Neal was here

[don't gasp]

We’re finding out as a culture that all of our sexual ‘liberty’ is not necessarily making us happier or more progressive. Turns out we’re just getting more distant, less satisfied, and more depressed.

Men less hungry for real sex due to pr0n.
“Not Tonight, Honey. I’m Logging On.”

What better argument can you make? God knew what he was doing when he set up the moral principles we know and [as a society] seem to despise occassionally.

On the slightly more humorous side, Smarter kids do it less. If I remember right, it’s these kids who wish they were dumb enough to indulge. Or, again proof of the Idiocracy principle.

Another reason to love Subaru. Short version: they reuse all their waste at the Indiana plant. No trash in 3 years.

How to deal with religious people if you are an athiest.

From the standpoint of a non-athiest, it makes an interesting read. If you’re trying to be impactful in your community and truly make the lives of those around you better, it’s good to know how you are viewed and how you can be viewed, and how to try to break through that to establish respectful conversation on any topic. Obviously, from the religious standpoint, we feel a pressure to save those who do not believe from the hell we believe is imminent in their future, but you cannot ever discount the thought process many people have gone through to arrive where they believe. Heh and most of these tips can be used the other way as well, “How to deal with athiests when you are a religious people.”

I just got done doing one of my favorite summertime activities, which is play bass for any group of kids. Particularly the group from Casas and a couple other churches. So much fun. Here’s pics:

http://flickr.com/photos/8771853@N04/sets/72157600463957949/

Highlights:

• Going so crazy nuts playing the bass I busted my glasses. Dumb, but fun.
• Hanging out with Heather a bit. She’s been a friend of the band since the first year and is always a good time
• Chillin’ with the band. We don’t hang out enough.
• Beach. Cold water. Catching hermit and blue crabs with Matthew. Getting my butt handed to me by big stinking waves.
• Dodgeball with hideous uniforms.

This is probably our last year, unless we get lucky. Which would be awesome.

I have weeks or months where I can surrender myself to what needs to be done at the cost of what I want to do. The reality of life comes in with a thunderous roar and demands surrender. The weight of the implications of simple choices crushes down like a whale on an ant. And yet, the guerilla inside me refuses to completely let go. To lose oneself to the ideal of maturity feels an empty endeavor. I long to explore; I pine for new experiences in sights, location, personalities, and sensations. So periodically I will break away from my best interest and indulge. Such a battle it is that rages inside between the elation of fullfilled whim and desire and the longing for stability and maturity. The pursuit of ‘best interest’ and the conscience of knowing what is right fights mightily against youthful exuberance and willy-nilly thinking. Perhaps growth is an accurate satisfying of both, knowing that strict rigidity produces painful legalism, whereas unbounded indulgence truly never satifies anything.

But to pursue long-term good requires faith and patience. Faith that your desires will be fullfilled in a more meaningful way via the long route, and patience to wait for their fullfillment. Testimony of those who have gone before affirms that faith and patience are not ill-rewarded.

But to pursue long-term good requires faith and patience. Indulgence reqiures nothing. Maturity requires sacrifice your immediate desires; your present. Immediate satisfaction requires a sacrifice of much more: it requires you to sacrifice your future.

addendum:
Hebrews 12:1 – “.. let us throw off everything that hinders and the sin that so easily entangles, and let us run with perseverance the race marked out for us.”

Contrary to what might seem intuitive, satisfaction is not found in the abundance of pleasure. Neither is meaning. In these pleasures, we find only that what we expected to be satisfactory is, in fact, not only incapable of satisfying the need and multiplies the desire itself. The good things of life are merely allusions to a deeper good, and the cavity in our soul that creates this infinite, often misunderstood, longing can not be filled by the mere finite pleasures of this life. Only an infinite pleasure can fill an infinite void, and to accept anything less is to settle for mere fractions of what true satisfaction can deliver.

I am becoming more and more convinced of this fact, but have yet to fully know, in the Biblical sense, this truth. To let go of a trivial good in the hope and promise of a bigger good can be a difficult thing.

I’m definitely sitting here wasting time at work. I just got done reading a rather provocative set of posts by a casual friend of mine who I met through Encounter, and I feel as though I am behind. Mentally, physically, emotionally, I am behind. I do not probe deep enough, and I do not feel hard enough, nor is my dedication to any one thing thorough enough to warrant mention, let alone merit.

Then again I could be overthinking.

But think is what I do, as do you.

So I’ve been pondering the questions:

• How do I be more honest with myself and those around me
• How do I truly build and maintain integrity in all my interactions
• How do I continue to build myself and hopefully project myself out of this shallow shell that oft holds me hostage.

So step 1 is to ask real questions and not be afraid of real reality.

[I think this is the second or third or perhaps trillionth post with the same ponderings].

So why do I say all this, and apparently repeatedly? To chronicle my desire to be less shallow and truly deeper. To document my [current] willingness to experience the trials of life for the sake of the experience and [hopefully] deeper wisdom. To invite you to feel free to probe me with real questions and hold me accountable to avoid cliche excuses for mediocrity.

So far, reviews of Vista are mixed. It is doubtful that I will bother upgrading for a long while, and then I may use Linux. To add to my previous comments, Vista can almost be a reason to go mac as well. It’s too bad they don’t sell their OS for PC. However, it is nice that the OEM version stays below $200.

Macintosh propaganda is blatant and unrelenting. In the vein of sarcastic counter-comments, I am going to go over the list of reasons to switch, and then react. Observe. This list is from the anti-vista website at apple.

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Boo creepy future obscene circuits from the future. Hooray post-911 paranoidal tendencies!