Geoff's Miscellany

Miscellaneous Musings

Geoff

Music Monday: The Rolling Stones

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When I was younger I really like the song Paint it Black. I now almost never listen to the radio, but right after telling my wife that I liked it as a kid, it came on when I turned the radio on on a lark the next day. Then later that day it came on the radio at the gym. I listened to it when I did my heaviest set on dead lift.

I’m not certain about why I like the song. I think I gravitate toward negative and depressing thoughts, so I found a friend in Mick Jagger. Interestingly, I found out that my sarcastic, over confident, and paroxystic (new word based on paroxysm I guess) dancing style was similar to Jaggger’s after seeing a Stones video in high school. Amongs people who’ve seen it (I don’t dance in public any more), my dance moves are legend. A friend and I once stopped a hardcore show by dancing so intensely that the lead singer gave us a shout-out as all of the weaker, smaller, and less intense metal heads backed away from us in awe or a brief sense of rational self-preservation. Nobody was hurt.

Anyway, I hope this song helps you have a bright start to your day.

Be Wise For Yourself

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One of the most interesting features of the book of Proverbs is that despite the fact that the Proverbs themselves try to help the individual to be oriented toward others, the book appeals primarily to self-interest. This is very important. I’ll probably write more about it later (I still need to finish my series on the common topics). But when our self-interest is appealed to, our desire to survive, thrive, and experience happiness Christians often feel embarrassed or feel the need to correct the Bible with comments like, “Jesus offers these gifts, but really we should be self-less.” Check out the Prologue to Proverbs:

Proverbs 9:10-12 The fear of the LORD is the beginning of wisdom, and the knowledge of the Holy One is insight. (11) For by me your days will be multiplied, and years will be added to your life. (12) If you are wise, you are wise for yourself; if you scoff, you alone will bear it.

If you become a scoffer, ultimately that falls on you. But similarly, if you become wise, it falls on you. Therefore, become wise. Other people cannot do it for you and you cannot do it for other people. Other people and things can be motivations for gaining wisdom, of course. If you want to be wise in order to have a longer life, Proverbs offers that as well. But, again, it’s on you to become wise and there is no guarantee that it will help other people, that they will appreciate it, or that they will support you. Similarly, if you become a scoffer, there is no guarantee that anybody else will be hurt, but there is a guarantee that you’ll bear the result of scoffing because you’ve become a scoffer.

Here are some thoughts:

  1. Seek wisdom in order to have the good life for yourself.
  2. Part of wisdom is loving God and loving neighbor and wisdom will help you do these better and indeed, loving God and neighbor has a volitional (will) component and an affective (enjoyment) component.
  3. The motivation for loving God and neighbor is given in the Sermon on the Mount. If you participate in God’s kingdom, the benefits, if real, are staggering (Matthew 5:3-10).
  4. The motivation for glorifying God is obtaining glory (see Romans 3:23 and 5:1-5 and all of chapter 8). In other words, God doesn’t need us to glorify him, God calls us to glorify him because it benefits us.
  5. It is unwise to be selfish, but true wisdom is self-interested and still loving to others.

Music Monday: Murder by Death

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One of my favorite poems is Paradise Lost. Naturally, this means that I enjoy The Desert is on Fire by Murder by Death.

The song takes place in a concept album wherein the devil was visiting a bar in Mexico and tried to make a few extra bucks on a drug deal. The other dealer double crosses him and shoots him in the back. When the devil gets out of prison he goes on a rampage against the entire village and when he confronts the villagers, he reminds them, “I fought off angels with my hands back, I set the heavens on fire.” It’s an exciting song with a fairly epic tone. If you want to know how the story ends you’ll need to listen to the whole album.

Debating your inner monolog

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One of the persistent themes of recent psychological literature on success is the inner voice. Thought it has many names, the inner voice describes sort of things we tell ourselves to psych ourselves up, out, or distract ourselves from ourselves. The Christian tradition, especially the Puritan and Greek Orthodox branches of soul care, did not leave these sorts of questions out. For examples of writing about using the inner monolog to grow in virtue I highly recommend the works of Evagrius of Pontus and, Thomas Brooks, and Richard Baxter.

A few days ago, I wrote about the Common Topics in the context of destroying writer’s block. But, because they are meant to help you construct arguments, they are useful tools for your mindset and self-talk. Your mindset is the collection of attitudes and thought processes you use to deal with your experiences.

Aristotle’s common topic of definition is used for framing a debate/speech/personal trait so that in a dispute you are in a favorable position in the minds of the audience. Definition is also used for framing a paper or speech so that the readers are not lost. In today’s post I want to show how definition is an important tool for reframing your own thoughts for making progress in sanctification and endeavors of merely human interest. I’ll give examples before I explain fully what I mean. If the examples are helpful, stop there. Learn to redefine your terms and stop your inner critic/naysayer/smooth tongued tempter with simple debate skills.

Examples:

  1. Thought: I need to have a drink in order to feel happy right now.
    Reframe: Happiness is more than feeling good right now, I’ll hit the gym and go read Scripture in a coffee shop.
  2. Thought: I’m too busy to fix my diet.
    Reframe: I already have a diet (what I eat), I just need to replace one junkfood meal a week and after 21 weeks I’ll be eating healthy meals every time I eat.
  3. Thought: I want to look at pornography because I’m lonely.
    Reframe: Looking at pornography won’t help me improve myself and make friends to cure my loneliness.
  4. Thought: I need this belittle others to feel whole and successful.
    Reframe: The sin of pride disconnects us from God who provides true wholeness and eternal success.
  5. Thought: I’ll fail and have one more failure on my list of achievements.
    Reframe: Failing is the only way to learn that isn’t boring and it’s better than sitting around doing nothing at all.
  6. Thought: If I try to make new friends, maybe they won’t like me.
    Reframe: There are billions of people who don’t like me. If these people don’t nothing will change.

Explanation:
Everybody uses self-talk. It’s just a matter of what kind and what you choose to do based on the self talk you use. If I were to create a model for how things work in my life it’s like this:

  1. Step 1: Inner monolog uses encouraging or discouraging statements to reason my will into acting on some impulse, plan, or request.
  2. Step 2: I evaluate the inner monolog as being true or false without consideration because I over trust my own immediate evaluations of issues.
  3. Step 3: I act and reenforce my self-talk and my self-talk becomes more entrenched in my mindset.

If we utilize good/better definitions in Step 2 to evaluate our self-talk, then we can do a better job of overcoming the voices of Negative Ned, Dr. Jekyll, and Uncle Screwtape.

Review: Mike Cernovich’s Gorilla Mindset

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Introduction

Mike Cernovich is a civil rights lawyer, though I do not think he practices any longer. He’s considered a controversial figure. I don’t really care about that. A person could be utterly terrible, but it does not change the merit of their arguments or the truth value of evidenced claims that they make. I first came across Mike Cernovich a couple of years ago when I had found a study on ebsco about cabbage juice and heart burn symptoms. When trying to find more information about the constituents of cabbage and what in it might increase mucilage production in the stomach lining, I came across a blog called fit-juicer which cited the same article. While the site was clearly designed to sell his books on juicing, it had excellent recipes for juice (my wife brought a juicer into our marriage…I never would have considered one, but I’m glad we have it). Not only were his recipes tasty, but he typically cited scientific literature related to the consumption of juice or plant constituents in relation to the benefits he claimed for his juices. It was interesting. I literally went through his website using in-article links and never read the comments. I had no idea that the guy was a lawyer, a figure or controversy, or even his name.

Anyhow, well over a year later, I was working on a writing project (still am) and was looking for a more practical application of Carol Dweck’s mindset ideas that I had found in her book on motivation in education. In the process, I came across Mike Cernovich’s book Gorilla Mindset. It had a title that seemed cheesy, although most people want the things it claims to provide. I found, a preview on Scribd (or was it a pirated version?). After I looked through the exercises at the end of each chapter and saw how similar they were in design to the ones I was writing for something else, I went ahead and bought a kindle edition of the book. I was pleasantly surprised by the quality of the book. It didn’t merely provide a model for what I was trying to do myself, but it provided legitimately helpful insight into improving one’s life and happiness.

The Good

  • Cernovich writes in a terse, no-nonsense style that is easy to absorb and does not leave the reader with so much theory that they cannot act on the principles he explains. Example, when talking about the way you make plans in life, he writes, “Maybe this, maybe that, maybe I’ll be a contender. Mr. Maybe is the ultimate seducer. Mr. Maybe whispers honey in your ear.”
  • Cernovich’s advice on health is actionable and the mindset shift he offers on health makes sense. Particularly his comment that a sick body leads to a sick mind. While it is true that some bodily ailments cannot be changed through exercise/nutrition (I have a genetic bone disorder), it is true that nutrition and exercise can shift you into a more positive frame of mind about such things. Not only that, but when I lift weights regularly, I have significantly less chronic pain than I have after just two or three weeks out of the gym.
  • Each chapter has helpful and actionable exercises that one could actually do to improve himself or herself.

The Bad

  • The kindle version had several typos, he could have used an editor (or a better one).
  • I wish he had cited more sources…but getting his readers lost in secondary literature probably wouldn’t have helped them the way he intended to, so while this is a bad in relationship to my preferences as a reader, it is probably a good with regard to his goals as a writer.

Conclusion

I have nothing to say about Mike’s more controversial endeavors. But he’s a helpful writer and 8.99 for the kindle edition of his book Gorilla Mindset is a good price for people who struggle with being stuck in life, feeling ineffectual, or who have persistent and powerful bouts of self-doubt the prevent them from achieving a measure of emotional or moral happiness in life. I recommend his book.

Disclosure: I wrote this review after buying the book because I enjoyed it.

Ideas

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Tonight a friend asked me if I’d had any ideas for papers I would like to write. I do, I even have ideas for books. I’ll probably not write any of this, but maybe I will. The fact is that I want to write these things and I have no actual resources for getting published (not attached to any academic institutions of notoriety or scholars of note). But the first fact is enough to write them. So, I suppose that if I write any of this and nobody wants to publish it, I’ll just put it on my blog. When it appears, I hope you hate it.

  1. Papers:
    1. Best way to translate χαρισ word group in Ephesians 4 and Colossians 4
    2. Interpretation of Matthew 5:27-30
    3. Platonism in Hebrews
    4. The meaning of from faith for faith in Romans 1:17
    5. Paper comparing best practices for UI tests in C#
    6. Discipleship language in the apostolic fathers
    7. Biblical battle stories compared with ancient/modern warfare manuals
    8. A summary of research available on hereditary multiple exostoses.
    9. A comparison of Stephen Brams’ work on game theory in the Bible and the results of literary criticism of the Old Testament narratives.
  2. Books:
    1. Sermon on the Mount commentary
    2. A how-to book on the Cardinal and Theological Virtues using ancient and modern sources
    3. A book on study skills
    4. A collection of entirely absurd short stories
    5. A book on practical epistemology (what it means to know, how to know, and thus how to research, learn and synthesis creatively
    6. A book on how to read the Old Testament using the Quadriga