Da Wince-y

I read The DaVinci Code a couple of years ago. As a recreational conspiracy fan, I already knew about the "secret" heresy. There's nothing in it that real-world theologians haven't already dealt with, even at the Vatican.

I have a mouthy critique of the whole thing, but the short version is: not very good. Apparently I'm quicker on the draw than a Harvard professor and an Interpol agent, both experts on codes and symbols, who are surprised at every turn by information you could find on the Internet without looking very hard. It's like a marine biologist being shocked by what's really a mammal. "Gasp! Dolphins too?"

I try not to be curmudgeonly and patronizing. Barring that, I try not to do it in public. I understand many otherwise reasonable people enjoy the book. Further, some Christians feel challenged by issues the book brings up, and you know, crisis of faith, that's not cheap.

So somehow, this below-average adventure thriller book-made-movie has become, like, the Anti-Passion of the Christ.

The best article I've found around the hoopla is Some Christians Shun, Others Co-Opt DaVinci in the San Francisco Chronicle, which talks about various theological types trying to deal with this month's media phenomenon. Bits worth comment:

Many evangelical Christian leaders are embracing the discourse and breaking with tactics they've used other times when they've felt under attack. They are questioning and refashioning how they react to pop culture and asking whether it's appropriate to profit off of what they see as heresy.

It seems some pastors (and Filipino bishops) feel attacked, and need to "counter-attack." How Christlike!

I'm reminded of how I used to discuss D&D with religious types. The thing (game, movie, whatever) is like a candle. You can use a candle to worship Jesus in your Christmas Eve service, light your house when the power's off, or summon a demon. But sacred, secular, or profane, the candle is not the issue. God doesn't care about candles. God cares about people.

Controlling candles does nothing for the soul in front of you. Loving your neighbor is the job, not batting down opposing ideologies.


My favorite part is at the end, where we see the continued dance of entertainment marketers do-si-do with the Christian demographic:

Just as evangelical Christians have learned to adapt to what they see as a cultural threat posed by "The Da Vinci Code," the studios have had to learn new strategies as well, said Robert K. Johnston, an evangelical Christian who is the author of "Reel Spirituality: Theology and Film in Dialogue."

Movie marketing never used to mention criticism of a film, said Johnston, also a professor at Fuller. But the novel had spawned so much criticism that ignoring it was not possible, Johnston said.

"Sony is gambling that even negative discussion by the religious community will bring more bodies into the theater to see the movie," said Johnston....

Lookit! They're changing color in front of us! But here's the thing: Whatever they look like, they still basically just want money. I'm not pointing this out to be cynical. I'm pointing it out to say, since we know their bottom line, and they're fumbling around for ours, how can we use this advantage to love them better?

Talent: Overrated

is the gist of this article in the New York Times about people who are experts in their field.

Among topics psychologist Anders Ericsson has studied is writing -- of special interest to me since I fancy myself in the business of writing, crippling psychological blocks aside.

I don't feign being an expert writer, but I've been told I have talent. When I procrastinate rather than write (i.e., most of the time) I lie on my stomach, peer under the bed, and tell my thunderstruck psyche, "I know it's hard, but you've got talent." This pleasant placebo never coaxes me out, but it calms the whimpering.

Mr. Ericsson, meanwhile, shows up with harder medicine: empiricism. Whatever little push natural aptitude provides is inconsequential next to practicing every day with a method that gives you immediate feedback and goal-setting.

A noteworthy pullquote:

Ericsson's research suggests a third cliché as well: when it comes to choosing a life path, you should do what you love — because if you don't love it, you are unlikely to work hard enough to get very good. Most people naturally don't like to do things they aren't "good" at. So they often give up, telling themselves they simply don't possess the talent for math or skiing or the violin. But what they really lack is the desire to be good and to undertake the deliberate practice that would make them better.

Read the whole article, because its entirety is more encouraging than my neurotic presentation.

Pinch Me, I'm Awake

Last night I dreamed I had met this amazing girl and asked her out and she said yes. Then I forgot about her somehow.

Some time later it suddenly came back to me, but I had a hard time remembering... it all seemed faint, like I might have dreamed it.

So in the dream I went to my gmail account and searched the archive for her name and a phrase I remembered writing to her, and it came up, and I was all "Woo-hoo!" because I had her contact info, and I didn't just dream it.

I said to myself, "Okay, we verified this, so when you wake up, go search for her name in your archive for real and get in touch with her."

Then I woke up and realized I really did dream the whole thing.

Welcome To The Demographic

I'm reminded of my Dad, who worked for the Baptist Sunday School Board in my early childhood. He traveled around and sold audio-visual systems to churches, back in the day when AV meant film, slide, and overhead projectors. He was fired after an argument with his boss when he wouldn't try to upsell more AV equipment than he thought a church needed.

I'm reminded of my Dad because of this snappy article at CNET: Is Jesus The Next Killer App?

The title is meaningless, but as I've noted, saying "Jesus" gets people's attention. Some choice quotes:

"There's not one major electronics manufacturer who isn't trying to target this space," said Dan Stark, who operates Stark Raving Solutions, a company that specializes in outfitting churches with the latest in audio and video technology.

And:

"Let's face it, we've all experienced the occasional sleeper on Sunday morning," says an Internet advertisement from Audio Visual Mart, an online media tools store. "But it doesn't have to be that way. Technology can inspire your congregation in new ways."

Mercifully, these Baalful proclamations come from manufacturers and retailers, not the churches. The writer seems to have spent more time talking to marketing flacks than their customers. Curious. My first thought is to tie this to my idea of journalists being uncomfortable with religion, but it could also just be laziness. Or something more innocent, I suppose.

I don't know where I'm going with collecting these beasts, but I hope you enjoy my growing zoo of them.

O Sole Mio

There's no indie cred for this kind of thing, but I've been an alternate energy goob since the '70s, when we really could have started working on alternate energy and had it make a difference by now. NOT THAT I'M BITTER. Solar energy in particular has always been a big deal to me. It's also always been too expensive.

I'm going to take the scenic route through my economic theory before we get back to solar power.

I've always found Mr. Smith's invisible hand of capitalism suspect, the idea that people acting in a consistently self-interested manner creates a suitable economic equilibrium. This is a pretty idea from 10,000 feet. On the ground, there's a hella lot of misery before equilibrium makes the scene.

In general, economists and mathematicians seem to treat economics as some great, mysterious ocean where we bob like tubs. That's bogus. The economy is what we all do. We can make the economy do whatever we want it to. There is no invisible hand. There is predictable consequence for our choices.

This is not a top 1% thing. This is everybody. Do we want to create more jobs? Then those of us who own businesses can choose to forgo some profit and hire more people. Do we want to slow down inflation? Then we all agree to charge each other less for our services.

This is simplistic, but not very. We just need a common vision and our decisions from there will cause everything else to fall into place. It's happening now. Right now, our common vision is that each person optimally amasses resources for him or herself. This is called "enlightened self-interest" and assumes that we'll all choose to be greedy.

However, we can also choose not to be greedy. We can decide to amass fewer resources as individuals, and give more to other individuals or community purposes. I'm not talking about charity, I'm talking about mutually finding another base assumption besides, "Everyone will be greedy because that's how people are."

Many people would cheat and act greedy anyway, sure, but many people also steal. We can have common behavioral standards which many people break, and retain a functional society.

Yet a number of people draw a weird, crooked line that says, "We believe theft is bad, even though many people steal anyway; however, we won't believe greed is bad, because everybody's greedy, right? Right?"

I'm not making an airtight argument, I know, but stay with me. My point is that we make the economy every day; the economy does not make us. To think differently is to allow yourself to be controlled.

Okay: solar power.

To run your house on solar energy currently costs about 2-5 times as much as buying electricity through your local utility (solarbuzz.com). The argument has been that photovoltaic (PV) cells are too expensive, and it requires open, unclouded sky, and you pay all the infrastructure costs yourself, and a bunch of other reasons. Therefore, common sense economics tell us that solar is nice, but no one will do it because it's too expensive.

If you slogged through my opinion on economics, you can tell I think this is horsefeces. Not because I think we can all magically decide to charge less for solar. Rather, because we've put 250 years and unknown trillions of R&D dollars into making fossil fuels work, whereas we've been working on solar energy seriously for maybe 20 years, funded mainly by government grants. We decided to make fossil fuels more important.

Solar power is not inherently more expensive. Solar power is more expensive because our common vision has valued fossil fuels over solar power. We choose to make solar power more expensive.

Just in this decade though, a small number of us (mostly science-types and venture capitalists) are choosing to find ways to not make solar power more expensive. Newly discovered technology is showing up that makes the whole deal cheaper. Two examples:

• Prism Solar Technologies is making holographic solar collectors to feed PV cell. No big mirror banks, just a rainbow array of holographs that steers light into PV cells. Non-technical explanation here.
• Spheral Solar makes "denim-power," flexible solar cells that look like denim, and use recycled silicon -- silicon shortages become irrelevant.

As more people decide to care about solar power, it will become cheaper. In the next 10 years, solar could replace fossil fuel energy. It won't. We're in for mixed use for a long time. But if we found a common vision, we could be green by 2015. I know that's crazy fast, but it rhymes. Sounded like a nice slogan for somebody, maybe. "Green by 2015!"

It would be very, very hard to do, but not impossible. It's just that we're going to choose to not do it.

The Sum Of Things

An article about the very last ninja:

The teachings of Grand Master Masaaki Hatsumi echo through my head as he entreats me to attack a blackbelted disciple with a practice sword. "Always be able to kill your students," he says.

...As he nimbly glides across the padded floor, Hatsumi showers students with cryptic proverbs straight out of Confucian scrolls, such as "anything can be used as a weapon" or "ninjutsu is the sum of things in the universe."

Listen, I don't know much about ninjas. But if I was a grand warrior master of stealth, I would totally want you to believe there was only one of us. And I would find some other guy, give him a headful of mystical phrases, and send him around to say things like, "I'm the last, best ninja!"

Because then you'd be watching him, and not me and my 50 ninja buddies who are sneaking into your home to kill you with poisoned nunchuks.

Killing the Buddha

I found somebody doing the thinking about religion and journalism. His name is Jeff Sharlet. He co-founded a site called Killing the Buddha, which I have known about for years, and sort of drifts in and out of my awareness.

KtB publishes articles and essays about people grappling with religion, any religion. I've found it interesting, but I've never been able to really feel it for a couple of reasons. Often at KtB, they're speaking not just a different language but an idiolect: trying to communicate something so personal and pre-verbal that it just doesn't come across.

But also because I have always operated under the assumption that I'm missing something when it comes to religion. I'm frequently dissatisfied with my religion and the intersection of religions, and bewildered by faith (including why I have it at all). But I've concluded I believe in a God who is fundamentally bigger than me and acting my best interests.

It isn't that I don't question or doubt; it is that when I question or doubt, the first place I look is inside. What am I missing? If I'm operating under the premise that God is omnipotent and loving, then I must assume his shit is together. The wild card is my reason and perception.

Intellectually, I've been down the road where God doesn't match that premise, and that road leads to heat death. So I don't spend a lot of time there. As far as I can tell, either Jesus is as advertised, or existence is meaningless. I know! So absolute! But there it is.

So reading a bunch of essays about how confusing religions are, I mean, I feel you brother, but you know, order up some fear and trembling and get to work on that.

Anyway, KtB is worth looking at. And Jeff Sharlet's other site, The Revealer, is the whole reason I'm writing this post. From the About Us section:

The Revealer is a daily review of religion in the news and the news about religion. We're not so much nonpartisan as polypartisan -- interested in all sides, disdainful of dualistic arguments, and enamored of free speech as a first principle.... We begin with three basic premises: 1. Belief matters, whether or not you believe. Politics, pop culture, high art, NASCAR -- everything in this world is infused with concerns about the next. As journalists, as scholars, and as ordinary folks, we cannot afford to ignore the role of religious belief in shaping our lives. 2. The press all too frequently fails to acknowledge religion, categorizing it as either innocuous spirituality or dangerous fanaticism, when more often it's both and inbetween and just plain other. 3. We deserve and need better coverage of religion. Sharper thinking. Deeper history. Thicker description. Basic theology. Real storytelling.

This is a big step in the direction I'm looking. Not afraid of religion in news media, but not prostrate before sectarian interests.

Mammon's Got A New Thing

More on noticing that Christians are part of the culture, not refugees from it.

Nothing new about news media, but I found an article in the March issue of Fast Company about an... entrepreneur, we’ll call him, one of the flock, who has figured out that Christians are a wildly marketable demographic.*

It’s short, but here’s a pullquote anyway:

To get pastors to steer their flocks to the multiplex, Bock woos the Christian press to meet with filmmakers, organizes screenings, and creates Bible study guides. All of which, analysts say, can sell $50 million in extra tickets and millions more copies of a DVD. "To not recognize [churchgoers] as a massive demographic is just bad business," Bock says. "It would be like not tracking men."

Hooray!

Or is it a hooray? I've argued it makes good business sense too. But since when do I give a flying rat’s ass about business?

Clearly, Christians are a fat, unexploited market. “Christian” media in the last 50 years have been, even in these empowered DIY times, 3 to 5 years behind the culture at large. Which is weird, because Christians are part of the culture at large. We produce and consume behind-the-curve media even as we help create up-to-the-minute culture. I have a feeling that has to do with a stilted expectation of what God finds appropriate, based on what our parents find appropriate. That’s just spitballing though.

The point is, we’re ripe for up-to-the-minute cultural participation. And someone, probably multiple someones, in positions to do something about it, are now paying attention.

But look, here’s an important word of warning, American Christians: Do not fall for this.

I have no reason to doubt Mr. Bock’s sincerity or religion. He could be following a genuine calling. But identification as a marketable demographic is the bottom of a mountain for us, not the top.

One reason it has taken so long for mainstream media to find us is that traditionally we have had all-different priorities. We were interested in hard-to-market ideas like patience, purity, self-control, holiness, goodness, and of course, Jesus. Not that mainstream media don’t value these as well, but their central value is WHAT SELLS. And since their main thing isn’t even on our list, we didn’t have a lot to talk about at parties, yo? Besides, they were already getting our money through other demographics (a/s/l).

I used to work at a game company. Around 1999, one of our business people talked to some Christians on staff about prospects for a licensed Left Behind game. We discussed it a bit, and she eventually dropped the idea. Not because the Christians she consulted were against the idea (though we agreed the books were awful) but I think, because the only way to sell it to the Christian market required a sincerity and faith – dare I say, a commitment – she didn’t possess.

I think she was a few years ahead of her time, and frankly, too moral to try to commit herself to milking a cash cow she didn’t believe in. I don’t think this recent wave, fronted by Christian beards like John Bock, have the same compunctions. They’re not against us. They’re just not for our God. We must keep this distinction in front of us. Like, phylactery in front of us.

It’s good to do business with nonbelievers. It’s very bad to get in bed with nonbelievers. We are experiencing a new recognition and it’s our job to use this recognition well, to advance the Kingdom, not to lean back and feel safe that someone recognized that our money is as green as the heathens’. Because as we meet this new opportunity, it is the very opposite of safe. It doesn't matter whether the movie comes with a Bible study guide. It matters where your heart is.

I feel like I have not found the creamy nougat center of what I want to say, but I’ve been trying to write this for a week, and I want to post something. More as I think and research.

*There is a similar NPR report I will link to when I find it.

Where God Lives

These maps, taken from data collected by the Glenmary Research Center, graphically identify the distribution of several large religious groups in the U.S. I didn’t find any surprises, except for an odd concentration of Quakers in north Alaska. (Percentages on parade, I suspect.) But it's still kind of neat.

Search Query: Where Will I Be Next Thursday Around Threeish?

Google introduces an online calendar program. It's getting good buzz in various other blogs that I won't bother linking to here. The lead to the linked USA Today article reads:

Hoping to beef up the underperforming online calendar market, Internet search giant Google late Wednesday introduced a calendar service notable for easy-access sharing among friends and family.

Do... do what? There's an online calendar market? According to the article Yahoo, AOL, and MSN already offer this service. I guess I knew this, in the same sense that I know these companies will also track stocks for me, and that I have no desire for them to ever do this.

Google hosts my blog and my email; I'm already giving them plenty of free information, thanks. We'll let my daily whereabouts be a tantilizing mystery.