humility being one of humanity's better characteristics and a grace that appears in short supply in Washington."
