We first had the idea for this blog a while ago, when Laine was trying to find the right words to describe her political leanings. Libertarian isn’t quite right. Anarchist is more accurate, but Anarchy as a whole seems like…a description of the problem more than a fully fleshed out societal plan. The fact is, what we both believe takes pieces from Libertarianism and Anarchy – but mostly, it coincides with the core tenet of Christianity. Since we first thought of doing this blog, we’ve learned thanks to our Libertarian community that actually…the overlap of Christians and Anarchists (and presumably Libertarians) is a common pattern.
Libertarianism (from French: libertaire, “libertarian”; from Latin: libertas, “freedom”) is a political philosophy and movement that upholds liberty as a core principle. Libertarians seek to maximize autonomy and political freedom, emphasizing free association, freedom of choice, individualism and voluntary association. (Wikipedia)
Libertarians also typically believe that the only time force against another person is warranted is if that person is violating the Non-Aggression Principle (or the “NAP”).
The non-aggression principle (NAP), also called the non-aggression axiom, is a concept in which “aggression”, defined as initiating or threatening any forceful interference with either an individual or their property, is inherently wrong.
Anarchy:
Anarchy is the state of a society being freely constituted without authorities or a governing body. It may also refer to a society or group of people that entirely rejects a set hierarchy. (Wikipedia)
The Core Tenet of Christianity
We’ve talked about The Jesus Cheat before, but the very very condensed arc of the Bible, Christianity’s origin story if you will, goes something like:
God gave people a lot of rules they had to follow in order to be in a relationship with him…
…they were terrible at it.
God got pissed, because is it really that hard to keep your commitments, you guys?
He tried again, with different people…
…they were also terrible at it.
Eventually, he sent Jesus, who was both 100% human and also 100% God (Yeah, that math tho…) to live as a person, among people, and be a sort of…proxy for all of the ways that people screw up and are broken and hide from each other and also God. Jesus was a proxy for this pain (or, if you will, sin) for all people, past present and future, because…God magic, basically? (there’s a reason we very lovingly call it a cheat…)
Jesus died under the weight of all of that pain, including the worst pain of all which is complete separation from God. This served to allow God to (we think) freely give remaining in relationship with people even if they screwed up over and over and over. It also broke, or forgave, any obligation that people had to God and made the relationship purely choice-based.
Basically, God saved people from their own broken, and found a way to stay by pre-forgiving them forever. We get this pre-forgiveness and utter acceptance from God as long as we do one thing (instead of a long list of things) – and that one thing is, depending on who you ask, believing in the Jesus Cheat or just…trying to have a relationship with God – making the relationship “purely choice-based.” Said differently, the only requirement to be fully accepted by God is to choose to be in a relationship with him. Human choice was the only checkbox that God maintained, which would indicate that human choice matters a lot. To God.
…there are nuances of course, and several lifetimes of study and understanding possible regarding Christianity. Maybe in a month or a year or a decade, we’ll be like, no, that was dumb, it’s actually this other thing. But for now, that’s the best understanding we’ve got, and it’s done a LOT to inform our political beliefs.
Libertarianism and Anarchy and Christianity, oh my!
So, we’ve got…
Libertarianism: people deserve to be free
Anarchy: no human system is the boss of me
Christianity: God is the only boss of me, and he appears to have actively preserved my right to choose
As you can see, there’s overlap there… God thinks we deserve to be free to choose, and if we choose a relationship with him, that relationship trumps all other relationships such that we are not subject to the “rule” of…anyone. That means that people do not deserve, or even need, to be controlled, because God’s got this even if sometimes people do awful things. As Josh is fond of saying, karma always comes. If God doesn’t want to control us, then people definitely don’t get to.
Radical Choice-ist
If God worked that hard to preserve human choice, then…so should we. If we don’t try to control other people, and we don’t accept that we deserve to be controlled, then all of our interactions become rife with choice and personal freedom. As long as we aren’t violating the NAP, we have the inherent right to live our lives as we see fit.
LP and Chill: It’ll Be Just Fine – the Short Version
Sometimes we see a pattern, and we try to explain it, and…we end up looking like this crazy conspiracy theory guy. Not because what we’re saying is far-fetched, more because it’s so interconnected and there are so many examples and we care about it so so much that it’s hard to be clear about the points we’re trying to make. More than once, this has pointed us at toward the full explanation of the pattern ending up a longer-form piece of content – like a talk, or “maybe some day a book,” or…we don’t really know. Just..some stuff is too long or too complex for a blog, despite that being where we usually start when we want to talk about something outside of the context of “work stuff.”
Sometimes, though, we find that we can do a summary, or a short(er?) version, of the explanation of the pattern. We’ve been seeing, and writing, more about politics lately, especially the Libertarian Party (LP), because the crazy of the world has led us both to open our eyes about it. And…there are reasons that we think politics might be part of the overall answer, and that is the pattern we want to talk about.
There is a Culture War
Are you happy with the United States political system? This question is not, are you happy in relation to what came before, or are you happy ish, but are you really, truly happy about the people in charge of making, enforcing, and talking about the policies that affect your personal freedoms every day?
If you’re not happy with it, do you feel comfortable talking about that? Do you think that your friends and loved ones and coworkers and various other tribes will still accept you if you’re honest about the problems you see and how those problems make you sad, or hopeless, or angry? Because…we aren’t happy with the current system. And our comfort with talking about that varies, but…most of the people Laine at least interacts with on a daily basis just seem really happy that Not Trump is president.
The fact that the current state is depressing, and frustrating, and that we can’t talk about that without alienating ourselves, is a sign of a large-scale, many-factioned culture war. The Corpo State/Cathedral, the Woke, the Karens, the Conservative Christians, the Antifa’ers, the BLM’ers, the Thin Blue Liners… this isn’t even all of the factions, but all of these groups seem to exist primarily to tell people that saying or feeling something that the group doesn’t approve of makes that person a terrible human being who deserves to be dehumanized and disregarded.
[The factions] seem to exist primarily to tell people that saying or feeling something the group doesn’t approve of makes that person a terrible human being who deserves to be dehumanized and disregarded.
COVID has been a mess, and has added the Masker, Vaxxer, Anti-Vaxxer, Lockdowner, and Anti-Lockdowner factions. What is irrefutable is that the lockdowns that were supposed to keep us all safe have caused mental health crises, increased suicides, increased incidences of abuse, and business closures, with no end in sight because we have no coherent metrics for when it will be “safe enough” to go back, or forward, to some semblance of normal.
It Sucks
The culture war, that is. It sucks to be hopeless, and to be too afraid to talk about it. And with that many factions constantly sniping at each other, sometimes the hopelessness and the fear seem…legit.
It Leads to Actual Life-Threatening Conflict/War
In addition to leading people to live in fear, this culture war leads to actual war, if we use the “life-threatening conflict” definition of war. The government is willing to use force and violence to enforce whatever it thinks is important, mostly in the form of the police, although sometimes with agencies like the ATF. There are historical events, like Waco, and also current events, like insurrection and riots in Minnesota and on the west coast just this week. People think that the police are the bad guys for all the damage they do, and while an argument could be made that they’re choosing to enforce laws that are non-sensical and damaging, it definitely seems true that they’ve been handed an impossible task that will see them also getting hurt in the process.
People think that police are the bad guys for all the damage they do…but it seems true that they’ve been handed an impossible task that will see them also getting hurt in the process.
Some People Love the Culture War…
On the other hand, this culture war is great for some people. It distracts most of the American public from noticing that their freedoms are being slowly leeched away in the name of “safety.” It also helps people in positions of authority further cement those positions because they can position themselves as the saviors of humanity – or, they can use fear and intimidation to get compliance if not support.
The culture war also gives the people who are happily part of those factions a way to convince themselves that they’re right – they can simply be louder, and look around to see the people who are nodding in agreement, and then temporarily feel safety in numbers. The people nodding in agreement, even if they aren’t quite sure, can also find some feeling of safety because they aren’t currently being rejected by the people around them.
…because Control and “Safety”
All of these reasons to love the culture war are about control, and “safety.” People in positions of authority are trying to control everyone else into either being safe or making them feel safe, if they get some personal value out of being “in charge.” The loudest members of the factions are trying to control the people around them into making them feel like their opinions are right, and that those opinions will keep that group safe even if everyone else is screwed. And the people nodding in agreement are hiding – trying to control the people around them into not rejecting them, or kicking them out of the tribe.
But…we know, because of a lot of science, that control doesn’t work. Not at all, and definitely not long term. The problem is that people are terrified of the potential consequences of both not controlling and not being controlled.
But…You Have a Choice
The thing is…you don’t have to control other people. And you don’t have to accept being controlled. You have a choice. It may not be an easy choice, and it may lead to some of your relationships altering, or ending. But actually, you can just…process the fear of the potential consequences without changing anything. Processing the fear allows you to see reality more clearly, and to see that trying to control other people is never okay – which means that it isn’t okay for someone to try to control you, either.
You can just choose to process the fear instead of grabbing for control.
If, once you process your fear, you want to change something, then…comes the hard part. Learning how to give up control isn’t easy, and it’s scary, and it requires trust in something outside of yourself.
People
You actually can have some amount of faith in people, or in humanity as a whole. People do wonderful, beautiful things, and their capacity for good is often staggering. We said at the beginning on this post, “there are reasons that we think politics might be part of the overall answer, and that is the pattern we want to talk about.” The Libertarian party has seen an upswing this past year, for…reasons that may at this point be kind of obvious. And it’s not perfect, and actually we’re both more Anarchist than Libertarian by the strictest definition – but the Libertarian party has several voices who are saying, loudly and clearly and well, that personal freedom matters. That people matter. More than the government, more than rules, more than checkboxes and false safety. And they’re building communities and actively trying to make change to reflect that people matter at all levels.
God
…but faith in people alone isn’t enough. Both Josh and Laine genuinely have no idea how people learn to give up control without faith in something outside of themselves and outside of other people. We can very clearly see that all of this weirdness, and all of this unrest, and even the culture war itself, is God doin’ stuff. We have no idea what he’s doing, but if he’s doing stuff, he has a plan, and if he has a plan, it’s going to be awesome.
There are no end states in life, which means that while things can never be completely safe, they also can never be completely broken and hopeless. And while the culture war sucks, it’s actually…okay. It’s growing pains, toward the next thing.
Our Favorite Villains: Joker (from The Dark Knight)
We have continued to talk between the two of us about how much we love “villains” of pop culture. We wrote a post about why Thanos is the best Avenger a long time ago, and decided to start a series. We recently watched The Dark Knight again (…again again, it’s a classic for a reason..) and we enjoyed Heath Ledger’s Joker so much that he got the kick-off spot for the series.
It’s an amazing movie, and ultimately it centers around the conflict between two moral codes: The Joker as an agent, or engine, of chaos, and Christian Bale’s Batman, who fights for justice, fairness, order, and self-sacrifice.
… at least it appears that way at first.
There are going to be spoilers for The Dark Knight in this post, but given that it’s about 13 years old, we figured that was probably fine…
Ledger won an Oscar posthumously for his work, and to be honest the character was a spectacular piece of acting. If you haven’t seen it recently enough that it’s fresh in your memory, stop reading this blog and just go enjoy it. Or, if you want just a vignette, watch this scene:
It sums up the character nicely.
So here’s the thing – a lot of people really loved the character of The Joker in this film. It’s one of the most iconic villain characters ever, and was arguably the best portrayal of The Joker until Joaquin Phoenix gave it a go (whose version of The Joker we will likely talk about in another Our Favorite Villains post). But…why? What’s so interesting and appealing about this character who could be described as a madman and a terrorist? What about The Joker in general – why is he an iconic villain, and a foil for Batman? What makes the Batman universe such a good fit for this kind of character?
Things We Love About The Dark Knight’s Joker
“Plans, everybody has plans.”
The Joker says some interesting things about planning, strategy, and execution – all reasons that we loved Thanos as much as we did. It’s clear from the opening scene of the movie (below!) that he’s thought out this heist step by step.
The arc of the movie follows his strategy to take over the finances of the mob, and use the control that having their money affords him to seize the reins of the battle between Batman and the criminal element of Gotham City. Interestingly, while the strategy is sound and he executes it well, the plan to manipulate and control is not one of our favorite pieces.
One key piece of this arc, and probably our very favorite scene, is The Joker trying to build a relationship with Batman in the jail scene. Basically, just like The Joker in The Lego Batman movie, this Joker needs Batman in order to be a supervillain. In a world without Batman, the Joker is just…bored.
Our conclusion from this is that despite The Joker saying he doesn’t make any plans to Two-Face, he does in fact make and execute plans. He outsmarts everyone, with plans that flex and build until the real end of the movie (more on that later).
The Joker stays committed to his stated goal: to bring clarity to people about who and what they are.
He’s playing a game, the real game, by real rules, when everyone else is playing a false game with made-up rules.
He’s clear – and clarity is success.
A lot of people in this movie hide who they really are. Bruce Wayne pretends to be Batman – or maybe more accurately, Batman pretends to be a playboy billionaire named Bruce Wayne. Batman also pretends to be an agent of law and order, when actually he’s an agent of chaos and his vision of justice, which is by definition outside of the law. The mob pretends to be invincible, but are actually paper tigers. The mayor pretends to be brave, but actually is full of fear. Gordon pretends to be dead, breaking his family’s hopes and hearts. Batman also pretends to be a guy who doesn’t do murder – but it’s a little hard to believe that all of the violence he does doesn’t kill anybody. Shooting high caliber autocannon rounds off the batbike in an urban environment is, we’re sure, totally safe. (</sarcasm>)
There’s also a whole subplot about who the real Batman is – in fact, it’s part of The Joker’s plan to force Batman to “come out,” as Bruce tries to wrestle with his default stance of hiding.
Contrast all that with The Joker. He shows up, he lays his cards on the table (…pun absolutely intended), and he tells everyone from the get-go that he’s here to bring clarity to the world. He’s here to show people that the rules they think they live by are moral forgeries. He also habitually lies about how he got his scars, which is a fascinating element of hiding in his personality. Generally, though, he is clear and he deals with the people around him in transparent, if off-putting, ways.
He’s committed.
Commitment was one of the things that we loved about Thanos, in the previous post that we mentioned. That theme holds true here, too. A climax of the “Joker controls the mob” subplot of the movie is when we see that The Joker has “recovered” all of the mob’s money. He had previously negotiated with them that if he could recover their funds, he’d get half – and when we see him with the literal pile of money, he proceeds to light it on fire.
“Some men just want to watch the world burn.”
– Alfred, trying to explain The Joker to Bruce
The Joker is committed to his plan, which is, again, clarity. He enjoys bringing clarity to the world. He doesn’t care about the same things other people care about – in this case, money – and that causes confusion and fear in its wake. The Joker pretty much only cares about the joy of being himself and helping others see clearly.
He’s crazy, but…not wrong.
There’s an interesting question here, underlying The Joker as a character – is he completely insane, or…is he just living by different rules than everyone else?
At first glance, it definitely appears that he is erratic or just crazy. But we think there’s a deeper truth, that he is in fact just living by different rules than everyone else. This makes a person appear crazy, but it’s actually something more like a strong cultural difference. To him, not living in a fake world is more important than obeying laws, or being seen as a “nice person.”
That’s an interesting lesson, because laws, and perception of “niceness,” are not morality. Also, what is moral is not always what is legal, or what is nice. Slavery was legal. Racism was enforced by law. Many victimless crimes are currently illegal, such as growing particular species of plants.
As always, we love Reality quite a lot, and it was refreshing to see people have to think hard about what they really believe as the result of a chaotic person’s actions. Not that we’d know anything about that…
The RULES, and “all it takes is a little push…”
One key piece of this arc, and probably our very favorite scene, is The Joker trying to build a relationship with Batman in the jail scene…
– us, earlier in this post
In particular, we love this part of the jail scene:
The Joker: …their morals, their code… it’s a bad joke. Dropped at the first sign of trouble. They’re only as good as the world allows them to be. I’ll show you, when the chips are down, these… these “civilized people?” They’ll eat each other. See? I’m not a monster, I’m just…ahead of the curve.
Batman : [grabs Joker] Where’s Dent?
The Joker : You have all these rules and you think they’ll save you!
Lt. James Gordon : [as Batman slams Joker into the wall] He’s in control.
Batman : I have one rule.
The Joker : Oh, then that’s the rule you’ll have to break to know the truth.
Batman : [getting impatient] Which is?
The Joker : The only sensible way to live in this world is without rules.
Generally speaking, we are not fans of rules, which is probably why this appealed to both of us. We’ve also both been the targets of people who valued the rules over us, or over other people, which…hasn’t changed our opinions about rules in general. What The Joker says here is not entirely correct, and…he knows it. The Joker doesn’t follow their rules, but he does follow his own. He’s…consistent. But he points out a legitimate thing – it makes sense, it should make sense, to look at the rules that one follows and ask oneself…okay, but why?
What is my motivation for following the rules? Do I even understand that I’m choosing to follow the rules? What happens if I stop?
The Joker pushes the Batman, the mob, the police, and society as a whole, to stop doing what they’ve always done. He pushes them to look at the world in a new light, where old motivations (money, power) are challenged and the old rules of safety and control are broken.
Batman, as a counterpoint, spends the whole movie trying to control things into being safe. He tries beating everyone up. He tries giving up his identity. In the end, he even sacrifices the ideology and the very idea of Batman as a force of good, in an effort to control the perceptions of the people in the city.
The Joker pokes at peoples’ rules, points out the sheer ridiculousness of them, and then…lets them choose. He’s happy with whatever they go with, he just wants to put people in situations in which they can see the world in a new light. That, and he really wants to burn down what they perceive as their safety.
The Joker and the End of the Movie
The last time we watched the movie, we kicked around the real motivation of the movie. This is a Christopher Nolan movie – this is the same director who did Inception, and Memento, and Tenet. He is not what you’d call a traditional thinker. Up until a certain point in the movie, the movie itself is wildly consistent:
This movie is a love story to chaos, and a warning against (and biting satire of) the patterns of institutional and personal control and fear.
And then…that stops. The Joker suddenly cares about a particular outcome, not, as we said above, simply showing people that they aren’t actually bound by their rules. The Joker targets two ferryboats’ worth of people – one boat of prisoners, and one boat of Average Citizens. He tells the boats that they will both be blown up as of a time, unless one boat blows up another. The prisoners decide not to blow up the Average Citizens’ boat. The Average Citizens take a vote, which lands on “yes, blow up the prisoners,” and then ultimately can’t do it. During this time, The Joker and Batman are fighting and The Joker insists that one boat will definitely blow up the other. When that doesn’t happen, The Joker tries to blow up both boats anyway, despite it not being quite the time limit yet.
If The Joker were consistent with himself as per the rest of the movie, he would have accepted that people are not as broken and twisted as he thought, and adapted. Or, at a minimum, he would have waited until the time limit was up to blow up both boats.
The Joker and Purpose, Clarity, and Commitment
As always, we love Reality quite a lot, and it was refreshing to see people have to think hard about what they really believe as the result of a chaotic person’s actions. Not that we’d know anything about that…
– us, again from earlier in this post…
When we have strong emotional reactions to things, we try to figure out why. Why did it resonate? What does it teach me about myself, or about God, or about other people?
We are both what could be described as chaotic – if you use the D&D alignment definition, chaotic means valuing “freedom, adaptability, and flexibility. On the downside, chaos can include recklessness, resentment toward legitimate authority, arbitrary actions, and irresponsibility. Those who promote chaotic behavior say that only unfettered personal freedom allows people to express themselves fully and lets society benefit from the potential that its individuals have within them.”
We firmly believe that God makes people exactly as he needs them to be. Neither of us tries to be chaotic, or to see the world in different ways than…it seems like most other people. In fact, thanks to the soul scars of trying to live this way, we’ve both tried various things not to be chaotic. This version of The Joker exists, for us, as a form of representation – we aren’t criminals, but we are wildly committed to the things we think are right. We’re good at making and executing plans. And we definitely think that clarity is success, and that people follow rules for reasons that are mostly fears of how they will be hurt if they don’t.
That representation, and the reminder of how God makes people, mattered to us because living your life in a way that’s consistent with who you actually are, how God made you, helps you find and execute your purpose. Also, it’s just…fun. It’s how you find joy in your life, and how you find people who feel joy in the same things, and in you.
I was overweight as a kid. Actually, I was overweight until I was in my mid-twenties, and then again for a while after I had my kids. But as a kid, in the 90s, it was an offense punishable by social ostracization. I was picked on throughout elementary school, to the point where I started calling myself fat so that other people wouldn’t do it first.
I moved at the end of 6th grade, to a much larger school. They mostly didn’t bully me for being overweight, but they did bully me for making out with my (female) best friend – which I did not, not that that matters aside from pissing me off even MORE about the sheer unfairness of it. I moved again at the end of 8th grade, to a smaller school, and found friends, and slipped into blessed nerd + “I’m in the school musical every year” semi-obscurity.
I dealt with one bully as a young adult, after I started my first job. I can see, looking back on it, that he probably felt threatened because, a) I was good at my job, b) I was on “his” project, and c) he perhaps felt like I was overstepping.
And then…no bullies. For a long time.
And then…more bullies showed up.
We’ve written about pieces of what happened at the church we were both members of. We have not written about what happened where we were formerly employed, out of (probably legitimate) fear of retaliation of some kind. But…suffice it to say that we’ve both run into a lot of bullies over the past few years. People we worked with, people we trusted. People we loved.
We try to explain a lot of patterns here. Patterns about fear and faith and hope and love, and how all of that comes together and applies to being a person. Patterns about how all of that scales to relationships (especially with God), and how it scales to and for organizations. A lot of these patterns, we figured out because…we lived them. We ran into really scared people trying to control what we did – and getting very very angry when we said no. That’s it. Just… no. We didn’t say, “you have to do what I say,” or “I’m going to make your life miserable for trying to tell me what to do.” Mostly we said, “please stop hurting us,” and “why are you trying to make me do something that I am sure is wrong?” and then eventually, just… no.
Sometimes “no” is a revolutionary act.
Decisions must be made…
Laine initially drafted this post in September of 2020. That’s actually the opposite of our usual process, typically we talk about things until it seems draft-able, then Josh does the initial draft. But this post began because Laine ran into a (comparatively mild) bully at work. And it brought back a lot of feelings about the other bullies we’ve recently run into, and a lot of sheer…exhaustion.
And then the election happened, and that brought with it more related feelings, and more exhaustion. And both the minor work bully and the election brought with them some clarity around what happens with bullies.
Bully (n): someone who does willful, targeted damage to other people in an effort to control them.
Because…bullies seem to win. The world actually seems to be structured for bullies – and for the control of other people. If you choose not to control other people, if you don’t play that game, if you flat-out refuse to play that game, then…you are an outlier. You stand out. You seem to invite bullies to take shots at you. But…that isn’t quite what happens.
Simply by existing, by living your life without controlling other people, you show the people around you that they too could choose not to control. You demonstrate, clearly, that another choice, a different choice, exists. This has the effect of forcing the bullies around you to choose if they will continue to bully – because some people behave this way because they don’t know another choice exists.
Bullies also force you to make a choice. Bullies force you to choose if you’re going to a) hide who you are in order to avoid the damage they might do, or b) very deliberately NOT hide, but instead choose that any damage is worth being yourself. As best as we’ve been able to figure out, bullies bully because they’re afraid they’re going to lose something that they think keeps them safe. Bullies need to control what they think keeps them safe so much that the people “in the way” become…dispensable.
So…if you’re the target of a bully, if you feel like your very existence invites bullies to take shots at you, then…that means that you’ve stumbled into the thing that they’re trying to hide away from the world – the thing they’re afraid they’ll lose. And it means that they don’t much like the fact that people exist who can’t be controlled into supporting their fears, and it means that they’re afraid that perhaps none of it was necessary at all.
It’s not your fault.
We’re going to say that one more time. It’s not. your. fault. We are emphasizing this because, again, it took us a long time to understand and accept it.
Mostly, with this post, we wanted to make something very clear – adult bullies exist. They exist anywhere that people exist, because people get scared, and sometimes those scared people end up with some kind of authority – real or imagined – over you and your life. This can be your boss, or your religious leader, or your government, or your significant other. Sometimes these people get SO scared that they forget entirely that you’re a person, and they just…want you to stop whatever you’re doing that seems to be a threat to them.
Regardless of what they say, it isn’t your fault. Bullies will tell you that it is, because they’re trying to convince you to change, and to hide, so that they feel more safe. You don’t have to do that. It’s scary not to, but…it is your choice. You can say no, and you can choose to be who you really are even if the bullies of the world don’t like it.
Sometimes “no” is a revolutionary act.
You won’t be alone.
The more we sort of…lean into this plan, the “be you and have fun” plan, the more we find other people who have figured this out. These people are some of the most truly supportive relationships that we have. So…while saying no to the bullies in your life, and choosing to be yourself, seems scary and like you’ll definitely be alone… you won’t. You will find your tribe, your people, your chosen family, and you will thrive. It’s worth it.
Before we start the actual post, today is the blog’s 1st birthday! <3 (Our first post.) Thanks to anyone who has been reading, or anyone who will read in the future. We blog because we love it, and we appreciate…well, everything related to it.
Last month, we spoke at Tech Leader Summit and ArchConf, which are conferences from the No Fluff Just Stuff tour. We also spoke this summer at UberConf, which is on the same tour. We had an AMAZING time, and we wanted to record and share some of it for posterity.
We’ve written about, and will write more about, this topic – but the summary is, people think that if someone near them is doing behavior X, it will cause them pain. They think that if someone near them is misbehaving according to God, then they will feel pain from God as a result.
This is an old, old cultural scar. Homophobia, racism, legalism, basically all kinds of hatred are examples of this. It’s a lie that people believe and respond to: “I need to control you, or something bad will happen to me. I need you to be what I think God wants, or we won’t be safe.”
We’ve gone over and over the ground of how people try to keep themselves safe. We even know part of why people do this – because of the one fear, the fear of being alone because of who you truly are. We do crazy, damaging things trying to keep ourselves and our relationships safe – and we do crazy, damaging things trying to make the people around us into our definition of safe as a result.
At that time the disciples came to Jesus and asked, “Who, then, is the greatest in the kingdom of heaven?”
He called a little child to him, and placed the child among them. And he said: “Truly I tell you, unless you change and become like little children, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven. Therefore, whoever takes the lowly position of this child is the greatest in the kingdom of heaven. And whoever welcomes one such child in my name welcomes me.” (Matthew 18:1-5)
Children
lolz
We were talking about this Bible verse, because we do that thanks to the magic of an app that spits out a Bible verse every day. Laine mentioned how this seemed legit, because children really are interesting and uncommon in their faith.
“That’s why kids are curious, and why they accept new information so easily. They don’t assume they’re right about…much.”
– Laine
And…children are pretty flexible. It’s true. They’re very sure about the world, but also they approach it knowing that they probably don’t understand it. Their only job is to learn, for at least the first 14-16 years. And since they change almost daily, they learn how to adapt simply in order to…wake up every day. This has the effect of them being very sure about the world – until something tells them to change.
Adults
“Adults go all hear-no-evil because their houses of cards are confused by new input.”
– Laine again
Adults build houses of cards based on the things they think keep them safe. Layer upon layer of flimsy, and foundations built on shifting sand. These houses of cards, despite being wobbly by nature, are rigid. They have to be held perfectly still, because if you even breathe too hard on a house of cards…the whole thing topples. So adults hold their breath, and they by and large tread lightly. People with house-of-cards models hate hearing things that disagree with their view of the world – which is unfortunate, because reality, and God, very often throw new information at us. Often this information is beautiful, if only we can manage to avoid running away from it long enough to allow it in.
God is going to force change, and growth. Not a single one of us is perfect or fully formed, and we do stupid things that hurt ourselves in the name of self-protection. God protects us from ourselves, and that means sometimes we have to change even if we don’t want to – and that means that not a single one of us can actually stay perfectly still or hold our breath for any length of time.
We can fight against the wind or we can go where it takes us – but either way, a house of cards won’t survive.
Conflict, too, is necessary for change and growth. It’s necessary for the growth of each of us, and it’s also necessary for the growth of the relationships we try to stumble through while we lug our baggage along behind us. The houses of cards that represent our relationships are even more elaborate – and even more fragile.
Adapt
At some point, children grow up. They start to get their own scars and their own baggage, and they start building models of reality that don’t hurt as much as actual reality. The begin to build the house of cards, and they lose all of the flex that makes them able to have the kind of faith that can bend without collapsing at the slightest breeze.
You gotta’ keep some flex in your models.
Some things are certain. But really, “certain” just means it takes a whole lot to convince someone otherwise. God, for example, exists. He exists, and he is good, and he cares about each of us individually. That’s certain. But…actually, that just means that we’re really really sure, because there’s a lot of evidence and we’ve been over that ground a lot.
Other things, like “OpenShift is the best Kubernetes platform,” eh. Maybe we should be open to new information about that, and maybe not being certain about it would be beneficial. Maybe it’s the best for some people, or even most people – and maybe it doesn’t work at all sometimes.
You have to have a foundation that’s built on things that are real – not cards precariously stacked. And…on top of that foundation, you gotta’ keep some flex in your models. You gotta’ be open to being wrong. You have to allow for wind, and breath, and change. The alternative is ignoring reality, and ignoring God, and that’s a dangerous path to go down.
Most of Succeeding at Life is About Being Able to Deal with Rejection
Succeeding at life is being shiny – living, sure and certain, in your purpose that God gave you as best as you currently understand it, and letting your soul shine. Letting the joy of being you flow out of yourself and everything you do. This is hard to do, and it’s hard to maintain. It’s difficult, and it’s complicated, but it really comes down to two things:
Doing what you’re supposed to do
Not being afraid of rejection for being yourself
If you have both of those going on, in our experience, you’ll have a lot of joy, and a lot of fun. You’ll attract people who like your vibe, and you’ll have an impact in the ways you’re supposed to.
We really love this blog. We started it almost exactly 6 months ago and it means a ton to both of us. We started with two posts a week – and then Josh started a new job. We downshifted to one post a week – and then Laine got a new job. We’ve managed to keep on keepin’ on at one post a week since then, which… well, we really love this blog.
One of the first things we ever did that made us sit up and realize that maybe we made a seriously effective team was give a nerd presentation – we talked about feature toggles as an architectural concept. A few months after that, we went to UberConf in Denver. That was Laine’s first IT conference, and we had a blast. That’s a pretty good “God does stuff everywhere” story, which we should probably tell at some point…
After that conference, as we adjusted back to normal life, we talked about how seriously amazingly cool it would be to give nerd presentations at a nerd conference of that level – national, and with nerd-famous people like Mark Richards and Neal Ford. Josh definitely fanboy’d when Mark Richards included him in a demo in a presentation. We also befriended one of the speakers on the tour, who lives nowhere near us. We filed away the plan to some day speak at national nerd conferences in general, and at UberConf specifically, in the “haha, sure, that might happen some day” file.
We called this a goal, but…it was a dream. It was a dream in the way that little kids gleefully dream about being an astronaut when they grow up.
Laine was off work for 6 months. Again, another story for another time. But while she was off work, we started to apply to speak at conferences. Josh’s new job was friendly to the idea, Laine had no job, it was something to think about, so…we sort of figured why not.
We applied to speak at O’Reilly’s Open Source & Software Convention (OSCON), who was having a themed Inner Source day this year. Once Laine understood what on Earth “inner source” meant, we were sort of like, “hey it is us and one of the things we love the most!!” We submitted two talks.
We also started conversations about getting onto a No Fluff Just Stuff stop, semi-local – NFJS organizes UberConf along with a lot of other regional conferences, all throughout the year. The other major conference they organize is ArchConf, in December – which was also on our Nerd/Astronaut Dreams Bucket List.
And then, on a Friday afternoon, we found out the following:
One of our talks was accepted for OSCON.
One of the speakers for UberConf had to drop out, there were some spots open, and we could have them if we wanted.
God does weird, wonderful, lavish, unexpectedly awesome stuff.
…you mentioned a hiatus?
Yes! We did.
OSCON and UberConf are the same week, the week of July 15th. We got lucky (jklol pretty sure it was God doing more awesome stuff) and our talk at OSCON is that Tuesday, and our talks (4!!)at UberConf are Wednesday and Friday. So…we decided to do both conferences.
J: Should we do both?
L: Are we really crazy enough to try that? :thinking:
Us: Yep!!
We’re getting ready for those talks now. We are both extremely dedicated, prolific workers, but even we have limits. We have several posts in varying stages of done, but the kinds of thing we write require focus and attention and time and soul – and we pretty much only know how to make any content we produce in that same way.
“A man’s got to know his limitations.” – Harry Callahan, Magnum Force
We will be back. We have so many thoughts and feels and did we mention we love this blog?
Logistics
These are the descriptions and scheduling of our talks:
Please come say hello if you’ll be at either OSCON or UberConf. (If you are not attending and would like to, we have discount codes!) We love these topics, we love talking about them, and we are so stupid excited to be doing this.
We’re (hopefully) taught some important things as children:
you can do anything you set your mind to, so aim high
we’re all representatives of humanity, and being part of humanity comes with some responsibilities – vote, take care of the environment, take care of each other, etc
do what you think is right, even if all your friends are doing what you think is wrong
