A Chekhov's Gun Critique

The philosophy behind Chekhov's gun makes sense on the surface, where you don't put something in a story unless it comes up later, but I think there's an interesting technique that I've seen in the Sherlock Holmes short stories where stuff doesn't come up later, but still kind of serves a purpose.  

Often Watson will reference other cases at the beginning of a story, some of which actually appear as short stories themselves and some of which never make it to print.  You may ask, "What's the point of even mentioning the case if it will never come up again?"  And my answer to that would be that it makes the world appear much larger than what we actually see.

Pleasantville 2

To the best of my knowledge, there has never been any kind of sequel planned to the movie Pleasantville.  But I sure love that movie.  Grew up watching Nick at Nite in the early 90's, and so it reminds me a lot of that channel.  

I imagine the sequel would be the citizens of Pleasantville slowly realizing  more and more of the problems that come with open-mindedness that encounters no resistance.  Things like struggling single parent prevalence, profane language dominating entertainment media, addiction to technology, etc.  And then they'd slowly become more open to some of the ideas behind self restraint again.  

And when some small behavior exemplifying restraint is accomplished, a small part of the world would lose its color and return to black-and-white.  Even though not everything would return to what it once was as far as culture and behavioral customs go (racial integration in particular would remain), enough things would revert so that eventually the entire world would turn black-and-white again, slowly biding its time over the years before it becomes open to introducing color and a spirit of open-mindedness once more.  

So it's kind of like a reversal of the main idea of the first film, which focused on the problems with restraint and how the world became more colorful when restraint was cast aside.

I like this idea because it shows that to everything there's a season.  There are seasons of opening up and there are seasons of restraint.  Pros and cons to both.  Open up some, step back a bit, open up some, step back a bit, and keep the pattern going.  The cycle repeats, probably indefinitely.  I believe there are historical examples of this cycle in the past, but at least for the time being, there does not seem to be a prevalence in literature of periods of voluntary self restraint dominating a culture.  Temperance movements have popped up here and there against alcohol, but that's all I'm aware of.

The Trolley Problem in Star Trek TNG

I believe a Reddit forum somewhere discussed this, but I didn't want to participate in a conversation there, so I'll just post a little bit about it here.

Counselor Troi is studying to get the credentials to potentially move up to a captain's position.  But she keeps failing a simulation section of the exam Riker gives her, and he won't tell her why.  Eventually she discovers on her own that the reason she kept failing was because she kept the well-being of each individual person in mind, even when the health of the entire ship was on the line.  

She finally realizes her first duty is to the ship, and so when she next takes the exam, she orders the simulation of LaForge to go in and fix a warp core breach, despite knowing it was going to kill him.  That time she passed the section.

At that point, she realized she didn't want to be a captain anymore.

So the solution to this problem really depends on the duty of the decision maker.  It may mean actively ordering someone to their death if it saves the ship, or perhaps actively sending three our four ensigns to their deaths if it saves the captain and first officer.  Whatever is optimal to keep the ship afloat on its mission is key.  Even if it's not pleasant to think about.  Being an effective leader requires tough and unfair decision making sometimes and it's certainly not for everyone.  I know I often avoid assuming such a position when I can.

Functioning Under Unideal Conditions

Being able to still keep going when things aren't ideal is a crucial skill, because reality is almost never ideal.  I call this ability Functioning Under Unideal Conditions.  If turning it into an acronym that looks vaguely filthy helps you remember it, I guess that's okay.  As long as you can live by the main idea behind it.

Sometimes conditions are so bad that you aren't able to function no matter how tough you are, but if conditions are just unideal, then yeah, it's something you should be able to live with.  You have to shoot for optimal conditions most of the time because ideal is most likely too elusive.

My Unexciting Religious Testimony

I talk about religion a lot in this blog, but I don't think I've ever posted all that much on how I became religious myself.

A lot of people have very dramatic conversion stories, often about how they went down the wrong road and reached rock bottom before finally abandoning shallow pursuits and grasping a much deeper meaning of life.  I am not one of those people.  I grew up with a very religious father, and he grew up in a very religious Louisiana family.  My dad and his seven siblings were very poor growing up, but they all got along really well for as long as I've known them, even now as their days are beginning to end and they're slowly beginning to pass away.

In my elementary school days I was fairly typical.  Did bad stuff every once in a while that got me in trouble.  I'd go to church with my dad here and there and he got me a kid's Bible by Mary Batchelor with great illustrations that I'd look at from time to time without actually reading much.  Most of the time I just watched TV and played Nintendo when I wasn't in school.

One of my many cousins and I were out in the woods of Louisiana one day during this time, and even though his father was a minister, he and I spent that day saying every foul word we knew of at that time, because a bunch we still didn't know.  But then we decided we were tired of that foolishness and pretty much stopped saying bad words after that.

So when I got to middle school and high school I was actually a bit more behaved.  I never had an urge to drink or smoke or anything like that.  Adult magazines and websites were a different story and once I got into those I didn't shake that habit until I was 26 or so.  Other than that I didn't have too many problems other than being very lazy in 10th grade.  But by 11th grade I woke up and stopped being quite so lazy, and life got a bit easier after that.

I believe it was in 8th grade when I finally felt called to walk up to the front of the service during the church's period of invitation and publicly commit myself to following Jesus and his teachings.  I thought about it for a good long while before I finally did.  I think I was worried about not being saved at that point.  I was baptized shortly afterward.  I started going to church regularly, but I got kind of freaked out in Sunday school with the pop religious music and socializing so I pretty much stayed in regular church.  

I read the Bible (or at least most of it) when I went to college, but even by then I didn't feel the spirit impacting me very deeply.  Not that I craved the spirit very much.  Some other religious folks there met me from time to time, but I couldn't be as committed as they were.  I think it was good to meet them here and there and I did appreciate it.  I went to church only sporadically during my college days.

My mom passed away while I was in college and I ended up moving back in with my dad and going back to the church I grew up in and was baptized in.  They asked me to do some of the sound and/or projector and I did it for a few years, but it wasn't very fun for me.  I can't call it a thankless job because I was thanked quite often by many members of the congregation.  I had a lot more fun going to lunch with the medical students after church.  We had a whole Sunday school class of just married medical students at that time because the church is close to a medical school.

A few years later I got married myself ,and my wife and I went to about two or three different churches before picking one to settle with.  I think it was at this time that I finally really started to get a feel of what Biblical doctrine was truly about, and I actually began craving a lifestyle that did not forsake the Lord.  I realized the deep truths of Proverbs and how material as old as that really can apply so much even today.  It's a book I feel EVERY young man should read because all of the pitfalls it talks about are very real.  I realized I couldn't do things on my own and needed the Lord's forgiveness for my shortcomings.  And I came to feel more and more that life is not a meaningless and random series of pointless events.  There's very much an intent behind nature, and MUCH more to the world than meets the eye.

I ended up going back to church with my dad again a few years later, and I guess I've been going with him every Sunday for the past three or four years.  It's a time I cherish because I know it's becoming limited as he progresses to an advanced age.  

Me being middle aged now myself makes me realize how fragile humanity is and how it really does need a lot of help in its battle against sin.  I know I'll take what help I can get because I certainly am not immune from falling into the traps of self-deception and failing to realize my own sins.   That doesn't go away just because I'm a bit older.  I don't care if people think I use religion as a crutch.  Why?  Because I do.  And I don't care if they think I was indoctrinated either.  So what if I was?

My life, even if it seems dull to many, has been quite fulfilling to me, where I got to live many dreams and ambitions and experienced a lot of good fortune.  There were some setbacks here and there and I'm sure those will continue.  But I hope I can be as thankful for all that God has given me as I have been over the past few years of slow spiritual awakening and realizing how amazingly frequently involved God has been in just my mediocre life.  God revealed so very much to me in my secular and religious studies and in my relationships that he never had to show me at all.  But he wanted to anyway.

Even just quiet mornings where I wake up early and take it slow before work bring me so much joy.  I don't even have my heart set on eternal life all that much because I've already been so blessed with just the temporary one God has given me.  Of course I still believe that next life is still there.  But even without it, God's goodness to me here has been so evident.  I know it hasn't been that way for everyone, and those I pray he takes special care of in the next life.

A Bad Idea About Strength

It's probably a bad idea to demand that people who are stronger than you should be even stronger than they already are.  Seems like it could potentially backfire.  

We can't forget that in this world even the strong are more fragile than they appear.

Does the Omniscient Viewpoint Matter?

Here again I'm arguing against moral relativism because it's something I like to do.  Perhaps someone has used this argument before and I've just never seen it.

Suppose we have a court case, and the man is found guilty by the jury because the evidence is compelling and strong.  But also suppose the man is innocent despite the indication of the evidence (kind of like a Sherlock Holmes story).  The jury just voted him guilty because of their limited perception, but really did their best given their lack of omniscience.  You can't bash their integrity for doing what they could with the tools they had.

Now moral relativists would classify the man on trial as immoral because his moral status was determined by consensus after some due diligence.  Even more so if the general public pretty much agrees with the verdict.  But what about the omniscient viewpoint - you know, the only one that can even potentially detect his innocence?  Does that viewpoint mean anything?