Guilty, as Accused

Well, it's certainly been a while. In times like this, i've found sometimes it's best not to bother with explanations. I already have a lot to say, so let's pretend like we're old friends and just pick up where we left off...

In the last few months, and even continuing today, our society has seen a number of high profile court cases that have stirred up conversation.  These include the Casey Anthony, Roger Clemens, Jerry Sandusky, and the recent David Zimmerman trial. As I’ve watched the public response to these trials I’ve grown somewhat concerned with how we draw conclusions. As far as the American public is concerned, Casey Anthony is a murderer, Clemens was on the juice, Jerry Sandusky is a child molester, David Zimmerman killed Trayvon Martin in cold blood, and Aaron Hernandez obviously killed Odin Floyd. This was all decided by the public prior to the outcome of these trials. For the record, Anthony was acquitted, Clemens was declared not guilty of perjury, Sandusky was convicted, David Zimmerman was acquitted, and things aren't looking great for Aaron Hernandez as the prosecution collects information. We then also have the occasional story like the one of Brian Banks who was accused of rape, was imprisoned for 5 years, on parole for 5 years, and was recently cleared of all his charges when the woman he allegedly raped confessed that she lied.

What I’m getting at here is that very often we, as individuals and as a society, make the mistake of making judgments without adequate information or based on the severity of the accusation. Another great example of this shows up in baseball with all of the PED issues for almost 2 decades. The recent events (last two years) have been quite interesting. Let's take a look at the Ryan Braun example. In December of 2011, MLB tried to suspend him for failing a PED drug test (the year he won the NL MVP award). He appealed the suspension successfully, but won his appeal on a technicality. His wiki page has a nice summary. During his appeal process, many prominent people (Aaron Rodgers is one) defended him quite emphatically. Braun enthusiastically drug the sample collector through the mud and not only denied using PEDs but took great offense at the accusation. Fast forward to a few weeks ago. Braun agreed (settled) with MLB on a 65 game suspension (the rest of this year) for connection to an "anti-aging clinic" (read: PED supplier). He came out and admitted he made "mistakes" and is serving the suspension. It should be noted that there were no positive drug tests involved in this most recent suspension. The evidence against him was overwhelming enough that he accepted a ban that is 30% more severe than the typical first time offense for PED use.

Ok, so why is this relevant? This is a clear example of someone being accused of cheating, everyone liking he guy and wanting it not to be true, then learning a little over a year later that he was cheating all along. Kinda the opposite of Roger Clemens and Casey Anthony. Both of them seem to rub people the wrong way. Both of them were found not guilty. Now, this doesn't mean they actually aren't guilty, merely that the court system was not given enough evidence to show they were undoubtedly guilty. I'm ok with this. I'm not saying that there shouldn't be consequences for actions, but what i am saying is that unless we have all the facts, perhaps we should reserve judgement. Or maybe, we shouldn't be making judgements at all?

We love to quote Jesus as saying "Let any one of you who is without sin be the first to throw a stone at her" when we are guilty of something. But, we conveniently forget when we are the ones who want to throw stones. Does expressing our opinions on a specific matter that we are sorely uninformed about really accomplish anything? We live in a world where everyone has a megaphone (facebook, twitter, blogs, etc.) and we, myself included, feel the need to proclaim our judgements to our friends. Perhaps, we ought to be mourning the tragedy of events like Trayvon Martin, instead of demanding retribution against a man who may or may not deserve it? Does justice need to exist? Yes. Do we a have a process that is designed to correctly mete out this justice? Yes. Is it flawed? Sure, but it's the best we have. The reason criminals are locked up is two fold. The first is as a punishment. The second is to prevent them from committing further crimes. If someone really is a criminal and gets away with something, odds are they are going to do it again and again. Eventually they will be caught. If someone commits a questionable act (falling squarely in the gray area of right and wrong) as an aberration to their normal character, I'd rather see a little mercy because that person could be me one day. It could also be you one day. Maybe we should be a little more hesitant to throw stones at people and a little more willing to put ourselves in their place.

Not sure yet (revised to Communication)

I don't really know what this post is going to be about, hence the title. I'll start by rambling slightly and see where it takes us.

So if you know me only through this blog, you first of all wouldn't know me all too well considering this is only the third post, but you might also be inclined to think i don't have very many thoughts that i consider worth sharing. This is not necessarily true. While i have many many thoughts that certainly aren't worth sharing, you would be underestimating the number of random things i think about. A more accurate assessment might be that i have many thoughts that i don't think are worth it to share. This is a whole different issue. Most of my thoughts that are "worth sharing" are not worth it to share. I often find myself thinking about controversial topics and just feel that sharing would not be worth the trouble that might come from the sharing. For example, if i were to share some thoughts on homosexuality, psychological disorders, abortion, politics, finances, parenting, marriage in general, or how any of these relate to Christianity... well... wow, wouldn't that open up a can of worms. As the case may be, all of these topics have been on my mind a lot the last couple of weeks. The problem is that i have no way of simultaneously communicating my thought processes and preventing a reader from taking something out of context (both the context of the blog post and the context of who I am as an individual). While considering this I have come to the conclusion that people really suck at helping other people understand their point of view. Maybe that's what i'll talk about instead of my opinions on the above topics.

This is nothing new. People suck at communicating. If you go to almost any school or institution of learning you will observe this. If you go to any religious institution, you will observe this. If you see two people sitting on a bench talking in downtown, you will observe this. To be honest, if you are around even one other person, you will observe this because it is you and this other person sucking at communicating. I'm bad at it too. Although many of us get to a point where we have someone who we think we communicate well with, i would imagine that most would be hard pressed to be able to tell you what it is about that relationship that allows for some semblance of successful communication. I think it is quite simple: you care enough about the person to actually listen and put value on their opinion.

Think about when you are having trouble communicating with someone... it usually isn't a problem with them telling you about their situation (with a few exceptions, one of which is a rather good friend of mine. Lets call him Arnold.). Arnold really just has a hard time talking. He is a very expressive person with body language a blind man could read, but couldn't verbally convey a message if his life depended on it. Its not just forming thoughts into phrases, sometimes it's actually saying the words themselves. Especially if those words are foreign names or long words with silent letters. I've known Arnold for something like 5-6 years now and have learned how to "interpret" what he's saying. With him, in order to understand what he's trying to tell you, you have to be able to understand his body language and who he is as a person (the "context" of what he is saying). A while ago, he came to me with a question about something that i was doing. The way he brought it up wasn't exactly delicate, he was rather upset about it and it came across as accusatory. Now, had i not known him and known that he was genuinely concerned for me and had my best interest in mind, i probably would have blown him off and brushed aside what he was saying. This demonstrates two different aspects of a successful communication that are connected.

The first is that i knew his character and was able to put what he was trying to tell me in context. Had someone walked up to me who i was unfamiliar with and approached me about this particular issue, I would have straight up ignored them. Or, even worse, i might have attacked back. In this case, i was able to understand and appreciate Arnold's message because i was able to put it into the context of his character.

The second is that i was able to read his body language to understand what he was actually telling me. While what he said was quite true, it wasn't the point he was trying to communicate. While he was saying that something was wrong, his body language showed concern and an interest in understanding (shoulders back, eyebrows up, eyes squinted slightly, head tilted. Someone who is attacking generally has their shoulders forward, eyebrows narrowed, eyes wide, head forward). What he was trying to tell me is that he thought what i was doing wasn't very good and that it might be damaging to me as well as those around me and that he wanted to understand my thought process.  It was the second and third parts that were a little difficult to decipher, but that his body language was saying.

I have been rambling for a little bit here, but i want to get to my point. It is that the reason we don't generally communicate very well is that we are terrible at balancing our selfish goals in conveying our message with our interest in understanding what the opposite person in the communication is trying to contribute. That sounds complicated, but i think it is a necessary way of phrasing it. The reason is that being totally selfless in a conversation is just as bad as dominating the conversation. If you are only interested in what the other person has to convey, you are being an audience. If you are only interested in conveying your message, the other person is being an audience. While audiences have their places (movies, speeches, lectures, diaries, even counseling at times), in daily life you are not so likely to encounter this regularly. More often than not, there needs to be 2 way communication. So there needs to be this recognition and constant assessment of how much you should be contributing and receiving information in communication.

I had lunch today with an old friend, lets call her Anne, and our conversation was a rather nice example of good communication. The conversation varied between familiar banter and each of us talking at length. At various points, we encountered a topic in which one of us needed to convey a message. The other recognized this need, through body language, knowledge of the person's history, or some other fashion, and appropriately received this message. There were other times that we were able to be talking somewhat equally on a particular topic and could go back and forth with each of us contributing to a conversation. Not unlike that common children's story about stone soup where people from all over a village contribute unique ingredients to a communal soup and the outcome is fantastic and couldn't be achieved without all the ingredients.

I guess what i'm getting at is that most of our communication issues come from this imbalance of our selfish needs with the amount we value the other person's contribution. In many cases the issue is that we're being selfish and not listening. In other times it's that we do not contribute to the communication and therefore information is only going in one direction. While this has its values, in almost any interaction there has to be some sort of two way communication.

Disclaimer for today:

10. I have an additional grammar disclaimer. I really like to shorten probably to probly. This is a direct result of texting, and i have a terribly hard time not doing it while typing as well. So, i'll probly revert to using that in a blog post here or there. (See what i did there!!)

Entertainment

Today, i've found myself thinking a lot about how entertainment impacts our lives, the consequences of that impact, and what can be learned about people by studying entertainment. Now, this is a rather complicated and difficult subject and there are a variety of perspectives that people have.  This post has the potential to be a novel on the subject, but i will attempt to be brief while explaining my observations and conclusions.

I suppose the first thing that needs to be addressed is the question: What is "entertainment"? This is a very hard question. For the purpose of keeping us all on the same page (HEYO!), i refer you to the wiktionary definition: http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/entertainment. I have copied and pasted the relevant definition below for the lazy/bandwidth limited among you:

An activity designed to give pleasure or relaxation to an audience, no matter whether the audience participates passively as in watching opera or a movie, or actively as in games.


So now that you understand how i'm choosing to define entertainment, we can move on to more interesting observations. I want to start by posing the question: What qualifies as entertainment? Well shoot, just about everything I do qualifies as entertainment. I mean, i'm a sports fan (check!), i love watching movies (check!), i enjoy listening to music (check!), i like hanging out with friends (check!), playing cards (check!), chatting with my wife (check!), browsing facebook (check!), sex (check!), going to church (hmmm, am i allowed to check this one?), etc.  Ok, so maybe listing all of the things that i do that are entertainment isn't the best way to do this. How about the things that are not entertainment? This leaves work (most of the time), commuting, and flossing. I hate flossing, it gives me no pleasure or relaxation whatsoever. That's why i cannot remember the last time i flossed. I'm pretty sure people who work in dentist offices must have side bets going about how many people they can get to lie about flossing. I never lie to them. I proudly announce that I do not recall the last time I flossed. I then promptly get put in my place about proper dental hygiene. Sure... like that's supposed to help. That just prevents me from coming back.

Wow, i just wrote 8 sentences about flossing/dentists. My apologies. But, i feel like i have safely established that flossing is not entertainment. Well, that is unless you're talking about the bets being made by dentists. Sigh... (Girl look at that body!)

Anyway, back to the entertainment deal. I've always been under the impression that entertainment should comprise a small part of my life, as there are better/more productive/holy/wholesome ways to spend my time. And yet, here I am and it seems my life is dominated by what appears to be entertainment. Plus, I really love my job and derive great pleasure from it. Also, I love doing things with/for my church. So really, for me it's commuting and flossing. One of those we've established doesn't occur, so it's just commuting. So, for 7.5 hours per week, i'm not experiencing some form of entertainment. For good measure, I'm going to add 7 hours to that total, because i'm sure i'm forgetting something. So, 14.5 hours/168 hours in the week brings me to 8.6% of my week not spent on entertainment. This leaves 91.4% of my time is spent on what i consider entertainment. WOW!

Now, i feel like i need to qualify this a little bit. I'm obscenely optimistic. Those of you who know me, and that's probly all of you, know I'm an optimist. It's not even like i have a choice in the matter. It has been ingrained in me since i was very little, and i no longer have to try and see the positive in things. Shoot, i had a hard time adding commuting to my list of "non-entertainment activities" because i listen to the radio on my way to work. And quite enjoy it for that matter. So, some of my information might be a bit skewed. But, i think that upon inspection, many of you spend huge amounts of your lives on entertainment.

All right... where am i going with this? The impact of entertainment on our lives. I love reading books, watching movies, browsing facebook, watching sports and listening to music because it takes me away from where i currently am and allows me to experience other perspectives. I love playing cards, hanging out with people, participating in church, chatting with my wife, and working because it broadens my own personal experiences and sphere of influence (both incoming and outgoing). These two lists have very different impacts. One is taking me away from myself and the other is refining myself. Now, certainly the music we listen to and the movies we watch impact our thoughts, opinions and beliefs. Perhaps this is more like research. Anyway, what i'm getting at is there are different types of entertainment.

I'm not going to define what a good "ratio" of entertainment types are. I really don't know, and I'm inclined to think that it is very dependent on stage of life and individual personality. What i would say is that it's important to evaluate the way you spend your time. As a Christian, there are things that scripture says i need to be doing and areas of my life that i need to be working on. This is not preventing me from enjoying entertainment, but instead making sure that i'm choosing entertainment that is healthy. For me, improving my quality of life, depth of faith, and relationships with those around me provides me much pleasure and therefore counts as entertainment in my book.

I'm curious to hear your thoughts on entertainment, so please share in the comment section. I have also decided to continue to add disclaimers to my list, but to do so at the end of current posts.

Disclaimer:

8. I am a sports fan. I can talk moderately intelligently about most mainstream sports (including golf and NASCAR but not including WNBA, fishing, and canadian football). My team allegiances are defined by where I am living at the time in which i become a fan. For example, I have always been a football fan and was born in northwestern PA. This makes me a Steelers fan. I didn't start liking baseball until i lived in Colorado. This makes me a Rockies fan. There are many great things to be learned from sports (team work, self improvement, practice, determination, etc.) and there are many bad things that come with sports in America (idolatry, drunkenness, greed, violence, etc.). I do my best to take advantage of the first set, and avoid the second.

9. I really enjoy plays on words. Puns, pop references, jokes. It will not be unusual to see one or two work their way into a post. Some are better than others, but that has rarely prevented me from sharing them. Enjoy or ignore, whichever is your preference.

Introduction

Well, Hello.

I don't really know what i'll be writing about here, but i've always considered having a blog. I suppose i ought to provide some disclaimers to start things off:

1. As you can see in the above few sentences, i'm extremely lazy with the shift key when typing "i" if it isn't the beginning of the sentence. While i try to be conscientious of other spelling and grammatical mishaps, capitalizing "i" only registers on my list when writing something for work or for public distribution of some manner.

2. I am a Christian. That has extraordinary implications for most people. Some of you have just now decided to stop reading my blog. I'm ok with that. I find that if someone is unwilling to listen to alternative perspectives, they are generally not worth having a conversation with. On that note, i try to be quite receptive to the beliefs and opinions of others. While i strive toward that, being a Christian can at times prevent me from listening without an agenda. One thing that i feel people don't realize is that part of being a Christian is sharing that faith with others. That's part of the deal. If someone claims to be a Christian and doesn't share their faith, they are failing. Perhaps this will clear up some confusion. Rest assured, many future posts will be discussing faith.

3. I am an engineer. I like approaching things analytically. My wife made the comment the other day that i'm curious about everything. I feel like this is a good assessment. While for many, the fact that i'm an engineer is in some conflict with my faith. I suppose in some sense this is true, because many things regarding faith (of any sorts) is seen as being in conflict with faith. I suppose i would argue that whenever you accept two things that are in conflict with each other (one could perhaps use the common physics conundrum of waves vs particles), faith of some sort is required to allow for both to exist.

4. I am a musician. My primary instrument is percussion, and of late drums. I also dabble some with the guitar, bass guitar, and singing. There are few things more relaxing for me than playing music and ignoring the world. I have written half a dozen songs and composed various percussion accompaniments to other music and am fascinated by the process of writing music. For example, how on earth do the popular artists of today compose their music? I mean, when Ke$ha was writing any of her songs, does she start with a rhythm or a tune? Or is it all lyrics, and then adding things to it? And if so, where do those ridiculous lyrics come from? Anyway, i'm always one to get off on a side track of music, so if you're looking for a way to distract me that's a safe bet.

5. I love watching and analyzing people, and i feel like i'm quite good at it. Many future posts will be pondering the thoughts/actions/inactions/statements/portrayals/tendencies of the people around me. Of course, those mentioned will remain nameless. Actually, perhaps not nameless, just not the correct name. Yeah, that will be fun.

6. While i'm normally quite careful not to unintentionally offend someone, this blog is not for that. I fully expect to be discussing the actions/beliefs of the people around me and attempting to prevent any sort of offense when i am unaware of who may be reading is entirely impractical. As such, please do not take things directly personally. This is not a place where i want to be attacking someone unintentionally.

7. That being said, i intend to be pondering the actions of people in general. This may include some sarcasm at some of the less thought through actions of normal people in society.

Hmm, 7 disclaimers seems appropriate. I think i'll stop there. Anyway, feel free to comment and contribute to discussions. Please do so in a fashion that is constructive or at least entertaining.

Blessings,
Mike