Finding Dragons to Slay

Sometimes I’ll start to get grumpy, and wonder where it came from. I get short with my family and generally irritable.

Eventually, I get out of the house (ideally out of the city or even state) to go do something, and realize I just needed a little adventure.

Working from home is great. But if I never go out into the world to fight giants and hunt and find treasure, it wears on me.

The challenge is to find a challenge. Ideally something real, not just manufactured for romance (e.g. a mud race). The real stuff is less glamorous, but if there’s at least some sense of necessity about it, it better scratches the itch.

This week’s dragon is navigating ParĂ­s for work meetings. I don’t care for the city or the tedium of the travel, but that’s all the more reason to be thankful. It’s something I can conquer and come home victorious, with the spoils of war, and find my home once again invigorating and not dulling.

Get out there and slay some beasts and get some scars.

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What You Did Right in Failure

Outcomes don’t perfectly align with inputs. You can have success while doing a lot of things wrong, and you can fail while doing a lot of things right.

You need to get the one big thing right to succeed, and get it wrong to fail, but everything else can be all over the place.

That’s why it’s important not to draw the wrong lessons. If every step taken by an eventually successful venture is retroactively treated like a good step, or every step taken by an eventually failed venture treated like a bad step, you’ll take the wrong lessons.

In a previous company, we got one big thing wrong. We were solving a problem millions of people felt only mildly, with a business model that needed them to feel it strongly. Hundreds felt it strongly, but our model couldn’t succeed with hundreds.

Slogging through the process for three years and trying to crack the code and figure out how to make it work took its toll. As it became clear what was wrong with the company, and that it couldn’t be fixed, the entire operation was tinted with the feeling of failure.

It stung so bad to fail that when I look back on things we did, they all give me a gloomy feeling. I associate all of them with failure. But in reality, many if not most of them were good moves.

We did a lot of things incredibly well. I’m starting to depersonalize now that more time has passed, and it’s enabled me to see lots of things I’d forgotten that we did. Things I can learn from and borrow for my current and future endeavors.

There are, laying among the junk heap of companies that got the one big thing wrong, myriad little things they got brilliantly right just sitting there, unseen and unused by others.

Like an incredible car with a bad engine, those other parts should be repurposed and combined with a good engine, not just ignored in the junkyard.

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Dreams Make Me Grateful

Sometimes I think dreams serve the purpose of making us grateful.

Dreams are certainly more mysterious and complex than just that. I have very little idea what their full purpose or meaning is, but I think at least part of it is to create a renewed perspective on waking life.

The other night I dreamt I had a missing tooth, and then in the dream pulled another tooth out with my bare hands for no reason. I suddenly realized what I’d done, and looked in the mirror to see two of my front teeth gone. I felt horror and disappointment. I didn’t want to smile.

Then I woke up.

I have never been more happy to have teeth.

For the last few days, every time I’ve been in front of the mirror and caught a glimpse of my teeth, a deep relief has come over me and I feel thankful for every one of those pearly whites.

I’ve experienced this in more dramatic ways too. Many dreams where I was on the verge of death before waking, or where I was robbed, or even lost a loved one. The experience of waking and realizing with deep gratitude I still have those things washes over me in a way I don’t think it could by mere thought experiment.

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When Companies Do Stupid Things

I keep seeing more disturbing and funny responses by various AI tools. They betray some kind of hypersensitive constraints programmed in to it, apparently by people who are terrified of it producing anything offensive to anyone. Which as a result, is offending lots of people.

While I, too, find these AI constraints odd and creepy, companies misread their markets and make strange decisions all the time. The solution is either for enough people stop patronizing them or criticize them until they better align to the market, or for people to create competitors to better serve other segments.

Criticism is fine and sometimes spurs broader conversations about implicit and explicit cultural values, but at the end of the day, companies ought to be able to make stupid things.

More dangerous than companies that make stupid things is the notion that companies should be treated as “public utilities”. AI bots, just like heads of lettuce or tennis shoes, are created by companies and given or sold to voluntary users. They don’t have to not be stupid. They don’t have to be reasonable at all.

We can point out the bizarre behavior of these bots, and it is of some benefit to do so, but the best solution is to build a better one.

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We Have No Idea What’s Happened Before

I was reading the new Fenton Wood book last night (I recommend all of his books) and he referred to kids in the ’80s playing war games, with one side dressed up as Nazi soldiers and the other Americans as, “Something you could never do today”.

Then this morning a friend shared a screenshot of someone asking one of the AI tools to generate a picture of a soldier from 1932 Germany, to which it replied ‘no’, and explained that would be too sensitive.

I have no particular interest in Nazi soldiers or militaries in general, but I am fascinated by the concept of suppressing history.

Of course it’s a myth that history has ever been or could ever be some sort of complete and objective picture in the first place. Most things are simply forgotten. I saw a Tweet just the other day where someone was genuinely asking how anyone possibly bought airline tickets before the internet. They had zero knowledge or even ability to guess how humans performed a common task just a few decades ago.

Other things are suppressed by the controlling regime in secret or subtle ways. A little exclusion here, a little shift of focus there. That’s the more common way history gets re-written. Things that have been excluded are denied altogether and called myths, or severely downplayed in importance.

But to just say straight up, “We all know that happened. We all know it was real. We all know many facts about it. But we are not ever going to speak of it or represent it as it was again” is a bit startling.

People like to compare these developments to 1984, but in that story, they would at least try to convince you that they’d ‘always been at war with Eastasia’ when the rewrites happened. It’s different to admit there was a time of peace, but to disallow anyone to talk about it or share artifacts about it.

No, it has not gone that far. One AI tool refusing to render a picture of a German soldier is not a ban on discussion. But the principle behind it – we cannot depict this part of history because it’s offensive – is so broad and sweeping nearly anything could be justified in that way. And it’s contradictory too. Can anyone bad be depicted? Why and under what conditions? When does a person or epoch get considered bad enough to not be depictable?

It’s easy to get near universal agreement that Nazis are bad. But what happens with cases that are not so widely agreed upon? Majority rule? (Didn’t a majority in Germany vote in the Nazis?) A tyranny of experts?

Granted, as far as I know this instance is a privately owned AI company, which as far as I’m concerned can do whatever they like. The ideal way for these matters to be dealt with is freely by myriad individuals and companies in whatever way each deems best, and where the profit and loss signals of the market create a distribution of many solutions for many markets.

I hope that’s how things unfold. I fear they won’t. Not so much because I fear governments will prohibit more and more historical discussion and depiction, more because I fear the eventual reaction to private companies doing it. At some point, people will get fed up and demand laws to prohibit the prohibition, or some strongman to redefine what can be excluded.

I guess it’s oddly reassuring to know history has never been presented in it’s entirety and can’t be. Best is to be aware of this fact and know that it’s always skewed.

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On Cussing

I cuss.

I grew up never cussing, though I heard plenty of cuss words. My grandfather was like the dad in A Christmas Story. He would weave them together like an endless tapestry. It was quite a work of art. I found it amusing, not offensive.

Movies I watched and people I worked or played sports with cussed. It never bothered me, but I also did not ever do it myself. It just seemed uneccessary.

Then, sometime in my early twenties, it started to seem necessary. Some forms of anger and intensity seemed to demand it. Some humorous moments were perfected by it. Plus, it was kind of fun and had a nice shock value for me, a Christian guy who never cussed, to drop a well-time naughty word.

I’ve never really had a theological view on cussing. Actual cursing – swearing by gods or calling on spiritual powers to harm people – seems dark and dangerous. But using crass words about bodily functions has always seemed to me not bad in itself, just contextually fraught for its ability to offend. An “All things are permissible but not all things are profitable” sort of thing. Also a “You have the freedom to do this but don’t use your freedom to cause others to stumble” sort of thing.

But I got lazy over time. Just like when I start drinking coffee every morning even though I don’t need the caffeine, before long I get so used to it I’m doing multiple cups without thinking or even really enjoying it. Cussing became an unthinking activity; filler words inserted far too often.

After many years not really paying attention to it, it began to bother me for two reasons.

One, I love words. Writing and speaking are two of the only things in the world I’m pretty decent at, and lazily inserting cusses seemed like a regression in my wordplay.

Two, it was needlessly off-putting to people I don’t intend to put-off.

Don’t get me wrong, there are times when a cuss word is exactly the recipe needed to put-off the very kind of people you want nothing to do with. I remember in the early days of Praxis, I had some podcasts or posts where I’d admonish young people to “Just get shit done”. The parents and kids that didn’t want to do the program because of that four-letter word were exactly the type I did not want to have to deal with.

But an occasional and well-placed cuss is different than the lazy kind that began infecting my vocabulary. I realized that, for example, as I moved to a new city and joined a church there, people may Google me and find podcasts or posts where I gratuitously cuss for no good reason. Do I want them to feel weird, or wonder what my deal is? Sure, I could argue that there’s no theological ground for being offended by my cussing (though I’m sure there are good arguments in the opposite direction as well), but is that the hill I want my reputation with fellow Christians to die on?

Worse, I’ve had moments where I’m in a conversation in the business context, and I carelessly drop a cussbomb. Only to find out a few minutes later into the conversation that the other person is a Christian. I have this weird moment where I’m tempted to say, “Me too! Even though I was just needlessly crass and vulgar. Hope you were able to know me by my fruit and light!” (I actually did say this one time).

So I’m trying.

I’m trying to clean up my speech and reserve cuss words for those moments where only they will do. Bear with me.

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Reverse Chronological Snobbery

C.S. Lewis points out the error in assuming past ages were inferior to the present. He calls “chronological snobbery” the habit of using past age labels as insults, for example, “That’s medieval!”

He is completely correct that there is nothing inherently inferior about past beliefs or practices. And it cuts in the other direction as well.

We’re in a cultural moment where the past is becoming more appreciated, which is refreshing. Alternate histories (e.g. more perspectives than the state-dominated ones) and renewed and serious looks at the past are some of my favorite things. But in our frustration at the present, we mustn’t fall into the reverse chronological snobbery trap.

Just because it’s old, or was practiced for centuries, does not make it good or true. We have to employ logic and give a fair assessment to all things, regardless of their age.

Perhaps, like Chesterton’s fence, a very old thing deserves a bit more careful of an examination than a very new thing, due to the weight of all the minds who saw fit to maintain it. Some humility is in order. But this does not mean we need to romanticize everything, and turn every past idea that runs contrary to the present into something praiseworthy.

In most cases, humanity has subpar beliefs and practices across the board. The weakness in present ideas don’t make you more likely to find strength in past ones. There’s usually a bit of good and much amiss in both.

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Just Ask

We are told to ask, seek, and knock when it comes to God. The same is often (not always) true of people.

When you want to know something about people, ask them.

The amount of assumption behind our thoughts and decisions regarding others is unnecessary; in business about customers or colleagues, in politics about enemies or voters or immigrants or whoever, in relationships about everyone.

“Maybe they’ll like this feature”, “They only care about this”, “They have bad intentions”. These conjectures are often all that big decisions and big emotions are based on.

It is much easier if you just ask people directly. Why did you do this? What do you care about? What do you think of this? What motivates you?

It’s amazing how often people will tell you the truth.

Any good economist knows this isn’t foolproof, as there’s a big difference between stated preferences and revealed preferences. Everyone says they love mom and pop stores even if more expensive (stated preference) but when Wal-Mart opens they shop there instead (revealed preference).

It’s good to observe actions – the fruit – and not just words, but asking people is incredibly handy when it comes to understanding motives. Instead of assuming the shopper above is just a liar or frugal, you can ask why their actions didn’t mirror their previous words. Maybe you’d discover that, while they like mom and pop shops in general, the particular one in town has a grumpy owner and they realized after one trip that they prefer the anonymity of a bigger store. That’s very different than just being a liar or frugal.

Curiosity about motives is hard to come by. When something happens, your enemies will immediately assume a motive that helps their case and hurts yours. As a reaction, you’ll assume an opposite motive. Meanwhile, nobody is taking a second to simply ask the actor about their motives.

Try it out. And with genuine curiosity and openness, not angling for a predetermined answer.

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Things You Can’t Find on the Internet

It’s a bit disturbing when you remember something clearly but can find no trace of it online.

It’s a good reminder that the world is full of mystery, facts, theories, genius, stupidity, events, and ideas we’ll never know about. It’s easy to forget this and assume history books and the expansive reach of the internet have everything interesting catalogued. But the vast majority of things ever spoken, done, or even written, are not accessible to us.

The other day I suddenly remembered a researcher of some kind who came to town and gave a presentation at a church when I was a kid. He had a theory that the earth used to be surrounded by a dome of ice. This was a pretty detailed theory, and he even brought all kinds of props like casts with footprints of humans and animals.

The dome, he said, caused the atmosphere of earth to be much richer in oxygen than it is now, and possibly pressurized like a hyperbaric chamber. He claimed dinosaurs like the T-Rex and Pterodactyl could not run or fly in our current atmosphere, given how small their lungs were relative to their bodies. He also claimed humans were much larger and lived much longer in these conditions.

Oh, the sky was also tinted pink under the dome. I don’t remember why, but it had a magenta hue. He produced several bits of evidence for this – references in stories and writings, etc. He also said that this particular magenta hue had some neurologically calming effect on humans and animals, and hence they were less violent and lived in harmony.

The biblical flood event entailed the melting and/or crashing down of this ice dome. He referenced Woolly Mammoths found flattened in ice with undigested buttercups in their mouth as proof that they were squished by a chunk of the collapsing ice dome.

One of the reasons I remember all this is because, per an offhand comment this guy made about being able to get the same calming effect as this dome with magenta tinted glasses, my mom got some for my dad, who has a head injury and no short term memory and sometimes gets agitated and repeatedly yells for lunch. My siblings and I found it delightful when he would be sitting there with these “calming” glasses on, yelling loudly in agitation. Of course we never let my mom live it down.

Anyway, I went to look this guy up. His name was Rick Tingle as far as I can remember. Granted, I only searched about 20 minutes, but I tried so many phrases and nothing at all – nothing remotely close – came up. Except one post in Reddit where someone was describing the theory and said they heard it as a kid but couldn’t find anything about it or remember who the guy was. No one there had any answers.

It was one of those startling moments where I had to wonder what else have I experienced in my life that I completely forgot? Or what else do I remember that no one else will ever encounter because all proof is now gone?

The world is bigger than the internet and history books. And much weirder.

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People I Don’t Worry About

“I’m a coward.”

The person who openly tells you this is less in danger of the snares of cowardice than one who tries to keep you from seeing their cowardice.

This goes for any vice, any struggle, any weakness.

People who lay themselves bare before God and man and surrender their need to control their reputation are in less danger of just about every trap than those who are trying to maintain an image.

When you’re worried about how you appear, you’re fighting on two fronts. You have to fight the same struggles everyone else does, and you have to fight the appearance of fighting these and carefully craft and protect stories that make you look better. No one can keep that up.

Those who are raw before God and open before others can be startling, unsettling, and a little crazy at times. They are no less prone to fall into error, but they are far less prone to stay stuck there. When you know – when you can say – “I struggle”, that struggle suddenly loses some of its grip.

This is part of what ‘dying to self’ means. Let go of the illusion of your goodness. Let go the need to defend yourself from accusations. If someone accuses you of a fault your default should be, “I don’t deny it, I only hope to get better!”

Once that posture is adopted, anxiety melts away. The devil is disarmed.

I cannot claim this is my dominant posture. I have had the experience only seldomly, but enough to know it is the key to freedom. And I have seen many times people who appeared to be on a dangerous path, but were never dishonest with themselves or others about it, come back to life beautifully. While those who keep trying to maintain the good opinion of themselves and others slowly decay inside even while appearing okay on the outside.

Bare your soul to God. When you do, you won’t fear man. The Psalmist says, “What can man do to me?”

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Sin Isn’t Fun

Ever hear someone sarcastically say of a rich person, “Oh I feel soo bad for you with all that money”?

That naive idea – that anyone with a lot of money can’t possibly suffer or be pitiable – is parallel to one Christians seem to have about non-Christians. It is a belief that non-Christians, since they keep sinning, must be happy and enjoying it.

The implication is then that, if we wish to reach unbelievers, we mustn’t mention things like forgiveness, freedom from sin, repentance, or righteousness. They don’t want these things, so it goes, because they are happy in sin.

This misconception, much like the one about rich people always being happy, is usually rooted in either self-righteousness or jealousy.

Self-righteousness is easy to understand. It’s easier to feel good about oneself if others are truly wicked – enjoying it wicked, not just regretfully making bad choices.

Jealousy is also easy to understand. Working very hard to avoid the traps of sin is not easy, and living a lascivious lifestyle can look more fun – especially to those who don’t have much experience with it. They can romanticize sin, just as those who are not rich romanticize wealth.

In reality, sin is not fun.

Remember when you were a kid, and you told a lie? How awful was your life as you tried to keep it hidden from your parents? How much better did you feel when you were finally found out, or confessed? The little devil on the shoulder promises an easy route, but delivers only suffering.

Sure, the initial bad decisions that lead to the plague of sin can be fun. Indulging in some envy or malice towards someone can feel good for a minute. Giving in to some fleshly temptation of food, drink, or lust can be fun for a short while. Those choices aren’t the real plague. They are the things that open the door to the infectious bondage of sin. That bondage is no picnic. It does not make one happy.

Being chained to demons is not an enjoyable situation. Emptiness, loneliness, depression, guilt, shame, fear, anxiety, doubt, weakness – these are the fruits of sin sickness. No one likes these.

That is why the gospel need not be altered for marketing purposes to remove references to forgiveness and freedom from sin. In fact, that’s probably the most appealing part for most, even though they may not say so.

Everyone puts up a front to appear happy with their decisions. But get people alone when they’re at a low point, or slightly inebriated, or grieving, or faced with illness. They will begin to share the truth – they that feel shackled by sin and want freedom. Usually, they don’t believe it’s possible. That’s why the gospel is so full of hope.

The gospel is not less attractive when it’s about freedom from sin. That does not mean that it should be presented simply, as Dallas Willard put it, a “gospel of sin management.” It’s not about just not doing bad things. That is rather flimsy and unattractive.

If the gospel is merely “don’t drink too much” and “don’t sleep around” then it’s little better than any other self-help program. The power and hope it contains are not in admonitions against bad choices, but in Christs victory over the dark spiritual forces that enslave people. Even over death itself.

The gospel message is not just about not doing bad things, but neither should it shy away from it’s core: freedom from sin.

They may tell you to your face they are happy as they are, but those in bondage are yearning for freedom and a way back into the light. Don’t fear to share it, and always strive to demonstrate it.

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What is Sin?

The common notion of sin in modern culture, and sadly much modern Christianity, is little more than “doing bad things.”

If sin is merely doing bad things, than salvation doesn’t seem that attractive or even necessary to most people.

But sin is not just doing bad things. Sin is more akin to a disease. A flesh-rotting, degenerative, wasting sort of sickness that spreads like a fungal infection. It’s a chain, a shackle to dark spirits and impulses.

Sin is slavery. It is infection. It’s like the creepy little crayfish looking thing injected into Neo in the matrix; a vile thing crawling around inside you, messing things up, spreading, making you vulnerable, controllable by the evil that put it there.

No one wants that. No one wants to be a slave to filthy degenerate overlords. No one wants a flesh-rotting disease. No one wants creatures they can’t control crawling around in their veins wreaking havoc on themselves and spreading to those around them.

That is why redemption means freedom. That is why forgiveness of sin accompanied healing from physical sickness and deliverance from demons in the ministry of Jesus.

Yes, “doing bad things” is the opening sin needs to creep its slimy tentacles in to you. But bad things are not the thing you need freedom from, sin – and the death and decay it causes – is.

I think a lot of people have it backwards. They think a thing is a sin because it is “bad”. But things are bad because they let the infectious shackles of sin in. It’s not just that some things are arbitrarily called “bad” by God or Christians, and if you do those you “sin”. It’s that some things are attached to or tainted with a real spiritual sickness – a black goo – and if you mess around with those things it quite literally gets in you. This is the structure of reality. It’s cause and effect. It’s not moralizing or arbitrary rules.

Lies are tainted with sin. If you pick one up to use it, you also pick up the spiritual pathogens dripping off it. It gets on you and in you. The more you engage, the sicker you get. Soon, lies are not a tool you use, you are a tool used by sin and darkness, because lies are a tool owned and infected by sin and darkness. They want to control you, so they tempt you by dangling a useful lie in front of you in a moment of weakness.

We need freedom from the taint of sin. And we need frequent sterilizations and purifications to get clean of new bits that attach to us.

Some people are so deeply, painfully in bondage to sin, they barely know what it’s like to breath free, pure air anymore. Those people don’t just need to be told, “don’t do bad things”, they need the freedom that only comes through asking and seeking repentance and forgiveness through Christ. The breaking of those chains is a glorious thing, worthy of celebration. Only after the freedom does the idea of “stop doing bad things” start to make sense as a preventative. An already infected person being told “wash your hands and don’t touch germs” is going to gain little from it. The infection must first be killed.

The Church’s job is not to say to those in bondage “don’t do bad things”, it is to offer freedom from bondage. To those who are already free in Christ, being reminded to avoid the temptations that allow the shackles to sneak back in is useful, but not so much to those afflicted and oppressed.

The gospel is an emancipation. It is an announcement that all the things that have enslaved and tormented you – depression, addiction, envy, lust, fear, and the demons behind them – have been defeated and you can throw off their shackles. It is a message of hope and joy.

Once free, a citizen of the Kingdom of God learns some responsibilities and practices to avoid being re-enslaved. But those come after you gain your freedom.

Until sin is revealed for what it is – the thing holding people back, the boot on their neck, the ickiness they can’t seem to escape – the offer of redemption will seem thin.

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On Leaving Things Open

It’s really hard for me to leave things open. I like to complete stuff, wrap it with a bow, and move on.

Some things need time and benefit from a non-immediate cadence. I’ve had to learn this – still am learning – and now leave some messages without a response and questions unanswered when it seems they need time to breathe.

Immediacy is the better default setting. But it’s not always best.

And it’s not just that waiting allows time to gather more information or weigh things consciously. That is part of it. But even without any explicit attempt to think on or discuss a matter, just giving it time and allowing yourself to go through some different mental cycles and moods can make the response better, clearer.

There are cadences to everything, and an immediate back and forth is only the ideal cadence for a few things.

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