I want to normalize personal economic interdependence. American culture has too much bought into the idea that one’s worth as a person is based on one’s level of financial independence. I’m thinking specifically about the discourse that floated around the internet recently about whether helping friends move is a good or bad phenomenon, but I’m extending it to financial support. Let’s instead embrace the idea that life is full of situations where you are dependent on others for a season, and opportunities to provide financially for others who are dependent on you for a season. Examples:
Children and the elderly. Isn’t it great that almost everybody gets to spend part of their life independent with the capacity to care for others, and part of their life dependent on others? Yes, you can save for your own old age, but nobody gets to skip childhood. The fact that almost everybody is on both sides of the independent / dependent line at some point in their lives is pretty great and important. It bothers me the degree to which modern people think of children or aging parents as a burden imposing on their lives. It’s an opportunity, and you too get to experience seasons like that.
Disability. Now, I’m less familiar with this. But it’s clear to me that alongside the other disadvantages disabled people experience, it only makes things worse if society says your value is based on your independence.
Stay-at-home mothers. I was talking to my sister today, who shared that she used to be embarrassed by the fact that she is dependent on her husband financially, and she is recently learning to embrace it. I think one of the worst things about our society is that it even crosses our minds to think one’s value is dependent on where one is in relationship to the producer/consumer economy. The fact that caring for children (if they are your own—remember that for paid caregivers this is a full-time job) would ever occur to us to be less important than e.g. working for an employer.
General opportunities opened up by thinking in terms of households rather than individuals. Also from my conversation with my sister: on the side of caring for her son, she is able to pursue artistic endeavors (a precarious situation if you need it for income) enabled by her husband’s stable job. This is wonderful. We should really embrace the idea that downstream from the fact that marriage is making two people one, is the reality that together, husband and wife have twice as many hours in the day to pursue good things. My sister and her husband are in this together: together, they make his stable income, care for their son, and make art. There is nothing wrong with the fact that the hours doing those things are split differently between them.
I could think up more examples, but that’s enough for today. That last point about thinking in terms of households and the various opportunities opened up by households both for experimenting with new endeavors and for caring for others in need, is the foundation for how I’ve been trying to think about the world nowadays.
Andy Crouch came to speak in my town a week ago, on the subject of his most recent book, The Life We’re Looking For, which is a more general and philosophical book on the same topic of tech he previously addressed in The Tech-Wise Family. Here are some of my notes from the evening, plus a little commentary.
If tech makes something easy or gets labeled “superpowers,” Crouch says that’s magic. Magic is changing the world without having to change yourself.
He argues that we need to flee from the modern temptation to distract ourselves at the slightest hint of boredom. Crouch tells his children, don’t run from boredom: creativity is on the other side of boredom. As someone with a number of artistic hobbies myself, I really appreciated this point, and it aligns with what I mentioned in my first post about finding myself less engaged in creative endeavors the last few years as I got more into consuming blogs and podcasts. Honestly, this is a hard habit to walk back on, but creativity ought to make it worth it for me.
On the subject of unaligned AGI—for those of you not familiar with that phrase, just think “robots taking over the world”—Christians already have a word for this! If future humans summon spirits we can’t control, only one community will have the experience to know what to do—the Christians. Crouch argues that the fact that the West doesn’t believe in demons is actually Christianity’s credit, because Christians dispelled demons from the West.
I found the Q&A particularly helpful, because in Crouch’s writing (and talk) it feels like he’s painting a picture of what the good life can look like generally, but it feels like it really falls short on practicals. I was pleasantly surprised about the amount he had to say on practicals when asked about it.
For example, someone asked, how do we decide what tech is worth the tradeoffs? Crouch’s response was that we should ask the questions, What is lost? What is gained? Does it free us up to care for others, or free us from the obligation to care for others? He gave a really helpful couple of potential examples—though someone might disagree with his take, it helped me picture what he’s getting at. His first example was the dishwasher. He talked about how grateful many housewives are to be freed up from the toil of washing dishes, which gives them more time for other things. On the other hand, he puts the microwave on the other side of the line. The microwave saves a little time over cooking, but it feels like something human is lost to eat, for example, microwave dinners—there’s something human about actually preparing a meal.
He talked about the Biblical dichotomy of work and rest vs. the modern dichotomy of toil and leisure. Rest is glad contemplation of the fruit of your own work, but leisure requires others to work for you (e.g. entertainment). Work itself is oriented towards fruit, but toil might be oriented towards idolatrous ends. Crouch likes the word Mammon, for the demon behind the idolatrous pursuit of wealth (Matthew 6:24) and argues that this really defines our society. In toil, Mammon wants you to care about numbers, not fruit.
Someone asked, “What should we care about caring for the world, if God is going to destroy this world and replace it with a new one anyway?” I find it frustrating how often this question gets asked in the Christian world. Crouch gave a great answer: When Jesus came He cast out demons—why would we not follow His example?
Someone asked him directly and generally about how we apply all this. He said the answer is not political (national), but not individual either—it is communal: most of all we must work on building communities with the right priorities. We must together live an “unboreable life of care for others”. This “not political or individual, but communal” third way matches a conviction I’ve been growing about what it looks like to see change. Not national, because most of us can’t impact that and policy tends to be superficial; but not purely individual, because though we need to work on inner character first, that plays out in our relationships with others who are pursuing common goals.
I’d like to start this blog with a confession. For just a moment, I am a Catholic, and you, dear reader, are my priest.
I spent the last few years far more interested in truth than goodness or beauty. A lot of my mental energy was taken up with the questions Who is right? Which is true? I actually noticed fiction and natural beauty having less of an effect on me. It was like the world was a little more grayscale, while I was a little distracted and obsessed with my epistemology hobby.
It was in this state that I started a blog, under another name. I only ever wrote a few posts. But a year ago I decided to put that obsession aside, for the sake of my spiritual life and my joy. I refocused on creating things, attending to the inspiring depths of God’s creation, and looking for neighbors to love (Luke 10:36).
But I still want to write, so I’ve decided to start this blog anew, hopefully more well-rounded this time.
Truth
Let me share with you how I got there in the first place. In 2020 I met an intelligent woman who had come to a few conspiracy theories on the basis of evidence and logic. My evidence and logic had led me to disbelieve, but the reasonableness of her approach shook me. I suppose this was a tiny piece of what people experience when they convert religions or deconvert—in my case, this wasn’t about my faith as a whole, although she did follow a niche theology based on an unusual but apparently consistent reading of the New Testament. It took me a while to re-embrace the idea that objective truth can be found. But I walked away from the experience with a new appreciation for the reasonableness of the beliefs of those who disagree with me.
Back in 2019 I described myself as an “extreme moderate,” but that doesn’t quite describe myself, as I often do pick a side. I think I’ve found a more accurate way of describing myself. I’m very much bothered when there is a point of view not being considered in a conversation. Most conversations should not have every view considered; but the question is whether opposing views have been considered or, when referenced, are referenced in their most faithful form. I dislike echo chambers, and usually try to be the one to bring in a point of view I don’t see represented.
But I’m not out here just to become less wrong, like scoring points in some game.
Goodness and Beauty
On the paucity of focusing on truth alone, I don’t have much profound to say except to repeat what many others have said before. We must not forget the whole of our humanity: we are embodied creatures, dependent creatures, desiring creatures. Facts make no sense outside the context of a story.
The character of a man is measured by what he does, not by what he says—which is why I hesitate to write for strangers on the internet in the first place. You don’t know my private life. (I’m not going to even attempt to put it on display, lest I be tempted to make it an act or make a name for myself IRL—I’m here under a pseudonym.)
I feel the difference between reading topics that are factually interesting, and the effect that C.S. Lewis’s “The Weight of Glory” had on me when I first read it.
But the pursuit of goodness and beauty also suffer apart from truth. To make good art one must know what is beautiful; to love others one must know what is good. Writing is a good discipline for my own sake to sort these things out. You’re welcome to join me for the journey.
Action
Above, I wrote that I dislike echo chambers, but that’s not so much about truth alone either. If you’re in some echo chamber that says Uranus and Neptune don’t exist, I don’t care a whole lot. But I think a lot about the fact that IBM built technology for the Nazis. Not to hyperfocus on the details of that fact—other companies did too, and other governments carried out plenty of horrors in World War II as well, including my own. But it makes a poignant example. What would I do if I were working for IBM then? What would you do?
I would like everyone to ask themselves a little more, have I really considered what is the Best way to live out this or that area of life? Breadth of perspectives is important to to that end, and I’ve had the blessing of experiencing a number of different subcultures that usually don’t talk to each other.
Since college, I’ve been blessed with the influence of a couple of subcultures in particular. I’ve found myself caught up in an intellectual Christian strain in the tradition of Pascal, Kuyper, and Chesterton—we use the label Christian humanist—to think seriously about how God’s glory displays in all creation. “The ethical question ‘What is permissible?’ faded in relation to the question ‘What is the main thing, the essential thing?’” At the same time, I’ve had the benefit of participating in a practical ministry with a philosophy that emphasizes being doers of the Word and every member a minister which leaves me never content to settle either for talk without action nor excusing ordinary people from being used by God.
I’m going to do my best not to write about Uranus and Neptune, nor to write about goodness that I don’t practice. Hopefully, if God allows, this can be a journal of my fleshing out the virtuous, just, beautiful, whole way to live, and be a springboard to living it.
Community
Now, as Alan Jacobs has written, “some conversations are be more meaningful and effective in living rooms, or at dinner tables, than in the middle of Main Street.” Previously, I was tempted to pitch this blog as a community, an “Attention to the Sky Club,” but it will never be. My community consists of those I spend evenings and weekends with face-to-face, and this blog has only a tenuous connection.
But maybe this blog can be something like a blueprint.
I am a firm believer that change happens mainly in the range between unseen internal character and the community level—for most of us, not directly on any larger scale than that. I am in community with others who desire inward character, service to others, and knowledge of our Creator and Savior, and we sharpen each other as iron sharpens iron. We are not writing our own stories; we are merely part of a grander story. Committing to community and loving your neighbor tie the most forgettable daily interactions to the eternal story God is writing. We progress by stepping back from what is distracting and urgent to take in the small, quiet, steady things of life that actually make up the biggest picture.
The black sky was underpinned with long silver streaks that looked like scaffolding and depth on depth behind it were thousands of stars that all seemed to be moving very slowly as if they were about some vast construction work that involved the whole universe and would take all time to complete. No one was paying attention to the sky.
