Mature Conversation

Image found here

To begin, I’ll just place here some story headlines from the news this week.

Planned Parenthood's Richards Details Secret Meeting With Ivanka And Jared About Funding And Abortion

Richards revealed details of the meeting in her book. Trump and Kushner offered full funding for Planned Parenthood, even increased funding—if Planned Parenthood completely stopped doing abortions. She refused. Because Planned Parenthood isn’t about “women’s health”; it’s about doing abortions.

Next, this:

Planned Parenthood CEO Finally Recommends Adoption, But For The Wrong Species 

She recommended adopting shelter dogs, rather than buying a dog. LifeNews had this response:

Planned Parenthood is so obsessed with making a buck that the idea of adoption rarely — if ever — comes up. Sure, the organization will take credit for a few moms choosing life to feed the lie that it does more than abortion, but the numbers are hardly flattering. In its latest annual report, Planned Parenthood could only claim one adoption referral for every 83 abortions. If Cecile wants to rescue dogs, she might want to show a little more concern for their prospective owners.

And a few days earlier was this:

Planned Parenthoodcalled for Disney princess 'who's had an abortion' in now-deleted tweet 

Of course, removing a tweet after it’s gotten a lot of attention means it’s not really gone.

The tweet, found here

It was discussed today on the Michael Knowles show, worth hearing (requires subscription, but audio is free).

From my viewpoint, I’m not surprised when I learn yet one more unfavorable thing about Planned Parenthood. I believe the people within Planned Parenthood are guilty of heinous wrongs of the worst savagery. Chances are you agree.

Abortion is one of the most polarized issues in our society. And yet, it’s horrifying to a huge majority. The Democrat platform position is restriction-free abortion. But only 12% of Americans agree with that position. Not even the majority of the so-called “pro-choice” position agree. Only 22% of women go along with the Democrat position.

Put another way, on this most polarized issue, 88% of Americans agree that there should be some restrictions on abortions. A hefty 76% favor limiting abortion to the first trimester, or limiting it to only certain very rare circumstances (rape, incest, or to save the mother's life), or barring abortion entirely. In fact, 78% of women favor limits.

That’s a lot of agreement.

During a class lecture last May, Dr. Jordan Peterson was asked his opinion on abortion. He’s a thinker, and his answer was careful and much deeper than for or against. But he started with this:

Abortion is clearly wrong. I don’t think anybody debates that. You wouldn’t recommend that someone that you love have one.

Jordon Peterson
screen shot from the video

He’s right. The data bears that out. And yet it seems a surprising thing to say. He gives a larger answer, to address why this wrong thing still presents a problem for society:

So, the discussion regarding the legality of abortion is nested inside a larger discussion about the morality of abortion, and that’s nested inside a larger discussion about the proper place of sexuality in human behavior. And, to me, that’s the level at which the problem needs to be addressed.

If that’s the level at which the problem needs to be addressed, why aren’t we addressing it at that level?

He goes on to touch on the importance of marriage quite beautifully:

It signifies a place where people can tie the ropes of their lives together so that they’re stronger. It signifies a place where people can tell the truth to one another. It signifies a place where sexuality can properly be integrated into life. That’s no easy task. It’s a place where children, at least in principle, can be put first and foremost, as they should be once they exist.

But he believes our culture isn’t mature enough to have this conversation on proper sexual behavior.

He’s hardly ever wrong, and probably isn’t now. But maybe we help the culture mature by having the conversation anyway. Think about having a conversation with children around. Sometimes you interact with the kids, but eventually you’re going to have a conversation with the grownups, and the kids will be bored and tune you out. Maybe leave the room, or find some other way to occupy their interest.

But if you have a long series of these conversations around your children, eventually they mature enough to get interested. Long before they're ready to contribute, they start to pay attention, and start to think about what the grownups are talking about. And eventually the listening children have matured enough to join in. By then they’ve been exposed to grownup ideas over and over, and have thought about them, and started to think through their own opinions.

We shouldn’t wait until the immature are matured before having a conversation among the grownups.

The growing awareness and agreement that abortion is wrong is evidence of some maturing among previously less mature listeners.

So, in hopes of more maturing to come, I will say, sex outside of marriage is always wrong.

Look, for example, at the formula for avoiding poverty in America. I’ve written about it before, had this data for more than 15 years. It shows up in Brookings Institute data in 2013. Ben Shapiro mentioned it in a speech last October. It’s essentially the theme of the Charles Murray book Coming Apart. It’s this:

1.       Don’t have sex before age 20.

2.       Don’t have sex until after marriage.

3.       Stay married.

4.       Obtain at least a high school diploma.

Regardless of race or economic level of the family-of-origin, 98% of people who follow this formula move up to the middle class.

If “planned parenthood” meant this formula, that would be a societal help. The euphemistically named Planned Parenthood doesn’t tell anyone this. They tell you that everyone has sex outside of marriage, and that the inevitable resulting pregnancy is an inconvenience to you and therefore you have a right to kill. Does that really make a contribution to a person’s life? Or to society’s?

So there are economic reasons for following the formula. Beyond that, the next part of the conversation has to do with reasons for confining sex to within marriage.

I jumped in to that side of the conversation back when I wrote the original Spherical Model material. It’s in the “Family Is the Basic Unit of Civilization” section. Absolute monogamy is a necessary feature of a thriving civilization. This isn’t new information. Giambattista Vico knew it in the mid-17th Century. Nearly a century ago Joseph Daniel Unwin demonstrated it with data about pretty much all the world’s civilizations.

And if that weren’t enough, Moses got that information straight from God about 2300 years ago (Exodus 20:14).

It’s a mature civilization that has figured out how to build on the wisdom of the past, rather than throw it out as old-fashioned. Not every tradition is worth keeping. But when the wisdom of the ages tells us something, maybe we ought to believe it until there’s incontrovertible evidence that it’s not true—instead of assuming it’s worthless regardless of mounds of evidence, which is what our immature culture has been doing the past several decades.

So, this is my effort to get that grownup conversation going. I'm sure we'll talk again.

About Me

As of a week ago, I had posted in this blog 900 times. I’ve written as Spherical Model, assuming my name isn’t particularly important. Plus, because I occasionally write on issues that absolutely do not align with political correctness, and people can get personally attacked and ostracized in today’s world for disagreeing with that particular agenda, I’ve felt comfortable staying anonymous. My friends who access the blog through Facebook know who I am.

I qualify as a classic introvert, so I still feel comfortable with anonymity. But I also recognize that, when I read other writers, I like to know who they are.

I have shared information about me before. But I haven’t put that information in the “about me” section of the blog. So I’m changing that. I’m updating and including more than you probably ever cared to know about the main writer behind the Spherical Model. And some of that (up to 1200 character) will now be included in the information “about me” as the author at The Spherical Model. You can see that by clicking on Spherical Model as the contributor, at the bottom of the right-hand column. (By the way, you can comment on the blog if you are signed in to Blogger.)

When I celebrated seven years of blogging, a few weeks ago, I linked the basics of the Spherical Model, which I hope is more useful information than who I am, so start there.

The Spherical Model Bio

The Spherical Model as the smallest think tank ever. It’s mainly just me, plus those I talk things over with—which happen to include my three adult children, whose interests align neatly with the three spheres, so I refer to my children in the blog as oldest son Political Sphere, second son Economic Sphere, and daughter Social Sphere. All three are married and pursuing lives we can be proud of.

I refer to myself as Spherical Model. My actual name is Linda Nuttall. Sometimes I say, “We here at the Spherical Model,” but that’s mainly just me. I have had Political Sphere write an occasional guest post, and I wish he would do more. But mostly I’m the writer.

I graduated with a degree in English, specializing in writing and editing. I spent my early career years as a writer and editor, mainly in the field of education, but partly in computer documentation—way back when we used Wordperfect 2.0. (I go back far enough to have learned WordStar, in case you’re a word processor historian.) One of those jobs was at a language translation company, where I did Spanish and Portuguese quality assurance. Among the education jobs were college level teacher development and support, and high-low curriculum writing (that means for middle school and high school grades, with low reading ability). I wrote textbooks and workbooks on government and biology.

I spent a lot of years, starting before the birth of Economic Sphere, as a stay-at-home mom. The most intense decade of that was 2000-2010, when we homeschooled, an adventure not to be missed. The Spherical Model idea came out of a homeschool effort to explain political ideas to my children—back in 2004. So my kids were the first to be taught the Spherical Model.

Mr. Spherical Model and I have been married since 1981. We both graduated from Brigham Young University. That does, in our case, mean that we are Mormons (members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints). Both of us come from families that go back to early pioneer days, although on my dad’s side, my grandfather immigrated in 1906. After Mr. Spherical Model graduated (which was well after my graduation, because he had served as a missionary, etc.), we left for graduate school in Indiana, then went to northern California for an internship and follow-up jobs, and then moved to Washington State for a decade before ending up in Texas.

Me and two of the grandkids,
in the Texas bluebonnets this Easter

We came to Texas for work in 1998. While I don’t enjoy humid heat and bugs, there’s a lot about freedom in Texas that I love. If you homeschool, you can teach Texas history by going to Washington-on-the-Brazos, where the Texas declaration of independence from Mexico was signed; then going to the Alamo, where Travis, Crockett, and Bowie died along with everyone else, taking a stand for freedom; and then going to the San Jacinto Monument, where the Texians defeated Presidente Santa Ana and his armies. As people say here, “I wasn’t born in Texas, but I got here as quick as I could.”

I’ve pretty much always fit writing into my life (and often editing) in an un-famous sort of way. I have other interests as well: music, art, crafts, health, cooking, sports, and probably other things that would make for a pleasant grandma-blog, if I didn’t feel compelled to continue what I’m writing here. I’m active in a local Tea Party, which comes up occasionally in this blog. I’m a precinct chair, and have served twice now on the district Resolutions Committee, working on the party platform. I’ve been a district and state delegate a few times. And I frequently write to my representatives. I’ve worked the polls several times. In other words, while I don’t consider myself a political activist (which holds a lot of negative connotations to me), I do try to get involved to do good where I can.

When I started writing on Defense of Marriage issues, back around 2003, I was talking with Richard Wilkins, who had come to Houston to speak to us. I’m a good note taker, and I believe I can take a number of ideas and arrange them in understandable language, so I asked him about writing, even though I had no credentials. He said it was valuable to have the viewpoint of a mother, and I should never be apologetic for that. So I’m acting on faith that what I have to say can be valuable to readers. I hope it is.

I love the Constitution. I love this country and pray for its preservation. And I love civilization. I wish the whole world would choose to live in the way that leads to freedom, prosperity, and thriving civilization. That’s a main reason I write the Spherical Model.

My regular resources change over time, so I’ll update that now:

·         Radio and Podcasts: Glenn Beck, Dennis Prager, Michael Medved, Hugh Hewitt, Ben Shapiro, Andrew Klavan, Michael Knowles, Buck Sexton, Larry Elder

·         Videos and Online Programs: Glenn Beck, Uncommon Knowledge, Hillsdale College Online Courses, Jordan Peterson, Steven Crowder

·         Blogs and Written Pieces: The Daily Wire, Townhall, The Daily Signal (Heritage Foundation), Thomas Sowell, Victor Davis Hansen, Ryan T. Anderson (Witherspoon Institute), Eugene Volokh

·         Books and Authors: Basic Economics (Thomas Sowell), Liberal Fascism (Jonah Goldberg), The Looming Tower (Lawrence Wright), Truth Overruled (Ryan T. Anderson), The 5000-Year Leap (Cleon W. Skousen), The Road to Serfdom (Friedrich Hayek), Economics in One Lesson (Henry Hazlitt), The Forgotten Man (Amity Shlaes), Meltdown (Tom Woods)

The book list—actually every list—changes depending on what I’ve been reading. I refer to fiction and movies fairly often here as well. Stories are useful for telling truth. 

So, that’s the bio. In the next 100 posts, leading to a full 1000, I expect there will be more on the interrelationships of things political, economic, and social. And among those posts will be some on the Constitution, education, defense of marriage and family, defense of religion, and whatever else comes up. It amounts to what interests me, and ideas I need to think through. But I hope the way I organize and present the ideas help readers around the world think through those ideas as well.

All Because of Him

We’re celebrating Easter this weekend with kids and grandkids. I love the festivities of a holiday, especially Easter and Christmas. There are eggs and candy and decorations, of course. But it’s also important to celebrate the most important event in the history of the world—the resurrection of Jesus Christ.

Back when I was a teenager, I heard a talk about the medical and historical details of the crucifixion. It had a profound effect on me then, and stuck in my memory.  The video below, called “What Was Crucifixion Like?” posted last year on the Messages of Christ YouTube channel, presents that information, along with visuals.  There’s good and bad to that. I never saw the movie The Passion of the Christ, because it was too gruesomely intense for me. I’m glad it exists, but it wasn’t really meant for me.

This documentary video uses partly literal recreation, along with computer illustrations for some of it. So I managed to be amazed at Christ’s suffering without being overcome by the savagery. It’s about 7 ½ minutes. And it ends with this: 

The willingness for Jesus to die on the cross for us, in such a painful and agonizing way, teaches us of His incredible love. Jesus could have been killed by stoning, or by one of many other ways, but He instead chose to be crucified. He submitted to the most heinous and dreaded forms of death, so that He could understand and succor His people. None of us can claim that Jesus cannot fathom our sorrows, anguish and pains, for He has endured all things. Truly, as Isaiah so prophetically stated: "he was wounded for our transgressions, he was bruised for our iniquities: the chastisement of our peace was upon him; and with his stripes we are healed."

At Easter we do, of course, remember the crucifixion. But what is the most important event in all history is the resurrection. That makes all the difference.

In our religion, The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, we look at these events somewhat differently from other Christian churches. We do not deny in any way the importance of the crucifixion. But we also note what happened in the Garden of Gethsemane the night before. We don’t see this as a weak or worrying moment for Christ, fearing what was to come. The suffering in the Garden was itself enough to cause even God to tremble, and bleed from every pore. This can’t be from imagining what was to come; it had to be important in itself. And we believe it was.

I struggle to explain clearly and briefly. But we believe that what happened in the Garden of Gethsemane was the temporary withdrawal of the Spirit of God the Father. What happened the following day, on the cross, was the separation of the body from the spirit, which is what happens in death. So there are two “deaths” to overcome: the one we understand when we see it, when the body and spirit separate; and also the one that separates our spirit from God’s spirit, that came about with the fall.

We live in a fallen world, where bad things happen, and where we make mistakes that we have no power to overcome on our own. Christ overcomes both the physical death, leading the way for us to be resurrected as He was; and spiritual death, leading the way for us to return to our Father.

Christ rescues us all from physical death; every one of us will be resurrected. But our place—our acceptance back into the presence of God—depends on our accepting Christ’s act, his atonement, to make up in every way our deficiencies, if we are willing to do as He asks, by earnestly striving to live according to God’s commandments, and to repent when we fail or slip up.

There was a talk, by one of my favorite Church leaders, Elder Jeffrey R. Holland, from 2006. In it, he says,

Considering the incomprehensible cost of the Crucifixion and Atonement,

I promise you He is not going to turn His back on us now.

I love that. I feel loved by knowing that. Christ didn’t do His ultimate sacrifice to be able to weed us out when we make one little mistake too many; He did it to give us every opportunity to be redeemed, because of His profound love.

Our worldwide Church has a theme again this Easter. This year it is #Because Of Him. Besides some reminders for each day of Holy Week, there’s this brief video reminding us of the many ways we benefit from what Christ did for us. It’s a worthwhile reminder before the Easter egg hunt and the family dinner.

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How to Have a Good Life

There are certain facts of life that are true: Life is hard. Bad things happen, even to good people. And how we face what happens to us matters, if we’re going to have a good life.

But it is possible to have a good life. So the question is, how?

That’s a big question. It’s probably one of those simple but difficult things. But I thought we’d do a little exploring of that big question today.

Some years ago we had a discussion with a thinker, one of a few mentors we’ve known, who was talking about the younger work force these days. He said something surprising that stuck with me. Those game players, the somewhat geeky ones who play games—what they really want, our friend told us, was to be the hero. To do something meaningful. If they couldn’t find that in real life, at least they could live it in the pretend world of a game. And that made them rather impatient with work in the real world that didn’t seem heroic enough.

I was reminded of this, doing what has become a common evening pastime: listening to Jordan Peterson interviews. There are hundreds of hours’ worth, so I’m just scratching the surface, but I think I’ve watched/listened to enough to qualify as a student of his, informally. Anyway, he talks about mythology, and stories, quite often. In one interview, posted a couple of weeks ago, he and host Richard Fidler on ABC Radio (in Australia) were talking about stories and their purpose: 

Dr. Jordan Peterson
screen shot from the interview

Stories map out how to live. And the question then becomes, well, what’s the story that maps out the proper way to live. And that story would have to contain a description of the environment, right? Just like a map has to map out the territory. The story would have to contain a description of the environment. And then it would have to contain a description of your role in the environment.

And so, the mythological landscape is something like this: It’s good and evil at the level of the individual. That’s the hero and the adversary. Everyone has to contend with that. The darkness and goodness in yourself, and in other individuals. Everyone contends with that. So it’s a universal truth.

And then, how is that individual encompassed within society? And society is the wise king and the tyrant. And it’s always the wise king and the tyrant. It’s both. Now, some societies are almost all tyrant, and some societies tilt quite nicely towards wise king. But, even if you grow up in a relatively benevolent society like ours, you’re still crushed by the mob into a certain conformity. And there’s a lot of pain and wastage that goes along with that. Now there’s benefits.

And then the last element of the mythological landscape is the terror and creative potential of nature. Well, that’s the mythological landscape. And a meaningful story guides you through that.

And he adds a minute later,

Well, if you get in a car without a map, you don’t know where you are or where you’re going. What good is that? All there is then is confusion and pain. So, yeah, the story is life. The story is, well, it’s the story of Rule 1[i]: Stand up straight with your shoulders back. Stand up and confront the catastrophe of existence. Voluntarily. Move forward. Under your load. Discover new things. Share them with the people around you. Life is a call to adventure. And everything’s at stake. That’s the thing. It’s an all in game. So you might as well play it that way.

OK, so, stories are going to help. We want to have meaning in our life: logos. Victor Frankl faced the horrors of the concentration camp by finding meaning. Logotherapy, he called it. He wrote in Man's Search for Meaning, that if you have meaning, a higher purpose for your life, then you’re more likely to survive, and be able to move on afterward.

There’s something about recognizing the dialectic of good and evil, realizing your potential to go either way, and then make the conscious choice to choose the good. That’s even necessary, Dr. Peterson says, when you face malevolence (evil). This is his approach to PTSD:

If you’re a naïve person, and you encounter [malevolence] in someone else, or in yourself, it will produce post-traumatic stress disorder. Because post-traumatic stress disorder occurs when people are touched by evil. That’s not how it’s normally described clinically, because academics—I would say people in general—don’t really like to grapple with that sort of reality. But if you talk to military personnel who have post-traumatic stress disorder, and you start talking to them about a dialectic between good and evil, they’re instantly on board for that. They need a dialectic of good and evil to recover from post-traumatic stress disorder.

Bad stuff does happen. Some people experience worse things than others. But there are things we can choose to do to improve the chances of living a good life.

In another Jordan Peterson interview, this one published this past Saturday, with Roaming Millennial, Peterson says the key is simply the truth: 

Dr. Jordan Peterson
screen shot from the interview

You have to speak the truth, and listen to the people that are criticizing you so that you can improve the manner in which you’re formulating your arguments.

That’s the way to live. And, look, here’s why: As the religious sages have insisted throughout the ages, life is suffering. There’s no way around it. Because human beings are limited and vulnerable, and the universe is a very large place. You’re destined to suffer.

And so, then, you might say, well, what defenses do you have against that? And one is the armor of ideology, and rightness. But the other is the shield of truth. You know, just like in Sleeping Beauty, when the prince goes off to have combat with the dragon. And truth elevates your life. And enriches it.

He suggests an exercise to find out whether you’re speaking the truth:

This is, I think, one of the most useful psychological exercises that anyone could ever do. So, start with the assumption that many of the things you say and think aren’t yours, and that you don’t believe them. They’re just things that you’ve picked up for one reason or another as you’ve walked through life, and you’ve brandished them like markers of your status. But they’re not really you. Because, what’s really you is hard to figure out. So you have to start from that assumption.

Then start listening to what you say. And feeling what you say as well. And here’s the rule; it’s a very simple thing to try: Pay attention to whether the thing you say makes you feel stronger or weaker. If it makes you feel stronger, then you can keep saying it, but if it makes you feel weaker, then you should stop saying it. Stop saying it right away. And see if you can reformulate your words so that when you restate them, that feeling of integrity and strength reappears. And you can feel it, really, down the middle of your body

And, because, what happens if you’re saying something that is untrue is that you dissociate to some degree. A part of you agrees with it, and a part of you doesn’t. It’s like you’re splitting your psyche.

That’s interesting. I’m thinking about that, and trying to reconcile whether someone insisting, forcefully, and certainly, that what they say is right when I know it’s wrong—are they feeling the strength, or the split? I’m going to have to observe that for a while, and maybe only ever know for myself. But I do know, for me, I understand what the wholeness of truth feels like, and that’s why I seek it.

He’s certainly right that it takes paying attention. And he goes on to offer ways for people to figure out what they want, what a “heavenly” life would look like, as opposed to a “hellish” life they could certainly create; as he puts it, “how horrible your life could be if you let all your bad habits and foolishnesses and deceits get out of hand.” The program is at a website called SelfAuthoring.com. That program is having good effect on people in universities, lowering dropout rates by as much as 40% in a semester. Pretty effective.

I haven’t used his program, but I’ve been doing similar exercises in a couple of books: Designing Your Life: How to Build a Well-Lived, Joyful Life, by Bill Burnett and Dave Evans, and Find Your Why, by Simon Sinek, with David Mead and Peter Docker.

The point is, it’s possible to choose the best possible life, in a world where things go wrong and bad stuff happens—if you don’t give up, if you don’t give in to nihilism or cynicism—if you figure out what a good life means for you, as a person you really care about (because you have to care about yourself, and some people haven’t had much practice doing that).

Dr. Peterson is talking about living a life that builds your character:

That’s the problem with being a materialist. You know, you think that you collect all these things around you, and that that’s going to protect you from the suffering that’s intrinsic to life. That isn’t what protects you. It’s your character that protects you. If you have your character intact, you can sleep at night with a good conscience, and you can take on the burdens of the day the next morning. And you can live without recrimination or regret. There’s nothing better than that.

It's almost as if he’s saying, the way to have a good life is to choose good and fight evil, in yourself and all around you. Become the good guy, by choice. Become the hero, by consistent practice and effort.

Yes, it did turn out to be one of those simple but difficult things. But worth it.

It probably doesn’t hurt to add that religion has been leading us to develop character all along. As the Ten Commandments tell us, love God—the source and definition of good. And honor life, family, property ownership, and honesty. And a further step is to love others as you love yourself—which requires starting with loving care for yourself.

---

[i] Referring to his book 12 Rules for Life: An Antidote to Chaos, here.

Promising Pencils

One of the principles of the Spherical Model is that you handle economic needs through a combination of free market and philanthropy.

A friend told me once about her experience as a missionary in socialist Denmark. Her assignment was to help the women’s organization figure out how to serve each other and the community. But when they would meet, every time the women came up with an idea, their first step was, “And we can apply to the government for a grant to do this.” It didn’t seem to occur to them that they could use their own resources. People had forgotten their own power to do good.

So I’m always pleased to find examples of people working to solve problems themselves, instead of saying, “How can we make government solve this problem?”

Remember, as we say here,

Whenever government attempts something beyond the proper role of government (protection of life, liberty, and property), it causes unintended consequences—usually exactly opposite to the stated goals of the interference.

People really can solve problems better than government can solve their problems. And this is true worldwide.

This week in book club we talked about the book The Promise of a Pencil: How an Ordinary Person Can Create Extraordinary Change, by Adam Braun. This young entrepreneur, only now in his mid-30s, began his project with $25 when he was not yet 25 years old.

Braun was trained in finance and started his career at Bain. But his heart was connected to a dream—maybe an obsession. He says, in the book’s subtitle, that he’s an ordinary person, but he probably doesn’t qualify; he's probably extraordinary.

The book is set up to take us through the story behind his “for-purpose” organization (a term he adopts, because “nonprofit” doesn’t pack enough power) that builds schools in impoverished parts of the world.

The first location was Laos. Later he expanded to Guatemala, Nicaragua, and Ghana. To date Pencils of Promise has built 457 schools for 86,021 students. They also do teacher training now, and water and health programs.

Screen shot from the Pencils of Promise website

The reason for the pencil comes from a question he asked. He was doing a Semester at Sea, traveling around the world. He didn’t want to collect trinkets as souvenirs. So he decided to collect answers from children. He would ask one child per country, “If you could have anything in the world, what would you want most?” He expected answers to be fancy things you can buy: a flat-screen TV, an iPod, or a fast car. But children didn’t answer that way. One young girl in Hawaii said, “To dance.” In Beijing a girl answered “A book.” This girl loved school, but didn’t own any books of her own. Another child answered, “Magic.” Yet another wanted his mother to regain her health.

In India, he asked a boy his usual question, and the boy said,

“A pencil.”

“Are you sure?” I asked. He had no family, nothing, yet his request was so basic.

More men came over and started chiming in. They prodded him, “You can have anything. He might give it to you!”

The boy remained constant with his wish: “A pencil.”

I had a No. 2 yellow pencil in my backpack. I pulled it out and handed it to him.

As it passed from my hand to his, his face lit up. He looked at it as if it were a diamond (p. 35).

The boy had never been to school, but he knew that children in schools learned to write, and they used pencils. What he wanted most was to go to school. It was the way to “unlock potential.”

So the pencil became a symbol—the beginning of learning, the portal to possibility.

Braun began carrying pencils with him, to give away to children, in various other countries.

He thought for a while—and his parents advised—that he would work hard, make plenty of money for a couple of decades, and then use that to eventually make a difference. But the dream to build a school kept eating at him. He started out doing fundraising to build a single school. Then he created an internship to work at his own nonprofit. And then he dove in full time to the nonprofit, and learned, a lesson or two at a time, to make it successful.

Nuth on the steps of the first
Pencils of Promise school,
photo by Nick Onken,
p. 128 of the book

Fortunately, he did a lot right. And, as he said, he learned from his mistakes. In fact, he said the organization benefited more from his mistakes than anything else.

In the book, each chapter heading is a mantra—or, rather, a principle statement about how to be successful in accomplishing whatever it is you dream of doing. These are things like, “Why Be Normal,” “Get Out of Your Comfort Zone,” “Big Dreams Start with Small, Unreasonable Acts,” and “Practice Humility over Hubris.” It’s his story of building Pencils of Promise, over several years, bringing in friends and family along the way. And bringing in timely contributions from just the right people.

I especially liked the chapter, “Change Your Words to Change Your Worth.” In that chapter he realizes that, when he’s talking to businessmen, they start to tune out when he says he’s involved in a nonprofit. They’re about profits, so being against what they’re for is a disconnect. The realization changed how he did things. He realized it wasn’t lack of profit he was focused on; he was focused on a purpose. So he started using the term “for purpose.” 

And then he started running things less like an ad hoc volunteer place and more like a business. Even volunteers who weren’t productive were “fired,” and replaced with committed producers. I don’t know if the phrase “for purpose” will catch on, but it is a better description of many enterprises, maybe even some “for profit” ones.

A lot goes right in Adam Braun’s story. While the mantras try to make it look like anyone could do this, it probably also required a young man with a sense of mission and an endless amount of optimism and faith, which all coincided with much fortuitous, well-timed help. It’s almost as though God wanted this enterprise to succeed.

Among the things I especially like were that this was all done without asking for government handouts. There had to be some working with various governments. And some cases the governments had a budget for teachers but not for building schools, so once Pencils of Promise put a school in place, education got underway.

But it is more than just rich people from rich nations dropping in to do something good and then dropping out. They got buy-in from the people in those poor local areas by having them make an investment. For people who only earned a dollar a day, they couldn’t contribute money. But sometimes they could contribute wood or stone that they gathered and carried to the building site. And sometimes they contributed their time in the construction. It was important that they showed they really wanted the school.

The partnerships were built ahead of choosing the building sites. The communities had to be ready, and show their willingness, before they were chosen as a building site. It was also important to have local management making things happen.

I prefer organizations that put all their donations into doing the good—rather than into overhead. Pencils with Promise operated on very low overhead the first few years. Still, they considered they were doing great to have around 83% of donations go to the actual building of schools. Later, they found a way to do a single large gala to earn the annual operating budget, so that all those small donations intended for the educating children would go 100% to building schools—and later also to books, materials, uniforms, and teacher training.

It helped that the self-driven young man, who surrounded himself with other self-driven volunteers and workers, had a background in finance. He still had a lot to learn, but it wasn’t a random guy off the street with an idea; it was the right guy.

I hadn’t heard of Pencils of Promise before we decided to read the book. But I’m glad to know about it now, and see it continue to do well.

Still, good isn’t always done by large worldwide organizations. Sometimes a service-oriented person finds things that need doing very close to home, and just does them. My mother-in-law was one of those. There was no stopping her; she had to serve, as a way of life. It was tiring for some of us to watch. But it was a good life.

Living a life with purpose is probably always going to be a life well lived. Happier. More fulfilled. Extraordinary success is great, and sometimes certain big things require the extraordinary effort, like Pencils of Promise. But small philanthropy done by many people in many places close to home, is also an answer to solving the economic and social problems in our world.

The Virtue Signaling Religion

Back around the beginning of this century, Gordon B. Hinckley, our beloved prophet at the time, wrote a book titled Standing for Something: 10 Neglected Virtues That Will Heal Our Hearts and Homes. The “Standing for Something” part refers to a saying: “If you don’t stand for something, you’ll fall for anything.”

I own the book, but I
got the image here

The book is about our need to return from the secularization of our culture. In the introduction he says,

People who carry in their hearts a strong conviction concerning the living reality of the Almighty and their accountability to Him for what they do with their lives are far less likely to become enmeshed in problems that inevitably weaken society. The loss of this conviction, the almost total secularizing of our public attitudes, has been largely responsible for the terrible social illnesses now running rampant among us (p. xix).

I think there’s a connection between this loss of God and a movement toward a whole long list of alternative “virtues” that don’t qualify as ultimately good, because ultimate good is defined by God. In short, when people stop relying on God, they fall for all kinds of substitutes.

People like to be able to think well of themselves. A traditional way of measuring your own goodness has been through religion. And that has been effective. Religious people tend to think about things bigger than themselves, related to pleasing God and effecting good for the rest of the human family. This leads to stronger intact families, celebrating life and protecting the lives of others, honesty, respect of property ownership, service, sharing, helping, kindness, and other things we typically think of as virtuous.

People who fail to believe in God still want to think well of themselves, but they don’t have the same source of guidance. They may still adhere to many of the behaviors in the above list. Or their secular religion might come up with another whole list of “virtues.”

They might shun some of the traditional virtues—particularly sexual purity. And then, in an effort to let those around them know that they have reason to think well of themselves, they do outward behaviors to signal their perceived virtue. They virtue signal. To themselves as much as to others.

And along with virtue-signaling, they might also shame anyone who doesn’t join them in their “religious” behavior. 

That’s where we have problems. It’s hard to find common ground when one person is shaming another—either direction. Sometimes these very people shove their beliefs down the throats of everyone around them while shouting, “Stop shoving your beliefs down our throats.” And they do this completely without self-awareness.

People might not be aware these days of some ancient history patterns. We think we’ve grown beyond the pagan, or the superstitious. But some of the virtues being signaled today are the same, with some wording differences and technological updates, as ancient pagan practices.

We can categorize some of these anti-religion’s tenets.

Worship of Environment and Animals above Human Life

I wrote this last year, after the US stepped away from the Paris Accords:

Climatism (not climate-related science, but the thing you’re not allowed to question) looks to me like a pagan religion. The sacrifices being required of us in the essentially vain hope that such sacrifices will appease the climate gods look eerily similar to throwing people into the volcano. It might make people feel like they have some control over something out of their power, but it doesn’t actually affect an eruption—and it’s really bad for the ones who get thrown into the volcano.

Are there reasons to be concerned about clean atmosphere and water? Of course. We’re better off with clean air and water. But the more advanced technologically a country gets—much of that from fossil fuels—the better air and water quality. In fact, we have made so much progress that way that there was a sudden shift from worrying about carbon monoxide to worrying about the very natural and positive carbon dioxide.

Should we be concerned because of climate models? Maybe, but they’ve been so consistently wrong so far that changing our entire lifestyle seems extreme.

And saving water is a good idea, especially if you’re in a drought area, because getting enough potable water for a large population is a challenge. But, the world is not running out of water. I saw a documentary in the IMAX theater of a museum once that showed a very dry part of the US, and talked about the worry of running out of water. I was puzzled, because they didn’t say “here”; they said it as though the world is losing water.

But, if you were taught the water cycle in grade school, then you know that water from the atmosphere comes down as rain, and makes its way into groundwater or into streams and rivers that eventually flow into the ocean. When something wet dries, that water goes into the atmosphere. And sun shining on lakes and oceans causes water to evaporate into the atmosphere. That’s how it gets there to come down as rain or snow. And the cycle goes on.

Water molecules are made up of two hydrogen atoms and an oxygen atom. Those are elements. They don’t disappear. Even if you disconnect the hydrogen and oxygen, you don’t lose them; they stay here as part of our earth, and they can be reconnected. (“Sciencing” was used in the novel The Martian, about an astronaut trapped on Mars, explaining how to “make” water.)

Example of virtue signaling found here

Should we be concerned because of climate models? Maybe, but they’ve been so consistently wrong so far that changing our entire lifestyle seems extreme.

Another aspect of ancient pagan religions is to honor animals above humans. No other species would sacrifice its entire species out of guilt that its existence fails to always positively impact some other species. Species are designed to perpetuate themselves. It isn’t virtuous to feel guilty for being human; it’s unnatural and ungrateful.

So, if you’ve been virtue signaling in one of the following ways, you might want to ask yourself how you know what you do is virtuous. And then, if you can’t explain it so clearly, logically, and unemotionally to a nonbeliever that you convert with persuasion, maybe you’d better stop the shaming as well:

·         Feeling panicked about global warming.

·         Driving a Prius or other electric status vehicle.

·         Pushing for alternative energy sources—except not nuclear.

·         Eating vegetarian or vegan, not just for your health, but because you believe your species has no right to eat other species.

   

Sexual Depravity and Human Sacrifice

Related to valuing other species above humans also shows up as human sacrifice in pagan, savage societies. Certainly we ought to be beyond that. And yet that is a pretty good description of abortion.

Some ancient societies do away with the old and infirm. That is what euthanasia is.

Savage societies typically fail to honor monogamy. This leads to a lot of social failures we’ve known about for a long time, as described by Vico and Unwin. (I’ve written a fuller discussion here.)

A side issue related to failing on monogamy is the spread of what have always been considered deviant behaviors: homosexuality and gender confusion. Finding better ways to treat people with these issues has to be a more humane approach. But tolerating and embracing deviancy isn’t enlightened; it’s very old and very pagan.

So, if you’ve been approving of the following things in an attempt to virtue signal, you might also want to ask yourself how you know what you do is virtuous. And again, if you can’t explain your reasoning so clearly, logically, and unemotionally to a nonbeliever that you convert with persuasion, maybe you’d better stop the shaming as well:

·         Alternative sexual lifestyles

·         Promiscuity

·         Homosexuality

·         Same-sex “marriage”

·         Transgenderism

·         Sexual freedom (promiscuity) for minors

·         Abortion

o   Favoring government funding and approval

o   Refusing any limits to abortion

·         Divorce for any reason

·         Benefits to couples whether married or not

·         Pro-masculinity for women

·         Anti-masculinity for men

Ruler as God

Another tactic of ancient potentates—kings, emperors, pharaohs, etc.—was to replace the people’s religion, setting themselves up as god incarnate, or perhaps an idol that they create as the object of the ruler's new religion. Then the people had to be loyal to him or be prosecuted (and usually executed) for heresy. The people were instructed to bow down to their god/ruler, pay him whatever assessment he charged, and then he, their god/ruler, would look on them favorably.

I don’t know if the ancient king who set up a fiery furnace for Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego offered amenities that some “subjects” expect of their government today. Life was brutal, so maybe just less imposed brutality was enough to buy their subjects’ worship. But today, in exchange for “worship” of the government/ruler, people speak as though government is doing the divvying out of good things so that the “subjects” can be absolved from needing to give.

So it becomes something virtue-signalers do when they “take care of the poor and less fortunate” by having government confiscate wealth from some to give to others. And they feel charitable doing this—even though it was coerced, and therefore not charitable giving by them or anyone else.

And anyone who even mentions that government interference actually makes things worse (look at welfare recipients since the War on Poverty began in the 1960s) is shamed as cold and hateful—even if that person is personally giving a tithe and more in actual charity and the virtue-signaling shamer has given nothing.

As we say here at the Spherical Model pretty often, 

If the government wants to implement something beyond the proper role of government, not only will government fail to achieve the stated goals; it will likely do exactly opposite of the stated goal.

So, if you’ve been approving of the following things in an attempt to virtue signal—you’re getting the idea—ask yourself how you know what you do is virtuous. And once again, if you can’t explain your reasoning so clearly, logically, and unemotionally to a nonbeliever that you convert with persuasion, maybe you’d better stop the shaming as well:

·         Socialism

·         Anti-capitalism

·         More government regulation

·         Infringing on First Amendment rights: religion, speech, assembly,

·         Gun control

·         Welfare unrelated to work or ways to get off welfare

·         Ignore or reimagine the Constitution

·         Public school monopoly of education

·         Socialized medicine

The list could go on. The point is that our disagreements go deep—as deep as religious beliefs. If we are ever to have peace, we need to learn to respect people with different beliefs, stop assigning them epithets—racist, homophobic, transphobic, hateful, bigoted, science denier, etc.—simply for not following a new, unpersuasive list of virtues.

And if we want more civilization and less savagery, we need a religious people who recognize virtue in honoring God, life, family, truth,and property.