Who doesn’t love the trope of the peaceful farmer suddenly forced to open an old chest full of weapons no one knew about and demonstrate a set of skills he assumed he’d never use again?

It’s usually not that dramatic (or violent), but this pattern definitely plays out in life. As you accumulate skills, experiences, knowledge, and a network, it’s easy to forgot the context-specific ones as you move from one phase of life to the next. But you should do your best to keep them fresh. Keep them sharp.

You will find at the most unexpected of times a sudden call, demand, or opportunity to dust them off and put them once again to good use. Keep them at the ready. Don’t forget the feel of wielding those tools, don’t lose the horn that summons those companions.

Over time, you’ll end up with lots of secret old chests, full of a variety of special skills, experiences, knowledge, and networks you can tap into if and when the need arises. You’ll be ready to handle whatever comes.

This doesn’t require anything crazy. Just be curious, work hard, be diligent, connect with people in whatever phase, task, or job you have at any given time. And when you move on, occasionally exercise those muscles again.

You never know what’s next.

It’s easy to tilt at windmills online. You think you are debating or considering a school of thought or theory, but really you’re dealing with a version that’s been through a game of telephone and retains only shadows of the source.

Hayek talked about the rare intellectuals who conceive original ideas, then the bulk of intellectuals who write books and papers based on these ideas, whom he called, “Second-hand dealers in ideas”.

Today, the most likely way you will encounter ideas is through social media posts made by people who listened to a podcast host who interviewed a guy who read a book written by a second-hand dealer.

In other words, you’re encountering the ideas fifth-hand.

This is neither good nor bad. Summaries and Cliff’s Notes and layman’s takes on ideas are useful. They have pros and cons.

But it is important to be aware of the distance between the theory and the version with which you are dealing. If you’re going to form a serious opinion or devote serious mental or reputational energy on the idea, go to the source, or at least the second-hand dealer first.

If not, carry on.

There He will not be

Among what’s dead, for He’s free

Christos Anesti

It’s not primarily the physical suffering by which Christ demonstrates his love for us, but the spiritual, mental, and emotional weight of what he endured.

The pain of betrayal from those closest to Him, the very crowd who laid palm branches before Him now begging for His blood, the ultimate sacrifice for people He loves who ignorantly and arrogantly hate Him, and the feeling of being momentarily ‘forsaken’ by His Father.

Not to make a trite comparison, but Tolkien said that Bilbo conquered the dragon before coming face to face with him, the moment he chose to go on through the dark passage despite his fears.

In the same way, Jesus conquered sin and death before the Cross, the moment in Gethsemane when sweating blood and crying out for God to take the cup from him, chose not His own will, but that of the Father.

Now that I’m kind of old (according to my kids anyway) and have been married two decades, younger people sometimes ask me what I think makes for a good marriage.

Honestly I have no idea.

I do have some ideas about what makes my marriage good, but I suspect a lot of that is unique to who my wife and I are. I have seen many different types of marriages work, so I wouldn’t want to present what has worked for me as some kind of universal.

But there are some things I’ve observed that I have not yet seen result in a good marriage.

Here are three off the top of my head:

1. If she is not really impressed with you, it’s gonna be tough.
2. If you don’t have rough alignment on the 2-3 utterly core values, it’s gonna be tough.
3. If you don’t enjoy each other’s company more than anyone else’s (even when you’re doing nothing at all), it’s gonna be tough.

Let’s dive in to number one a bit today.

It’s easy for a guy to be head over heels in love with a girl, and his love to be so passionate that she sort of gets swept up in it and goes along with it.

Maybe she likes you as a friend and is not uninterested in you as more, but she’s not really in awe of you. Absent your persistent and intense affection, maybe she’d take her time and decide if she wants more than friendship. But because of your urgency and the fact that she doesn’t dislike you, she goes along with a relationship and maybe even marriage.

This is a tough foundation. Men really want and love being seen as a total boss by their wives. It can be easy to fool yourself early on that she feels that way, but if it’s not real, there is likely to be strife later. A woman who is ok with, but doesn’t massively respect and admire her man will lead to tension.

A good test for this when you are dating is to ask your friends and relatives what they think of the way she looks at you. If they all immediately say, “Dude, I see the way she gazes at you. She is in awe”, that’s a good sign.

I had dated a girl who I thought I would marry. She liked me, but she wasn’t in awe of me. I couldn’t see this, but others could. They’d say things like, “Yeah, she’s really great” but that was it. After we broke up and I started dating my wife, the contrast was amazing. Everyone would say, “Oh my gosh she is so in love with you” just from looking at the way she looked at me.

Even total strangers would comment on this. We were at a blues show sitting near the front and the singer said to the audience, “This next song goes out to this young couple right here, because ya’ll so lovey dovey it makes me want to puke!”

What’s funny is we weren’t holding hands or kissing or displaying any physical affection. We were on opposite sides of the table talking and listening to each other and the music. But she saw in my wife’s gaze that undeniable sparkle. (Funny aside: the song was called, “Meet me with your black drawers on” and was quite bawdy for a young Christian couple;-).

This level of obvious romantic swooning is not something that persists every day of your marriage. That’s perfectly ok. But, the underlying sense of respect and awe should be there. If she doesn’t think, “My husband is legitimately awesome” the inevitable bumps and fights and mistakes along the way will become so much harder to bear. Maybe too much.

Find a girl who sees you as a king. That will help.

“Then a great and powerful wind tore the mountains apart and shattered the rocks before the Lord, but the Lord was not in the wind. After the wind there was an earthquake, but the Lord was not in the earthquake. After the earthquake came a fire, but the Lord was not in the fire. And after the fire came a gentle whisper. When Elijah heard it, he pulled his cloak over his face and went out and stood at the mouth of the cave.” — I Kings 19:11-13

We are always called to something.

Most of the time, the calling isn’t specific or temporal. It’s the constant general calling to live righteously, work as unto the Lord, be a light, seek and show mercy, repent and forgive, and love like Christ.

It’s up to our own free will and judgement to determine which jobs and activities to engage in while we heed this general calling. Most choices in life don’t involve direct obedience or disobedience to a specific calling. Most are up to you to choose what you deem best, as long as you persist in living your general calling as best you can.

But sometimes there’s a specific calling to do a specific thing at a specific time.

I’ve experienced this only twice in my life. In one instance, it came as the gentle whisper. In another, it came as something much more dramatic. Maybe not earth-shaking wind, quake, or flame, but certainly more than a whisper.

I’d like to think I heeded it both times. Except it’s hard to know, because neither call had an expiration date. I was to do something, which I did, but when was I to stop doing it?

In the one case, I’m sure the answer is “never”. It is a persistent life calling for me to focus on some specific things. A way to help me see and make those choices which are left to my free will in a better way.

In the other case, it’s much harder to tell. I took the calling, with great pains and joys, succeeded at least to some degree, and then tried to take it to what I thought was the next level. But that next level ended in a miry swamp. Did I abandon the original calling too soon? Was it a mistake to try to expand it, hand it off, split it into two?

I don’t know.

I hope I will someday hear, “Well done, good and faithful servant”, but I have no confidence that I will.

Being off the path of that calling after having once walked it is far, far harder than never having had the calling at all. I’m never sure if I’m in the right place, if I’m being punished, if I’m being rewarded, if I’m being prepared, if I’m all used up, if I have more fights ahead.

As demanding as a calling is, there’s nothing quite so draining as being unsure if you still have one when once you did. I never got the, “The job is done, you may rest before your next adventure” moment I imagined. Nor have I had the, “You failed, you quit too early, you abandoned your post” moment. I am left guessing.

Perhaps the test is for me to re-learn to find the still small voice, after having once been spoken to through the storm. Perhaps it’s to empathize with the many who never receive a specific calling, but are only called to be faithful in the day to day generally. I don’t know.

I do know that it has helped me see more clearly the extent to which any success I had in that calling was not my doing. The Lord giveth, the Lord taketh away. What I was able to do following that call was done by Him, not me.

So here I am Lord. Whatever is next, even if it’s nothing in particular, I’m here for it. Only help me see and hear.

I’m still thinking about when laughter is good and when it is dangerous. It’s hard for me to even admit it’s danger, because I’m such a fan of laughter. But it’s there.

One of the distinctions may be the direction of the laughter.

Laughing up – playfully disregarding would-be authorities – seems necessary. A man before a tyrannical tribunal making fun of the interrogator’s shoes.

Laughing down – cruelly mocking someone’s struggle – seems dangerous. A group of boys mimicking or snickering at a less coordinated classmate.

This isn’t to say it’s all about physical power or status. Laughter can healthily cut across all of these. But it’s more about your subjective position in the moment than any kind of objective social hierarchy. When you are in the more vulnerable or absurd position, you are laughing from below. When others are more vulnerable or absurd, you’re laughing from above.

This isn’t a perfect rule. For example, sometimes one of my kids trips and falls. Everyone is silent for a moment as their pain and embarrassment hangs in the air, until someone starts laughing and it makes the person who tripped laugh at themselves and the tension is relieved.

But maybe these exceptions prove the rule. The kid who trips is as likely to get offended by the laughter as to join it.

If laughter implies “It’s funny because it reveals that you are lower than me” it’s probably dangerous. If it implies, “It’s funny because even though I’m in a lower state, you (or I, or this) seem silly to me.”

My friend Deryk has a rule of thumb. The things you laugh at, or enjoy ironically or as parody, have a real danger of changing you. At some point, the faux identity bleeds into the real one.

Like hipsters with mustaches, the intentionally absurd and ironic can morph into a genuine fashion. Online shock culture has a darker version of this pattern. The memes become reality.

Absurd acts of political correctness and cancel culture drive people to fight back, play the troll, and engage in extreme humor in seedy corners of the web. As more and more people feel suffocated by the mainstream mob, these seedy corners provide some humorous refuge. They seep out into the mainstream.

The created-just-for-the-purpose-of-offending content has a way of attracting and changing people. It takes on a life of its own, independent of the goals of those who started the memes. People start to actually like it, actually believe it, actually become it.

I’ve said many times that laughter is a powerful tool to defeat the devil. Poking fun at evil and not taking it seriously is a spell-breaker. But there seems to be some kind of subtle turn, when the laughter goes from spell-breaking parody to dark humor skirting the edge of reality. Laughing at tyrants is usually good. Laughing at parodies of the victims of tyrants is usually dangerous.

Those advocating tyranny are also unknowing victims of it. They are to be pitied. Dehumanizing them or using them as playthings whose sole purpose is to be triggered for amusement is a slippery slope. The more you succeed at it, the more you become the tyrant, or the slave of one.

Laughter should leave you feeling lighter, uplifted. Not sinister, dark, secretive, or gleeful about the pain of others.

Heavenly laughter breaks chains. It is fully free, secure, true, light, and loving. It joys in reality, even when it is absurd. It is only strength.

Diabolical laughter creates chains. It is entrapped, insecure, false, dark, and deceptive. It needs to find weakness in others to hide its own.

Be careful what you laugh at.

One of the best things about routines is the opportunity to break them.

A regular schedule, workout, or other discipline provides a stable foundation for each day. The benefits of routines are many and well known. But my favorite is probably the fact that, once you have a routine, it gives you the ability to shock yourself out of a stupor by mixing it up every once in a while.

Some days just feel draggy. When I’m on autopilot and can’t break the funk, I get a sudden realization like a little voice whispering, “Hey, you could change your routine, or even skip it.” It comes as a revelation. The idea immediately energizes me, like a kid playing hooky.

It doesn’t even have to be a major change in routine, just a slight unexpected variation will do. It works wonders, reminds me of my own agency, allows some mischief, and keeps the world engaging.

This only works if there are routines in the first place and they are pretty much always kept. A sudden deviation is great when it’s a real surprise. When it’s an escape hatch always present at the back of the mind and frequently used, it weakens all the benefits of routine and provides none of the benefits of breaking routine.

Not on mighty steed

A donkey will do the deed

Before you they’re kneed

No one would say prudence is bad. But it doesn’t seem to have the status of the other Christian virtues that it once did.

A loving person with very bad judgement and a pattern of rushing into bad business or personal arrangements is not usually considered lacking virtue. People would say, “He’s a really good guy, he’s just a bit rash sometimes.”

But the opposite does not seem to be true. A person who struggles to be loving, but has excellent judgement and control over their faculties, decision-making, and impulses is not usually considered a good person. People would say, “He’s cold, unfeeling, and kind of a jerk.”

Maybe that’s a bad example, because love has a place above all other virtues. But I think it holds if you replaced it with faith, kindness, charity, or any other of the traditional virtues.

I guess it shouldn’t be surprising then that prudence is one of the most lacking virtues in our time. If it’s treated as of lesser importance, and the concomitant social rewards are lesser, we should expect less of it. People respond to incentives even when it comes to being virtuous.

The costs of a low-prudence society are immense. The rate of divorce, levels of debt, constant online flame wars, the existence of crypto memecoins and meme stocks, the complex webs of commitments and contradictions in people’s beliefs and associations can all be seen at least in part as a result of insufficient prudence.

Perhaps prudence has fallen out of favor because it is a poor match for a society that places a high value on speed. Accelerating technology, which has made our lives more comfortable and prosperous, has conditioned an overall sense that acceleration in itself is a good, and anything that slows it down is in the very least uncool. A boring stick in the mud.

But look around at people in great emotional, mental, spiritual, or physical distress. Most would’ve avoided the worst had they a bit more prudence. Slow down. Take time to step back and consider. Don’t jump into that relationship, or extramarital affair, or divorce, and your finances won’t get wrecked. Don’t rashly join a new movement or cause and throw your whole identity into it, and your reputation and friendships won’t get destroyed when it collapses or cannibalizes itself.

On the positive side, I think prudence is coming back into fashion. When all forms of overnight “gainz” have evaporated, people are left looking back at the boring but relentlessly reliable path of making good, deliberate choices and sticking to them, thinking beyond the zeitgeist, and putting the cool wisdom of a clear conscience and calm pace of life above the hottest impulses and trends.

Two cheers for prudence! Or maybe rather one reasonable cheer in good sense and not too exaggerated.

I saw a story today about AI nurses doing consultations. There’s a lot to like about this, and a lot to dislike.

In the like column, an info-rich AI nurse could be a big improvement. Consider how absolutely terrible almost every single human medical practitioner is. It has to be one of the worst professions when it comes to knowing your subject matter. Health pros are almost always myopically narrow, and uninterested and uncurious about their own field. They run through a set of tests taught to them at some medical school based on biases and bad science, and then tell you to take a pill that undoubtedly makes your overall health worse.

When you’ve spent lots of hours researching health issues on your own, and connecting with others doing the same, you find tons of new ideas and insights and cures. But the biggest problem is that there it just too much information, too many similar but not exact symptoms, too many remedies to test, too many disparate places this info exists, and much of it in other languages. Imagine an AI nurse able to absorb and sift and sort and pattern match to make recommendations in an unbiased way. “Scanning hundreds of thousands of forums and papers and websites, it seems these are three likely candidates for what you have, and these appear to be the top three treatments with the highest correlation with success.” It could be massive.

In the dislike column, the parameters on any AI system are put there by humans. And so far, these parameters have led to fairly ridiculous results on any matters of disagreement or dissension. Imagine the kind of stupid, tyranny-approved, unscientific answers a mainstream medical AI bot would be programmed to give you. “Take your prescriptions” is probably the gist of it.

Then again, I don’t know if it could be worse than the status quo.

Usually you can figure out how politically powerful a group or ideology is by how unfunny they are.

The paradox is that contrarians eventually become powerful by being funnier than the status quo.

But even as they gain power, you can watch them get less funny.

Humor and power rarely mix.

It’s amazing the wild and complicated theories people can spin up to explain the price of things. The boring reality is, it’s always dictated by supply and demand.

Now of course there are myriad reasons as to why the supply is what it is, and what drives people to demand more or less of things. These are complex and impossible to pin down precisely. They are worth exploring and trying to understand if you can.

But the number of times I see proposed reasons for prices, and proposed solutions that ignore supply and demand is startling.

“Housing costs far too much! It’s because builders and landlords are greedy. We should kill them or throw them in cages if they try to own more than a few properties!” says the ignorant or lying reformer.

Builders and landlords are likely greedy, just as their tenants and everyone else is likely greedy. But they didn’t start being greedy all of the sudden. It has always been so. Yet housing costs weren’t always so high. What happened?

Supply and demand.

More people demanding housing, and a smaller number of new houses being built.

It’s a pretty easy formula!

You may or may not like the implications in the same way you may or may not like gravity. It’s not going away. You have to navigate the world in light of its existence.

The beautiful thing is, you don’t really have to do anything. Mr. Reformer can pour a drink, sit back, and let things sort themselves out. Truly. All you have to do is stop doing something. Namely, stop using the guns of government to prevent individuals from creating more housing.

You don’t need to urge it, or incentivize it with speeches or subsidies, or create grand plans or special zones. You just need to get the hell out of the way — I mean that quite literally; remove the bureaucratic red tape, which is a genuine representative of hell on earth.

Let the supply and demand do their dance freely and you needn’t trouble yourself so much. In fact, you can seize the opportunity to benefit from their interplay with some entrepreneurial endeavors of your own!

Trolling is equal parts delightful and nasty. It’s also valuable.

It’s nasty because it takes advantage of people – particularly those more innocent, ignorant, naive, or less experienced and jaded by online discourse.

It’s delightful because these same people are often nasty, brutish, ill-tempered, willfully stupid, careless, and vindictive themselves.

Beyond the entertainment value and offensive potential, trolling serves a vital function. It promotes intellectual discipline.

By pretending to be or believe something outlandish and calculated to trigger particular biases and assumptions, trolls unmask those biases and assumptions.

There’s a certain mix of humility and arrogance in it. The troll has to first become the fool, by allowing their reputation to be damaged by the stupid and untrue things they post. But they get a gleefully satisfying superiority when the trap closes. When the target is triggered in just the intended way, the target becomes the fool, and the troll is the genius.

The object lesson for all observing is to be more careful, less thoughtless, consider your biases, don’t be easily triggered. The lesson for the target is rarely understood and more rarely taken, but the chance is there.

So trolling is valuable for the online community at large. But it’s dangerous for the troll. It’s very hard to play the trolling game well and repeatedly without letting it make you arrogant or bitter. It can suck you in to scoring points on strangers for public spectacle, instead of working on yourself. The disciplinarian is always in danger of enjoying it too much, and neglecting inner improvement.