unHurry: Rehumanize by accepting limitations

4 September 2011 by 2 Comments

Author Sara Zarr cites an interesting New York Times article talking about the limitations of our ability to make an infinite number of decisions during a given period of time, otherwise known as decision fatigue.

If you feel, somehow, that you’re a slacker if you’re not writing six to eight hours a day, and that if you only had more willpower, you could just do it, science says you’re wrong.

As she points out in her post, writing is a creative act that is filled with countless decisions. Other crafts are not quite the same in this regard as they are made up of time consuming handiwork where decisions on the way to a finished product are not continuously required, but the same principle applies.

What Sara’s post and attendant article reminded me of again is the way in which our culture as a whole — in both work and [supposed] leisure — with its pace, its impatience, its demand for immediate answers (decisions) dehumanizes us. I read again this week a quote from Kathleen Norris, talking about her move from New York City to the rural prairie, where she says “I have learned to trust the processes that take time, to value change that is not sudden or ill-considered but grows out of the ground of experience.”

Much of American culture has no use for human limitations, the limits of time. We want things now-now-now. We expect the economy to grow-grow-grow infinitely, at an exponential pace. It dehumanizes in many ways.

How do we change the culture so that we can be ourselves again?

Filed under Affluenza, Entitlement, Modern culture, The contemplative life

Christmas VI

30 December 2010 by 2 Comments

During this season of extravagance I’m often reminded again — even in my tiny house with our two beat up old cars — how blessed I am and how wasteful the U.S. is as a culture. This waste bothers me more and more every year, and I try to curtail it as much as possible in my own life.

Christmas is a time for extravagance (a topic I intend to explore more in the future) as we celebrate the incarnation — although this extravagance need not be wasteful. And as we dole out gifts to family and friends, let us take note of those without family or friends. Or other things we so very often take for granted, such as the sundry food on our holiday tables.

[Youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0HlFP-PMW6E]

See an interview with Jeremy Seifert, the director of Dive!, on MyFoxLA’s website.

Filed under Advent, Affluenza, Christmas, Consumerism, Disposable culture, Modern culture, Salvage, Sustainable living

Christmas V

29 December 2010 by Leave a Comment

A sale on storage containers right after Christmas eh?

I’m actually a fan of these plastic storage totes. They keep the mice and bugs out of your Christmas decorations, keep clay wet for quite a while and are stronger and easier to move around than cardboard boxes. Isn’t it a tell-tale sign of a consumer culture, however, when they’re put on prominent display and on sale immediately after Christmas?

Cameraphone capture while shopping for lumber for a work surface for a Christmas gift

Filed under Advertising, Affluenza, Consumerism, Disposable culture, Entitlement, Mass production, Modern culture

Generosity and tax code

15 December 2010 by Leave a Comment

At first this topic may seem way off base for this blog, but it fits in light of my service with a nonprofit for more than six years now, and my toying with the idea of founding one in the Scissortail Art Center — even if that’s eight years off. So here goes.

Yesterday morning’s Excellence in Giving newsletter featured a recent New York Times article, Nonprofits Fear Losing Tax Benefit. A couple of quotes caught my attention, including the following.

“It’s disappointing that the charitable sector, which is broadly committed to improving the well-being of civil society, is in this case indifferent to repairing what’s wrong in the country at the expense of protecting its marginal tax advantage,” said Rob Reich, an associate professor of political science at Stanford University.

In my opinion Reich is off base. Maybe I’m missing something here, happy to be somewhat ignorant of the inane American tax system (Can a person actually be what is considered knowledgeable in this?), but the marginal tax advantage for nonprofits is less important than the tax deductions for people who give to 501(c)(3)s. According to the Times article, there are three schools of thought when it comes to deductions for charitable giving. One suggests donors are not influenced by the opportunity to itemize, to catch a break on their taxes. My own experience begs to differ. Donors do pay attention to this. Numerous people I’ve talked to about giving to M-DAT start their line of questioning with “Is it tax deductible?” If donors will no longer be able itemize, they will probably be less eager to give — at least in the short term.

Donors have, in essence, been conditioned to expect this special treatment, just like nonprofits. If the tax system drops deductions for charitable giving, I can imagine a number of very hard years for nonprofits. Following those few difficult seasons, however, I can also imagine those lost donations beginning to filter in again as people become used to the idea that the government does not — indeed, should not — bear influence on their generosity.

In light of my own past, present and potential future involvement with nonprofits, it may surprise some when I say that I’m all about significantly simplifying the American tax code. That includes doing away with deductions. I can imagine how the government’s original intent with this part of the tax law might have been noble, attempting to encourage donations to charitable organizations. Unfortunately, people’s motives have been negatively influenced by the law.

People should give out of their generosity; they shouldn’t be writing checks with hopes — even in the back of their mind — of lower taxes (even though lower taxes in and of themselves are also a good thing). People should give to a cause for the sake of the cause.

Filed under Christian art retreat, Entitlement, Modern culture, Personal reflection

The Bones of Plenty: Prairie, farms, Depression

5 October 2010 by 1 Comment

Last night I finished reading Lois Hudson’s The Bones of Plenty. I enjoyed it thoroughly, in large part because it’s probably been a couple years since I paged through a novel. Most of my reading is of nonfiction.

I picked this book up in part because it examines life on the Great [northern] Plains. Set during the Great Depression, it follows a year in the life of a farming family near a small North Dakota town. It’s well-written, poetic at times, in a format broken up by dates instead of chapters. As someone who usually needs short chapters to keep me going through a story, this could have been problematic. It wasn’t. In fact, it worked very well in the context of the novel and moved the story along at a good pace. One thing I didn’t understand, however, was the ubiquitous use of italics. Each paragraph contained multiple italicized words, and any emphasis the reader attempts to subsequently apply is strained at best after a few sections of the book.

Kathleen Norris, in Dakota, suggested Hudson’s The Bones of Plenty surpasses Steinbeck’s The Grapes of Wrath as a novel about farm families during the Depression. I’ve yet to read Steinbeck’s work.

Abandoned House, Prairie from @Michael's Flickr Photostream

What’s most interesting to me about this literary work is its depiction of farm life on the prairie. Hudson’s characters talk about how farming is changing, how the little guy can’t compete with the company farms any longer — even back in 1933. How prices tanked and middlemen made profits even when the growers lost money. How certain hybrids are supposed to do better than others, and about the government’s fatuous attempts to raise prices and control supply. The author employed historic figures for bushels of wheat and quoted government pamphlets from the 1930s when giving words to local officials. As a bit of a sidebar to this review, one of my favorite literary quotes talks about government involved in farming. From Joseph Heller’s Catch 22:

Major Major’s father was a sober God-fearing man whose idea of a good joke was to lie about his age. He was a long-limbed farmer, a God-fearing, freedom-loving, law-abiding rugged individualist who held that federal aid to anyone but farmers was creeping socialism. He advocated thrift and hard work and disapproved of loose women who turned him down. His specialty was alfalfa, and he made a good thing out of not growing any. The government paid him well for every bushel of alfalfa he did not grow. The more alfalfa he did not grow, the more money the government gave him, and he spent every penny he didn’t earn on new land to increase the amount of alfalfa he did not produce. Major Major’s father worked without rest at not growing alfalfa. On long winter evenings he remained indoors and did not mend harness, and he sprang out of bed at the crack of noon every day just to make certain that the chores would not be done. He invested in land wisely and soon was not growing more alfalfa than any other man in the county. Neighbors sought him out for advice on all subjects, for he had made much money and was therefore wise. “As ye sow, so shall ye reap,” he counseled one and all, and everyone said, “Amen.”

This is the prairie that my wife and I grew up on. This is the prairie that, after living in the Ozarks for more than six years, covertly drew us back to it’s amber waves of grain. This is the prairie upon which we hope to establish a contemplative place for artists to come and create, learn.

Filed under Christian art retreat, Entitlement, Mass production, Modern culture, The contemplative life

Intentional Observation: Delight yourself in YHWH

11 September 2010 by 2 Comments

Delight yourself in YHWH and He will give you the desires of your heart. — Psalm 37:4


One of the categories in the sidebar of this blog is “entitlement.” I haven’t posted about this idea (or reality) for a few years now, but was reminded of it this morning when a friend on Facebook decried a Christian radio program for saying “Something that you want can be considered a need if it is part of your lifestyle.”

Apparently, according to this friend’s report, “The dj’s were asking people what they needed to buy or spend money on but just haven’t yet. They wanted to know what it was and why they haven’t bought it yet? What a conversation to get us thinking about our own self-absorbed lives!” Health and wealth gospel, anyone?

Summers during my high school years I worked at Maranatha Bible camp. It was common for a few Canadians to be on staff, as well as a few people from other places around the world. One summer in particular there was a Latino student helping out around camp. His name was Pedro, or was it Pablo. Anyway, he played the piano quite well, and his mantra that summer was “Delight yourself in the LORD and He will give you the desires of your heart; Pamela Anderson.”

I get the sense that we [Americans] often, or pretty much always, forget the first half of that Psalmic invitation. “Delight yourselves in YWHW.“

Do we remotely know what does that looks like? Via Biblios.com, “‘To delight’ is most frequently expressed by chaphets, which means originally ‘to bend’ . . . hence, ‘to incline to,’ ‘take pleasure in.’” How often can we honestly say that we take pleasure in God? I know I can’t say that very often with honesty. Admittedly, I’m too self-absorbed. The to-do list whirling about in my head keeps me from delighting in much of anything, actually. Even when I get to spend time sculpting in my studio, of late, all I can think of is how little time I have to actually spend there and how I need to get as much done as I possibly can. Presently I have to find work to pay the bills, which can be an enormous distraction at times.

Email — and I really don’t get that much of it anymore — is always calling, as are the blog stats (even though they never really change, and I know in my head that I don’t really care that much). Apparently there is some interesting psychology behind our relationship to social media and technology according to a Fresh Air interview from August. Useless distractions abound in our culture, super-saturated with media of all kinds, and keep me from delighting in God.

What would happen if we actually did delight in YHWH, even in our partial understanding of Psalm 37′s invitation? I’d like to think that the desires of our hearts would change. We would be less self-absorbed, “Love your neighbor as yourself.” We would worry corporate America and its quest for ever more cavernous coffers because the next best digital gadget just wouldn’t mean all that much to us. I believe we’d find more joy in every aspect of our lives.

In short, the desires of our heart, whether you want to call them needs or wants or whatevers, would change. They’d look more like the goodness of God, more like His desires for us, for creation.

So how can I do better at delighting in YHWH (regardless of my intentions, my desires, which do not include Pamela Anderson)? I need focus. I think a lot of us need focus. It’s much to easy in the U.S. to go in ten thousand and one different directions, to have 10 hobbies or passions or interests and not be really proficient in any one of them. Additional options play out ever before us thanks to advertising in newspapers, on websites, on television or along our commute to the office. We see what the Joneses just bought or where they vacationed and think we’d enjoy that too.

And we might, actually, but the more directions I’m going in the less — in general — joy I have There just isn’t time for all of them. I must realize what’s most important to me (and what presently allows me to delight in YHWH) with respect to my faith, my God-given talents, my family etc. and adjust accordingly. Subsequently I have to realize that, even in light of similar faith or family values, my direction will often look very different than other peoples.

Filed under Affluenza, Christianity, Consumerism, Entitlement, Intentional observation, Modern culture, Personal reflection

Does poverty encourage creativity?

8 September 2010 by 4 Comments

Lately I’ve been wondering if poverty encourages creativity. Two things prompted this ponderment. One was Andrew Petersen’s first post in his recent series about money, titled Not the root of all evil. The other is simply the lean financial times I find myself in the midst of as we enter Autumn; the contract work I’ve had painting houses this year has dried up for the time being.

My mind is working differently than when I had that work painting. I see things now, objects and opportunities, differently. Possibilities multiply. I take the time to consider more numerous options than if our household was [somewhat more] flush with cash, able to collect in a cart from the Home Depot whatever sundries are needed for a project. Things I’ve collected, some with a specific purpose and some not, look new and become useful in a myriad of ways (I’m not really all that much of a pack rat, but I can’t let some things go.). For instance, the broken dishwasher in the backyard will now become, after being disassembled, part of my downdraft table. Anyone have a squirrel cage laying around they care to donate to that project?

Thus the question in my head is, “Does poverty encourage creativity?” Seems to me it does. I’d like to hear what others think or have experienced in this regard. Does our wealth, individually and nationally, sometimes get in the way of (and also some of the time foster) our imaginations, our ability to be at our creative best?

Paradoxically, I also find myself busier now that a month ago when I still had that [mostly] regular job. I’d love to be working on my own house right now — painting and putting to good use all the building materials I’ve salvaged over the past few months — but haven’t the time in light of trying to find other ways to generate income. As I count in my head, I’m working in no less than five directions toward that end at the moment.

One of those directions is as a freelance graphic designer. I pick up this kind of work now and then anyway, so I’m offering my talents as such if you or yours need a logo, brochure, banner etc designed and printed up. You can see a portfolio of my work under the above tab titled Design Portfolio. Email me at TheAestheticElevator(at)gmail(dot)com if you need such services.

Filed under Affluenza, Consumerism, Disposable culture, Imagination, Intentional observation, Living incarnationally, Modern culture, Personal reflection, Restoration, Salvage, The contemplative life

Let your squares be squares

13 July 2010 by Leave a Comment

Julie Rozman, an architect-slash-ceramics blogger I’ve followed for a few years now, posted some images of her work for sale. She’s moving from Chicago to Urbana to study ceramics, and one of her sets of work reminded me of a post I’ve been thinking about for a while.

A long while, actually. Probably since I graduated from college almost ten years ago now.

Julie's sculpture does not forget it's roots.

In my architecture classes, in my graphic design classes and some of the time in my ceramics classes I watched aspiring artists and designers, myself included, forget the basics of design. We’d go after an assignment with passion, with dreams of being featured on the front cover of Architectural Digest, and forget that there are certain building blocks to every visual and spatial solution. They were overthinking the problem.

I suppose this is a symptom of the genius mentality, the drive for stardom usurping the desire to make useful and beautiful contributions to our surrounding environments.

Filed under Aesthetics, Affluenza, Architecture, Art, Art education, Artist as genius, Basis for designing well, Beauty, Ceramics, Design, Modern culture

Racism at the bank

10 July 2010 by 2 Comments

So I went to the bank again this afternoon. Ahead of me in line were people of all colors and ethnicity, again. The man directly in front of me was in what I presume to be in native garb from somewhere in North Africa, a simple white robe and a well crafted skull cap of sorts.

An American man got into line behind me. He had a young Latino next to him with whom he spoke fluent Spanish. Apparently the American, from what I could tell, was helping this man open or withdraw from a bank account.

Africans at a bank in the Midwest.

In this particular Wells Fargo branch there is a large antique scale. The American told the Latino to go see how much he weighed. As he went to discover that he weighed a slight 120 pounds, the man escorting him said to me under his breath, “Too many of them here. Too many of them too,” he continued while pointing to the African man in front of me. “They’re taking over.”

I had to restrain myself from replying to this blatant racism, though in my mind I formulated a response, something to the effect that “I appreciate the cultural diversity that’s come to the Midwest.” He’d just come in and I didn’t really know how much of a conversation I wanted to have in line at the bank, a conversation of that nature. So I said nothing and looked ahead.

As the line was fairly long and slow we did end up exchanging a few more words, mostly to discuss our weight, the pens in the bank which never write and how Fridays are always the busiest day to make a deposit. It became somewhat obvious this man was pretty unhappy in general, or at least liked to complain. I wondered if he was harboring some sort of bitterness that poured into all aspects of his life, including impatiently waiting in line at the bank.

I know this is a fairly common prejudicial sentiment, but what I don’t understand at all is how people get there. I grew up in a very, very Caucasian Midwestern community. There were a lot fewer Latin immigrants (legal or otherwise) then than now, and very few black people in the town.

The one black kid I remember in school, in my grade, was a bully. He was a leader and had a cadre of people around him that didn’t respect anyone else for the most part. My first life experiences with an African American were negative, and yet I’m somehow not harboring any ill feelings towards him or people of any color.

How is it then that so many Americans, perhaps particularly in the Midwest, find and foster such feelings towards people of other ethnicities? Is it thanks to media reports that talk about crime in the poorer neighborhoods where immigrants end up living? Did they have parents who instilled specific prejudices instead of compassion, respect and love for other people as themselves? Or did they have bad experiences like I did as a child that they couldn’t work through?

Last weekend my wife and I were thinking about patriotic American holidays and church. We were wondering if the patriotism often worked into Sunday morning services on or near certain holidays — which my wife and I don’t really appreciate — would be lost on someone not born in the United States. Other’s pointed out, though, that these people might have a greater appreciation for America and feel right as rain celebrating the country (in lieu of celebrating God, which is the problem we have with such services).

And this makes sense in most cases. So how do so many Americans end up so down on these people who so love their country? Isn’t it flattery for people to try and get into your country for the freedoms and opportunities it affords?

I’ve heard the arguments against immigration, so spare me your pat rhetoric in response to my deeper apolitical inquiry. And understand that I’m not condoning the illegal crossing of borders here. The man in question at the bank this afternoon should know better than to assume all or most immigrants are illegal. The Africans in line were almost certainly not illegal. They were probably refugees.

How can so many Americans have so little sense of their personal history? How can they forget so easily that this country is a country of immigrants (my sincere apologies to the Native Americans)? I’m grateful for my own family’s interest in their history. I’m glad that I’m regularly reminded by my parents and grandparents of our Danish, Swedish and German heritage. Apparently there’s a little bit of French in there too somewhere. Do other families not talk about their roots? Doesn’t someone in their clan have an affinity for genealogy?

My best guess as to why people find and foster this kind of hatred is that they’re scared. Scared of the reported crime, whether or not it’s an accurate representation of the immigrant community as a whole. Scared of losing jobs I suppose, even though we all know the immigrants generally take jobs a lot of us Americans aren’t willing to do anyway (though I suppose this economy may have changed that to a degree). Scared of the unknown.

Really I just don’t understand, as I said before. I’m not perfect. If we’re honest with ourselves we all know that we harbor some bias, some prejudice. But aren’t things like love for one’s neighbor still basic cultural values in America? Do we not hold to the truth that all men are created equal?

Filed under Central Nebraska, Entitlement, Grand Island, Intentional observation, Living incarnationally, Modern culture, Personal reflection

On how consumerism changes religion

31 March 2010 by Leave a Comment

David Taylor just had to go and post a review of Vincent Miller’s 2008 book, Consuming Religion. As if I wasn’t depressed enough already at how my reading schedule appears utterly doomed for this year, I now have to add another book to the wish list. A few quotes from Taylor’s review (yes, they’re long, but worth reading, and obviously quite a bit shorter than the actual review which is also worth reading):

    Consumerism may fight against religion. But it is commodification that disarms it. As he puts it, “When consumption becomes the dominant cultural practice, belief is systematically misdirected from traditional religious practices into consumption . . . Traditional practices of self-transformation are subordinated to consumer choice” (225) . . .

    The “use” of Mother Theresa illustrates these dynamics. Her indelible image—the cracked outline of her face, a preternatural smile, tenderly touching an untouchable—gets printed on t-shirts. These t-shirts get mass-produced and worn by young Americans “inspired” by her life. They recite her words. They appeal to her work to denounce, say, two-car-garage lifestyles and the war in Iraq. And they do this while drinking Kenyan coffee and listening to “World Music” on their iPods . . . Religious materials, in short, are “thrown into a cultural marketplace where they can be embraced enthusiastically but not put into practice” (28) . . .

    In Miller’s account, the story begins with Karl Marx. Marx showed how laborers were alienated from the fruits of their labors. This, in turn, led to an increased “de-skilling” of workers, who then more easily “employed” by engineers to perform tasks for which they received “wages.” In time a shift ensued in the mode of human existence from being to having. The suburban single-family home epitomized this shift. Here we had a family supported almost entirely by wages. The family, under this rubric, shifted from managing production to managing consumption. Such a family, for example, now collects “devices” in order to make their lives easier. But for Miller the result leads to increasing isolation from neighbors, who are no longer felt to be needed. Wages and benefits replace “extended family and community relationships as the source of security” (48) . . .

    What advice does Miller offer the reader looking to resist assimilation to consumerism? The first task, he argues, is to name commodification as a problem. After this one can choose a number of creative activities. One can find out where their food comes — Chiquita bananas or breast of chicken. One can take up a craft and gain an appreciation for the labor costs that are involved. The liturgy, at least of the more “high” churches, can serve to reinforce the interconnections between doctrine and symbols and thus aid in the stabilization of their meanings.

After a few criticisms of Miller’s use of sociology over hard data and some hasty comments on the arts, Taylor concludes his review:

    In the end, however, I was very encouraged by Miller’s book. He offered an acute picture of the dynamics of a consumerist culture. The problem is not simply that our culture produces narcissistic individuals who increasingly find themselves isolated from neighbor and nature. The problem is the way that the dynamics of commodification make it easy for us to “consume” religion.

Read Taylor’s review in full via this link.

Filed under Affluenza, Christianity, Consumerism, Entitlement, Mass production, Modern culture

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