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One of my goals in deleting Facebook a little over a week ago was to use the time I previously spent on Facebook to write more. Unfortunately, the power cord to my computer broke, and I was unable to post  here until my new cord arrived in the mail today. However, I did manage to put my time to good use, reading Conrad’s Heart of Darkness and Orwell’s 1984. And while I’m glad to have taken a step closer to literacy by perusing two books that have contributed so much to thought and conversation, neither book impacted me as much as a 23-page short story that I re-read this week, and have read several times in the past: Hemingway’s “The Short Happy Life of Francis Macomber.”

The fact that Francis Macomber dies is of no more import than the fact that Winston Smith lives–Macomber experiences more of life in his few minutes of manhood than Winston does in his entire existence. And the victory over himself that Macomber achieves is far more worthwhile and laudable than the victory over himself that Winston Smith achieves.

I also find it interesting that in a story published in a woman’s magazine (Cosmopolitan) in 1936, Hemingway identifies an issue that has become prominent in American social commentary as of late–the self-neutering of American masculinity. The people who seem the most disturbed by this trend are not the men themselves, but women. Women write articles in the Wall Street Journal asking where the good men have gone, and before I deleted Facebook I noticed an amazingly large proportion of my female friends “liked” a website called The Art of Manliness, which is a men’s website dedicated to reviving traditional manliness–everything from being handy around the house, to taking the initiative in dating and relationships, to chivalry. And while the term boy-man is often used in these bemoanings, it is always presented as a relatively recent phenomenon. It is interesting then, to see that Hemingway used the same term in 1936.

It’s that some of them stay little boys so long, Wilson thought. Sometimes all their lives. Their figures stay boyish when they’re fifty. The great American boy-men. Damned strange people. But he liked this Macomber now. Damned strange fellow. Probably meant the end of cuckoldry too. Well, that would be a damned good thing. Damned good thing. Beggar had probably been afraid all his life. Don’t know what started it. But over now…. Be a damn fire eater now. He’d seen it in the war work the same way. More of a change than any loss of virginity. Fear gone like an operation. Something else grew in its place. Main thing a man had. Made him into a man. Women knew it too. No bloody fear.

Macomber hated being a cuckold. However, up until this point, his wife consistently takes advantage of him because he is afraid of her. That fear makes him not quite a man, but it also makes him manipulable. When he loses his fear, when he becomes truly a man, it scares his wife because she knows that she will no longer be able to take advantage of him and control him. 

“You’re both talking rot,” said Margot. “Just because you’ve chased some helpless animals in a motor car you talk like heroes. “Sorry,” said Wilson. “I have been gassing too much.” She’s worried about it already, he thought. “If you don’t know what we’re talking about why not keep out of it?” Macomber asked his wife. “You’ve gotten awfully brave, awfully suddenly,” his wife said contemptuously, but her contempt was not secure. She was very afraid of something. Macomber laughed, a very natural hearty laugh. “You know I have,” he said. “I really have.”“Isn’t it sort of late?” Margot said bitterly. Because she had done the best she could for many years back and the way they were together now was no one person’s fault. “Not for me,” said Macomber.

Fear is the ultimate emasculator. Francis Macomber conquered fear, and though he died, he died a man. Winston Smith, on the other hand, was conquered by fear in Room 101–if not before–and though he lived, he lived as less than a man. It is better to be unafraid in death than afraid in life. In the words of Shakespeare’s Francis Feeble, as quoted by Hemingway’s Robert Wilson, “By my troth, I care not; a man can die but once; we owe God a death and let it go which way it will he that dies this year is quit for the next. “

I’ve made some changes in my life lately. You could say that I’m downsizing, but that wouldn’t capture the essence of it. You could use the word simplifying, but that isn’t quite it either. Perhaps the best explanation is that I’m primitivizing. Every meal I’ve cooked in the past two weeks has been in a cast iron skillet–I haven’t even touched the microwave. And my foods have been simple, single ingredient foods: eggs, milk, turkey bacon, gluten, cheese, spinach, almond butter, and the like. And I think its time I made some changes in how I use technology.

Writer Jack Donovan responded to popular articles bewailing the growing number of young men who delay “entering the real world” in favor of immersing themselves in sports and video games in their parents’ basements by claiming that modern technology has largely rendered the type of physically active, large motor movement work that men are biologically suited for–and mentally predisposed to–obsolete. In his view, sports and video games are a way of vicariously experiencing making a difference through physical action–a simulation of an experience men used to regularly gain through work before physical labor came to mean taping boxes shut.

Thankfully, I have a job where I can make a difference though physical action. However, I’ve found that I’ve been simulating another important experience–social interaction. For me, Facebook has become a sort of masturbatory form of communication where I trick myself into thinking I’m interacting with friends when in reality I’m clicking on a tiny drawing of a thumb. Let’s be real; clicking on a thumb is in no way meaningful communication.

For a while now, my main reason to check Facebook has been to see if any of my highly attractive female friends have posted photos of themselves. I’m going to miss that aspect of the site for sure. However, for every pulchritudinous photo in my newsfeed, there were bound to be several solipsistic statuses and even more solipsistic photos of what someone happened to be eating for supper. I have come to the conclusion that Facebook feeds solipsism.

So, I’m deleting Facebook. I’m going to make a conscious effort to send more emails, make more phone calls, and write more letters (revolutionary concept, I know). In fact, I’ve already started. If you want to connect with me on a real level, my email is kadewilkinson@gmail.com. I’d be happy to call or write you, if you send me your contact info at that address. And if you are one of the aforementioned pulchritudinous females, you are more than welcome to send me photos. 

A gun is an instrument of violence.

Sure, a gun is an inanimate object, a simple tool, but all tools have a purpose, and the purpose of a gun is to kill. This is different than being a weapon: hammers, axes, and shovels are all weapons, but each of them has a practical application other than the application of violence. Firearms have no other such applications. Of course, firearms aren’t the only tool whose only practical use is the application of violence; other prominent examples would be swords, spears, bows and arrows, bombs, artillery, and tanks. What sets firearms apart from the other examples is that firearms are the most advanced and effective dedicated tool for the application of violence commonly available to the average individual. The more advanced tools generally require either specialized knowledge  or a team of operators, or both, while the less advanced tools require increasing physical prowess. It is only the firearm that allows the technically untrained and physically inept individual to apply violence against others.

Guns give the capacity to perform violent actions to those who would not otherwise have that ability.

Think about the school shooters covered endlessly by the media. They were all large, muscular football player-types with the ability to physically impose their will on their peers, right? Oh no, that’s right–they were frail, wispy fellows who were picked on by their peers and lacked the physical ability to stand up for themselves until they upped the ante and brought a firearm. Guns transformed them–in both their minds and reality–from the vulnerable to the powerful in a way that spears would not have.

Guns democratize violence by making it equally available to the strong and the weak–and this democratization of violence is necessary in today’s society.

In the past, the application of violence required a level of physical prowess and skill. Whether it was spearing bison from horseback or going to war against a neighboring tribe, men were simply more biologically suited than women to perform the violent activities necessary for the day-to-day continuation of society. However, these activities were inherently risky, which resulted in men bearing the brunt of physical risk in society. In compensation for the expectation of being subject to much greater risks, men naturally developed certain privileges, which were proportional to risk in order to ensure that men would remain willing to risk their individual lives for the benefit of the tribe. However, modern society decided to do away with that arrangement. Now that women earn up to 8% more than men with comparable jobs, and any type of male privilege is looked on as reprehensibly evil (although for some reason female privilege is still ok), there is no reason that men ought to feel any duty to bear the lion’s share of physical risk. In theory, women ought to have to register for the draft at 18, as there is no justifiable reason to require men to pay the majority of the cost of maintaining a society that benefits women more than them.

Of course, all that is at the societal level. However, those societal influences have led large numbers of both men and women to reject the traditional marriage model, in which the male provided physical and financial security in exchange for the domestic and sexual attentions of the female. The prevalence of divorce and of female-centric divorce laws that almost invariably award custody to the woman have further contributed to the redefinition of the family. Furthermore, the average US male is now so out of shape from sitting behind a desk all day that he lacks the physical ability and confidence to stand up for himself, much less for others. All these factors have erased the old system in which the strong protected the weak, and replaced it with a system in which the strong are discarded and the weak protect the weak. And when the weak protect the weak, weakness abounds.

When weakness abounds, the only way to apply the violence necessary for the continuation of society is through a tool that does not require strength or skill–and guns are the only tools that fit that description.

Uniforms.

The word may conjure up in your mind images of firefighters, police officers, EMTs, military members, Boy Scouts, UPS drivers, NBA players, Hooter’s waitresses, or even prison inmates. Truth is, we all wear uniforms. Some are more obvious, like the ones listed above. Some are less obvious, like the politician uniform, or the hipster uniform. For politicians, it’s a solid black or navy suit, with a solid white or light blue shirt and a solid red or blue tie. For hipsters, it’s skinny jeans, a flannel shirt a size too small, and a cardigan.

Sometimes, the differences between uniforms can seem to be pretty subtle. For example, in this photo, one can clearly see the the “dress blue” uniform of each of the five branches of the US military. To someone familiar with these uniforms, it is easy to identify which branch a serviceman belongs to just by looking at his cover, without even seeing the differences in the rest of the uniform. However, some people may not be able to correctly identify all five uniforms even when the entire uniform is visible.

What uniform do you wear? I’m not talking about a uniform that you wear for work, but the uniform that you wear every day. When people see you, they form opinions about you based on what you are wearing, just as surely as if you were wearing a recognizable uniform. The question is, what does that uniform say? Do you wear the uniform of a well-dressed person? A redneck? A frumpy Wal-Mart person? When you are wearing the uniform of an organization, your appearance reflects on that organization, but when you wear what you choose, your “uniform” reflects on you.

What image do you want to project? Do you have pride in your “uniform?” If not, maybe it’s time to make a change. 

The summer after my freshman year at Union, before heading to Wakonda to work, I completed the IRR “summer program”–a month-long technical rescue and survival training course held in the shadow of Lone Cone. As part of the training, we each did a 72-hour survival solo, wearing only street clothes, and taking with us only a knife, 5 feet of 550 cord, a metal match, a pencil, a sheet of paper (to write notes which would be left twice a day for our evaluators to read to know we were ok, since human contact was forbidden), a Bible (optional), a water filter, and two one-liter water bottles. We were offered the chance to earn extra credit by spending 24 hours within arm’s reach of a tree, without a fire and with only the 2 liters of water in our bottles. Although I didn’t need the extra credit, I knew immediately that I had to accept the challenge.

Like an idiot, I decided to do my 24 hours next to a tree at the end of my solo–by the time I walked to the tree with my freshly filled water bottles, I had spent 48 hours without food. I picked a small tree in an open area with a southern exposure, and laid down next to it. As the sun rose higher into the sky, I began to realize that choosing a souther exposure at roughly 7,000 feet of elevation might not have been a great idea. Despite my rationing, my supply of water began to dwindle. At some point, the heat combined with my lack of nourishment must have caused me to lose consciousness, because the next thing I remember is one of the evaluators shaking me and talking to me, and not being able to see him clearly, understand what he was saying, or figure out what was going on. Once I did figure out what was happening, I was upset at the evaluator because I thought the contact with him would cause me to lose the extra credit, and possibly credit for the entire assignment. He assured me that it would not be held against me, made me drink some of my remaining water, gave me some more water because of the heat, and left. With the extra water by body was able to regulate my temperature, and the rest of the day was pretty easy, albeit boring. Then the sun went down.

One interesting thing about high elevation is the amount of temperature swing that is fairly normal. I asked later how cold it got that night, and was told that it got down to 16 degrees. It certainly felt colder. Wearing only my canvas work pants and a flannel shirt, I was freezing. at one point I thought about trying to run in place to warm up, but after almost 3 days without food and an exhausting day of enduring heat, I just didn’t have the energy. I curled into a ball with my arms around my legs to conserve heat. Soon, my entire body began to shake violently, in what felt like a caricatured case of shivering.

As I lay curled on the ground shaking, I did not feel misery. Oh, I did at first, but soon that faded and my entire consciousness became aware of only a single thought: “I can make it another moment.” I never thought about making it through the night, or even through an hour or a minute–just through the moment.

I had another similar experience in Nicaragua my junior year, when we spent 24 hours on a boat in open ocean as part of our open water survival training. Cold and wet as the boat bobbed up and down and back and forth, for a time in the middle of the night I again found myself enduring moment by moment. Sometimes something similar happens when I swim a long distance. Somewhere around the 2-mile mark, I usually want to stop and rest for a second. Instead I keep going, one stroke at a time, my whole consciousness absorbed with simply performing one stroke.

I like to refer to that phenomena of the consciousness being whittled down to just the present moment as “living in the moment.” I know that phrase has been used in many ways, but that’s what it means to me, and I’m trying to apply it more to my everyday life.

Not that life is some pain to be endured by focusing on only a single moment at a time–I don’t mean that at all. However, I think that sometimes I focus so much on the future that I don’t fully live out the moment that I am in. Whatever stage I’m in, I always seem to be in a hurry to get to the next stage, to “get on with life.” Sometimes, I’m afraid that I miss valuable opportunities by always being in a rush to get to the next thing. The experiences where I truly lived in the moment, such as my survival experiences, remain indelibly etched into my memory, because I experienced them to the fullest extent possible: to the point where my consciousness was aware of nothing else. How many times in the past might I have made equally lasting memories by simply choosing to experience to the fullest the situation I was in?

I don’t know, but I intend to give myself less reason to wonder in the future. 

The other day I started shaving my head again.

Shaving your head when you have a full head of hair is kind of backward thinking—most people dread the idea of being bald, and many people only adopt head-shaving to hide the fact that they have very little hair left.

Then again, I’ve never been accused of being a guy who follows the crowd.

Most people run Windows on their computers. People who consider themselves non-conformists use Macs. I run Linux. It’s not that I want to be different for the sake of of being different—I just feel that Linux is better. The same goes for my use of an old-fashioned safety razor and shaving soap rather than a cartridge razor and shaving cream from a can, or my partiality to wool winterwear over new-fangled synthetic fabrics.

I’m not here to convert people to my style, or my preferences in operating systems, grooming products, or textiles. I’m different, and I accept that—In fact, I embrace it. But I do have a point for you to consider: sometimes, one must think backwards to move forwards.

In the early days of the Google search engine, it’s developers found themselves in need of a powerful server to host their new smart search. It was backwards thinking that led them to cripple many cheap household computers together to create their server, but it was that model that led to the redundancy that enabled them to stay on-line when a fire destroyed almost a third of their storage capacity.

It was backwards thinking that caused Columbus to sail west to go east. Even though he didn’t accomplish what he set out to do, he is regarded today as a visionary because of that backwards thinking.

It was backwards thinking when the King of the universe, the all-powerful, the all-magnificent, the very source of life itself, decided to become a helpless baby, live a life of poverty as an itinerant teacher and miracle healer, and die for sins that He didn’t commit–My sins. And am I ever greatful for that.

Backwards thinking changes the world.

Think backwards.

(No head-shaving required)

This last year, I discovered a blog called The Art of Manliness. While some of the articles on the blog are definitely tongue-in-cheek, many of them are absolutely excellent. It was this blog that caused me to start journaling, and it was a post on this blog that gave me the idea to write a letter to my dad, which I think was one of the best self-realization projects I ever took on.

This week there was a post entitled “Manliness Doesn’t Just Happen,” in which the owner of the blog, Brett McKay, made the argument that a man cannot be the best version of himself simply by living his life without thinking about it. To be the best version of oneself, man or woman, one must engage not just in action, but also in contemplation.

Contemplation. I think that is an important key to improving one’s self, no matter the area in which one wants to improve. If your goal is to become a better basketball player, you will not only practice basketball, but you will also engage in contemplation. You will consider what aspects of you game need the most work, what you can do to improve them, and how you will track your progress. It makes so much sense, that you are probably thinking “well duh” in your head right now.

So how come we often don’t apply this principle to our spiritual lives?

Maybe I’m the only one that has this problem, but I know there have been many times in my life where I did not have a plan for improving my spiritual life, because I never took the time to spend contemplating improving my spiritual life. Not that I didn’t think about spiritual things, I did. But I allowed my quest for spiritual improvement to be guided completely by the insights that I would gain here and there from my reading or sermons. I did not have an overarching “game plan” that the things I discovered fit into, but let each discovery be the totality of my improvement for a time, and then forgot about it as I moved to the next discovery. I would have never tried to use such a haphazard approach to increase my bench press, but somehow I thought that it was sufficient to take my spiritual life to the next level.

I now have a “game plan,” and I can say unequivocally that it has made a difference. This blog is part of that game plan: a place for me to engage in contemplation by expressing my thoughts “on paper.”

Last week, as I was contemplating by writing, I wrote a post that I knew some people wouldn’t like. It was tempting to just not post it, but I knew that I had to express the thoughts that God had impressed upon me. I tried to change it, so that people would be less likely to find it offensive, but I could not find a way to do that without diminishing from the power of the message. My game plan as it concerns this blog helped make it clear what I had to do, and I published the post. If I did not have a game plan, I think that I would have saved it as a file on my computer where it would have offended no one, made no one uncomfortable, and had absolutely no effect on anyone who might have benefited from its message.

And I hope this blog not only is the voice of my contemplation, but also causes others to contemplate, and to maybe see things in a light they never saw them before. Take some time today to contemplate your quest for spiritual improvement. Make a game plan. And then go out and follow that game plan, using it as a guide to make improvements you otherwise wouldn’t.

If my blog helps you in your contemplative efforts, or if there is some other resource that I ought to know about, let me know in the comments. I love finding out that I’m not the only one who reads this thing.