ThomStratton.com

Evidently it takes a weekend for people to really work up a head of steam. It seems like most of my usual blogs/sites are worked up about something. In the end it always seems to boil down to the same thing: someone said something that offended me, and they’re a poopie-headed stink-bomb and need to shut up. One blogger had an interesting perspective, though, saying essentially “I’ve come to the conclusion that everyone is stupid, so why bother being offended by their stupidity?”

Of course, to listen to that person continue on, I suspect what he really means is that everyone is ignorant. They know only their own perspective, and seldom take the time to examine or imagine any other perspectives, so their opinions are more often than not going to be unsophisticated, naive, and absolutist. Blanket statements are almost guaranteed to be wrong, especially when dealing with people and human behavior.

Perhaps the only thing worse than blanket statements of the problem is blanket statements of the solution. This is not to say that we shouldn’t try to solve problems, but we can do without the blanket statement crowd. We need tough people who are able to dig deeper and get as much of a board perspective as possible.

What we don’t need is the constant screeching of the ignorant trying to distract and confuse and generally make it difficult for anything to get done. It’s because of the screechers that the “solutions” that end up getting put in place tend to only make things worse. Far too often the best thing that can happen is nothing. Better that than throwing half-baked, screecher-motivated snake-oil treatments at the problem and then blaming everyone else when it painfully encounters a much deeper and more complex reality than the ignorant care to acknowledge.

Yeah, it’s Monday. The screechers are out in force.

I ran across this quote from Charles Bronson in “The Magnificent Seven”:

You think I am brave because I carry a gun; well, your fathers are much braver because they carry responsibility, for you, your brothers, your sisters, and your mothers. And this responsibility is like a big rock that weighs a ton. It bends and it twists them until finally it buries them under the ground. And there’s nobody says they have to do this. They do it because they love you, and because they want to. I have never had this kind of courage. Running a farm, working like a mule every day with no guarantee anything will ever come of it. This is bravery.

This applies for mothers, too, of course. In a world that increasingly preaches pursuing your own pleasure, gratifying your own desires, and making everything “all about me,” accepting the responsibility for the care and education of children in raising them to adulthood is almost subversive and counter-cultural. Bravo to those who do.

That is all for today. Everyone have a great weekend, and we’ll see you on the flip-side.

THIS will convince them to see my side!

Every so often when in a silly mood I’ll post something “meta” on Facebook, like “Generic post oversimplifying a complex issue and branding all the opposition as idiots.” Strangely enough, these tend to be my most popular posts, with numerous people jumping on the bandwagon to post stereotypical responses seen in other online arguments. It seems everyone has experienced online debates that repeatedly fall into tired patterns and pointless repetitions.

The thing is, we’ve probably all been those commentors before. It’s easy to spot those behaviors in others, but not so much in ourselves. But more importantly, such discussions have convinced me that the trouble with our national dialogue is not what we disagree on, but how we disagree. The fact that anyone can reasonably predict how any given online discussion is going to go suggests that we either don’t know how, or don’t want to actually discuss issues in a rational manner. That, or social media is not a very good platform for doing so.

And perhaps most importantly, I’m convinced we’ve forgotten how to listen well. Far too often, as Stephen R. Covey puts it, we aren’t listening to understand, but listening to speak. We’re thinking of what we want to say, and just waiting for the other person to stop talking long enough for us to say it (at least when we’re being polite; I know plenty of people who talk over each other rather than wait). We aren’t reading through the other person’s comments trying to understand their perspective, we’re looking for mistakes we can zing them over. We’re sharpening our knives, looking for just the right spot to stab.

In short, we’re not interested in understanding, building common ground, or actually solving the problem. We’re interested in winning. We want to be able to come away from the discussion thinking, “Heh. I sure showed them! If I can’t change their mind, at least I can make them cry!”

And then we wonder why the world continues to polarize, nothing seems to get done, and problems just continue to pile up.

And yet all it takes is one “meta” post to watch people often on opposite sides of issues all line up together to make fun of how we communicate. It seems one of the few points of common ground is unwittingly making fun of ourselves.

It seems as though for most of my life there has been a continuous, low-level grumble over congressional district gerrymandering. So continuous, in fact, that I never really gave it much attention. It’s just another one of those things Americans love to complain about, right? And then I encountered this: The Top Ten Most Gerrymandered Congressional Districts in the United States. If you ever doubted gerrymandering happens, this is truly wince-worthy. Our political class are far too often worthy of the worst we think of them.

Some time last year my boys got into Pokemon. Really got into Pokemon. It’s probably about the time they discovered there is a Pokemon Club at the local library. I used to play a little years ago, and while both of my boys are into it, they don’t always want to play one another, so I took it up again to help keep the peace and to provide my older son a little competition to help refine his decks. And so it was also natural that I would be the one to take them to the club every Saturday.

I have a love-hate relationship with the Pokemon Club. The organizer is a cool guy, and there are some cool kids there. But there are a LOT of kids there, and they’re not quiet. It’s the sort of place designed to suck all the energy out of any adult that dares enter the room. I have fun making deals and collecting the cards, and take great care not to take advantage of the younger kids (the teens and young adults I mostly worry about not being taken advantage of). I also note the newcomers, semi-clueless kids, and baffled parents and do what I can to help out, sometimes making deals that are absolutely terrible for me just to make sure the kids have a good experience.

But the real fun is watching the effect this has had on my own boys. They’ve been learning a few things through all of this, which makes it all worthwhile as a parent.

1. Don’t Be That Guy – Every week on the drive home I hear my boys discussing the various trades they’ve made and the various kids they’ve traded with. Invariably they’ll complain about some kid or another who is not pleasant to trade with. These range from the kids who, if you don’t have EX’s (don’t ask if you don’t know) will blow you off, to the kids who try to dictate up front both what they’ll give you and what you will give them and will not accept any counter-offers.

My kids observe, and they learn. They don’t trade that way. They don’t treat other kids that way. They’ve learned from watching others how the “good traders” behave. I assume this will carry over into other areas of life. Hopefully they will learn to pay attention to the kids around them and decide who to emulate and who not to.

2. Sportsmanship counts – They don’t just trade cards at the club. They play games against one another. They have tournaments. I worry about this a bit, because at home my kids are not always good sports about winning or losing. But my son participated in a recent tournament and handled himself quite well. In fact he held is cool when I was about to strangle his opponent (a much older kid) who capitalized on a mistake my son made and won the game (this is not my beef–losing is part of life), then proceeded to lecture my son about the mistake. It was not a kindly “did you see what happened there?” sort of lecture, either. My son took it in stride, and I know he won’t do that to anyone himself.

3. Planning and goals – My boys are not content to just collect cards and make the best deck they can with them. They actually plan out what decks they want to build and then set out to obtain the cards they want. They enjoy coming back from the club each week and tracking their progress against their list of cards they need. They’re learning to think long-term, and to stay focused on their goals.

4. Accepting limitations – Unfortunately Pokemon is a game where money counts. There are kids who have money, either that they earn themselves or their parents fork over, and they tend to have all the coolest cards. And unfortunately those with the most cool cards tend to win most. This hasn’t dampened their enthusiasm much, oddly enough. They seem to accept that neither they nor I can/will spend that much money on a game, and they do the best they can with what they have to work with.

5. The Art of the Deal – My older son has been learning how to put together some impressive deals. He’s learned to be a facilitator, finding out what people are looking for and making connections to get it. Several times he’s come to me looking for lynch-pin cards that if he can get hold of he can complete a multi-person deal that will end with his getting the card he’s looking for. I admit I get a little frustrated with some of his friends who keep changing their minds over what deals they will accept, but he’s undaunted. He figures out how to put it all together, does the legwork, and comes home with the card he wants.

6. Looking Out For Family – This has been especially rewarding to see. My kids (and I) keep our eyes out for cards each other needs and pick them up if we can. Sometimes this is just to facilitate the inevitable second round of trading among ourselves after we get home from the club, but often it’s just because they know one of us is looking for that card and they have an opportunity to get it.

There are a few more lesson being learned here, but being learned by me:

7. Sit Down, Shut Up and Let Them Do Their Thing – It’s not easy to do, but I’m trying to let them learn on their own, sometimes the hard way. I don’t always think the deals they make are the best for them, but I’ve learned that, in the long run, if they’re happy then shut up and don’t spoil it. If I see some problems inherent in what they’re doing I’ll sometimes point it out, but I leave them to make their own decision. Very few of the problems that come up are insurmountable. Bad trades can be overcome by better trading in the future, but there will always be regrets. It’s just part of life.

8. Acknowledge their expertise – They have a lot more time to think about and study Pokemon than I do. They generally do more trades than I do. I’ve learned to leverage that. I’ll consult them on whether or not a trade someone is offering me is fair. I’ll ask them for suggestions on cards to collect for my decks. When they come up with a particularly vicious deck combination I’ll let them know (though I confess I could do better at acknowledging it without whining). They know this stuff, and I believe it’s important to recognize that they know it. Yes, I may wish they’d put this much effort into other things they’re supposed to be doing, but I know I wasn’t any different at their age. Everyone likes to know that other people know that they know, you know?

I’ll admit that even when I played it years ago I never took Pokemon that seriously. I might still not take it seriously if I hadn’t begun exploring it with my boys. Yes, it can be a fun game, but the benefits that have come from joining the club have been surprising to me. There’s been some valuable life experience for all of us. Eventually they’ll grow out of their interest in Pokemon, and that’ll be fine. But in the mean time, I’m looking forward to seeing them continue to learn.

Being humble doesn’t mean being a wimp. Being truly humble leads one to do hard things simply because it’s the right thing to do. I witnessed that in church today when a man publicly owned his mistakes and did his best to make up for them.

First a little background. My church is a lay church. No one at the local and regional level gets paid for their efforts; we all have our regular jobs and lives, and our church service is volunteer. For example, our previous Stake President, who oversees six congregations, is a branch manager for the bank I work for. The current one is a CEO for a kitchen-wares company. The leader of our local congregation is an IT engineer, and the leader of our men’s auxiliary drives a Fedex truck.

This also means our teachers are laypersons. This presents some interesting situations sometimes, as there can be temptation to deviate from the church-approved curriculum. This happened last Sunday when our adult Sunday School teacher detoured the lesson into an area that left many of us feeling a little unsettled. It hadn’t been all that relevant to the topic of the lesson, and seemed to be more designed to show off the instructor’s gospel scholarship. This happens from time to time, and as a general rule I don’t worry too much about it.

This week before the lesson began, this brother got up and apologized to everyone for his error of the previous week. He had felt unsettled about it himself, evidently, and it had bothered him the rest of the day. He had come to the conclusion that he had been introducing his own thoughts instead of the assigned the material and felt he owed us all an apology.

That couldn’t have been easy to do.

I don’t now the full story. Perhaps someone in authority took him aside and gave him some negative feedback. Perhaps he came to it entirely on his own. I may never know, and ultimately it doesn’t matter. His apology was sincere, and given before a room full of his peers. My respect for this man has increased significantly. He owned his error, and he made amends without any attempt to justify or excuse himself.

That is incredibly rare these days. At best we usually get passive-voiced non-apologies, such as “mistakes were made, and I regret that some people were offended.” This was nothing like that. It was a straight-up, “I made a mistake, and I’m sorry.”

I don’t even remember what it was he had said last week. It hadn’t been a bad lesson, other than the section that seemed off track. But I’ll tell you what, it may be a long time before I experience a lesson quite as effective and memorable as his two-minute apology today.

Well, this is pretty darn cool! What can’t they do with this technology?

http://3dprint.com/38144/3d-printed-apartment-building/

The leadership of my church recently re-iterated a call to balance social change with religious freedom. Not unexpectedly, they met with criticism. It’s pretty much a given that you’re going to tick off someone these days, no matter what you do or say. After all, a recent poll supposedly found that 82% of those surveyed would prefer a meteor hitting the stadium during the Super Bowl over either of the competing teams winning. (I could write an entire post about that, mind you.) We are in an era where the more gray things become the more some people try to deal in absolutes. The goal is increasingly becoming not to avoid offending anyone, but to offend only the right people.

As I said, the Church’s stance drew criticism–from both sides. A few of the Church’s apostles met with the media to further clarify and address the issue.

LDS leaders knew they wouldn’t satisfy everyone when they held a news conference Tuesday to call for fairness for both LGBT people and religious people.

So criticism from both ends of the spectrum didn’t surprise Elder Dallin H. Oaks and Elder D. Todd Christofferson of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.

But people who prefer all-or-nothing solutions on either side are avoiding the hard work of balancing LGBT and religious rights, they said Thursday in a visit with the Deseret News.

Elder Oaks and Elder Christofferson said LDS Church leaders will be disappointed if their proposal for laws that protect LGBT people from discrimination while safeguarding religious rights doesn’t influence the national debate.

While they expressed gratitude for people on both sides who responded favorably, they said the criticism is a sign they got it right, and that their position is needed.

I especially agree with the third paragraph. Calls for all-or-nothing solutions are not only lazy, but intellectually weak. It demonstrates the lack of serious thought and a definite lack of imagination. If you cannot conceive of situations that would challenge any all-inclusive law, you’re not really trying. An example given in the article is in the realm of housing and discrimination. Certainly in most normal situations there’s no reason why a landlord would deny housing based on sexual preference. But consider the situation of a widow renting out rooms within her home. Should the same laws apply there, or should she have some say over what behaviors she will allow in her own house?

I see nothing wrong with calling for people in good faith to come together to see if we can’t work out a better way of living together. I hope that’s something we can do. Those who want to paint either side with a single brush are intellectually dishonest, and not the sort of prejudiced people we want directing the national debate. As Elder Christofferson said:

“In general, the idea of saying ‘this is just a license to discriminate’ or ‘you’re seeking a license to discriminate’ is a way of avoiding the hard work of finding a way to balance competing values that are both critically important. Frankly, what we’re saying is, we gotta do the hard work. We can’t just throw out a slogan and get away with that. It’s not good enough.”

And yes, that goes both ways. We also can’t sit back and claim that any gain by the LGBT community is just an effort to stamp out religious freedom. In response to criticisms by a columnist in the New York Times, claiming that the Church’s position is just an effort to gain legal permission to discriminate against gays, Elder Oaks had this to say:

“When I heard that I can tell you my reaction,” Elder Oaks said. “I thought, well that illustrates how much we need to have people educated about the principles we are teaching of fairness and balance, because that’s a very unbalanced statement.

“I would be ashamed to make a comparable statement saying that nondiscrimination is just trying to wipe out religious freedom,” he added. “That would be the equivalent. I’d be ashamed to make that kind of a statement, and I’m sorry that a responsible voice in the New York Times made it. I’m hopeful that he’ll see that’s not our motivation and that’s not the intended effect of what we’re doing.”

We don’t need more extremists on either side of the debate. What we need are people willing to come together and work out the details. There is nothing wrong with compromise. What far too few realize is that by allowing for compromise now you may very well be protecting your own future, too. The laws that give you what you want today may just as easily be subverted by someone else to take away from you tomorrow. I know it’s hard to see that, as we all love to think “Oh, that’ll never happen,” but as social taboos continue to fall, our society will continue to accept behaviors that they used to see as unacceptable. Surely there will be behaviors gaining acceptance in the future that homosexuals will see as offensive and something they wouldn’t want to have to allow in their home just because they’re renting out a room and are legally obligated not to discriminate. Set the laws too severely in one direction and you may later find yourself on the wrong side of that same law someday.

And this, too, goes both ways. Religious freedom should not trump all, either. The dangers of that should be quite apparent in the Muslim nations of the Middle East. Compared to the goals of the LGBT community here in America and the goals of the theocracies of the Muslim world, I and my Church stand far, far more closely aligned with the LGBT community than we do the Muslim theocracies. And, in many ways, we stand apart from many of the conservative and religious leaders here in liberal America:

Some conservatives and faith leaders worry the LDS Church proposal would open the door to anti-discrimination laws that could hurt religious believers.

“That’s very much like taking a position that religious freedom is an absolute and there are no exceptions,” Elder Oaks said, “and it should override in any and all circumstances the values of nondiscrimination. We don’t believe in that extreme, any more than we believe in the extreme voiced by the New York Times.”

The free exercise of religion is critical to Latter-day Saints, but they recognize exceptions for things like safety and public health, he said.

“There’s great danger in thinking religious freedom is abolute and overrides everything about nondiscrimination,” Elder Oaks said. “And there is great danger in thinking nondiscrimination in absolute and overrides religious freedom.”

One should also not equate the Church and its stand with the example set by some of its members who engage in politics. As a recent Utah transplant I find myself regularly alarmed by political positions espoused by some of the members of the church that exceed the Church’s own statements on the matter. As mentioned before, this was not the first time the Church has made statements in favor of non-discrimination in public interactions, and yet several bills to accomplish just that have encountered opposition in the political process. There are extremists in every group. I acknowledge that, and I’m embarrassed and alarmed by those who adhere to “my camp”. Whenever given the opportunity I vote against them.

Just this morning on the way to work I listened to a recent talk given by Elder Oaks in our recent General Conference. He emphasized that while we as members of our religion have an obligation to vote our consciences on political matters when given the opportunity, he very clearly stated that when the majority will goes against us we have a civic and moral duty to continue to be kind and patient with those who disagree with us. We are still expected to work with them on issues where we can agree. Some battles we will lose–and have lost–but that shouldn’t mean we refuse to work together in the future on issue of common interest and in smoothing relations between us and working out the rough spots where rights sometimes collide.

The extremists in both camps would have us believe that these issues are insurmountable, that either they win and we lose, or we win and they lose. That way lies madness, and lays the groundwork for forces that bear both sides ill will to divide and conquer. If you think that whether or not someone can refuse to bake a wedding cake is a critical issue, just imagine how difficult life would be if those who think gays should be publicly executed should gain control. And they are trying to.

When that day comes I would prefer to be able to fight shoulder to shoulder with my LGBT friends and allies in defending our right to quibble over who gets grandma’s spare room than fight alone against those who would execute us both for who we are. It would be absolutely foolish if we all lost everything we hold dear just because we were still fighting over relatively small things that could have been worked out.

I’m still here. It’s been a crazy week with no sign of letting up any time soon. So I give you “Starvation” by Thomas Bergersen, which evokes for me the image of rampaging hoards. And, as with most things, some days you’re the rampager, some days the rampaged. Stay strong, do good work, and may your children all be above average.

If you’d prefer something a little more relaxing, there’s always this:

Anyone who reads me regularly should probably know by now that I’m something of a luddite. I don’t trust technology, and I don’t invest heavily in it, which is a bit odd considering I make a living from IT. I should be the guy with all the gadgets, right?

Well, I’m not. One minor exception (and I’m still behind the times) is audiobooks. Since my commute take 30+ minutes each way, I find it’s a good time to fill my head with something more positive than endless news cycles or pop music. So I’ve been listening to books while I drive.

And then the unthinkable happened. My book broke.

Last Friday when I went to get in my car to go to work my mp3 player wouldn’t even turn on. It didn’t just give me a “low battery” warning (I have a USB charger in my car, so I could have gotten around that). It was dead. I checked it out some more when I got to work. It wouldn’t even register as a device on my computer when I plugged in the USB cable. It was a completely inert chunk of plastic and metal. And I was only about a third of the way into my latest book.

Vindication should feel better than this. I love physical books, and this is why. I’ve never once picked up a book and found it to be completely inoperable. Warped pages, yes, but never has the cover refused to open or the pages refuse to turn. It just doesn’t happen.

And so I’ve been unable to continue my book. I could have checked out a copy from the library this weekend, but that doesn’t help my commute. I tried using my other mp3 player, but it’s not Audible compatible. It refused to recognize the file type. There was no way I would be finishing this book unless I got a new, compatible player.

Interestingly enough, the book I’ve been listening to is “American Gods”. I wonder if someone is trying to tell me something.

This morning I came in to work, and there was my dead mp3 player sitting on my desk. It being dead, I didn’t even bother to take it home or attempt to secure it at all. On a whim I tried to turn it on again. Nothing. I whacked it against my palm and tried again. It turned on. It’s back. Evidently it just needed percussive maintenance.

Books should not require percussive maintenance. They should perhaps be a means of implementing percussive maintenance. I’m just sayin’.