overthinking echoes

You know the difference between an echo and reverberation? An echo is a single sound reflecting back with enough volume and delay to be perceived as separate from the initial source. A reverberation however is when the hearer is bombarded with a number of reflected sounds and the result is an inarticulate jumble. In life it is a fairly common occurrence to feel an echo of the past; as something we have done is reflected and comes back to us, usually at a slightly different volume. This can be good, like a promotion at work, or it can be bad, like when a big lie catches up with you. This is a westernized version of Karma and the basic principle behind the Christian “reap what you sow”.

Echoes can teach us a lot about ourselves and about basic morality but this is not their greatest advantage. Sonar uses echo to learn about the surface which reflects the sound waves. It can be used to learn the distance, speed of motion, and shape of a given object which is not able to be seen otherwise. Similarly the echoes of our past which reach us can tell us many things about the person or group of persons who is reflecting our previous action. I am annoyed with myself for not giving this serious thought before. In thinking about the various echoes I have felt over my life I can, in retrospect, now piece together information about those who facilitated the echo and can see ways which I could have responded that would have been more appropriate or advantageous.

Then there are also a number of animals which we could consider in this discussion. The bat and the dolphin both use this principle on a regular basis in order to probe the world around them. Is this a plausible way for us to learn about those who surround us? Is it ethical to deliberately incite someone merely to gauge their reaction and learn things about them which they would never admit? Surely you risk putting them off and alienating yourself from certain individuals but is the payoff worth the risk? What can we truly learn about people using this understanding of psychological sonar? I believe you can gain insight into prejudices which the subject would never readily fess up to, insecurities they are trying desperately to hide, idiosyncrasies which point to deeper issues, and eventually you can begin to predict the persons response to various stimuli based on this information.

But then a problem arises. We each perceive the world through our own various prejudices, insecurities, and idiosyncrasies which are, for us, imperceptible. Surely this will affect the data we receive and taint our ability to accurately predict the reaction of a subject. This does not nullify all of our results it merely shifts the way we should look at our results. Perhaps we should take from an echo two possibilities. Every prejudice/insecurity/idios

yncrasy we believe we uncover also has an antithetical prejudice/insecurity/idiosyncrasy which we may be exhibiting to various degrees. For example if a submarine uses sonar to find that a given object is moving at 20mph and the sonar itself does not take into account the speed of the submarine, it is then left to those who interpret the results of the sonar to subtract the speed of the submarine. If the sub is moving at 10mph then the object itself is only moving 10mph in the opposite direction. If the sub itself is moving at 20mph then the object is stationary.


This is how we deal with echoes but every once in a while we experience reverberations. We are suddenly bombarded with echoes which are indistinguishable due to the sheer number being felt. We can sometimes still make out which action caused this but often the messages which can be clearly articulated in echoes are imperceptible in reverberation. This is confusing. These moments of reverberation leave our heads spinning and often end in depression. These times give us very little in the way of information. We can learn very little about ourselves or others during these times and perhaps the best we can do in these situations is damage control; weather the storm.

Overthinking Erosion

I went to the Grand Canyon over the summer with my family. The assurance of God’s existence is a common reaction to experiencing the ineffable but my reaction was different in that all I could think about was erosion. I wash my hands in running water and (occasionally) shower under it. I fill up little plastic guns and shoot streams of water at friends (or enemies depending on the context). I live under the general assumption that flowing water is benign and poses no threat to me. Obviously the powerful waves of the ocean or the force of a geyser could be hazardous, but a river? A stream? They could carry me away and beat me against stones but in that case it would be the stones which did the damage not the water itself. Short of drowning, a river alone poses no threat to me. But erosion serves as a warning that perhaps I have been lulled into a false sense of security.

Each gallon of flowing water slowly steals away the strength of the stone, eating away at it and creating crevices. These crevices weaken the stone to the point where, at times, it is no longer able to hold its own weight and large chunks fall into the water to be washed away, immediately if they are light enough and very slowly if they are bigger. These large chunks which fall away and into the water are then surrounded on all sides by rushing water as this erosive process begins anew to eat away at them like a very slow acting acid.

Erosion is a team effort however. Water alone cannot rip through rock without its accomplice; time. The Grand Canyon wasn’t formed in a day (or 7) and wasn’t the result of a mythical flood lasting 40 days and 40 nights (calm down Christians, “mythical” doesn’t mean what you think it does); it was carved over millions of years. This line of thought caused me to wonder about time. Time is often referred to as a “thief” but this isn’t accurate. Here we see time playing the role of driver, merely facilitating the work of the water. But time is not called a “thief” by people looking at the Grand Canyon; that moniker comes from people looking back over a life which has gone too quick and are missing the things which have been taken from them. So if time is merely the accomplice, what masked villain has taken from me everything which I have lost over the course of my life?

Is it my own actions which, with time’s help, cause pieces of me to be stripped away? Surely not because even had I taken no action at all from by birth on, my friends and family who have died would have died nonetheless. By this same logic it cannot be the actions of people conglomerately because our bodies begin to die upon birth and bear no mark of possible immortality. But what if it was being itself which caused this ontological erosion? What if being, all being, was not merely transitory but self-mutilating? Evolution, as an originally modernist ideology, is optimistic in its underlying assumption that being is, via natural selection, moving towards perfection. The problem is that complexity is not synonymous with perfection. A simple machine is generally more efficient than a complex one, at least when the propensity toward dysfunction is added in. Perhaps evolution is the ultimate proof of being’s masochistic reality.

Even outside of evolution, human history proves the same thing. Man’s tendency to act selfishly and oppressively is a constant but man’s ability to do so grows exponentially as we learn more. The Enola Gay changed the world August 6, 1945 at 08:15 when it dropped the atomic bomb on Hiroshima, Japan. The environmental effects of man’s “progress” are worrying to say the least and the gap between the world’s rich and the world’s poor is ever-widening. My intention here is not to sound panic stricken or prophesy a coming apocalypse. Honestly we are making improvements and slowing this process greatly in various ways BUT the trend cannot be reversed.

Simple glances at evolutionary changes and human history have supported the theory that being is, in and to itself, what water is to the Grand Canyon. So what can we, as the canyon, say or do? This is a bleak idea indeed because by nature of the fact that we ARE, we are part of the problem. This all makes sense when you think about the universe. Being is abnormal. Just as cold is merely the absence of heat and darkness the absence of light; and just as neither darkness nor cold is an entity in and of itself but merely the natural state of things, perhaps the absence of being is the truest reality (No. I’m not Buddhist.). Some might even wonder if non-being is then something we may call “god” in that it is not tainted by being’s sadistic and self-eroding nature. Non-being therefore has within itself no “bad” and, on the other hand, no “good” (although I would argue that these are the flipsides of a single coin).

So perhaps those people who saw the Grand Canyon and thought to themselves “THIS proves that God exists” weren’t too far from where I have now ended up, though my path here was a little longer. Maybe things like the Grand Canyon should serve as reminders that, as beings, we are constantly eroded into non-being. Time facilitates our erosion and in this way attempts to horn in on the glory, but essentially it is merely the fact that we exist which assures us that we are being worn away little by little. We have the power to expedite or slow this process but in doing so we are thus expediting or slowing the process for all being and not merely ourselves. This is a great responsibility.

Damn it

Damn it he’s sweating again. This happens every time he talks to her. Luckily it feels as though the perspiration is, for the most part, running from his capped head down the back of his neck .So it shouldn’t be too obvious from her point of view directly ahead. But soon it will soak the back of his shirt making it look as though his shoulders had an accident. He quickly reminds himself not to turn his back to her; he doesn’t want any part of his body appearing incontinent.

“…and I couldn’t believe he would say that. I was just shocked, you know?” God her eyes were captivating.

Damn it he has no Idea what she’s talking about. He blinks at her and then realizes how awkward that probably appeared. So he strains to keep from blinking while simultaneously searching for an appropriate response to…whatever it is she has just said. She was talking about Josh and Karina, he remembered that much but just after hearing that he had been distracted by his…perspiratory malfunction.

“He’s a jerk.” Was all he could think to stay and, knowing her distaste for Josh, it seemed safe.

Blink. Thank god. Not blinking really dries out the eyes. Blink. Blink. Damn it. He had read somewhere that someone who is lying tends to blink a lot. What if she had read that too? What if she thought he was lying? He couldn’t risk that. Besides, if she felt strongly about this and he was taking Josh’s side, that can’t be good. Okay blink normally and show authenticity.

“I swear the guy is a total jerk. If…” Damn it. She had started talking again and his little outburst just interrupted her.

Now she’s just staring at him. Damn it. He needs to think of an end for the sentence but he still can’t figure out how much blinking is appropriate for the moment. He nervously turns to look behind him before remembering the now large puddle between his shoulder blades. He spins around and notices that his sudden movement has startled her. She looks confused.

“Sorry. I didn’t mean to interrupt.”

Good save. She still looks confused but at least she’s smiling. And what a smile it was.

“oh..no..it’s fine. He is a jerk. But like I was saying he is getting better and it really impressed me how he stood up for her.”

Wow. Not what he had expected. But at least he had caught up to her in the conversation.

“we’ll see how they do next week,” he says, “it’s the finale.”

Josh and Karina are the core characters on her favorite television show; a show he pretends to like as well. He doesn’t blame her for wanting to watch it. He actually isn’t sure many shows she has to choose from here in this place. What shows do these people watch anyway? Wouldn’t it be ironic if it was all of HIS favorite shows?

“…things going with your friend?” Damn it. She was talking again.

Maybe there’s some sort of signal she could give before she started speaking, something to snap him back to reality when he gets lost in his own thoughts. Well, at least this time he knows exactly what she’s talking about. She’s asking about his “friend” who supposedly saw what happened that night; his “friend” who is the only one who can get her out; his “friend” who refuses to testify. But he has no friend. He himself is the one who can get her out because it was him who murdered that girl and it was her who ended up taking the fall. His intended second murder victim had, in a strange twist, become instead an abnormal sort of hostage. But as long as he has a “friend” she will continue meet with him. Granted, the guards and the glass are bothersome but at least she looks forward to his visits. She even seems to enjoy the conversations. He’s never had that before and it is intoxicating.

“I meet with him today,” He lies, “we’re going to meet with a lawyer. My friend’s just afraid, you understand. The killer is still at large.”

He knows he can’t keep this up forever but he doesn’t like to think about that. His lies are what imprison her but without that barrier of lies she would surely hate him. After all, he only lies because he genuinely has feelings for her. If anything comes of them as a couple, these untruths will have been the seed from which it sprang. He had intended to have her but instead he has put her in a cold cell and convinced her that he is her only way out. He smirks. This line of thought makes him think that perhaps their relationship isn’t very abnormal after all.

Strippers at my church picnic

I was reading the bible last night and found a passage which was clearly speaking to strippers. Let me explain.....If I believe, as the church in America teaches me to, that the Bible is the living word of God and speaks not only to a particular people in a particular time but to anyone in any time and if, along those same lines, I believe that a biblical education such as is found in a seminary (or "cemetery", as I've often heard it called by wise and witty men of God) is something which may do some good for some people but is not a necessity for all christians, then I should be able to read any passage in scripture and have it speak directly to me where I am today and I should not need any special understanding in order to apply its teachings directly to my life. So when I got back from a bachelor party last night, I was reading the bible and came across this passage:

Luke 6:38 Give, and it shall be given unto you; good measure, pressed down, and shaken together, and running over, shall men give into your bosom. For with the same measure that ye mete withal it shall be measured to you again.

Having just, that very night, spent in "good measure" quite a bit of money which was "pressed together" into someone's "bosom", the meaning of this passage was clear; the more this exotic dancer danced (the more she "gave"), the more men would "give into" her "bosom". What a clear kingdom principle for those who enter into this particular vocation!! Some would say that the word "bosom" is metaphorical rather than literal but unless explicitly told otherwise, ALL scripture should be taken as literal because it is the infallible inspired word of God. This is how I KNOW that the book of Revelation predicts the premillennialist pre-trib end of the world scenario roughly charted out by experts such as Tim LaHaye and Hal Lindsay. If we take "bosom" as metaphorical, where do we stop? Pretty soon we are left with a metaphorical Jesus on an allegorical cross.

I have also learned, from so many church services, that going back to original languages, looking for "cultural/historical context", and other such tactics are merely ways in which the leftist, over-educated, and spiritually numb theologians of our day seek to distort our high view of scripture and undermine God's will; twisting what scripture means to us today by claiming to seek what it meant "when it was written". If God had meant for us to know what it "meant when it was written", He would have placed us in that time and not here in 2009. This being said, it is very crucial that one be able to back up one's position with other scriptures (also read at face-value) from various places in the bible. Thus I offer, to support the above Kingdom Principle, the following support;

Joshua 6:17 "And the city shall be accursed, even it, and all that are therein, to the LORD: only Rahab the harlot shall live, she and all that are with her in the house..." This scripture proves God's mercy and willingness to use a Harlot (old english for whore). If God will use and save a harlot (old english for whore), why would he shun a girl who merely strips at bachelor parties? Did not our Lord Himself save from execution one who was guilty of adultery?

2 Samuel 6:14 "And David danced before the LORD with all his might; and David was girded with a linen ephod. " Here we see the man after God's own heart dancing scantily clad in public. Some would say he was dancing to the Lord but we can clearly read that he danced BEFORE the Lord. If God truly is omnipresent then anywhere we dance, we are dancing before Him.

1 Samuel 19:24 "And he [Saul] stripped off his clothes also, and prophesied before Samuel in like manner, and lay down naked all that day and all that night. Wherefore they say, Is Saul also among the prophets?" Saul is here called a prophet when God has him STRIP NAKED before Samuel. Perhaps we in the modern church have a shallow view of prophesy and are missing out on God in our refusal to hire strippers at church picnics and special services.

DISCLAIMER: Mike Golin did not actually attend any bachelor parties or come anywhere near any stripper's bosoms. Neither does Mike Golin actually condone the hiring of strippers by churches or para-church organizations. Mike Golin is simply tired of face-value biblical teaching and the downplay of education's crucial role in "studying to show yourself approved, a workman who need not be ashamed, rightly dividing the word of truth" (2Tim 2:15). If one actually believes the Bible to have any value whatsoever, the refusal to educate oneself concerning its history, context, and content, giving any excuse short of severe mental handicap, is disrespectful at least and sinful at most.

...dumbass

It has always seemed to me that a person is merely a conglomeration of traits collected from the influential people in his or her life. Obviously there are other factors but this, I believe, accounts for most of why a person is who he or she is. This morning I lost a very influential person in my life and I am lost in thought.

I remember building a couple of fences with him, listening to his one-note airy whistle as I handed him tools or steadied boards or drove in screws. I remember working on cars with him, not caring too much about the car itself but enjoying the company nonetheless. I spent a lot of time over at his house when we lived in Menifee and I stayed the night there pretty often. Once he took me to a golf tournament to watch Chi Chi Rodriguez. Fishing, working, talking, watching tv, whatever we were doing I remember that I always felt safe around him. He was one of those people who you would ask if you had a question about anything because somehow he seemed to have informed and wise answers to any question. While he was sometimes a little…gruff (my nickname for years varied between “mikey” and “dumbass”) I could feel that he loved me simply by the way he interacted with me.

Family was always a priority. He flew in from texas for family reunions and both my parents’ birthdays without hesitation. I picked him up from the airport when he flew in for my mother’s birthday just this year and we spent the day in Santa Cruz driving around, walking around, and talking about anything that came to mind. People were drawn to him because he was so genuine; nothing about him was a façade. It’s rare to find people who don’t seem to fake some aspect of their lives but, as far as I could see in my time with him, I never saw him be anything but real, even in the days and nights I spent in the hospital with him. While in the hospital his lucidity fluctuated, there were times where it seemed as though nothing were wrong. My second night with him, at about 2:30am, he woke up and randomly began to talk to me; he was clear headed and wide awake as though about to get up, get dressed, and drive home. We talked for about an hour before he fell back asleep and that conversation will forever be etched in my mind.

It is presumptuous to think I could have anything in common with this man other than an occasionally rough exterior but it is my hope that the time and love he poured into me would yield something which could pay him just tribute. I would be honored to love as generously as he did or live as genuinely as he did. I am so blessed to have had him as an influence in my life and I pray that my life would do him justice as such.

I Guess I'll be a King

History is a fiction. It’s a pretty standard postmodern concept but it rings true in many ways. The idea is that history is written by the “winners” who then record their wins, omit their losses, justify their sins, and demonize their opponents. This means that the history I read out of a history book is only a warped reflection of the actual events off of the biased perception of the “winners”. This is undeniable. I am not content to stop there though. It seems to me that all perceptions are a fiction or, to phrase it differently, that reality is always 100% imperceptible to us. A person’s fears, loves, and prejudices shape every stimulus; visual, audible, and substantial.

Communication is a fiction as there is no combination of physical, audible, or substantial methods by which one can express any idea/emotion fully. Here I think it is important to delineate between emotive communication and instructive communication. Person one can explain to person two how an engine works. He/she can enumerate all of the parts of the engine and explain how they function together. This is instructive communication. Try as they may however, Person one can never convey to person two the picture of an engine and understanding of an engine which exists in their mind. This is emotive communication. For emotive communication we use metaphors, similes, hyperbole, and a list of other tools but they all fall short of conveying reality.

Perception is a fiction in that my senses are predisposed (as is my mind itself) to filter outside stimuli and categorize it. Four people who have all witnessed the same event will describe it in four different ways because, although the event was the same, their experience of it was different. On a deeper level if one gazes up at a star fifteen light-years away, one is actually looking at that star fifteen years in the past. If that star had blown up fourteen and a half years earlier it would make no difference to the perception of that star-gazer here on earth.

Emotions are fiction because they are based on the perceptions and communications referenced above. The anger Person one feels toward Person two burns stronger if person one has had a rather difficult day. The rejection person one perceives from person two and the consequent loneliness felt may be due simply to a jumbled communication caused by person two’s own preoccupation. What one feels very seldom reflects reality because what one experiences often bears little resemblance to reality.

With this in mind, relationships are a fiction. We project onto others the attributes we would like them to have. If we want to like them, we attribute positive characteristics to them. If we want to hate them we do the opposite. It is impossible to know or be known by another person at any more than a surface level because fictional perceptions, fictional communications, and fictional emotions are the lens through which you view them and they view you; “through a glass, darkly”.

So this leads to a rather bleak outlook on life. This leads one to be an island unto oneself, investing very little in relationships positively or negatively. None can know me and I can know none. All I have is my fiction. But how empowering would it be to realize that the “history” you’ve been writing is merely fiction and is thus yours to mold as you wish? How freeing to begin to do intentionally what you’ve been doing unintentionally all your life? If you are writing fiction anyway, why not construct a world worth living in?

Overthinking the Rain

I love the rain. Water is pulled from its environment and purified (via evaporation, sublimation, or transpiration) only to be reintroduced to the environment in the form of fresh rain (or some other kind of precipitation). This means that the drops which now beat against my window are not falling for the first time or for the last. The water pooling outside my door right now, running slowly down through the asphalt into various piping systems only to be dumped into some small river and evaporated, may end up being hurled as a snowball in Big Bear in the not too distant future. The same rain drop which floods a town today bringing death may end a drought tomorrow and bring life. The waves which pound the hulls of so many ships become the trickling streams which feed the roots of giant sequoias. The Iceberg which sunk the titanic may be the rain that hydroplaned my car on Highway 17.

This is a powerful image and can be used to convey any number of messages; it can be a message of hope or of hopelessness. For me, at least right now, it is a reminder of time’s absolution. I’ll explain. The water in my Dasani bottle may at one time have washed the blood from a murderer’s knife but this thought neither quenches my thirst nor negates my biological need for water. My indignation that this water may have been used to coerce false confessions from innocents cannot keep me from dehydration; the only way I live is to drink in the water and thus the history that it carries with it. With each sip I am affirming though not condoning the past; I am bowing not only to the idea that what has happened feeds what is happening but that the past, its evils and terrors included, is the womb from which the present is birthed.

This leads me to wonder, how much of this poisoned water can I drink without myself succumbing to the toxin? If a man drinks enough alcohol, is he not eventually drunk? As modern people we are sustained by poisoned water and becoming drunk on the horrors of the past and, as repulsive as this thought is, we can do nothing else; for this is the only way we survive. But what of my own horrors? What of the water which washed the blood from MY hands? Is it truly so repulsive to think that maybe my own mistakes and wrongdoings can be evaporated, recycled, and in their own right bring life to the future? Surely this is not redemption but something else completely; absolvitory grace.

The horrors past are not fiction. Their effects were surely felt then and surely are still felt today but we must all drink from this same well of history day after day and perhaps clinging to retributive justice is a bit like voluntary dehydration. It takes humility to lump oneself in with the worst but could it be that this separation of history from its evils and men from their sin is the hope so often misidentified by religion? Is it possible that a fresh rain could bring both hydration and absolution to the drinker? After all, how clean do I feel if I refuse to see my own bathwater as anything but the muddy filth from which it was probably evaporated?