Authenticity Macht Frei

One of the interesting things about getting older is you wake up one day in an entirely different culture. A generation or two comes of age under much different influences. Education has always been passed down in erratic and precarious ways, especially of late once the teaching profession became an arm of the Democrat party. The idea that socialism is a good idea, for example, would’ve been foreign to me when I was in my 20s.

So some guy named Rogan, apparently a major influencer, said he’s voting for Bernie primarily on the basis of his “authenticity”. And I think that explains part of the thirst for leaders who are increasingly unexperienced: from Obama to Trump to that Greta girl, the idea is that if you can find individuals who have not been corrupted by the political system they are seen as legit and authentic.

Charlie Kirk said something on a radio show that resonates:

“I’ve been trying to warn people that young people, in particular, will vote for Bernie Sanders and clueless people will vote for Sanders because they think he’s authentic. And there’s an authenticity crisis happening right now in America politics. People believe that politicians espouse certain positions only because they are paid to do so and that money in politics is the number one issue. Republicans and conservatives are on the wrong side of the money and politics issue.”

This would help explain Trump’s rise - he boasted in ’16 he was spending his own money and wouldn’t be beholden to the system - as well as the shocking recent poll that Mayor Bloomberg has somehow bought himself a fourth place ranking among Democrat voters nationally. He, like Trump, is supposedly too rich to be bought off. The only legit sources of money nowadays become self-funding or grassroots Bernie-style. Which means populists or billionaires. Narrows the field a mite.

At root it reminds me of what Yuval Levin says in his latest book about the hatred of institutions and anything formational.   To have governing experience, to learn how to govern, is to be corrupted by it. (Bloomberg, tellingly, isn’t telling anybody in his ads he was a mayor, at least that I can tell.) The fiction is that the only free person is one who has not been formed when actually it’s only formed people that are truly free. It goes back to whether you see human nature as needing to be freed from constraints to be good or that we need constraints precisely because of the nature of human nature.

The Mystery of Bishop Inquity

To continue the previous post, another comment by the priest I heard give a talk said this concerning a former bishop of Columbus:

"When I realized what actually did go on, my greatest shock was that it didn’t so horrify the bishops that they didn’t stop it. There was a priest in Mount Vernon [Ohio] who was very bad. And everybody knew it. And Bishop Herrmann wouldn’t move him. And finally the farmers from Knox County came and told Herrmann: 'either you move him or we shoot him'. So he moved him to Newark [Ohio].

I mean, it’s incomprehensible how that happens. But again the bishops themselves were part of this bizarre alteration. Any bishop who deeply believed in Jesus Christ and the mission of the Church could have never done that. It’s hard to say, and you'd ask 'are you accusing them of not believing?' No, I’m accusing them of not believing what they should believe."

So like with the post on McCarrick and Bernardin I tried to figure out what the heck went on with Herrmann. How could a priest born so deep in the pre-Vatican II world go so astray (I say naively)?

He was born on the East Coast (Baltimore) and, just like with Bernardin and McCarrick, lost his father while still a toddler. He had to help his family during the Great Depression, working for an oil company for years and like both Bernardin and McCarrick had a late vocation.

According to the Columbus diocese website his nine years as bishop was highlighted by a reorganization of the Diocese, the implementation of community housing and food programs, and a spirituality program for priests begun by social justice Jesuits in 1973. This list of accomplishments seems to neatly encapsulates what the priest mentioned:

"The root cause of much of the problems in the church was created by influential Jesuits in the '60s and '70s who saw the Church’s mission as more one of social justice rather than one of transcendence...those who saw the Church as an NGO..."

Bing Crosby Movies Ruined the Church (hot take!)

I had the rare opportunity to hear a priest give a talk recently whom I greatly esteem and who is well-connected to American and European bishops.  The candid talk was downright therapeutic. Really opened my eyes to a new way of looking at much of the corruption in the Church.

He began by reading the gospel passage in Matthew where John the Baptist is languishing in prison and is presumably wondering what happened to the promises in Isaiah of the Messiah such that the lion and lamb would lie down together, the child putting the hand on the adder, etc... and yet this isn’t turning out how he thought it would. And John asked his followers if Jesus was the messiah or should we expect another...

He said this is where we’re at today. “We are in prison. We are not experiencing the success of the message of the gospel." How can the world be this bad despite the grace we’ve been given?

The root cause of much of the problems in the church was created by influential Jesuits in the '60s and '70s who saw the Church’s mission as more one of social justice rather than one of transcendence. If you think about, who is better as leader of an NGO than McCarrick, who was light on transcendence but heavy on fund-raising?

He says people laugh at him for this, but he thinks Bing Crosby's movies ruined the Church by setting up ridiculous expectations of priests in Going My Way and Bells of St. Mary.

"They anesthetized people's common sense. Anybody who couldn't see that was phony couldn't see anything.  And yet they became cultural icons of the Catholic clergy, that you could do no wrong. I don't think any sane priest thinks they can do no wrong;  I know there are priests who do think they can do no wrong but they're not sane. I think that this idea somehow that there was this kind of ethereal clergy did violence to us.  I think it's part of the cultural baggage that we came out of the horrific World War II with, trying to find some peace and security, and in fact not doing that at all."  

Imagine if we laity and media weren't so awed by the priests since the '40s that we nipped the pedophilia scandal in the bud by pushing back hard?

His primary messages:

1) Reform almost always comes from the ground up, not from the hierarchy.
2) You can only do what you can do.
3) Bishops have very complex jobs that hardly anyone can handle.
4) Benedict saw that he could not handle the papacy.  Neither can Francis.

On Benedict's resignation and the woe in some quarters it created:

“But it happened. He did what he thought was right. Many people think it wasn’t right. But you know Benedict was hated in Germany. When he went to Germany the bishops didn’t even shake hands with him. He was more beloved over here than over there. But you’re not going to have a single person anymore who is going to meet all your needs. It’s not possible. Which is why there ought to be a pulling back, into the real focus of the real meaning of their life. They have probably become too activist in world affairs. There’s a book out by Pius XII’s involvement to assassinate Hitler. That might’ve been something justifiable, considering that Hitler was a mass murderer, but Pius made it very clear ‘this is me personally involved in this, not the Catholic Church’. I think that we’ve put too much on the papacy that no one can carry and I think Benedict realized that. I’m sorry he resigned but I think Francis is trying to carry it and obviously he can’t. You shouldn’t try to carry what you can’t carry. You should be what you’re supposed to be and move back. 

There’s a scholarly article by John Watts about how the monarchical papacy got started in the 13th century and how it develops. There are many ways to be pope.

And a very high profile, public, political figure is not necessarily one that suits the age. Because it’s just not possible.”

It’s all coming together: why Benedict left, why Francis was elected. I’m a victim of the same George Bush mentality that expected utopian things to happen in Iraq upon liberation - without the proper culture you cannot reform. Similarly the Vatican, where the culture is noxious.

A 2012 article in Der Spiegel was helpfully prescient, though I wouldn’t have believed it at the time. An insider is quoted as saying: “the Vatican is a ball of wool that's almost impossible to untangle -- not even by a pope." Events have proven the truth of what Benedict already knew. Bergoglio was elected as a “reformer” but reform was no more going to happen in Rome than Iraqis were going to have a healthy, functioning democracy.

Ten years ago Vatican finances were something of a distraction to me compared to the need for evangelization. Admittedly financial corruption, let alone sexual corruption, hurts the Church's ability to authentically mirror Christ to put it mildly. But pre-McCarrick I felt like evangelization was more important than reform, and presumably Benedict felt the same given how much importance he put on writing his books on Jesus rather than knocking heads in the Curia.

But now we’ve seen just how ugly the corruption was, especially with McCarrick and his rise to power. It seemed gobsmackingly crazy that an institution of and for Christ was incapable of meeting minimal secular standards of finance (with the banking) or minimal standards of conduct (i.e. sexual crimes). But the Vatican culture predates the American experiment just as Iraqi culture does and is certainly not immune to the "crooked timber" of all humanity. This isn’t to excuse the corruption but ... you can’t reform from above it seems. No single person, no pope, can do it. Certainly that seems to be the tale from Paul VI to John Paul II on down the line.

Harry & Meghan Takin’ Their Talents to Canada

Picturing this to Green Acres tune starring Prince Harry and Princess Meghan:

North America is the place to be
Barn livin' is the life for me
Land spreadin' out so far and wide
Keep your palace just give me that countryside 

Nova Scotia is where I'd rather fend
I get allergic around footmen
I just adore an in-law free view
Darling I want that Michigan Avenue

The bores! the floors! fresh air! no cares!
You are my husband, goodbye palace life...
Green Acres we are there!

Mafia and Bishops

History can seem bizarre. For example, I wanted to know if the sickness (in terms of scandal) of the Cincinnati Archdiocese predated Bernadin. His immediate predecessor was Archbishop Leipold, who served only three years before an untimely death. He seems like he was a holy man but where it gets odd is here:

Possibly the most historical event of his career happened as a result of his acting as spiritual director for a young nun living in Ohio and Indiana. In 1963, as Monsignor Leibold, he issued an imprimatur to a diary of private revelations written by Sr. Mildred Ephrem Neuzil while she was serving at a convent (Kneipp Springs) in Rome City, IN. It was here that she claimed she was visited multiple times by the Virgin Mary who declared herself to be "Our Lady of America" and gave her important messages to be given to America's Bishops..

After issuing his imprimatur to the messages written down by Sr. Neuzil, later on, as Archbishop of Cincinnati, he went on to commission a statue, plaques, and even a medal to take these apparitions to the second level of Church confirmation.

This is a devotion I was not even aware existed. And it gets weirder: Sister Mildred ended up giving charge of the devotion upon her death in 2000 to her dear friend Sr. Joseph Therese (Patricia Ann Fuller) who ended up canonically no longer a nun. She claims two men were involved in fraud with donations and they claimed she was no longer a nun and so she sued them for defamation. It made its way to the U.S. District Court and in 2015 she lost, with Vatican saying she was not part of any current legit congregation.
__

I’m watching The Irishman on Netflix in small doses. I think part of the interest in the mafia in general is the generational part: seeing how the different characters are interrelated, who mentored and promoted who, who killed who, how power evolved, etc... As well as to wonder about the “ultimate meritocracy” of the political men who end up on top.

It’s also fascinating to see how the gay mafia took over the Catholic Church including the American branch. It’s almost like there should not just be the official sacramental lineage of bishops going back, but also the lineage of how gay prelates took over: who appointed who. Like the mob.

It’s interesting to look at the parallels between Bernardin and McCarrick. Both lost their fathers as infants. Both had to take over family duties in their earliest years during the Great Depression. Both likely suffered from same sex attraction; in Bernardin’s case maybe simply accidental he had tons of gay friends. Both excelled at mediation: politicians friendly to “both sides”. Both had late vocations by the standards of the time (i.e. when most chose that route in your early teens): McCarrick decided to enter the seminary at age 20 while traveling in Europe for a year. Bernardin had entered a public university as a pre-med student and shocked his sister when he announced he was going to seminary. Both spent a vanishingly small amount of time as parish priests.

Japan and WW2

Reading Richard Frank’s Downfall about the (agonizingly slow until it came fast) surrender of Japan in WW2.  I've always wondered the moral decision making around its development and use, and why Japan didn't surrender after the first one.

The rationale for use was predicated on the steady evolution of increased tolerance of civilian deaths, beginning with German (who else?) pilots in WW I. It feels in some sense inevitable in one sense, like the frog sitting in water that gets hotter degree by degree. It’s reaction-reaction-reaction all the time: a reaction to German and Axis use of civilian terror and deaths by beginning Allied bombing campaigns. The panicked reaction to news Germany was bent on going nuclear led to our Manhattan Project (the Germans badly misjudged the amount of material they would need and pretty much gave up). And the deployment of the bombs was perhaps a reaction to news of vast Japanese homeland mobilization as well as the prospect that the Russians, an already untrustworthy “ally”, were planning to take part in the spoils of Japan.

Why two bombs? The short answer seems to be that members in Japan’s inner circle already knew enough about nuclear programs to think that the U.S. had at most a very limited supply of weapons, perhaps only one. They knew enough, alas, to know the difficulties, a poisonous knowledge that helped trigger the Nagasaki bombing since the first one didn't tip the balance. Perhaps even the second wasn’t enough on its own either, given they suddenly had Russia declaring war on them at the same time. So the second weapon was deployed with speed -- not to prevent the Japanese from having enough time to come to their senses but because without a quick second bomb it would look like we had a very limited supply.

In some ways it all feels foreordained if grotesquely tragic. You can see the slow build-up: the steady incremental steps to evil in the form of civilian bombings (the American ones at Tokyo not only killed civilians but ended the Japanese nuclear program). There was the box that Germany put America in as far as having to design and build it. The box that Japan and Russia put us in as far as deployment. 

The world wars of the last century feel surreal given the relative "peace" we have had since.

Isaiah and Ways of Reading the Bible

Part of why the Bible is so fascinating to me is now is because for so long I read it wrong. I missed so much in earlier readings due looking it as a past document instead of a live one that is applicable to past, present and future. I’ve read it too much with the view of the writer's original intention without regard to symbol or figurative language - even though symbols and "double-meaning" are what separates man from animals.

I’m reading a book on reading ("On Reading Well"):

“The ability to understand figurative language, in which ‘a word is both itself and something else,’ is unique to human beings and, as one cognitive psychologist explains, ‘fundamental to how we think’ in that it is the means by which we can ‘escape the literal and immediate.’ We see this quality most dramatically in satire and allegory. Although very different, both satirical and allegorical language employ two levels of meaning: the literal meaning and the intended meaning. In satire, the intended meaning is the opposite of the stated words; in allegory, the intended meaning is symbolized by the stated words. Satire points to error, and allegory points to truth, but both require the reader to discern meaning beyond the surface level. In this way, allegory and satire—and less obviously, all literary language—reflect the transcendent nature of the human condition and the “double-willed self” described by Paul in Rom 7:19”

I'm reminded where the high priest Caiaphas said unwittingly of Jesus but accurately nonetheless, “It is better for you that one man die for the people than that the whole nation perish.”

The simplest lines in the Bible now resonate with meaning in a way they couldn’t before partially because I have more biblical knowledge, as well as I’m more alert to my own perennial tendency to underestimate God’s love. Take for example today’s first reading from Isaiah:

‘Comfort my people, comfort them’
says your God.
‘Speak to the heart of Jerusalem
and call to her
that her time of service is ended,
that her sin is atoned for,
that she has received from the hand of the Lord
double for all her sins.’

An incomplete way to look at this passage is to see it merely as God’s instructions to Isaiah. The better way is to look at it as instructions to Christ in 30 A.D. and to us today.

The fascinating tidbit is this verse is linked in many Bible commentaries to Job 42:10. So I trotted out to Job, chapter 42, which comes after Job has experienced a ton of Job-like negative experiences:

“And the Lord restored the fortunes of Job when he had prayed for his friends; and the Lord gave Job twice as much as he had before.”

So the verse from Isaiah is saying the Jews received double for all her sins, and yet it points to Job saying that Job got twice as much as he had more for his troubles. How to reconcile these? Maybe that we get twice as much grace as our sins dictate?

The world-changing view of Job is that he’s actually Jesus. (Which I first learned from GK Chesterton.)  Job's depicted as a righteous person who unfairly receives suffering. That’s Jesus to a “T” obviously, who was the only righteous person outside of Mary. So the way I look at the verse from Isaiah - in a paraphrased way - is that God the father is saying to Jesus through Isaiah: “Comfort my people, comfort them. Speak to the heart and call to her that her sin is atoned for, that she has received from the hand of the Lord double the expiation needed by way of your crucifixion.”

I never would’ve read Isaiah that way years ago. I would’ve read it only in the historical moment, without the supernatural (yet well within human capacity)  idea that Scripture applies to past and present and future.. I would’ve read it as Isaiah being reminded by God that now the exile in Babylon is over and that all is well - except that it seems unfair the Israelites had paid double for their sins. It’s true that the writer’s actual, original intention could be simple hyperbole: “hey, you’ve paid double for your sins so don’t worry about it!” But if we’ve learned nothing, we’ve learned that nothing is accidental (title of Fr. Groeschel book), including most especially what’s written in the Bible. Christ, in a way, paid double for our sins since he had no sins to atone for.

Coffee Shop Thoughts

Sitting in the quintessential millennial hang out, the coffee shop, in the quintessential millennial Cbus neighborhood, the Short North. It’s like a micro vacation with none of the financial hangover. “Roaming Goat” it is, right next door to ye olde new bookstore. Sipping a rich roast coffee and feeling a bit out of place, like a 40-year old at a fraternity party. Found a table in back; a bit light on natural light but pleasant.

It’s not my natural habitat as shown by a painting above me of the Holy Roman emperor of the Democrat party, Justice Ruth Bader Ginsberg. The title of the work is, appropriately, “Blessed Be Thy Name”. One might append, “devoted custodian of the sacrament of abortion”.

A gray November day, as appropriate for Ohio in November as could be cogitated: cloudy, windy and 46 degrees. A weather cliche. Good weather inasmuch as it’s somehow more appropriate that we give thanks in a time of year in which thanks is not a ready sentiment. Just as they say the time you most need to pray is when you don’t feel like it, one should practice giving thanks when it’s not sunny and warm and you’re on a beach.







While I’m here, the melange of thankful entries on my workplace’s bathroom window (click to enlarge):

Peggy and Pageantry

I think there are certain Beltway types who are smitten by ritual and by "historic" proceedings, even if the substance is banal. Peggy Noonan seems to have fallen under this particular trance given her eagerness to boast "What I saw at the Impeachment Trial" (to paraphrase her first book title). Rarely have we seen Noonan so captured by the Beltway bubble and bauble, so taken by the petty.

The problem for her, no doubt, is that politics is too small these days. Giants of the ‘80s like Reagan, Tip O’Neill, Daniel Patrick Moynihan have morphed into the midgets of the ‘10s: Schiff, Trump and Jordan. It’s not Peggy’s fault per se, but giving this impeachment the time of day seems a waste of her talent. The massive squander of time and energy on a question that was known since the transcript came out, on whether there was quid pro quo, is as astonishing as it is silly. The only interesting question is the one rarely asked: exactly how wrong was it? I don’t think it rises to the level of impeachment.

The only surprise in the whole affair is it took three years to catch Trump in something half-way impeachable. A babe in the woods, a complete neophyte in politics who didn’t understand the game, he was invincibly ignorant of the fact that the unelected spy agencies have at least as much power as the president and more if you consider that they can take out a president far more easily than vice-versa.

Ultimately what was done to Trump was far worse than what he did. If the press had any credibility at all they’d be more outraged at the mortal sin of the years-long Russia probe than of Trump’s venial, venal phone call. More sinned against than sinning is Trump, at least while he’s been in the White House.

Amy Robach's Brush with Truth via Project Veritas

I worry that Trump has greatly accelerated media decadence, that he’s driven them mad and has exposed them to the point where they no longer "self-identify" as journalists anymore.

No longer in a state of “journalistic grace” they’ve easily transitioned to “advocate sinners”, having long been tempted in that direction anyway. It's getting to the point where if the press said the sky is blue I’d believe it wasn’t.

Because in the time-honored D.C. way, a gaffe/hot mic revealed the truth. TV reporter Amy Robach vented on having the goods on Epstein three years ago but the ABC honchos suppressed the story because apparently too many important and powerful people would get hurt, like the Clintons, Alan Dershowitz, and a prince in England. Because, as we know, the role of the press is to protect the powerful and preach to the powerless (especially Trump voters). The irony of Buckingham Palace having veto power over ABC stories is that we once fought a war to end monarchical rule.

And of course Robach stepped back from her brush with the truth and docilely toed the corporate line just as she did three years ago when she withheld the information from other news outlets or the police because, as we know, the role of the press is to get scoops, not give them. Apparently she felt no moral obligation given that Epstein could claim more victims in the meantime.

ABC laughably professed not having sufficient information for a story on Epstein never mind having had nothing on Justice Kavanaugh but eagerly feeding off wild-eyed allegations for days. (As one columnist said, "Whatever the liberal elite wants printed is propaganda; whatever it wants suppressed is news.")

They found out who apparently leaked the video and arranged to have the staffer fired even though he/she now works for CBS. “Professional courtesy” said CBS. They might’ve added, “After all, we’re all on the same team here, to propagandize for liberalism.”

I think we’re in a post-hypocritical age now given that there’s no longer any shame in being one. Witness ABC lecturing Trump on his focus on the whistle-blower while at the same time working to crucify their own whistle-blower, now at CBS. There’s no stigma to Trump’s hypocrisy when everybody’s doing it, just as there’s no stigma now to having kids out of wedlock since everybody’s doing it. There reaches a tipping point where there’s no shame.

The Epstein story is not the most important story of the year but it’s highly symbolic and telling. That he could get killed in a detention center and there be no leads or media curiosity? It’s like the Jimmy Hoffa story only it all occurred in public.  But little cracks are beginning to form in the cover-up, little slow leaks of truth. Despite the press. 

Last Days Pre-Nostalgia

There’s a weird and perverse predilection in me for this to be the “last days”, to be nearing the apocalypse, even to the point of not quite being disappointed if Pope Francis doubles down on his loathing of church conservatives by displaying the Amazonian idols in St. Peter’s (update: he did not).

Both Donald Trump and Pope Francis feel like canaries in the apocalyptic coal mine, both singing “the end is nigh!" to different tunes.

One wants to live in interesting times as long as they don’t affect us unduly, which is a fiction we can believe to a rather astonishing extent. This wicked tendency is disturbing but perhaps goes with the human nature interest in extremes: extreme holiness or extreme debauchery. But especially the latter -- as the Henley song goes, we all love dirty laundry.

But whether this be the last times or middle times or what have you it doesn’t lessen the obligation to be holy or to die to self, which I think is part of my attraction alas. The delay in the Second Coming is an act of the mercy of God for which we should all be grateful.

How a Bill Doesn't Become a Law

It’s interesting to me to consider the ever on-going ripple-down effects of the activist judiciary. Since the adoption of a “living Constitution” (which effectively kills the Constitution), the judicial branch has become rightfully paramount to the legislative.

After all, if you’re in the position where a branch of government sanctions the killing of hundreds of thousands of innocents and could rewrite the Constitution on religious liberty and freedom of speech, well, that concentrates the mind.

So there’s a bill (the Secure Act) stuck in the Senate despite 97 out of a 100 senators in favor of it. It helps address the looming retirement crisis by increasing amount older workers can contribute to 401k, protecting religiously affiliated organizations, protecting private-sector pensions, increasing 401k coverage to part-time employees, etc…

But the problem is Senate floor time is scarce due to the focus on judges (the latter also arguably due to the feeling that this is the last hurrah for the GOP and its hold on judges, given the demographic winter it’s on the cusp of).

A way around it is if you’d have unanimous consent:

In short, if a bill enjoys unanimous consent among every Senator, it doesn’t require any floor time. At this juncture, it appears three GOP Senators are refusing to allow the bill’s passage under unanimous consent: Ted Cruz, Mike Lee and Pat Toomey. Senator Cruz has concerns about certain 529 college savings plan provisions. Senator Lee has concerns about a provision that provides some relief for small community newspapers. And Senator Toomey has primarily voiced concerns about certain technical tax corrections that impacts retailers, which he wants to see addressed through floor debate and amendment.

Appalachia at Dusk

We recently took and trip and drove through atmospheric old West Virginia, old because of the mountains and old because poverty contracepts the artificiality of newness. Veiny fronds and ivy weave around eighty year old farm equipment and hundred year old barns. Everything has a look of having settled in permanently.

We pass a historical sign marking an antebellum house on 35 South, General McCellan’s house if I read it correctly at 60mph. This road is a corridor I’d like to tour, but hard to park on a turnpike and it’s mostly all private land. Plus I hear they have shotguns in those hollers. It all gives off a “City of New Orleans” tune vibe.

Unwoke: Napa Valley
Woke: Appalachian valley

Napa nah, Appalachia yah. The white lightning tour > the winery tour.

We pass by South Charleston Industrial Park, which looks like an old penitentiary. A “Beef Jerky Outlet” sign. Dunes of black coal look as soft as Hawaiian black sand beaches. Hoary old mountains wearing fog wreaths like the coronas of ancient Roman generals.

Deathly looking truck ramps scale mountain passes for when brakes fail. How do they get down from up there? I google and learn: it’s a tow and a fine.  In a half-doze I dream a rhyme of a fen populated by a Renaissance festival: a Ren Fen.

Gallery at highway speed:

Motivational Indeed

Rousing and deeply moving/unsettling talk by a speaker at our department meeting today. Funny, sad, rich and uncommonly wise. Have I changed or has the company? Both? Regardless, this speaker comes from an obviously core Christian bedrock and addressed the sore sticking point for humanity today: the inability to see the sanctity of life and the extraordinariness of the “ordinary” person.

At the same time it was unsettling because he was deeply uncompromising on mediocrity. I tend to be exceptionally mediocre (oxymoron alert!).

It’s funny that after treating work as a joke, a Dilbert cartoon, that now it’s morphed into a different thing. My experience is sometime between 2006 and 2009 executives simply stopped being obtuse and really changed in a radical way.  More common sense-oriented and more purpose-seeking. And definitely more employee-centric.

For example, needless meetings stopped happening and became far less boring, especially on the department level. It is inconceivable in the ‘90s we’d have as a meeting venue the Columbus Zoo, and mix business with pleasure.

It’s remarkable how the culture shifted. In the old days of the 90s, every other day you’d have some new top-down management fad you’d have to indulge, beginning with “ponc” which stood for “price of non-conformance” and which became a rallying cry among the troops, with all of us calling each other “ponc-ers”.

There was an atmosphere of mandatory overtime, pointing fingers, and pointless exercises - basically all the stuff that went into Dilbert’s popular cartoon. But it’s as if the execs started reading Dilbert and reacted to it - or maybe it’s when we became a private company. Execs even started using Gallop to measure employee satisfaction. That'd cray-cray in 1990.

I suspect some of it is also the influence of Silicon Valley, where the tech companies have a more laid-back style and emphasize employee comfort. You get more with honey than vinegar.

Or it’s simply that the millennials (who are now the majority of the work force and drive many a decision) are not motivated by hierarchy or “force” but by being treated like an adult with less overhead and supervision. It’s odd to see institutions change, but if you live long enough you see stuff.

The result is to feel a loyalty to the company in a new and more visceral way. It’s interesting to see the change in our department getting a speaker who would speak to average man instead of one who assumed that his audience were all executives chasing only the bottom line. He was human - no cyborg salesman - and spiritual, and it was a disconnect to hear this at work, if only because most of the time I’ve failed to see the spiritual side of work (which admittedly is idiotic). But it’s inconceivable someone so authentically spiritual in the ‘80s or ‘90s would've spoken. It was cutthroat world and the goal was to make money so as not to have layoffs.

The speaker, Kevin Brown, inadvertently gets to the sickness in capitalism which is to treat everything and everyone as transactional.

The money quote was: “Can you look in the mirror and see the faces of the people who helped you get to where you are?”. In other words, we look into the mirror and may either despair or be complacent and self-satisfied, but what we should see is that we are not autonomous units but reflections of all that came before us - the teachers, preachers, mentors, parents, strangers, the person who serves you now, etc. They all played a role in our becoming. There’s no such thing as a “self-made man”.

Brandt Jean Forgiving Amber Guyger

Interesting to see the varied responses to the video of the man forgiving the cop who killed his brother. It’s almost a Rorschach test.

Al Sharpton: “He’s not doing it for her. He’s doing it to grow as a Christian.”

Displays denial of God’s grace, shows Pelagianism and reduces humanity to being incapable of doing something for another without self-interest.  Also contradicts Scripture in pretending he can read another person’s heart.

Others on Twitter: “He did it because therapists teach us that you have to forgive in order to move on and not influence your health and well-being negatively.”

This is the therapeutic model that sees religion as a means to an end, that of the god of health, rather than the ultimate end in itself.

Others: “It’s Stockholm Syndrome where you sickly love your oppressor.”

The cynic’s choice, a conspiratorial mindset that sees human behavior only in political and psychological manipulation terms.

Others: “He’s a fool.”

Others lack the vision to see forgiveness as anything but weakness.