Complacent or Vigilent?

Sometimes, the most cautious are still caught unaware by severe weather, e.g. my friend in Joplin, who was driving home with his family from his daughter's graduation, in May 2011, when their world was turned upside down by that unexpected change in the weather.

Today, in the news, they are asking:

Could better tornado warnings cause complacency? - msnbc.com

Meteorologist Rick Smith said he hopes that for residents who prepared and were spared, that their work doesn't lead to complacency.
"I don't want people to think preparedness efforts are ever wasted," Smith said. "The weather radios people bought, the plans people reviewed on Friday and Saturday, it's not like you're never going to use those again.
"If you didn't use them on Saturday, you should be thankful and glad."

Having myself lived in an area where tornadoes are prevalent, and watching peoples' reactions to them, I have come to the conclusion that people are going to be what they are: that is: if they are already complacent, they will continue to be; if they are not, they will continue to be vigilent.  All things considered. Still, I agree with Rick Smith quoted above, that preparedness is not wasted.  People need to take that stuff seriously, without regard to how many times they have survived or their relatives have survived or whatever.

Those people involved in developing these warning systems are doing all of this to save as many lives and as much property as they can.  When people disregard their warnings (even if they turn out to be not as bad as they sound at the time of warning) they are, in a sense, slapping the developers, scientists, storm-chasers, and all the others involved in warning them, in the face.

I moved away from that part of the country, and one of the major decided factors in my doing that was the weather.  I had grown up with that as a child, and don't remember being overly cautious or frightened.  But, as an adult with a family, it was a completely different game.  I know some people can't move, or refuse to for whatever reason: family, land, fear of the unknown, jobs.  This list could go for days.  But, if they stay, they should be vigilent and give heed to the warnings.  The warning system does save lives.

There is probably a metaphor, or a symbol of some kind in this.  At least a lesson that could be shown in a story without going all Aesop on the reader, right?  Kind of like the movie The Day After Tomorrow is a lesson about screwing up the environment....  Hmmmm....

God is What?

Two things:

"He that loveth not knoweth not God; for God is love." 1 John 4.8

 "And fear not them which kill the body, but are not able to kill the soul: but rather fear him which is able to destroy both soul and body in hell." Matthew 10.28

Question:

Do I fear him because he loves me so much, or do I love him because if I don't he will send me to hell?

Second Question:

If I fear him and love him for the first, it is without merit; if I love and fear him for the second, I deserve to go to hell anyway for attempting a Blaise Pascal feint on him, and if God sends me to hell, then how can he say he loves me?

Thoughts:

I would never send someone I love even to prison, much less to an everlasting torment in fire that never stops. And I'm not even as good as God, right?

Several will almost assuredly immediately yell, "You took it out of context, you took it out of context."

Bull! Context is a golden calf that must be melted down, crushed and drank.  If these are out of context, then the Christian god is love only in a certain context and will send sinners to hell only in a certain context. That is not what the Bible says, is it? Does it say, "God is love, only in such-and-so a context"? No. Read the "context" and you will see that you cannot dispute this.

You want to see a biblical contradiction? It is this Matthew 10 verse alongside 1 Corinthians 13. Love and Hell from the same source? It is like attempting to mix clear water with bitter; all will be tainted..... None fit to drink.

Just think about it...

Music While Writing?

I mentioned a few posts ago about Stephen King's listening to music when he writes. I know people who listen to music while they study. Many arguments/debates have taken place between me and my children and between my college student peers and me on this subject.

They claim that they can concentrate BETTER with music or TV playing while they read and study. I have told them, and stick to this: the human brain is not capable of handling this efficiently. And this is especially true if there are vocals. Classical music may work for short periods, but the human voice is one of the most distracting sounds to other humans; so, if you are listening to music while reading, writing, or studying, you are in effect causing your brain undue stress by making it attempt to pay attention to two separate things at once. Not good.

Now, on to listening to music while writing. In some cases listening to hard and heavy music while writing is extremely helpful:

• When your inner critic refuses to shut the hell up
• When you are attempting to drown out other distractions
• To increase your feeling of energy while you work
• Because that Homeric Geek guy said I shouldn't

There are probably other reasons for listening to music while writing, but those are some that I have argued for.

On the other hand, it is a bad idea to listen to music when you are:

• trying to work your way through a difficult plotting issue
• trying to hear your characters' voices
• writing at 3:00am and everyone else in your house is sleeping

Seriously, it is nearly impossible to truly give your undivided attention to deep issues while Ozzy is cranking in your ears. Dr. John Medina in Brain Rules states that it is actually impossible to multitask, which is what thinking and listening to music amounts to.

So, next time think about what you are attempting, then make an informed decision about cranking up the Metallica while writing....

Attention Spans Are a Terrible Thing to ... to Something ... I Can't Remember

We should use technology to push our minds to new breadth and new depth. Don't simply give up on the old technology (such as books), especially at the expense of the attention span. Technology should be used to learn about new areas in which to spend more time thinking deeply. But, online reading, online browsing will change our brains to the point that we will have trouble thinking deeply; our attention spans will be incapable of handling that sort of pressure.

What will happen as fewer and fewer books are read; what will happen as fewer and fewer teachers and professors actually require students to read the books assigned? Nicholas Carr interviewed several people for his book The Shallows: What the Internet Is Doing to Our Brains; people who were students, teachers, etc. One philosophy major stands out. He no longer reads actual books. How is that possible? Another interviewee states that he is no longer able to read War and Peace. (That may not be a fair example, because I know plenty of people who make that claim and it has nothing to do with attention span). For that person, Tolstoy's novel is too long and complex. That is disheartening. People are allowing themselves to be changed to such a degree, by reading online -- only online -- that they can no longer enjoy complex and tedious tasks. Their brains are changed. Literally.

Already, people are more impatient than they used to be, in general. (No, I don't have any statistics for that, it is a personal observation). Is that the kind of world we want to live in? A world filled with impatient people who are incapable of thinking deeply?

Think about it.... if you still can.

Attention Contention

Publishers and editors seem to suffer from what appears to be adult ADHD (Disclaimer: I am not a psych doctor, so I can't make this diagnosis for real).  They press new writers to maintain constant tension for their potential readers; keep the pressure on, keep them turning pages; in other words, don't bore them with anything that might strain their weak, failing, meager attention spans.

It won't be long that novels will have to be the length of short stories and short stories will have to be one word that captures the entire emotional and psychological life of a character: e.g. Jesus wept.

I contend that we, as humans, as readers, as writers, have the responsibility to rebel against the publishers and editors, for the sake of our children and their children.  Attention spans are quickly becoming endangered and if something drastic is not done, will follow the Dodo into extinction.