Advice for Bachelors: When to Change the Sheets

•  The health department quarantines your house.
•  The post office will not deliver mail to you.
•  The dog leaves.
•  You see a line of bed bugs marching toward the exit.
•  You see flakes  fall from the sheets when you bend them.

A Glut of Organizations

Americans are distinctive for voluntary organizations (Tocqueville) that promote a favored cause. They are wonderful, do a lot of good. But can it be that more is always better?  Not necessarily.

I have been members of various voluntary groups usually devoted to social justice causes and religion. I can think of several examples in which I doubt that it could be shown that anyone actually benefited from our work.

One was a Theological Advisory Committee for the denomination. We met at wonderful places, had a great time with each other, prepared papers, interviewed guest experts and  made reports. If anyone were saved, sanctified, or inspired to do good works increasing love of God and neighbor, I was not aware of it.

I was once on the board of an interfaith organization. We spent thousands of hours making a video on local poverty to be shown in local churches. We had a big community gathering to celebrate our video and had some success in getting churches to show it. Was even  one poor person helped by all this? Not that I know of.

I and a friend accepted an assignment by our local church when we were exploring future ministries. We took on housing for low and moderate income families. We interviewed town and city officials, investigated the issue as best we could. The most astounding discovery was that in the city and county there were a huge number of organizations working on this issue. Our message to the church was to urge members to join one of these, not to form another organization! Too many already.

I could go listing many other groups  I have belonged to that I doubt ever actually helped anybody.

Emerging needs may call for a new voluntary organization. But this should be resorted to only after it has been determined no existing group is effective or relevant to present circumstances.

Nostalgia for the Bad Old Good Times: The Daily Assault

Life down on the farm in the 1930's and 40's was no picnic.  I have been there, done that. But it had some advantages we have lost. It was mostly quiet and peaceful. You welcomed the mail man who might bring a personal letter or the semi-annual Sears Roebuck Catalog. It was nice to see a neighbor or go to church for some social contact, etc.

Today we are constantly assaulted by:

• Unwanted postal mail.  If you give to one charity, soon you are receiving requests from forty others of the same or similar sort. This process increases exponentially in this and the following ways.
• Unwanted email. Respond to one cause, and soon forty others want you to join them, send letters, petition Congress, give to the little boy in Thosmonia dying for the nineteenth time of some horrible disease,  ad infinitum.
• Unwanted phone calls. The causes that don't send you postal or email call you, usually at dinner time (likely to be home, right?).
• Unwanted callers at your door. Frequently, these are of a religious sort, wanting to give you literature, talk about your relation to God, Jesus, Thor, or Aphrodite, or convert you to their faith. 

Add to that:

• the constant fight to keep rid of useless mail, old newspapers, cardboard boxes delivered by UPS or FedEx, and other accumulating stuff that threatens to stuff your living space.
• the struggle to keep up with the recycling of paper, plastic (everything labeled from 1 to 7), cardboard, and other approved items listed in the annual message from the city.
• the effort to get the garbage and recycle stuff out on the right day, keeping informed of holidays, when it is a day later.
• getting the cans and bottles back to the store to get back your nickel per item.
• finding a place to recycle old electronic items, cords, plugs, dead computers, hard drives, TV's, VCR's, etc.
• remembering what they said on TV about how to get rid of old prescription medicines without poisoning future generations.
• remembering what the just-published study said about the foods and medicines that are sure to kill you unless you avoid them.
• trying to keep up with the requests on Facebook, e. g., becoming friends with or and sending a penguin to someone I don't know.
• maintaining sanity while enjoying computers: trojans, worms, viruses, privacy settings, broken internet connections, failed hard drives, updating drivers.
• nuclear issues, proliferation, bombs, terrorists and rogue nations using them, global warming, and on and on and on ............

Ah, for the good old days down on the farm when your main concern was keeping the outdoor toilet and the stable shoveled out, cutting enough cord wood for the stove and fireplace, freezing while you got a fire built on cold winter days, getting to the doctor seven miles away when you got suddenly sick and had no car, hoping the Sears catalog in the outhouse will last til the next one comes, wondering if the chicken in the yard will be big enough to feed the preacher and his family, hoping the drought will not ruin the cotton and corn crops,  worrying that someone will rob your sweet potato hill or smoke house, praying that the next tornado will not blow your house away, that the cow will not go dry, and that your kids will not die of measles, mumps, diphtheria, whooping cough, or get polio. Etc., etc.

"Hey, Sweetie, wanna take the bottles back to the grocery store!"

My New Philosophy

I find myself watching and reading about  day to day political occurrences less and enjoying it more.  Avoiding the incessant commentary of alleged experts is especially delightful.

I will occasionally look in on Fox News just for a laugh.

Purgatory for Them Too

See prior blog first.

• Charities sending me coins or gifts with their request. I figure the purpose is to make me feel guilty and more likely to send a gift.  As a rule I don't send gifts to any organization that does this. If  I do send a gift, it is in spite of, not because of, what they sent me.

Almost Wholly Acerbic Reflections

The following  will not to be allowed into heaven until they have spent at least 5000 years dealing with  their own mischief:

• Anyone connected with the packaging industry, especially the hard plastic variety, whose work is designed for the benefit of the producers and sellers, not the consumer.
• People who speed through parking lots as if they are on a super-highway.
• Those responsible for the little sticker on every apple I buy at the supermarket.
• Whoever designed the system that guarantees that when I back out in a parking lot, there will be a huge SUV on either side that effectively  blocks any sight of oncoming cars.
• People who pass me  on an interstate highway at lightening speeds then immediately slow down precipitously  so that I am forced to brake to keep from bumping them into the next state (geographically or eschatologically).
• Folks who leave their shopping carts right where they unload them, creating numerous hazards and inconveniences. 
• Cheaters who park in places reserved for the handicapped with enough ready excuses that take more time to iterate than parking legally would.
• Designers of car door lock systems that blow the horn right when I am walking past, scaring the heck out of me.
 

You can easily add your own. But you get the picture.

Hermeneutics, Relativity, and the Illusion of the One Right Way

The Polish philosopher Leszek Kolakowski set forth the Law of the Infinite Cornucopia, which notes that no shortage exists of reasons to bolster whatever theory anyone wants to believe  (New York Review of Books (January 11, 1996), 10). I suggest a theological version that I will call the Law of Infinite Hermeneutical Adaptability. This law states that the Bible can be interpreted to make it compatible with nearly every conceivable doctrine. The greatest proof of the operation of this Law is that irreconcilable positions on nearly every theological and ethical question are extant, all of which claim to have the sanction of Scripture. The sublime form of the Law indicates that reasons can always be given to demonstrate that Jesus himself would have approved of the conclusions reached by a given individual or community. When the Law of Infinite Hermeneutical Adaptability is in operation, it is nearly always accompanied by the Phenomenon of Total Surprise. I prefer the description of this Phenomenon in its "Lo and Behold" form: When individuals and groups find the Word of God in the Bible, the results, lo and behold, turn out to be identical with what they themselves believe!.
 http://www.frontiernet.net/~kenc/bibint.htm

Properly adapted, this principle works whether it is a Christian interpreting the Bible, a Muslim interpreting the Koran, or a SCOTUS Justice interpreting the American Constitution.

Check it out.


http://www.frontiernet.net/~kenc/index.shtml

Questions of the Day: Buffet, Rapoport, Koch, Sanders, taurus feces

What if all  wealthy business people were like Warren Buffet and Bernard Rapoport?
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/04/23/us/politics/bernard-rapoport-liberal-donor-in-texas-dies-at-94.html?hpw

Suppose all Senators voted like Bernie Sanders and all House members voted like Louise Slaughter. 

 Now suppose all business leaders and super-wealthy folks were like the Koch brothers.

Head still swimming?

Then try this: Suppose that politicians began to tell the truth (within the limits of human fallibility). Given the fact that most  Americans believe that 93.3% of what politicians they oppose say is taurus feces, would anyone believe them, given that 93.3% of Americans believe taurus feces from politicians of their own persuasion 93.3% of the time?
http://www.frontiernet.net/~kenc/index.shtml

Tuscon and the Bountifulness of Confusion

The commentariat has become a cornucopia of speculation about why Jared  Loughner committed mass murder in Tucson. All this  (and more) is being repeated since Newtown.

Two types of theory can be enumerated: (1) monocausal and (2) polycausal.

The monocausal theories come in two extremes: (a) individualistic and  (b) social. Some monocausalists claim that it was the act of a solitary individual with a deranged mind. Explanation is to be sought  solely in the psychology, life-history, and proclivities of the killer.

Other monocausalists look for social sources. His outrage was the product of the sick political climate of our time. The individualistic theories come mainly from the right side of the political spectrum, the social theories primarily from the left.

No particular individual commentator is likely to fit perfectly into one of these categories as sharply defined, but they do help to locate the vicinity in which he or she  can be located.

I have long been fond of polarities and ideal types. But, alas, they are more useful for  analysis and than for discovery of truth. But perhaps a beginning can be made.

I am a polycausalist -- along with many others.

To say that there is  not a  simple, direct causal connection between current social factors or his individual psychology and the the murderous deed is not to say that there is no connection at all. In the last analysis it was the finger of Jared Loughner that pulled the trigger. The fact that he may be schizophrenic, e. g.,  is not predictive of his outrageous behavior (most mentally ill people do not commit murder), but it may be part of the total  ensemble of operative dynamics  in his specific case.

The fact that current political rhetoric is excessive and vitriolic does not necessarily imply that it caused him to do what he did, but his mental derangement may be part of the total configuration of factors involved. Causality may be too strong a term from the outset. Perhaps it is better to think of a complex network of dynamic interacting influences with many levels and dimensions  become concrete over time in this particular person as a self-determining  center of activity expressive of his formed character.

We are dealing with the mysteries and complexities and perhaps contradictions and shifting tendencies that form this individual person as an agent of action. That we do not and perhaps cannot fully understand with the resources available to us. What we can do is remember two of Alfred North Whitehead's dicta:

"Seek simplicity--and distrust it."

"Philosophy may not ignore the multifariousness of the world--the fairies dance, and Christ is nailed to a cross."

In Reference to the Two Posts to Follow

"The chief danger to philosophy is narrowness in the selection of evidence. This narrowness arises from the idiosyncrasies and timidities of particular authors, of particular social groups, of particular schools of thought, of particular epochs in the history of civilization. The evidence relied upon is arbitrarily biased by the temperaments of individuals, by the provincialities of groups, and by the limitations of schemes of thought.  . . . Philosophy may not neglect the multifariousness of the world—the fairies dance, and Christ is nailed to the cross." Alfred North Whitehead, Process and Reality, 337-338.

Happy Thoughts on a Bright Day

Millions of people got up this morning, ate a nourishing breakfast, had a productive day at work with congenial colleagues, and were greeted by adoring children who stay active, work hard at school, and have ambitions to make a positive contribution to society. Uncountable acts of spontaneous kindness occurred all over the country.  Bystanders spring into action to disarm a mass killer. Volunteers showed up at a myriad of organizations designed to help people in need. Name a good cause that benefits people or animals, and organizations galore are active in working on them. In the far flung places of the globe, some of them dangerous and violent, professional groups sponsored by gifts give aid to the hungry, the sick,  the homeless, the helpless, and the afflicted of every sort imaginable. Members of churches, synagogues, and mosques every day are at work doing good deeds  to relieve human misery and to make things better. Conscientious public servants do their best within the constraints of bureaucracy to render service in the name of local, state, and federal governments. Even elected officials frequently do things because they are right and promote the general good, independently of whether it helps them politically or not.

And so the list could grow much longer reciting deeds of love, justice, mercy, compassion by every day folks, celebrities, and all sorts of people who turn good intentions into helpful acts reducing suffering in people and animals. Duties are done routinely without regard for reward or attention but because they need to be done to keep life going and for the good order of families, communities, and societies. Children are loved, husbands are responsible, and wives are busy earning money and keeping the family sane. Thus does the world go round and round, and the sun rises and sets on people doing the best they can with what they have to make the best of life and are content with what they have and generous in sharing it with others while being helpful to friend and stranger along the way.

Thoroughly Acerbic Comments on a Gloomy Day

These observations apply only to those who are correctly described  by them:

• We are rearing a fat and lazy generation whose members have been assured since birth that they are "awesome,"
•  who have absorbed the notion that anything that requires effort should be fun or one can opt out, 
•  who have little capacity for delayed gratification and self-denial, 
• whose educational achievements  (not  totally the fault of their schools) are meager compared to the Chinese (and many others) whose Confucian values have important similarities with the largely defunct Protestant ethic
•  in a society transformed by globalization  and communication technologies that leave those with little  or the wrong kind of education and few marketable skills with low-paying jobs or none at all,
•  especially if they are young, male, and black or otherwise handicapped by region  or ethnicity
•  in a society that lives complacently in a plutocracy that has gamed the system (consider, e. g.,  the health care bill) to serve the  interests of the wealthy (though a large percentage of the wealthy and super-wealthy vote Democratic these days) who benefit from a compliant Congress,
•  resulting  in obscene economic inequalities  (from many causes) and lack of opportunity that corrupt democracy, 
• whose economy is too-much sustained by consumption and too little by productive investment, 
• whose citizens by and large want greater  government benefits, lower taxes,  and deficit reduction hardly realizing that we can have any two of these but not all three, 
• who accept a situation in which presidents can fight wars not paid for with volunteers who do the suffering and dying leaving the rest of us--if we have jobs--free to buy fancy cars, big houses, and all the consumer goods voracious corporations seduce us into buying by reassuring us that we are awesome and deserving of everything our money and credit cards will temporarily sustain
•  while corporations invest abroad reducing jobs for Americans as our old and decaying infrastructure threatens our safety
•  while terrorists plot our destruction in a world in which hundreds of millions go hungry, suffer from curable diseases, and live in fear of violence from blood-thirsty, power-hungry agents of darkness who care not for justice and are undeterred by the suffering they cause, 
• while storms, earthquakes, and floods add  more misery to helpless parents, children, and families the world over.

Otherwise, except for all the other things that are wrong or out of joint, things are great as another year begins in which  large sections of the world are cursed with anti-humane and cruel  religious and cultural practices right out of the dark ages that especially  hurt women and children as we continue to pay culturally backward Saudi Arabia for oil with funds borrowed from the Chinese in order to sustain our idolatrous love affair with the automobile whose wastes poison the atmosphere and warm the global climate.

 http://www.frontiernet.net/~kenc/index.shtml

Companion Volume to Born into the Wrong World Published

https://tsw.createspace.com/title/3498756 
 
The Beauty of Ordinary Lives is a 42 page tribute to my parents, a companion volume and supplement to my autobiography Born into the Wrong World. It is  available at Lulu.com and  at

https://www.createspace.com/3498756

http://www.createspace.com/3490587

Buy at Lulu.com: 

http://www.lulu.com/spotlight/kencatfrontiernetdotnet

From the Preface:

       I was fortunate in that I chose my parents well. John Wilfred Cauthen and Nancy Beulah Harris Cauthen were ordinary folks from rural Georgia. They taught me what unconditional love was by their words and actions.  I will be forever grateful to these wonderful people who demonstrated the beauty of ordinary lives. This little booklet is a loving tribute to them. I focus on their last years as they confronted the necessity of giving up the home they loved and moving to a nursing home to spend the rest of their days.
Excerpt:
        Suitcases in the car, it was time. Mother held the kitty and said a long, sad, lingering farewell to her "Baby." My Dad gave me a big, tight hug, flung wide his long, skinny arms, and exclaimed with passionate resignation, "Goodbye, old house." I led one and then the other to the car, put the old, ugly wheelchair that had been Rosalie's in the trunk, and got in beside them. We all took one last look at their home place and drove off. When we arrived, Mother remembered something Rosalie had said when she came to make this her home years before. "This is the place where you come to wait to die."
    Some time ago my Mother told me about a couple several years ago stopping in their driveway and coming to the door. They asked directions to the nursing home where we now sat. In the back seat of that car sitting very still and drawn up was a sad, unsmiling old grey-haired woman looking very scared and downcast. It took little imagination to figure out what was going on. Now I sat at the door of this same unwanted but needed refuge, somewhere to live that was not and could not be home, a place both forbidding and welcoming, a sanctuary that promised care and safety without ceasing to be dreaded as the place you go when nowhere else will do, where you don't want to go but go anyway because you have to, the place where you come to wait to die.

Announcing the Publication of the Revised Standard Version of My Autobiography

The revised standard version of my autobiography is available now at Lulu.com  and at CreateSpace.com

https://www.createspace.com/3490587

If you buy from CreateSpace please enter discount code 

6XQY8WZW

at checkout  (worth $3)

The Lulu version is described below:

http://www.lulu.com/product/paperback/born-into-the-wrong-world/13394968

Born into the Wrong World

By Kenneth Cauthen

Paperback, 240 pages

$11.58 You Save: 20%

List Price: $14.48

The life and thought of Kenneth Cauthen. Born in the rural South in 1930, he was a pastor, professor of theology, and author of twenty books. Cauthen describes his life in the context of the times from the Great Depression to the current Age of Terror. He describes his personal life, marriage, divorce, remarriage, life in a rural Baptist Church, and Professor in a theological seminary.

  Add to Cart  

The author has lived through momentous times. Born in 1930, his life covers a span from the Great Depression to the Age of Terror. Born into the Wrong World tells the story of a country boy from the segregated South who grew up among farmers and mill workers and spent his life trying to make sense of life and its mysteries, wondering why there is so much suffering and injustice and why so few share the conviction that something radical needs to be done about it.

All is here – his life experiences, his inner struggles, suffering, early sexual trauma, his career as pastor who almost got thrown out over the race issue and as professor of theology, his marriage, episodes of depression, and devastating divorce, his theological development and mature thought, his ambivalence about the church, his social and political views – everything.

The author says, “I wanted to end the story with an account of my funeral, but I was not willing to meet the publisher’s deadline.
Kenneth Cauthen

http://www.frontiernet.net/~kenc/index.shtml

What's Wrong with this Country Anyway?

Let's get one thing straight:  By and large, generally speaking, for the most part, what the American people want is increased governmental benefits,  lower taxes, and deficit reduction.  You might be able to get two out of three, but nobody knows how to achieve all three. This helps explains the contradictions, absurdities,  and confusion seen so widely today.

Some rave and rant about the deficit and want a smaller government that spends less. But when asked what they would cut, they are short of specifics that would make a significant difference. Well, of course, there is always the tried and true waste, fraud, and abuse, and  there may be inefficiencies in the Department of Fisheries and Wildlife, etc. 

But the big bucks are elsewhere. We could cut Social Security Benefits.

Oh no, either we or our parents or grandparents depend on that.

What about Medicare? No, of course not, for the same reason that we can't deeply touch Social Security?

Medicaid? Well, no, too many poor people depend on that.

Ah, then, you want to cut the mammoth defense budge?

Hell, no, are you crazy?

OK, you want to reduce the deficit but don't want big cuts in either of the Big Four -- Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, and Defense. Your only alternative is to raise taxes!

Now you are getting crazy even weird. Taxes are too high now.

So it goes, The swingers who have voted against the ins in the last two elections and put Democrats are poised in 2010 it appears to turn out the ins once again. Independents and others in this class apparently have no defined ideology so they go back and forth between parties and persons apparently based on how the world is treating them at the moment, gut feelings, self-centered sentiments --presentism and selfishness, I call it. Because Obama came in promising change, hope, and a politics transcending party in the midst of the greatest depression since the 1930's not of his own making and did not make us all prosperous in two years, these fickle, confused, gut-driver party switchers want to be rid of the President and a Democratic Congress.

They can't get what they want--smaller government with lower taxes, greater benefits, and deficit reduction--so they act out of anger, rage, full of contradictions, confusion, ignorance, and incompatible demands.

As the most colorful New York  gubernatorial candidate summarized  his platform, "Rent is too damn high."  That's about as good as it gets in 2010 as I prepare to vote shortly.

Hooray for American democracy!

Quasi-acerbic Comment for the Day

A certain segment of the Republican party appears not to accept the moral and political legitimacy of Democrats, especially Barack Obama, to govern. It is contrary to the grain of the universe, a cosmic mistake. In their eyes Republicans clearly represent the powers, principles, and people that should be in charge. All this gives intensity, even rage, to the very fact that a Democratic President and Congress are presently in office.

Theological Question of the Day: Was Jesus saved?

Is there any New Testament evidence that Jesus ever accepted the Lord Jesus Christ as his personal Savior?

Obama's Folly

President Obama seems determined to do what  many others over the centuries have failed to do: win in Afghanistan.

 The obstacles are many and formidable:
an enemy that  retreats into sanctuaries in Pakistan;
an offense limited to stealth drone attacks in these sanctuaries;
a Pakistani military that is unable or unwilling to destroy them;
a Pakistani government that is obsessed with India, unstable, and
     limited in what in can do to attack fellow Muslims without risking
     overthrown by militant extremists;
an American public that is tired of the endless conflicts with Muslim 
     nations and losing confidence in our ability to restore peace, order,
     and justice in that troubled, complex land;
billions spent in these wars in Muslim nations that badly needed
     at home;
a partner in Karzai who is corrupt and surrounded by corruption---we   could go on.

The larger context is that we fight these wars with volunteers and deficit financing, a situation that costs the rest of us very little at the moment. But I worry about a situation in which presidents can wage wars which are personally costly for a few but with little or no personal burden for the rest of us.

My impression of the military is that for the most part their standard line is the same as it was in Vietnam--give us more troops, a clear definition of our mission, and a little more time.

We face a cruel dilemma. On the one hand, our leaving might result in another Taliban and disaster for the masses of Afghan people, especially women and children. On the other hand,  we face the prospect of staying there indefinitely with no assurance that we can ever make things right.

There is no good solution, only bad, worse, and catastrophic options. But which is which? If we knew, would the political situation allow its implementation?

Is this a glimmer of hope?
http://www.salon.com/news/afghanistan/index.html?story=/news/feature/2010/09/27/afghan_taliban_talks

Or is it like all those false hopes when Israel has talks with Palestinians?

Obama: Intellect Over Feeling, Being Cool Over Being Passionate

Consensus: When Clinton said he felt our pain, he appeared to be really hurting. When Obama says it, we don't doubt his truthfulness, but he does not come across as feeling it deeply in his heart. This jibes with my frequent criticism that he sounds too much like a professor and not enough like a politician. I don't expect him to be a prophet. That is another vocation.

I wonder sometimes if deep in his heart he is an idealist who wants everybody just to get along, despite his schooling in and sometimes practice of  "Chicago politics." He does not want to offend anybody-- Republicans, big business--remember FDR who said they hate me; I welcome their hatred. He wants everybody to like him--generals, bankers, school kids, dogs, and canaries. Now cooperation in ventures that promote the national interest and the common good is a wonderful thing. But sometimes one has to get nasty in the spirit of Lee Atwater and Karl Rove to be successful. 

Would it help if we saw more of the latter in Obama's pragmatic political practice?  I wonder.

What's Wrong With These People Anyway?

Johnny came home with a black eye, a bloody nose, and a few loose teeth. His Mother was horrified, but Johnny said, grinning from ear to ear, "Yeah, Mom, but you should see the other guy!"

That appears to be what the Democratic message gets boiled down to this fall. "If you think we are bad, the other party is worse."  Although it convinces me, that is not an inspiring slogan. But will it work for independents and swing voters?

Please explain to me why these coveted voters swing back and forth tossed about by "every wind of doctrine." (1) Why would folks who voted for Obama and Democrats in 2006 and 2008 say they plan to vote Republican this November?

I have voted for one Republican in my entire life beginning with 1948 until now. I preferred  Republican Russell Peterson to be governor of Delaware in 1968. He was by far the most progressive candidate, whose like are totally extinct today. Every other time the Democratic candidates were more in line with my ideology and values, although sometimes I have had to hold my nose while pulling the lever.

I suppose that many people are less ideologically oriented than I am or have an outlook that is more in the middle, since admittedly I am  well toward the left and got paid while I was articulating a point of view in some detail. Folks in the middle could more easily than I tilt between parties as circumstances and issues change.

I suspect however that a lot of swingers react on the basis of what is happening to them at the moment, what they feel in the gut. The "in party" must be responsible if I can't find a job, pay my mortgage, or send my kids to college. So I will vote them out. If unemployment were at 4.8% and their incomes were rising, and times were good  all around,  presumably they would reward the party in power. So a president and his  majority party are in large measure victims or beneficiaries of fate  but with limited control over what is going on in the world during their tenure.

So despite all the good things Democrats have done, the times have not been kind to them, and they may get punished come election day.

"Yeah, I know, but I have seen the other guy."

_______________________________________________

(1). . .  so that  we may no longer be children, tossed to and fro and carried about with every wind of doctrine, by the cunning of men, by their craftiness in deceitful wiles. Ephesians 4:14.  (RSV)