Goal in Mind

When we finally have a goal in our head, something to for which to aim, everything else seems to fall into place. 

I will be graduating December of this year after going to school full-time through the summer and fall. Everything else that I am doing now falls around that goal which helps me to become more focused in a confusing college world. I find it extremely difficult to be motivated at these big state schools.

I have always been an extremely motivated person. I am a sponge around people I idolize, I work extremely hard and I have never felt the pains of indifference. But, here at these state schools, the primary virtue encouraged is indifference. To believe something is uncool, to want something is ridiculous and to fight for something is obscene. Video games, movies, clubs, drinking, drugs, shallow party relationships, separation from pain and suffering, and monetary success are all we care about now. I wish I could say I have been untouched by these influences, but this is not true. 

I have felt my idealism subtly damaged in the wake of this pop culture. It is depressing as hell to me.  (Literally depressing as hell) I'll wake up at two in the afternoon sometimes or stay up late doing nothing good. As humans, we need goals and things to fight for. I need something to fight for, but when I'm stuck in a system that is all about a degree and deeply impersonal, I can't think of anything to fight for.

I am glad to have a goal now. I think having this goal will help me find the things I need to fight for: adventure, integrity, and love.

Forced Rest

I have been thinking about a lot of things in my life lately, as I normally do. But now it is a bit different. I had a Basketball injury and sprained my ankle in three places. So now, I can't really go anywhere, besides my room. I can't work, which is what I normally do on my weekends. I am not used to having a free day. A day in which I have no plans but to do what I want to do and to rest. A sabbath, I suppose.

I have always thought everyone should have a sabbath. It seems very healthy; however, I have not really abided by my own rules. But now, I am being forced to live by that rule. I am being forced to rest. 

Mommy, an old man and a little girl

I picked up my mommy at the airport yesterday. It was so good to see her. We spent the day hanging out in Miami, and I got to show her my life here. I am so thankful for her, she is so patient with me. The relationship is so deep and I 'm sure extremely stressful for her at times. Sorry about that mom. 

While I was at the airport waiting for her to arrive, I was watching this old man next to me. He had his luggage and was waiting for somebody. Then a young father walked by carrying his little daughter of about two years. As they walked by, the old man's face lit up. He looked her right in her eyes and gave the biggest smile. The girl smiled back, excited by the old man's obvious enthusiasm. 

I wondered why this old man was so excited to see that little, young life go by. My grandfather is the same way with the youngest grandchildren in the family. It is as though they inspire him and give him more life. I find this very interesting. It is as though the old man is seeing something in himself, nostalgia or gratefulness that life is continuing. There is not depression or jealousy that this new life has more years or potential than himself. Instead, he possesses some kind of love or hope for this new life. It is almost as though the child gives him some kind of love or hope as well.

My mom and I talked a lot about these things throughout the day. I am amazed at her willingness to listen to me.

Until next time.

Interesting Article

I was reading some old NY Times articles and ran across this one.

Notice it predicts everything that is happening right now thanks to bad politics. Interesting

Horror

If you look horror up on google images, this is the first picture that is shown. Just in case you were feeling horrified because our economy is going to die and everything we have ever known is going to die! 

I personally am very happy that the bailout plan pushed by all the powers that be did not pass. We love our horror films, like the pictures above. We love getting scared and clinging to our friends in that moment. You know who knows we love getting scared? CNN, NY Times, etc. They love to get us all riled up and freaked out; they love us looking like emo guy top right. We love watching about how scary everything is, so they freak us out. That is why I was so scared the bailout plan was going to pass.

It was only a couple of days after the economic crisis had happened and all of the sudden some guy named Paulson told us that he needed to be in charge of 700 billion dollars going to save the big corporations. Then Bush got up and told everybody we needed to stand behind this bill, much like he told us to get behind the Patriot Act after 911 when we were filled with horror. To each his own, but the Patriot Act scares me and so does this bailout plan. 

It was pretty interesting that the representatives voting against the bill tended to be either really far left or really far right, and the heads of the parties and the president all wanted the bill to pass. I am glad that our representatives are going to take some time to better work out this bill. It does not seem like something to rush in two days. Once it happens, you don't just take it back. 

Anyways, we should be writing our representatives to tell them how proud we are of them, or not proud of them if you really wanted the bill to pass. 

In other news, Our intramural football team won another game. We are 2-1 now but our defense is yet to be scored upon. (We lost the first game 2-0 on a safety, yeah it sucks)

Commonality?

Sometimes I forget how many people really live in this world. It is so easy to consider only ourselves, only to be rudely awakened by pictures like this. These people are all marching to encourage the production of some new car coming out. I have no clue what the essence of the debate really is; I can't relate. Yet somehow there is some commonality between us it seems.

I was reading the article pictured above in the NY Times while I was riding the bus through Miami on the way to school. I thought it might be kinda cool to have our bus run into a big protest like this. We could probably have a big barbeque or something while we tried to change the world.

Course Schedule

This semester I'm taking:

1. Visual Media Design: That's why my graphics are so good on this webpage! Notice all the stuff I've done? lol
   
2. Constitutional Law: Powers: Taught by a Cuban/American guy that went to Wheaton College. I never thought I would see a guy from Wheaton College at FIU, but there he is. He swears more than any teacher I've ever had, and if you know anything about Wheaton that is really odd... LIke really, really odd. Great class though. A lot of pretty girls that are going to law school are in the class, yay! (See pic above)
3. Consumer Economics: Taught by this a very fiscal conservative guy. Really interesting he travels a lot and he works at the IRS. Very Cool Nerd
4. Statistics for Business: What else can I say but, Gen Ed course. This class makes me believe that the world is boring, pointless and without purpose. (Sorry Simon for that hyperbolic statement.) The teacher speaks worse English than my old cleaning lady from Poland and the material is dreadfully easy/boring.
5. Writing Strategies: To help me write because I'm a writer. The teacher wants us to read Stephen King though, I almost cried when she told us that. Stephen King? We can't find any better literature than Stephen King? "Blah, blah, blah..." These are the prominent words that go through my head throughout this hour and fifteen minute class. Blah, blah, blah

ECC's Proud Florida Graduate

I yahoo'ed my name to see what I am famous for just now and I found a bunch of stuff I had already seen before but then I realized something new. My community college in Chicago, Elgin Community College proudly announced through the Daily Herald Joshua Ballantine as their only graduate from out-of-state. See the article here. My address was listed in Florida so I went down in history as ECC's only Florida graduate for 2007.

The ironic thing is that I've never been to my Florida address. The things the system does not see is incredible to me. 

Rock Climbing

Here are some videos of the climbing trip Clint and I took to Banff, Canada.

My New Idol

I get really mad at myself when I read stories like this because I didn't do it.

The world runs like clockwork that is irreversibly historically deterministic. Sometimes I feel like everything is as it is and cannot be changed, that nobody can really be different even though that is our primary goal. A goal which we strive for with our entire consciousness and being. A goal so subtly unattainable. 

Society, man. Society! Society blocks us into demographics and tells us we have the freedom to choose, but they don't mean it. They don't want you to choose, it wants your soul, your will, your FIRE! 

Chaos! 

Noise! 

Errands! 

Responsibilities! 

A-muse-ment! 

Friends! 

Politics! 

Job!

After it all we have arrived nowhere, we have fallen into the clockwork of fatalism, the enemy's gates. 

"Why? Why did I end up this way?" asked the hungry sojourner as he lay in flat surrender at the base of the enemy's gates. 

"Because you fled from pain, you fled from struggle." Answered the enemy. "You grew content, you feared death. You found one piece and kept it, only to be caught up by the beautifully cruel turns of my wheels! 

The sojourner stared into the enemy's eyes and the enemy stared back at him intensely. It was terrifying. In his eyes was the presence of all evil, all wickedness. The greatest fears known to mankind in its conscious state burned like fires in the enemy's eyes, and more fears, still unknown to man, moved inside egg-like shells. The sojourner turned away, not able to bear the depth of the enemy's eyes.

"You wanted everything nice and organized. You feared doubt, destruction and pain. How did you think you could ever conquer me? Am I a man like yourself that you come at me with mere numbers and manpower? Everything you know is powerless against me, it is what you don't know that will kill me." The enemy finished.

The sojourner looked again into the eyes of the enemy only to realize the enemy was not there. The enemy was nothing, emptiness, abyss. The sojourner continued to look and realized the enemy was gone, non-existent, yet still staring right into his eyes.

Courage

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pit0zG1vswM

Its hard to watch this new commercial by Nike and not be inspired. I watched a video about advertising recently and they said that when you watch a culture's advertising you are watching a society reflect itself to itself. The companies are trying to sell to their own culture, so they portray how the culture sees themselves or how they want to be seen.

As Nike flashed up the athletes during the commercial they only flash up their own athletes they have sponsored throughout its history and quotes that they have come up with within their own company. I tried to find special techniques that they used to make this commercial so appealing and successful, but the more I tried the more I realized they used the best of themselves and advertised that. It is something about not following the market but rather influencing the market. That is what people are drawn to. That is what makes people want to be involved. 

The commercial glorifies those that have fought through trials. Those who have endured. That is what a global advertising commercial such as Nike's courage commercial is trying to portray to the people watching. That is what the people watching think of themselves or think they would like to become.

K2 Deaths

CNN reported that 11 people were just killed on Pakistan's K2-the second biggest mountain in the world- when their rope snapped. 

The climbers who died were Dutch, Irish, Italian, French, Norwegian, Korean, and Nepalese citizens. People from all over the world coming to this one place to challenge themselves. Sometimes it seems so stupid that we put ourselves in dangerous positions, that we risk our lives to say that we have accomplished something. Yet accomplishment and challenge touches something deep within us. 

These climbers tested themselves until their deaths, but what if they had never went on the trip? What if they never would have taken the risk? Would they be happier people? 

The mortal son of a god from The Iliad, Achilles, faced a similar decision. He was forced to decide whether to die in glory early or lead a happy, lengthy life to create a family. He eventually decided to take the glory.  What is it within the human spirit that desires to prove him or herself untouchable? Immortal?

I just got back from a rock climbing trip, not quite as intense as the K2 climbers yet challenging nonetheless. I found myself full of lust for the next battle, the next cliff to conquer. I failed many climbs but that only made me want it more. I was challenging my greatest challenger throughout those climbs, myself. I am not ready for K2, yet something in me desires some challenge, some risk like those climbers about which I read on CNN.

Breakfast

I love breakfast. It is my favorite meal in the world, because it sets off your day and its easy to cook. I cooked some breakfast today for some people in the house and it was so fun. Some people didn't want to eat but I made them anyway to make myself feel better about myself. (Its weird how we do that no?) 

Breakfast is so cool because it is simple. Everyone is too groggy to worry about what is going on so they'll eat anything, so anything tastes good. Also, it symbolizes a new day. When I am cooking breakfast I feel like there are not that many problems in the world because there is always a whole day ahead. I feel like any pains can be turned to victory stories because of the time ahead. 

Everyone should eat breakfast. Especially when they are in a small country town with a big family and random people too.

Carpenter

I will get up in a couple hours and go build houses. They call me a carpenter for now. I really like that. 

My family flew to the Dominican Republic today from Chicago. 

I worked out.

I saw the sun.

I smiled

I saw a movie about death which made me think a lot.

Wesley and my sister are in love...

Life continues on as I know it

Prince Albert, Saskatchewan

If you have never heard of this town then you haven't lived. Pretty much the final town before the never-ending nothingness that is northern Canada. Population 34,000. We drove for six hours across continuous prairies reading "war and peace." (no joke) 

We were attending the funeral of Wes' friend's mom, if that makes sense. He is a young kid and lost his mother, it was incredibly sad. Wes' friend Aaron was so fun to be with. We hung out before the funeral for a couple days and talked about life. He is a Christian and so devout. He loves Jesus more than anything and that hope really helped him through the pain of losing his mom. 

Aaron's family were incredible. They were living with their uncle, his wife and four kids while their mom struggled with cancer. His family has six also, so that was twelve people in one small house. The couple of days that Wes and I were there, they welcomed us as part of the family. Even though they had just lost their mother, they didn't know me, and they were so busy, they welcomed us as though we were family. Not even because they felt they had too, they genuinely wanted to get to know us and serve us the best they could. I could not believe it. 

I was thinking, how many people could actually tolerate living with their family in close proximity for long periods of time like that? And still welcome others with open, sincere arms? What a testimony of a faith that is put into action I thought. I am so grateful for Aaron and his family, and the lessons of compassion, tolerance, and values that they taught me by the way they live while I was there.

Congratulations Rachel and Wesley Proch!

Something Beautiful happened... And I saw it with my eyes... Rachel and Wesley got married to one another.

I was pretty stoked for them. It was perhaps the craziest month of my life. 50 gringos from all over the northern part of the continent coming to this little island in the Caribbean. I was exhausted after the wedding. 

I learned some things: Family and friends may be the most amazing existences in the universe, life must consist of more peace than we are used to in the USA, and I have two really hot sisters, only one of which is still single. (So I will have to work hard to keep her that way.)

The Neural Buddhists By DAVID BROOKS

• The Neural Buddhists
  
  
  By DAVID BROOKS
  Published: May 13, 2008
  In 1996, Tom Wolfe wrote a brilliant essay called “Sorry, but Your Soul Just Died,” in which he captured the militant materialism of some modern scientists.
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  David Brooks
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  To these self-confident researchers, the idea that the spirit might exist apart from the body is just ridiculous. Instead, everything arises from atoms. Genes shape temperament. Brain chemicals shape behavior. Assemblies of neurons create consciousness. Free will is an illusion. Human beings are “hard-wired” to do this or that. Religion is an accident.
  In this materialist view, people perceive God’s existence because their brains have evolved to confabulate belief systems. You put a magnetic helmet around their heads and they will begin to think they are having a spiritual epiphany. If they suffer from temporal lobe epilepsy, they will show signs of hyperreligiosity, an overexcitement of the brain tissue that leads sufferers to believe they are conversing with God.
  Wolfe understood the central assertion contained in this kind of thinking: Everything is material and “the soul is dead.” He anticipated the way the genetic and neuroscience revolutions would affect public debate. They would kick off another fundamental argument over whether God exists.
  Lo and behold, over the past decade, a new group of assertive atheists has done battle with defenders of faith. The two sides have argued about whether it is reasonable to conceive of a soul that survives the death of the body and about whether understanding the brain explains away or merely adds to our appreciation of the entity that created it.
  The atheism debate is a textbook example of how a scientific revolution can change public culture. Just as “The Origin of Species reshaped social thinking, just as Einstein’s theory of relativity affected art, so the revolution in neuroscience is having an effect on how people see the world.
  And yet my guess is that the atheism debate is going to be a sideshow. The cognitive revolution is not going to end up undermining faith in God, it’s going to end up challenging faith in the Bible.
  Over the past several years, the momentum has shifted away from hard-core materialism. The brain seems less like a cold machine. It does not operate like a computer. Instead, meaning, belief and consciousness seem to emerge mysteriously from idiosyncratic networks of neural firings. Those squishy things called emotions play a gigantic role in all forms of thinking. Love is vital to brain development.
  Researchers now spend a lot of time trying to understand universal moral intuitions. Genes are not merely selfish, it appears. Instead, people seem to have deep instincts for fairness, empathy and attachment.
  Scientists have more respect for elevated spiritual states. Andrew Newberg of the University of Pennsylvania has shown that transcendent experiences can actually be identified and measured in the brain (people experience a decrease in activity in the parietal lobe, which orients us in space). The mind seems to have the ability to transcend itself and merge with a larger presence that feels more real.
  This new wave of research will not seep into the public realm in the form of militant atheism. Instead it will lead to what you might call neural Buddhism.
  If you survey the literature (and I’d recommend books by Newberg, Daniel J. Siegel, Michael S. Gazzaniga, Jonathan Haidt, Antonio Damasio and Marc D. Hauser if you want to get up to speed), you can see that certain beliefs will spread into the wider discussion.
  First, the self is not a fixed entity but a dynamic process of relationships. Second, underneath the patina of different religions, people around the world have common moral intuitions. Third, people are equipped to experience the sacred, to have moments of elevated experience when they transcend boundaries and overflow with love. Fourth, God can best be conceived as the nature one experiences at those moments, the unknowable total of all there is.
  In their arguments with Christopher Hitchens and Richard Dawkins, the faithful have been defending the existence of God. That was the easy debate. The real challenge is going to come from people who feel the existence of the sacred, but who think that particular religions are just cultural artifacts built on top of universal human traits. It’s going to come from scientists whose beliefs overlap a bit with Buddhism.
  In unexpected ways, science and mysticism are joining hands and reinforcing each other. That’s bound to lead to new movements that emphasize self-transcendence but put little stock in divine law or revelation. Orthodox believers are going to have to defend particular doctrines and particular biblical teachings. They’re going to have to defend the idea of a personal God, and explain why specific theologies are true guides for behavior day to day. I’m not qualified to take sides, believe me. I’m just trying to anticipate which way the debate is headed. We’re in the middle of a scientific revolution. It’s going to have big cultural effects.

La Juventud

It seems everyone wants to "be young again." Adults talk about the "good old days" and how "when I was young." What a gift youth really is, the mistakes we make and the adventures that we seek. 

I am realizing that I am a youth. (Even though technically I'm more of an adult.) I live some really interesting adventures, everyday is a new challenge, adventure, or mistake. This special time of my life is something to be treasured and I should tell about it. I am not only writing about my life, but about the age or epoc in which I am trapped, my youth. This point through which all people cross as part of the human condition, a point that some ignore and some extend.

I went to the doctor yesterday in the big city about an hour away, Santiago. I picked up this military man that was hitchhiking to work. He told me how great the military parties are. When I got to the doctor I had to wait so long to see him. I'm sitting here with all these people waiting to get in and see the doctor. I waited on and off for about 5 hours, mostly just watching people. There were rich and poor in the hospital. One lady with her kids yelling at the nurses, two guys following these two girls flirting around the hospital, and doctors busily treating the patients.  I walked across the street to the mall which is mostly upper class to eat something. I love these times when I can just watch people, the young guys flirting with the KFC girl, the two rich business men having a meeting, and the two real plastic girls buying new jewelry. 

We will all die at some point, we all have the same appetites, and we all need one another. We should start embracing our youth more and more I believe.

This question has been plaguing my mind for the last couple of days and it almost seems impossible to answer unless it possess some kind of paradoxical truth. Something I am inclined to believe. The question is this:

How can one stand for truth and virtue while living a life full of mercy, grace, and forgiveness?

I saw that the famous pastor Bill Hybels calls himself a progressive now on the back of Jim Wallis' new book "the great awakening." No progressive stand for a much more relative approach to truth. Progressives are all about everyone being equal and that no one is better than anyone else. This really does away with absolute truth, which seems like a necessary belief for a pastor. I am generalizing to keep the blog short, but it seems that many modern day christians have found a way to answer my big question like Shane Claiborne, Jim Wallis, and now Bill Hybles, or have they?

This is the question going through my head and I will let everyone know when I find the answer, cuz then all the world's problems will pretty much be done away with.

-Joshua