Discerning Truth from Falsehood

A friend of mine introduced me to a series of videos called "How It's Actually Made" in which videos of actual production processes are shown with narration that seems to be a humorous blend of truth, exaggeration, and often obvious jokes. The purpose of these videos is clearly to be entertaining, but the fact that actual production processes are shown, along with the fact that there are some truths in the narration, make these videos slightly educational as well. The tricky part is trying to discern the actual truths from the not-always-obvious falsehoods, and I've found that it's best to err on the side of caution and to not fully trust anything the narrator says.

Unfortunately, a lot of life is like that. When people talk, even when they're trying to be honest, not everything they say is going to be true, and it can sometimes be hard to discern the truths from the falsehoods. Thankfully, the same rule of thumb applies. As long as we take everything we heard and read with a grain of salt, we can try to avoid the trap of accidentally accepting as true a belief that is actually false.

Even more disturbingly, this can even happen at church. No one is perfect. Sometimes, people misspeak, misinterpret sacred text, or come to plausible but false conclusions. Even the sacred texts may not be free from error, as translations from one language to another sometimes lose or alter the meanings of words and phrases due to the fact that an idea that can be expressed in one language may not be able to be expressed clearly in another, and there is always the possibility of misinterpretation.

This is why it is so vital to try too develop the Spirit of Discernment, so the Spirit can help us sort divine truths from accidental (or humorously intentional) falsehoods. But even here, we must be careful. It can be difficult to discern the voice of the Spirit, and it's possible to confuse the voice of the Spirit with our own thoughts or perhaps even the voices of other spirits. It's difficult, if not impossible, to know whether the voice of the Spirit is truly the voice of the Holy Spirit confirming the truth of something that is actually true, or whether the voice is actually the voice of a deceiver, "confirming" the "truth" of something that is actually false.

Thankfully, I take some comfort in knowing that God can make obvious that which is important to get right. God often speaks through a still, small voice, but He can speak louder when He has to. If it is truly, vitally necessary for us to know the truth of something, He can make it plain in ways that cannot be misheard or misunderstood.

It's frightening that it can be nearly impossible to discern truth from falsehood in certain situations, but I'm glad to know that, if God knew it was important for us to know the absolute truth, He can make it practically impossible not to.

Heaviness and Levity

In my discussions with other people, we often explore heavy topics. The world has many problems, and to even begin to become part of the solution to any of those problems, we need to understand them, and for people other than those conducting the actual research on those subjects, the main ways to understand such problems are to read about them and discuss them. Naturally, this gets heavy. Dwelling on such dark topics for long enough is bound to darken one's mood. Yet, it is possible to counteract this darkness with a touch of light-heartedness. We can use humor, fun, and levity to lighten an otherwise dour and heavy mood. While the world can be depressing, the world also offers many anti-depressants that can help us rise above the despair of hopelessness and maintain the motivation to actually work toward solving the world's problems, rather than merely lamenting the fact that they exist.

With as heavy as the world often is, and especially given how crushing it can be to bear the weight of the world, it can be helpful to use occasional moments of levity to lift our spirits and lighten the load.

The Right Amount of Challenge

Most games have difficulty settings. Usually, games can be set to Easy, Normal, or Hard, though other difficulty settings that are especially easy or especially hard aren't unheard of. In addition, games can be made harder or easier by how they're played. Players can use certain playstyles and abilities to make the game easier, or they can restrict themselves to more difficult playstyles or making themselves to meet additional requirements to make the game harder. Through the use of various settings, abilities, and playstyles, players can adjust the game's difficulty until it's just right for the experience they want, so it's challenging enough to be rewarding and easy enough to not be frustrating.

Life's not quite like that. Sure, we can make life easier for ourselves by using more effective playstyles and abilities, and we can make life harder for ourselves by limiting ourselves to less effective playstyles, making ourselves meet additional requirements, or giving ourselves handicaps, but we are unable to adjust the difficulty settings of life. That's God's job.

God gives people tougher challenges because He knows who's tough enough to handle them. He teaches us the most effective playstyle, so we can play at the top of our game. He asks us to meet additional requirements, but He offers us additional assistance when we do. By adjusting the levels of challenges and assistance He gives us, God can adjust the difficulty settings or each of our individual lives until they are just right for each of us. By adjusting the difficulty of our lives, He can give life just the right amount of challenge for everyone, enough to make us work and grow, but little enough that we can actually rise to the challenge and, with His help, win.

Sometimes, life is challenging. But if we follow the right playstyle and make good use of the abilities we've been given, we may find that, thanks to God's influence, our lives give us just the right amount of challenge.

No Solo Solutions

We can't solve all the world's problems. There are too many of them, and many of them are too complicated for us to find viable solutions. Instead, it makes far more sense to solve the few problems we can solve, work gradually or incrementally toward solutions to the problems we can't solve yet, and trust God and humanity to take care of the rest. We all have human limitations and weaknesses. We can't do everything by ourselves. Luckily, all God ever asks of us is that we do what we can. As long as we each do our part, and God does His, we can trust that everything will be made right in the end.

To Respect Those We Think Are Wrong

In Elders' Quorum today, we were talking about how to be peacemakers, and specifically how we can make peace with the people who disagree with us. To that end, I think that respect and empathy go a long way. Part of that includes trying to understand their perspective, just as we try to help them understand ours. Naturally, we want them to understand that we believe that life begins at conception and that all human lives are sacred, not to be discarded on a whim. But if we're going to have productive conversations with those on the other side of the debate, we also need to recognize that many people don't consider embryos full individuals until later in their development, and their hearts go out to the usually young women who are often not ready to be mothers and who would not be able to provide stable homes for their children. It's all well and good to try to calmly explain our position, but we should try to understand theirs as well.

That's why I cringed a bit when I heard the other elders talking about the importance of defending the truths we hold dear. Not everyone agrees on what the truth is. Other people also have truths that they want us to respect, including truths that we call falsehoods, just as they question the validity of our truths. If our aim is have peaceful relationships with the people we disagree with, it's probably best not to start (or even continue) arguments about who's right and who's wrong. Rather, I think the best we can do is to agree to disagree on certain topics and to try to maintain mutual respect, empathy, and love.

We won't always agree with each other about what is true or what should be allowed or forbidden. But those disagreements don't have to cause arguments. We can learn to live peacefully with people we think are misguided sinners, just as they can learn to live peacefully with us delusional religious folk. We don't have to be enemies just because we think each other are wrong. We can try to respect each other's beliefs and decisions, acknowledging that each of us has agency, including the agency to choose what we believe, what evidence we accept, and how we interpret the evidence with which we are presented. We don't have to try to tear down or criticize each other's beliefs. Rather, we can learn to accept our differences of opinion and behavior and to respect each other anyway.

"Abandon Challenge"

I'm currently playing a game called Ori and the Will of the Wisps, and I recently ran into a challenge with one of the bosses. At a certain point in the boss fight, the arena fills up with water, and since I can only use my healing move while standing on solid ground, this mean that I couldn't heal. Rather than fight this boss dozens of times, I decided to backtrack and explore other areas first, to gather the resources I needed in order to increase my strength and find alternative methods of healing. According to the game, I "Abandoned [the] Challenge," but that was something I needed to do in order to come back and face the challenge with a better chance of winning.

Sometimes, challenges will prove too much for us, and we will need to improve our strength, skill, and/or strategy before it is wise to try again. That's not quitting, and it's not "Abandon[ing the] Challenge," at least not permanently. It's just recognizing and taking the next necessary step toward overcoming the challenge.

May the Right Ideas Win

I've had a handful of conversations about this whole repealing Roe vs Wade thing, and one thing that struck me is that each side thinks it has the obvious moral high ground. Some people are horrified that people would interfere with women's medical and reproductive freedoms. Others are horrified that people would condone and support murdering babies. Naturally, most situations are incredibly complicated, but many people simplify the entire conversation into clear, black and white morality, with their side, whichever that is, being the one that's clearly morally right. Everyone thinks that they're doing the right thing, but they can't all be right.

This is a thorny issue, and many of my moral maxims are coming into conflict with each other, and with themselves. I believe in preserving freedom, but I also believe in preserving life. My favorite maxim is "Live and Let Live," but it's terribly unclear how to apply that maxim in this case. I want the right ideas to (have?) prevail(ed?), but it isn't clear to me which ideas those are, even though it seems perfectly (conflictingly) obvious to almost everyone else.

I think I need to wash my hands of this whole situation. It seems clear to me that some abortions are clearly morally justified, and others are clearly not. But it's hard to know where to draw the line, and I'm not even sure who should be the ones to draw that line. And, since each situation is different, it's really hard for me to judge the concept of abortions in general. I'm not simply Pro-Life or Pro-Choice. I think that both life and freedom are extremely important. But when those ideals come into conflict with each other, I either need to judge which one is more important to me, or I need to reserve judgement altogether.

So, I'm staying on the fence on this one. Lots of people have chosen sides, and they all believe they have chosen the right side. But, whomever's right, I hope the right ideas win.

Mistakes, Misfortune, and Miracles

Today, I was reminded of an experience I had years ago, which I now call "The Midnight Miracle." I've blogged about this experience as it happened, but to make a long story short, there was a series of unlikely and seemingly unfortunate events which ultimately worked out better than any of us could have hoped. Reflecting back on this experience, I realized that God knows what He's doing, and any event that takes place, even if it is painful or seems unfortunate, is all part of God's plan. God is good at turning mistakes into miracles and misfortune into good fortune. God is good at taking things that look bad now and making them look perfect later. When we finally look back at our lives and the world when we can see them from His perspective, we'll learn that things worked out exactly the way they needed to to ensure the best possible outcome.

Granted, that can be hard to imagine from our perspective. We see the badness in the world, and we fail to see how this is, or is leading to, the best possible world or how much worse the world would be if it were even slightly different. We fail to recognize how our mistakes and misfortunes are essential parts of God's miracles. So, we need to learn to trust God and His plans for us, even when they don't look so good from our perspectives.

Interconnectivity

Earlier today, I had a conversation with someone about how interconnectivity has helped human beings to thrive. People are interconnected. We rely on each other for help, and we help each other thrive. That has been true for all of human history and for every level of society, from individual couples and families to alliances between nations. Working together is what allowed our ancestors to accomplish all that they created, and sharing our knowledge, skills, and resources with each other is what will allow us to build on our past accomplishments to create an even brighter future.

Even on an individual level, interconnectivity matters. No one is ever truly alone. We will always have God, angels, spirits, our Savior, and/or the Holy Ghost pulling for us and helping us, and we even have the opportunity to help Them by doing Their work on Earth. We are interconnected with everyone around us, including those on both sides of the veil.

It's comforting to know that there are people around us, both past and present, both here and beyond, who can help us succeed in life, and it's wonderful to be able to help others as well. It feels good to be interconnected with the entire human family and to work together with them to accomplish great things.

No one individual could do what human civilization has accomplished, but we were all able to do it together because we are all interconnected.

Taking Care of Business

I just spent the last few hours taking care of business. This included pet care, cleaning, doing dishes, doing food prep, coordinating upcoming activities, and even a bit of plumbing. It was a lot of work, especially for this late at night. But I was happy to do it. It was satisfying and rewarding, and much of it went about as successfully as anyone could have hoped. I'm proud of what all I accomplished over the last few hours, and, given the chance, I'd do it again.

There's a certain kind of empowering satisfaction that comes from doing good work, and that satisfaction can sometimes be empowering enough to motivate additional work, sometimes leading to a chain of successful labor. It's rare for this to happen, and the work still requires physical energy, which requires rest to replenish, but if one times their efforts right, they can use the satisfaction of one job well done to motivate them to take on the next task. That's what happened to me tonight, and I'd love to learn how to do it again.

Pure of Heart

I recently watched a video about the story-telling trope of characters who are "Pure of Heart," and that got me thinking about whether people are or can be "pure" in real life.

Naturally, everyone starts pure. Newborns are completely innocent and morally unimpeachable. Yet, people can never stay pure. Life happens. People make decisions. Sooner or later, a bad choice will be made, and the person who made that decision will no longer be perfectly morally pure. Everybody sins. Nobody is perfect.

Yet, we can become perfect. Through the grace of God and the power of the Atonement, we can be cleansed of all our impurities and imperfections. We are not pure, but we can be purified. Our hearts are no longer pure, but they can be made pure again.

So, being pure of heart is a condition that we no longer have and cannot have now, but one that we can have in the future if we strive for it. No one reading this is pure of heart, but they used to be, and through diligent effort and the grace of God, they can be again.

Everyone's Father

I've got a strange relationship with Father's Day. I was never very close to my father, and I don't have plans to become a father myself, so Father's Day means almost nothing to me. However, I can still have a relationship with my Heavenly Father, and so can anyone else.

Many people have strained relationships with their fathers or even never knew their fathers, and Father's Day can be rough for them and other people like them, but we all have the opportunity to come to know God as our Heavenly Father and start to build a relationship with Him. We can learn more about Him, draw closer to Him, and learn to love Him and feel His love for us.

Regardless of our relationships with our earthly fathers, we can have a loving, familial relationship with our Heavenly Father. Even when not everyone has an earthly father in their lives, God Himself can be a Heavenly Father to everyone.

Happy to Help

I'm very bad at accepting help, let alone asking for it, but as manipulative as this may sound, maybe I should start seeing them as opportunities to help. I occasionally say that I'm "happy to help," and that's usually true. I often enjoy helping others, or at least, I enjoy the feeling of being helpful. But the thing is, I'm not the only person who feels that way. There are others, perhaps many others, who would gladly help the people they care about in exchange for nothing but the knowledge that they were able to help them. And perhaps some of those people would actually want to help me. And if people actually want to help, perhaps we ought to give them the opportunity.

I want to help people, and I suppose I shouldn't be too surprised that some people actually want to help me. We should all seek opportunities to help each other, and we should make such opportunities available to those who seek them. It can sometimes feel awkward to ask for help, but I'm happy to help, and I suppose I should open the door for others to help me, too, if they want to.

Some people are truthfully happy to help, and as hard as it is to accept help, sharing opportunities to help can be a way to share the happiness of helping.

Everyday Religion

I watched the first two episodes of Ms. Marvel, the new MCU show on Disney+, and one thing that struck me about the show was how big a role religion played in it. The main character, Kamala Khan, is Muslim, and she actively participates in her religion in the show. The show hasn't been preachy about it, displaying Kamala's Muslim religion in an overly positive or negative light (as far as I, an outsider, know; the opinion of Muslims may vary from mine), and Kamala's religion hasn't been a major plot point so far, to explain the necessity of its inclusion. It's just there as what she does while the rest of the story plays out in the foreground. Practicing her religion is part of Kamala's daily life, and as the show follows Kamala, growing about her daily life, we see her practicing her religion.

And frankly, I find that commendable. I think we should all aspire to be that way. Some people put their religion front and center as the main (and seemingly only) aspect of their personality, but those people tend to be more polarizing than normalizing. Others tuck their religion away in the background of their lives, hiding their candle under a bushel, as it were, and those people do little to remind others that God even exists, let alone that we should worship Him. Kamala Khan's middle road of regularly practicing her religion strikes an excellent balance between the two extremes of preachiness and privateness. Her openness allows us to see her religion as a normal, natural aspect of her life.

We, too, should practice our religion as openly as is natural. We should pray over our meals, just as we typically do, even in public, never minding that people might overhear. When people as us what we did last weekend, we should honestly answer how we spent part of our weekend at church. And, of course, we should keep our language and behavior clean, whether other people will notice the difference or not. We shouldn't shove our religions down other people's throats, but we shouldn't sweep it under the rug, either. We should practice our religion as part of our daily lives, if only so that other people can see that religion doesn't have to be either all-consuming or an afterthought, but can be a normal, everyday part of our normal, everyday lives.

Teach Us Tolerance and Love

One of our hymns, In Humility, Our Savior, includes the line "Fill our hearts with sweet forgiving; Teach us tolerance and love." That's a lesson that's always worth learning, and it's especially true this month. Both Christians and members of the LGBTQ+ community place a strong emphasis on love, but they use such different definitions of love and understand the importance of love so differently that it's difficult for them to understand each other, let alone have productive conversations. I believe that both groups need to temper their love with tolerance for each other. Both sides need to learn to tolerate the other group's views and existence, even if they don't agree with each other. Both groups need to learn to tolerate each other. If we don't, we will always be enemies.

I don't want to be enemies with anyone, but the good news is that God doesn't want me to. God commanded us to love everyone, but if we can't learn to love them, let us at least learn to tolerate them.

Trust in God's Plan

I sometimes wonder if I'm headed in the right direction and if I'm actually following the path that God has laid out for me, but I probably don't need to be worried about that. God has a plan for me, and His plan has taken all future events, including my choices, into account. He knew I would stumble. He knew I would make certain choices. He knew every move I would make. And He exerted His influence over me and the rest of the world in such a way as to ensure that this exact outcome would happen. I can recall a few moments when, if God had nudged me in one direction over another, my life would have gone very differently. Yet, God guided me to where I am now, and where I am now is where God led me. Now I just have to trust that God knows what He's doing. He led me down this path for a reason. God has a plan for my life, and His plan accounts for how my choices would affect my life. I can't mess up God's plan for me, because every mistake I would make had been anticipated by God and prepared for. Every misstep is a stepping stone toward where God is leading me. I trust God to have created a plan that was custom tailored to me. I trust that God's plan for me includes the "missteps" He knew I was going to make. I'm not perfect. God knows exactly how imperfect I am. And, considering all my imperfections, I trust that God made a plan for my life that was absolutely perfect for me.

Actions and Attitudes, Motives and Methods

I just watched a video about antiheroes, and the video essayist looked for ways to categorize heroes, villains, and anti-heroes on a pair of graphs, with heroic and non-heroic Actions and Attitudes and Motives and Methods. As I watched this video, I couldn't help wondering where I would fall on these graphs.

My actions aren't exactly heroic, but they are generally good. I usually try to do the right thing, when I bother to do anything at all. Yet, I know my attitude could use some work. I usually do good, but I also usually do so reluctantly and/or resentfully.

My motives and methods are a little harder to pin down. My motives are a mix of good and bad ones. I generally like helping people, and I enjoy making people happy, but I also derive some motivation from just doing what I'm supposed to do. I'm motivated as much by an obligation to do good as by a genuine desire to. My methods are functionally irrelevant. A fictional character may have options in their choice of method. For example, when a fantasy character has to get into a city despite guards trying to keep them out, the fantasy character may try to trick the guards, sneak past them, bribe them, intimidate them, persuade them, kill them, or merely knock them out. There are plenty of ways to get into a guarded city, but there aren't that many different, meaningfully-significant ways to clean the house or church building or help my sister with food.

So, my methods are irrelevant, my motives are a mix, my actions are generally pretty good, but my attitudes are generally pretty bad. Of those four, I think it makes the most sense to work on my attitude, to stop complaining and grumbling so much, and to focus on the better motivations for doing good. If I'm doing good only because I "should" or because I "have to," it's easy to have a bad attitude about that. But if I focus on better motivations and do a better job of maintaining a good attitude, I can establish myself more firmly in a heroic quadrant than an anti-heroic quadrant.

I want to be a good person. I want to do good things in good ways for good reasons, and I want to maintain a good attitude while I do it. I know that's asking a lot, but I'm already about halfway there. Now I just need to work on my Motives and Attitude, and I should be almost entirely Good.

Paying for Prophecy

In 1 Samuel 9, a Benjamite named Saul, who would later become king of Israel, had a pressing issue to bring to the local seer, Samuel, but he had a problem. He had been traveling light, so when he considered the possibility of consulting the seer for guidance, he wondered what he could bring the seer as a gift. This struck me as odd, not because of the synonymity of the terms "prophet" and "seer," but because it's not a typical cultural practice for us to pay prophets for their guidance. We get our prophecies for free at least every six months. Then again, that may just be a difference in payment model. Saul, apparently, was using a pay-per-prophecy program, whereas we're on the subscription program. Rather than taking cash to the bishop, prophet, or temple whenever we have a burning question, we pay our tithing regularly and get inspired guidance frequently.

Granted, there's nothing wrong with this. It's not priestcraft; it's pragmatic. Those who have devoted their lives to the service of God, including the regularly-provided service of relaying prophecies from God, still need to eat. They are still mortal, and so long as they are mortal, they need to make a living somehow, and, by divine design, their vocation and calling are one and the same. Sure, I would love to be able to buy more specific guidance from time to time, but the system we have works well enough, especially when we account for the Holy Ghost helping to provide guidance as well.

At first, it seemed weird to read about Saul paying for a prophecy, but maybe it's not so weird after all. I mean, I'd do it if I could, and in a sense, we kind of already do.

Don't Trust Others With Power

This evening, in our family scripture study, we read a reminder of why people shouldn't be trusted with too much power. In 1 Samuel 8, as elsewhere in scripture, the people want to have a king, but are warned against the harm a king can cause. Kings can tax and confiscate property, appoint taskmasters over the people, force people into difficult situations, and severely punish those who disobey. Kings are bad news.

But, naturally, it's not just kings. No one should be trusted with too much power over other people. Power corrupts, and those who have more power than accountability are prone to abuse that power. Thus, we shouldn't trust anyone with great power unless we also have a plan for how to hold them accountable if they abuse it.

As a general rule, I don't trust other people, especially not with power over other people. Instead, I believe strongly in individual moral agency and, when necessary, the power of persuasion. Instead of exercising power over other people, I would rather try to persuade them to do as I ask, and I would much rather be persuaded to cooperate than be forced to by those who want to exercise power over me. If you have a good reason to want me to do something, explain your reasoning to me. If you can't, then maybe your reasons aren't as good as you think.

Power in the wrong hands can be dangerous, and it can be hard to know whose hands are trustworthy, so, as a general rule, I don't trust anyone's. I don't trust other people to have or exercise power over me, and, as many scriptural examples illustrate, I don't think God would want me to.

Should I Have Killed the Cockroaches?

So, remember when spent half the night wondering about the morality of squashing a bee that had become debilitated? Since then, I have had two experiences with killing insects that had the appearance of cockroaches. The first, I caught at home, and I immediately thought of flushing it down the toilet, but I was persuaded to keep the insect contained (in a foodless, waterless, nearly air-tight container) so its body and identity could be more thoroughly examined and identified later. The second insect, I spotted away from home while vacuuming, and, having no other way to quickly contain the creature, I vacuumed it up. In both cases, I caused the death of an insect that was mostly minding its own business, and I didn't feel even remotely bad about either of them, mostly because I believed their were cockroaches.

What bothers me about this isn't that I'm so callous about killing roach-like insects, but that I'm okay with killing roach-like insects more willingly than insects like flies or bees. There's no moral consistency there. Why would I give cockroaches (or insects with the appearance of cockroaches) less moral consideration than flies or bees? Why would I give flies and bees more moral consideration than cockroaches? It's inconsistent and illogical. Unless there's a moral difference between bees and cockroaches, I should treat them similarly.

Granted, there could be moral differences that make bees more worth sparing than cockroaches. Bees assist in the pollination of plants and the production of honey. Bees bring more joy into the world than cockroaches do. If human happiness is the main moral factor to consider, and bees bring more happiness than cockroaches do, then cockroaches deserve less moral consideration. Then again, I don't know enough about cockroaches to confidently identify them, let alone list their positive and negative qualities. I shouldn't be so quick to judge.

However, I'm not sure it matters much. Neither bees nor cockroaches are human, so neither of them deserve anywhere near as much moral consideration as a human. The deaths of these insects are probably entirely inconsequential in the grant scheme of things. It's probably just fine that I killed the bee the other day, and it's probably just as fine that I killed these probably-cockroaches more recently. I don't know if I "should have" killed the cockroaches, but I'm sure it's okay that I did.

Rough Start, Okay Finish

This morning was a little rough. Plans had to change, some tasks became harder than I expected, and I had a hard time finding the energy to keep going with my plans for the rest of the day. Thankfully, it ultimately went okay. I got the help I needed, took a breather when I had to, and I kept going forward with my chores and errands, ultimately succeeding in completing most of it. Today didn't go as well as I had hoped, but it went well enough, and I'm glad it went that well at least. Today could have been worse, especially given how roughly it started. I'm glad that, thanks to some help and diligence, the rest of the day was able to go okay.

Nature is Beautiful

Nature is beautiful. That can sometimes be hard to remember, especially when the weather gets crumby, but there are places of great beauty in the world, and there are elements of beauty in nearly every environment.

Personally, I love mountains. Though I don't get to see them in person very often, I love to look at pictures of them, and I've joined a few groups on Facebook dedicated to sharing the kinds of landscape photographs I like to see. And in my own area of the world, we have trees, each of which has a unique beauty, in addition to their shadow-casting, temperature-regulating, and oxygen-producing benefits.

I love mountains, and I love trees. Granted, I'm not a huge fan of overly hot and sunny days, but I'll accept nature as it is an appreciate its beauty, despite its downsides. We're lucky to live in such a beautiful world. I hope that we all take the time to appreciate and preserve its natural beauty.

Should the Party Have Killed Arrigal?

Arrigal is an assassin and a theif. He attacked multiple party members, nearly killed them, and took a lot of their stuff, including much of the treasure they had earned over multiple quests and adventures. Granted, Arrigal had his reasons for doing so. He had stolen from the party in order to steal back stuff that he thought they had stolen, and he attacked them only to prevent them from preventing him from stealing back what had been stolen. And, yeah, he nearly killed them, and he could have killed them, but he deliberately didn't kill them, and he made sure to do no lasting damage. Frankly, the party got off easy. Had he wanted to TPK the party, he totally could have. Yet, he let them live long enough to learn he had stolen their stuff, and they tracked him down, cornered him, and had to figure out what to do with him.

It's worth noting that, by the time they grabbed him, he had already returned the stuff he had taken from them. As it turns out, his suspicions of them were only part correct. Yes, they had stolen from him and his group, but that was the only major act of stealing they had done. Once he learned this, he returned their treasure to them and attempted to slip away with his life. And when he failed and was captured, he cooperated with their interrogation to the best of his abilities. See, most of the party knew nothing about the theft that had caused Arrigal to attack the party; they only knew that he had attacked them, and they were understandably reluctant to let that slide. But after getting their stuff back and learning that he had only stolen from them because he thought they had stolen from him and others, they let him go.

Morally speaking, this was the right thing to do, but strategically speaking, I'm not sure this was a wise choice. Arrigal still has a bone to pick with the party, since the same theif who caused this whole problem in the first place also picked Arrigal's pockets while they had him captured. The party is too dangerous to risk crossing again, and it'd be wise for him to cut his losses and get out while he can, but he'd like his stuff back, and I would loathe to reward the immoral actions of a selfish theif. Perhaps Arrigal should steal his stuff back. And if anyone gets hurt trying to stop him, then that'll be a shame.

But I'm probably not going to do that. Arrigal is probably just going to leave the campaign setting and never interract with the story again, so he'll be safe from the party's misguided retribution. Or maybe I'll let him fully turn toward villainy, over-react, and commit overkill, the way only an assassin can. It's possible that I'll have Arrigal become a recurring, fatal threat to the party. Perhaps they should have killed him when they had the chance, before he kills them.

But he won't. As before, the knowledge of the potential to get petty revenge is probably enough for me. I don't actually need to kill player characters or actually, permanently steal (stolen goods) from them in order to enjoy this game. For me, it's good enough to know that Arrigal survived and can continue his story elsewhere, never intersecting with the party's story again.

So, no, the party should not have killed Arrigal, and I'm very glad they didn't.

Should I Have Killed the Bee?

Just now, during our scripture reading, I heard some buzzing. Apparently, a fly had gotten itself stuck in the bowl encasing one of our ceiling lights, and it could not get back out. Now, part of me was tempted to leave it there and let it starve to death. I have no great love for flies. They're an annoyance, and as far as human happiness is concerned, the world is probably better off without a particular fly than with it. Yet, it is good to practice compassion and to save lives when one can, so I decided to try to save the fly. Upon doing so, I learned too things: One, the "fly" was actually some kind of bee, and Two, the time spent in the dusty ceiling light bowl had rendered the bee unable to fly. For context, I dislike bees and wasps, having had a few negative experiences with them as a child. Yet, I was already in the process of trying to save the creature, so I did what I could to free it from the bowl, whereupon it fell to the floor. I had hoped that it would recover, that I would then catch it in a cup and take it outside. Yet, the bee seemed completely unable to function. Perhaps, if I had gotten it outside, and any allies of its came to its rescue, it might have survived, but seeing the flightless bee, I determined that it would probably never recover, and I squished it. The rescue mission became a mercy killing, and I'm not sure how to feel about that.

For starters, I must acknowledge that, as moral quandries go, this one had extremely low stakes. The life of an individual fly or bee is trivial, hardly worth trying to save or bothering to mourn. Short of maliciously torturing the helpless bee, I'm not sure there's anything I could have done in this situation that would have had a measureable effect on my soul, positively or negatively.

Secondly, I must acknowledge my biases. I believe that animals deserve much less moral consideration than humans, and I admit that I have a special disliking of bees. I hope that my anti-bee bias didn't factor much into my decision, but I'll admit that my human-centric speciesism did. I would be far more reluctant to give a human a mercy killing than I was to squish that bee, and I must admit that I may have given up on its life too easily.

I suppose I could award myself a few brownie points for even having this introspective reflection. After all, most people wouldn't give a second thought to the life or death of a fly or bee. But I'm also mostly examining this situation so I can blog about it, so even this introspection is selfish.

Had I taken the bee outside instead of squishing it, I'm not sure what would have happened. Maybe it could have been saved and could have lived a good life, for the rest of however bees live. Or maybe it wouldn't have been saved, and it would have died a slow and uncomfortable death. In terms of reducing suffering, perhaps it was a good thing to kill the bee. Yet, if the prevention of suffering is the ultimate good, then we should end all life on the planet, so no living thing could ever suffer again. Surely, that isn't the ultimate moral choice. There is also the potential for happiness and can outweigh the pain of suffering. Could the bee have been happy, had it managed to live?

I kind of doubt it. Even if the bee had lived, its life would have been negatively affected by this experience, possibly in permanently debilitating ways. Then again, who's to say whether its last few days or moments couldn't have been happy, despite the struggle it would have faced, had I allowed it to live?

Upon further reflection, I think I shouldn't have killed the bee. I have to believe that the potential for happiness was worth the likelihood of suffering, just as it is with us. People suffer. Yet, their lives are worth preserving, because there is almost always the possibility of enjoying some happiness during their mortal lives. Now, if the suffering is severe, there may be an argument for prematurely ending it, but that argument must contend with the possibility of happiness ahead. There was a chance, however slim, that that bee could have lived and been happy, and I should have taken that chance.

Instead, I killed the bee. Ultimately, that's not a huge loss. Thousands of bees are born and die each day. But this bee taught me a bit more about how precious life is, even when it's difficult. I should have tried harder to save its life and been less quick to prematurely end it.

Delayed Gratification

I had a plan for today. I'd send a few work-related emails, figure out how I was voting, and then play Mario Kart. I felt that it was important to make the Mario Kart wait until after I was ready to vote, so that would motivate me to get that work done quickly today. That's called Delayed Gratification.

Unfortunately, it didn't quite work out that way. Even without the Mario Kart, I still procrastinated, and I didn't finish making my voting decisions until well into the evening. So, I haven't played Mario Kart today. I might squeeze in a race or two after blogging, but if I don't, I'll have delayed my gratification until some time tomorrow.

Not that there's anything wrong with that. Sure, it would have been nice to get my voting done earlier and have more time to relax afterward, but I still got my work done on time, and I'm relatively satisfied with how I spent my day. And who knows? Maybe tomorrow will go better, especially if I've managed to learn anything from this semi-failed experience with delayed gratification.

Previously and Partially Blogworthy Thoughts

I can't blog tonight. It's not that I don't have any blogworthy thoughts. In fact, I almost have the opposite problem. For the past few days, I've been thinking a lot about ideas I've already blogged about and ideas that I maybe should blog about once the ideas are more fully formed. I've been focusing so much on previously and potentially blogworthy thoughts that I haven't landed on a complete thought that I can still blog about. I suppose I could blog about something that's a bit of both, rehshing the idea of God's omnipotence and speculating about what it might mean for me, personally, but I don't want to retread old ground, at least not until I've figured out something new and complete to say about it.

So, yeah. I've been thinking a lot about partially blogworthy topics and topics I've already covered in previous blog posts, so I don't really have anything new to say at the moment. I guess I'm a slow learner. I'm still working on things that I feel like I should have figured out by now. But who knows? Maybe I'll figure something out before it's too late to act on it.

Slow Learners

In addition to being vengeful, it would seem that Samson was also a slow learner. To get back at Samson for all that he had done to them, the Philistines convinced Samson's girlfriend, Delilah, to try to trick Samson into giving away the secret of his strength and how he could be weakened and captured. Each time she asked, Samson gave her a different answer. Each time she was given an answer, she tried it, and it didn't work. Now, one would think that, after the first time or two, Samson would catch on to the fact that Delilah was trying to betray him. Yet, he never learned. Eventually, after multiple failed attempts to weaken him, Samson gave up the real secret, and Delilah predictably used the trick against him.

Samson was, indeed, a slow learner, but perhaps I shouldn't be too hard on him. After all, if he's a slow learner, he's not the only one. How often do we fall into the same pitfalls and fall victim to the same shortcomings? How often do we continue to make the same mistakes? Samson wasn't the first person to trust someone who had proven to be untrustworthy, and he wasn't the last. We, too, repeatedly make mistakes, whether through weakness or poor memory or lack of planning or anything else. Wisdom comes slowly. As we try to make do with our currently imperfect wisdom, we will, almost inevitably, make some of the same mistakes more than once.

Samson was a slow learner, but so are we. We shouldn't be too hard on Samson (at least not for this), and we shouldn't be too hard on ourselves, either. We are all slow learners. What's important is that we still eventually learn.

Vengeance

Vengeance is a bad idea. Throughout Judges chapter 16, Samson and the Philistines seek vengeance against each other in increasingly destructive ways, each making the excuse that they're only doing to the others what each other had done to them. This is a horrific perversion of the Golden Rule. They were doing onto each other what the had done unto each other, when instead they should have doneunto each other what they would have had each other do unto them. They were each thinking of the past (admittedly, the recent past), when they should have been thinking about the future. Vengeance begets further vengeance. If either side had forgiven each other instead, the cycle of vengeance would have stopped, and thousands of lives would have been spared. Granted, it's hard to forgive those who have wronged us, and both Samson and the Philistines felt badly wronged by each other. It's only natural that they all wanted revenge. But that desire for vengeance only led to greater violence, more destruction, and further loss. Either side could have cut their losses by deciding to forgive the other instead of continuing the cycle of seeking revenge.

It's tragic that neither Samson nor the Philistines could let go of their desire for revenge, and the both suffered for it. I hope that we will be wiser than they were and that we will be strong enough to forgive rather than seeking revenge.

Friendly Competition

I like team games. I like cooperative games where the players can work together and win together. That's part of why I like D&D. Nobody "loses" a game of D&D. It's not Player vs Player, or even Players vs DM (or vice versa). Everyone is working together to tell a fun, interesting story and have a good time.

And then there's Mario Kart.

Today, I played Mario Kart with some of my siblings and my best friend, and some of us really got into it. We challenged each other, attacked each other (usng only in-game items, of course), and genuinely tried to defeat each other. And after each race was over, we spent maybe half a minute feeling proud or upset, and then we congratulated each other on a close race or a strong victory, each acknowledging the role luck played in the outcome of each race. Sure, we each tried to defeat each other, but we always raced fairly and with friendship and respect.

Thanks to how well tonight went, I'm starting to rethink my position on friendly rivalries. I didn't use to think that was an actual thing. I didn't realize how rivals could also be friends, especially considering how much emotion each person invests into trying to win. Yet, we had some friendly rivalries today, and win or lose, everyone seemed to have a good time. We're planning on having some rematches when our schedules permit, and I'm looking forward to beating and being beaten by my friend and siblings again. Today, I experienced friendly competition, and I'm looking forward to doing it again.

The Complex Morality of Shopping Carts

Morality can be complicated. I recently had a conversation about shopping carts and how they form a rest of moral character, of "goodness." The idea is that returning the shopping cart is generally considered the right thing to do, yet, there is no law against abandoning the shopping cart in the store parking lot. So, the test is found in whether a person will willingly return a shopping cart, even though there'd be no personal consequences for not doing so. Will the person do the right thing, even without the force of law compelling them to do so?

Yet, I'm not sure I fully agree with the conclusions being drawn. Returning the shopping cart is a good, altruistic act, but it is also a "lawful" act, in that the act is expected by society, even if not legally required. People may return the shopping cart, not because it's the right thing to do, but because they want to live up to others' expectations or perhaps even because they feel compelled to yeild to social pressure. It's possible for people to return shopping carts for purely Lawful reasons, rather than Good ones.

In fact, returning a shopping cart can even be done for Chaotic and Evil reasons. If someone asks "Hey, are you done with that shopping cart," and you are, but you return the cart to the storage area instead of giving the cart to the person who asked for it, that's at least Lawful Neutral, if not Chaotic Evil. If a child is playing in the cart collection area, and returning the cart now would hurt the child, doing so would almost certainly be an Evil act, and if one is told by an authority figure to just abandon the cart and get in the car because we're already late for something, and one painstakingly returns the shopping cart to the receptical anyway, then returning the cart could even be a Chaotic act, motivated by defiance of the authority figure.

That's why I'm not sure if any given act is inherently good or bad. It seems to me that the goodness or badness of a act is based more on the actor's attitude and motivation, and since people tend to have complex feelings and motivations, morality can be complex as well. I returned a shopping cart recently, before this conversation, but I'm not entirely sure why I did it, so I'm not sure whether it counts as a "Good" act. Returning the shopping cart now would be even more uncertain, as my action may now be motivated by a self-serving desire to perceive myself as being a good person.

Naturally, I'm strongly overthinking this. Some acts are generally Good, and "generally Good" is generally good enough. Besides, the kinds of people who worry about whether they're Good or not are typically good enough that they don't actually need to worry. Still, for those of us who are concerned about getting morality right, whether an act or person is moral or not can be a complex, convoluted, and situationally changing question.