To Carry Fire

I spent my childhood learning about God. What he wanted from us humans, and how we could give it to him. What we were saddled with from birth: sin. Like with other religious sects, I grew up believing in my inherent imperfection. I grew up with the belief that  life was suffering, and we had to make meaning from it. We would fail, constantly, and never live up to the standards God set for us, so we had to hope for the future. Through God's power alone could the world be set aright. Only through God's grace could we ever be forgiven. Jesus is the epitome of this viewpoint: His one time death was the only thing needed to release all men from sin and death. (Now, being Protestant, my birth religion  did  also focus on "works" not just "faith", but that's a separate concern.) Jesus needed to suffer for the world to be saved. And we, his spiritual descendants, had to suffer for the world to be saved.  My belief growing up, then, was that suffer...

Of the many concepts that are ethically important, one is incredibly valuable in this age of inflated self-importance and unhealthy narcissism: genuine self-respect. What is "genuine" self-respect? It is, more correctly, just "self-respect", but needs to have the qualifier to distinguish it from fraudulent self-respect: that which is proposed by the self-help circles and certain religious traditions. These forms of fraudulent self-respect are called "self-respect", "self-esteem" "unconditional positive self-regard", etc, but amount to an unhealthy psychological concept called narcissism. Narcissism vs. self-respect is a debate which seems too muddy to consider, but can be distilled into key similarities and differences. Similarities include the focus of both concepts on what the self is, what the self does, and why the self does what it does. Differences arise from the different answers to these questions. So, while a narcis...

Well. Here we are, another year. Here in Ohio, we're experiencing our first significant snowfall of 2019. I have to admit that it looks beautiful. Something about white snow covering everything the eye can see is refreshing. It's the frame of mind of renewal that brings me to my purpose for writing this blog. Most mornings, I wake up and lay in bed. My fiancée needs to get to work, so she's up soon. I dawdle on my phone, checking Facebook, not for anything, but just to pass the time. We eat breakfast and she goes off to work. She's new at her job, but she's getting the hang of it. I move from laying in bed to sitting on the couch, not for anything, but just to pass the time . Star Trek: The Original Series is the show I'm watching right now, but it's not just Star Trek I watch. I watch YouTube videos about video games I'll never play, Vines I'll forget in seconds, and motivational hacks I'll never use. I'm not spending my ...