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David over at JollyBlogger has become a fan of Seligman's theory of Learned Helplessness (and its reverse, Learned Optimism). I've been touting Seligman's Learned Optimism and What You Can Change and What You Can't for over a year now. (See my review of What You Can Change and posts "Childhood and How It Affects You Now", "Depressives and Reality" and "Pessimism vs. Optimism".)
Learned optimism is interesting, but perhaps people have to see it from the learned helplessness idea. If you think about it, a great deal of intelligent evangelicalism creates learned helplessness.
There's nothing worse than hitting my home page and seeing, well, absolutely nothing. I've had the page set to show the last 7 days since inception, perhaps in deference to the old UPN television show. ("Theoretically, the sphere ran out of oxygen an hour ago." "Yeah, well, theoretically, you can't jump back in time." It was a thing.)
I've already handled some changes to other sites on the bloghost, adjusting for their home pages to display the last X entries. Which I should do here. I already do it on the WordPress and Mambo sites. (I leave the Plone sites out of it for now because, well, Plone is evil. EVIL I TELL YOU!)
I'll go ahead and make the change today. Which will make this post seem really, really stupid.
Like that's all that different from anything else I write....
But, of course, I can't help it. I either over-deliver or fall flat on my face. No middle ground for me.
I finally snagged some work and now I've blown it because I tried to deliver what the customer didn't want. I learned a good deal about something that I'll probably never use again. And that I have totally screwed up my career.
Manage your career, folks. And don't neglect it to follow your spouse's career. When he or she decides to dump it — because they hate it, because they want to stay at home with the kids, because the world totally changed and now that career is totally gone — you'll be up a river without a paddle and heading for the dam. Sure, you can ride over it and survive, but most people don't.
From time to time, Michael Spencer at Internet Monk. Last month Rev Spencer wrote about a trip to the LifeWays Christian Bookstore in his sparse county in Kentuckey. It brought home to him the commercialisation of the faith that has almost been completed. I take it this disturbs him more than any feelings that people were being taught poor theology or doctrine.
The faith has struggled with commercialism before. Luther's complaints about the selling of indulgences comes readily to mind. Jesus' clearing of the money changers from the Court of the Gentiles seems relevant, too. It's not new, but our manifestation is perhaps new to Protestantism. Catholocism has wrestled with this for years. If you want to see crass religious commercialism, go to the Cathedral of Our Lady of Guapalupe in Mexico City. Or go back and read about Pope John Paul II's trip to the states: the "Pope Soap on a Rope" was a big hit with the atheists at my university twenty years back. Protestant Evangelicals' "televanglism" isn't all that much worse.
I got an email newsletter from our old church back in the city. It announced some parenting classes. Taught by a woman whose son was pure devil when I knew him.
Maybe he cleaned up. Or perhaps it takes a bad kid to tell you how to really parent.
Maybe it doesn't matter anyway: Seligman makes a pretty convincing argument that given "good enough" parenting, the only thing that makes a difference is your genes. Maybe environment and parenting make a difference over the long term, that when in their 30s or 40s the kids will have something to go back to.
Still, pretty funny that someone with a truly wild kid would be teaching young mothers how to parent their little ones.
I'm sitting in Toronto, typing on what seems like a Portuguese computer, trying to tire myself out enough to sleep. I made the mistake of moving the middle schoolers to Every Week from the enshrined Every Other Week. And all their parents said "Praise be to God, the One who gets these monsters out of our hair".
I don't have that many. One of them, whom I will call Lara, told her dad to pick her up at 4. She could have simply called her dad and asked to be picked up at 3:30, our usual time. Instead, in great middle schooler fashion, we all decided to stick around until 4.
So I took them out for Squishees at Family Express across the unbuilt lot. Then we sat around the table and "chilled" or "hung out" or did whatever it is that they call sitting around doing nothing with someone. Well, Halley and Caleb (not their real names) flirted with each other a lot. I try to keep it from becoming deadly or from ruining the carpet. It normally involves some form of liquid being thrown, mostly Halley to Caleb.
Lisa over at Winter Sunshine (conveniently hosted on this bloghost) posted some excerpts from a piece of Star Wars fan fiction that she wrote back in 1981 or so. My favourite line:
"Where did you come from anyway?"
"Maybe it's time you had a talk with your mommy."
Oddly, that's about the quality of scriptwriting that we've come to expect from a Star Wars film.
Yesterday, I wrote about how Ole Anthony of the Trinity Foundation may be a heretic, but he's a heretic with something to say. I've spent a part of today listening to more of his conversations from the 1980s on The Eagle in DFW.
He's really pissing me off.
I've spent the evening listening to Ole (pronounced "oh-lee") Anthony, the president of Trinity Foundation in Dallas. They have been publishing The Door magazine (nee The Wittenberg Door) since 1996. They have also been going after televangelists for years, having brought down more than one who has been corrupt. The Door website has an interview that Ole Anthony had on a popular DFW radio station several years back. (1988? They're talking about Pat Robertson's run for president, the power of communism and both the Bakers and Jimmy Swaggert.) I'm pretty sure that Mr Anthony is a heretic, but I'm pretty sure most people who are interesting are heretics.
He really disturbs me. He comes off as someone who would piss off Jerry Falwell and Brian McLaren. He reminds me of the Socrates character from that old NAVPress book who, upon suddenly finding himself in a 1980s American university, gets attacked by a coalition of the Moral Majority, NOW and the ACLU.
What really disturbs me is that I think he may be right about a lot of things. His life buys a lot of listening time from me. His voice buys a lot more. He's done radio before so it is perhaps it shouldn't. But he also did time as a hostage in Lebanon.
And, of course, Joe Bob Briggs likes him.
When I started this horrible career change period time mission quest thing, I started to get a great deal of advice, most of which concluded with "Well, sometimes you have to do things that you don't want to." For some people, that's probably good advice. For me, with my inability to separate my wishes from yours, it's probably not.
After much consideration, you will notice that I am not saying yes any more to the very few job offers just because other people tell me it's a great opportunity. The job has to be something that I can do, something that I will at least minimally succeed at.
But I haven't taken that into the rest of my life.
It's the end of a dream that I never really wanted: I am turning down even their counter. I could have gone on the CEO track. Might've made a few million by the time I was 60 — which, according to this month's Atlantic Monthly, might be necessary to survive the downturn that's hitting America for the next thirty years. And I'm turning it down.
It's always a bad idea to take a job that no one, and I mean no one, has been enthusiastic about. Not even Alan, mostly because it really isn't in NYC.
I analysed the job myself and put together a timeline. The company currently is a Value-Added Reseller (VAR) of computer hardware and consumer electronics. Low margins. High volumes: US$150M. In order to successfully have an outsourcing component, I would have to convince them to extend their footprint into the current customers. It's no good to try to do software services when you have no experience offerring such. You look at the computers going in and you ask what services could you sell on top of those, services like configuration, load design, depot staffing, desktop replacement services, desktop management. After proving your competence here, you then move into the software services market, again with your existing customers.