Zachary Ricks's Blog, page 3

Field Shift

If you've been following me for any length of time, if you've ever gotten an e-mail from me, etc., you know I'm a huge fan of C.S. Lewis, and of a particular quote that changed my life.

The quote is: “Good philosophy must exist, if for no other reason, because bad philosophy needs to be answered.” And every stupid internet fight, every bad comment flame I've ever gotten into has been in part due to that quote and what I considered to be a duty to respond to what I saw as bad philosophy.

There are at least two problems with this.

It means that I am always responding. I'm always on defense. I'm never the instigator, always reacting, on my heels, never on offense. If all you play is defense, you never score points.
It's a generally negative view of the world. If you spend all your time responding to bad philosophy, incorrect assumptions, groundless assertions, etc., that's where your focus goes. And soon everything is bad philosophy. And everything sucks.

So, I'm retiring from the “I must respond to that statement” club.

But I'm not retiring from answering bad philosophy. I'm redefining how I answer bad philosophy. Because there is a lot of it all around us. And it does require an answer.

But that answer doesn't have to be in comments, it doesn't have to be in response.

My answer can take the form of action. And it can take the form of art. It can and does take form of the way I treat other people in real life as well as in so-called “social” media. And it can take the form of offense.

Not offense in the sense of getting in someone's face and shouting at them, though I'm sure that there are people out there who can, do, and will take offense at what I consider to be good philosophy. But offense in the sense of actively being for something.

So, here's what I am for right now that bears mentioning.

I am for the individual making his or her own decisions.
I am for hard work. I am particularly, recently for Mike Rowe's SWEAT pledge.
I am for the right to practice my religion according to the dictates of my own conscience and allowing everyone else the same privilege – worship a sack of beans for all I care. I won't force you to change how or what you worship and so long as you don't try to force me to change how or what I worship, we'll get along fine here. I, myself, am a member of the Church of Latter-day Saints, sometimes referred to as LDS or Mormons.
I am pro-human being in general. And I am specifically pro-men. That does not preclude me from being also pro-women. This is not a zero sum game where the gains of one must lead to the loss of the other and vice versa. Also note that I'm not “pro-MALE”, I am “pro-MEN” There is a difference.
I am for judging people on the basis of their own words and actions, and not on what everyone else says about them.
I am for good story. It is difficult to express HOW much I am for good story told well. This goes in conjunction with #4. If a book is talking about how much human beings in general suck, or how much a specific subset of human beings (perhaps defined by gender, perhaps defined by political belief) suck, then your book will be burned abandoned, removed from my e-reader, etc. An aside jibe is fine. More than that and I start filtering the author's name out of my reading.
I am for the traditional family. Mom, Dad, Kids. Too many families are missing a critical component of that. Yes, this is an ideal situation, and not all families are built that way. Understood. Accepted. That doesn't change that this is the ideal situation, and all things being equal, should be what is striven for.
I am for paying one's bills and living within one's means whether we're talking about individuals or governments. Borrowing money today that must be paid back later is sometimes necessary for specific things, but it's a plan doomed to failure if you're doing it to support a certain lifestyle.

That's a decent enough summary to begin with.

Going Straight

Thinking this morning about a bunch of things, but in particular, I find myself going back to my thoughts about farming, fields and rows.

I've talked about this before, but listening to the radio a few weeks ago, I heard one of my personal heroes talking about how he'd started farming up in the intermountain west. He was having a hard time keeping his rows straight. He'd think they were okay, but then he'd look back and see that his rows were all janky and crooked.

So I took the opportunity and I called him up, because I grew up on the farm, and had a great dad who taught me how to farm straight rows. You look down at the end of the field, pick the point where the row is supposed to end. And you just keep your eyes on that point and drive to it, and your rows are straight. Yes, look back every now and then, to make sure the thing you're dragging behind the tractor is still there, but mostly you have to keep your attention – your focus – on the end of the field.

We had a short conversation, and at the end of it, I told him “Don't make the mistake of thinking that this is just about farming. It's not. It's about everything.” And that was the end of the conversation.

I keep thinking about that conversation, and the application of that principle in my own life. Pondering it in my heart, I think is how it's put. Why is it that in life, we (well, I, anyway,) spend so much time freaking out about what we're supposed to be doing? Or feeling that we're lost? Adrift? At sea?

I think it's because I'm scared. I look at what it is that I think I'm supposed to be doing, and it really scares me. What if I fail? What if I'm no good? What if I'm wrong about this? These are the thoughts that are constantly running around in my head. And closely related are You're a screwup. You've proven to be unreliable, untrustworthy… unworthy. And if that's true, then of course, failure is inevitable, and then I might as well get packed with salt and eaten.

Putting it down here like this, you'd think I'd be laughing, and I am a little, because it's ridiculous. But it sounds so much more true in my head.

Eyes on the end of the field. See where the row is supposed to end. No, really see where the row is supposed to end. Then go there. It's really that simple. Not that easy. It's deceptively simple, but it's really not easy. Life isn't a turn around the field on a tractor. For one thing, there's fewer distractions on a tractor. Not as much turbulence. Not as many impediments that you can't drive over, plow under, and be done with. (Not that there isn't stuff that will do that in a field – got to pay attention. I remember one time we found a buried spool of barbed wire in the backyard, because I stepped on a barb with bare feet. Tetanus shot. Horrible story…) Anyway, you get the point. The principle is easy to see and easy to explain using the example of a tractor and a field.

It's much more difficult to apply when you're dealing with people, expectations, work, school, significant others, parents, siblings, children, other family members… Things jump out at you in life. You get blindsided by sickness (physical, psychological, emotional), death of loved ones, loss of job / income, mean people, politics, etc.

Heck, sometimes it's hard just to see the end of the field. But you have to keep your attention there.

And you have to keep moving. That's the other thing. You can't just sit there and happily contemplate the end of the field. You've got to get to work.

So, there's a few things that I'm looking at as being next steps.

Learn what you have to learn. If your “end of the field” involves knowing something that you don't know today, acquiring skills you don't have today, that kind of thing, then address that need. Start learning. Apply yourself to learning. Be diligent. Keep learning. Refresh your understanding of the fundamentals occasionally. And when you understand fundamentals, apply them. Use them in your everyday life.
Start moving. Don't let a lack of knowledge stop you from doing something to get closer to the end of the field. You don't need to know everything about writing to write. You don't need to know everything about kinesthesiology to lift weights. Your knowledge will never be perfect. At least, not here on Earth it won't, so lack of knowledge is no excuse for not acting – for not doing that which you do understand, and can do. Today. And as you learn and start, you'll learn more and get better naturally.
Keep at it. Be diligent. Once you're moving, keep moving. Oh, take a rest if you have to. Even farmers stop the tractor occasionally to fuel up, to check their equipment, take a leak, etc. But then, they get back up in the tractor and keep on until the field is done. Might be a late night, but they keep at it. And so should you do.
Be patient. Fields take a while to plow. And you're going to take a while to get to the end of your field. You don't understand everything right away? So what? If you've started, and you keep at it, you'll get there eventually.
If there's a mistake that needs to be addressed, it's not the end of the world. One time, I plowed under an irrigation spigot. My dad had told me to watch out for them. I went down to the end of the field, turned, came back, turned again and… suddenly there was water spouting up in my rear view mirror. I stopped the tractor, and was freaking out – no idea what to do. My dad came strolling up, stared at that, stared at me, then shook his head and went to turn off the water and get the welder out. It was fixed pretty quickly, and I went back to work and finished the field. See that? The problem got fixed, and I went back to the field. In point of fact, Dad was the one that actually welded everything back together, and I wish sometimes that he'd made me do it. I still don't know how to weld. But the field got plowed, and my dad didn't kill me. It was a mistake. But it didn't stop me from plowing the field.

And if you picked the wrong spot… fields can always be replowed. Crops can be replanted. Life goes on. You can stop, reassess, and go back and fix it. That may suck, may be some wasted time and gas and whatnot… may even be really bad if the crop was wrong. But life goes on. You can get back up. You can try again.

Learn. Get moving. Keep at it. Patience. Fix what has to be fixed, then get back to it.

And always, always, make sure that your attention is at the end of the field. Heck, I’ve read someplace that if your eye is where it’s supposed to be, and you just keep moving, you can even walk on water.

GSG NaNo Gaiden

For the last three years, I’ve done a daily podcast during the month of November to encourage people to get their writing done. It was a lot of fun, but also took a lot of time. And over the last year, I’ve realized a couple of things.

1. You don’t need my advice.

Seriously. Write your story the way you want to. NaNo isn’t about getting the story right, it’s about getting the story on paper. Or on screen or whatever. You want advice regarding that? Here it is.

BICHOK. Butt In Chair. Hands On Keyboard. 2000 words a day, six days a week. Done. That’s how I’ve done the last five years, and have “won” NaNo five years in a row. I’ve never not hit 50k in November. Write or Die has figured heavily in my success, and using it, I can usually get 1000+ words in an hour. If you’ll sit down and just write, this isn’t that hard to do.

2. You really don’t need my advice.

Anything I say about a story is potentially going to get in the way of your writing. I have a way of writing that works for me. I like writing about people encountering obstacles and overcoming those obstacles. When I write, it’s primarily science fiction or fantasy if it’s fiction, and if it’s something else – like a blog post here, it’s normally a way of me venting a bit of my spleen out into the general internet. I’m not an expert on writing. I’m certainly not an expert on writing well. I beg, borrow and steal most all of the advice I’ve given. That which I have not grabbed from others, I have made up out of whole cloth. I’m a fiction writer. I do stuff like that. 

3. Other people are happy to give you advice.

If you’re participating in NaNoWriMo this year, there are a lot of places for you to get good advice. Try the NaNo forums, for example. Or other blogs or podcasts. Plenty of places. Lots of advice. Which may or may not be good advice. I’m not going to make any guarantees of the quality of any advice you may find out there, especially not mine.

4. Focus.

This year, I just want to make the best story I can. I’ll be shooting for, and will almost certainly hit 50,000 words. (Which will be an extra super challenge now that I’ve just totally jinxed myself. Watch me get hit by a bus on Nov 2nd.) Quantity != quality. But that quantity is a necessary precursor to quality.

All of which is a roundabout way of saying that this year, 2013, there will be no GSG NaNo Gaiden Daily Podcast. Last year’s podcast is still out there, and you can listen to that if you need to, but the truth is you don’t need to.

And that’s pretty much it. Good luck to all of us who are participating this year, and may your plot twists be plentiful, artfully yet not obviously foreshadowed, and may your characters suffer appropriately.

Competition

First, go read this thing from Kevin J. Anderson.

Seriously. It’s not that long, and it raises some interesting points.

Okay. Got it? Ebooks. Backlists from people who have been writing professionally for years and have an established fan base are coming.

Which raises a question for me. I’ve always known, sort of back in the back of my head, that my books didn’t have to compete with just people who were writing today – with just the podcast fiction people or the self-pub people. My writing has to compete with Dickens. With Shakespeare. With Robert E. Howard’s Conan stories, and Burroughs’ Mars novels.

But I suppose it didn’t occur to me that I would be in competition with KJA’s backlog. Or David Farland’s. Or who knows who else’s? Which is pretty silly, when you think about it. But…

You can’t worry about it. In a sense, yes, you’re competing against EVERY OTHER WRITER WHO EVER LIVED. This is always going to be true. Can’t let it stop you from writing, though.

It does make me think, though. What can I bring to the table that other people don’t? Is there something unique that I can put INTO my books to appeal to readers? Something they aren’t getting from someplace else?

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Time and Talents

I picked up the e-book copy of Elder David A. Bednar’s book “Increase in Learning”, and started into it. It’s got me thinking a lot about learning (connecting a little with the lists and reading thing I talked about yesterday), and I want to explore that for a moment.

WARNING: This post will feature some pretty on-point discussion of LDS scripture and doctrine. If that’s not your bag, come back tomorrow. I may be back to discussing anime, or writing, or something else.

Still here? Okay.

I’ve always used the King James Version, so that’s the language I’ll be using any time I mention a Bible verse. But as a standard practice, if I’m mentioning something in the Book of Mormon or Doctrine and Covenants, I’ll put a link up to the text at scriptures.lds.org. And of course, this is just my view, and not to be taken as official LDS doctrine.

Let’s start with the parable of the talents, found in Matthew 25. We all pretty much know the story – a man has three servants. Before leaving on a long journey, he gives each of them talents – a measurement of weight – of silver. To one, he gives five talents, to the next, he gives two, and to the last one he gives one talent. And the KJV seems to say that he is giving these to them based on their individual capacities – “to every man according to his several ability…” And then the man leaves on his journey.

Two of the servants – the one with five talents, and the one with two talents, “went and traded with the same”. The one with a single talent “went and digged in the earth, and hid his lord’s money”.  Time passes.

The lord returns, and demands an accounting from his servants. The two who had gone and traded with the talents had doubled their money, and their master was pleased. The third, who had buried the talent, returned his lord’s money, and the lord cast him out as an unprofitable servant.

I’ve always thought of this as being a pretty straightforward message that people should develop their talents. Today, I’m modifying that slightly. It’s not enough to develop a talent. It has to be put to productive use. I can sit around the house all the time practicing piano, and get really good at it. But if I never play for anyone else, have I put it to productive use? Maybe there’s some virtue to developing a certain discipline or appreciation for music, but is it doing anyone else any good?

Let’s fold in another, earlier statement made by Christ – Matthew 5:14-16 – where Christ tells his disciples that they are the light of the world, and talks about candlesticks and bushels. Everyone has some kind of talent. Everyone has at least the capacity for some kind of light. Therefore, each and every one of us, individually, has a responsibility to shine out. To put ourselves and our abilities to productive use, and to do so for the benefit of other people.

Now, here’s an interesting question. What if I’m sharing a talent, putting it to productive use, for money? What if, say, I’m writing as well as I can and getting paid filthy, filthy lucre for it? NOW what?

Well, we go back to the original parable. The profitable servants were trading in the marketplace. That’s where the exchanges took place. Those who participated in the marketplace with their talents were rewarded for it by the master. Doesn’t sound like condemnation, does it? In fact, it was the guy who refused to participate in the marketplace that was cast out as unprofitable.

Yes, it’s a parable. I may be reading too much into it. But… I’m kind of turning this over and over in my head, and trying to find a hole in the reasoning.

Oh, yes. The motivation, of course. The love of money is the root of all evil, et cetera. But human beings are complex things. We can do things for more than one reason. One reason may be to support a family, which in today’s world means earning a living by the sweat of our brow – and that can be skull-sweat in the form of writing or coding or law or a number of things. One reason may be for the appreciation and enjoyment of seeing a piece of music or fiction or architecture or a crop come in. They aren’t mutually exclusive. One reason may be because we really really want a MacBook Air, or a new car, or a house. That gets thrown in the mix. One reason may be that we feel a responsibility to share our talents because we don’t want to be thought unprofitable.

But it raises the question – am I using my time correctly? Am I using it productively? Profitably?

I’m still thinking it over. But… if I’m reading this right, I’ve got a responsibility to develop and share my talents with others, and using them in the marketplace… counts.

 

Into the Lists

I took some time this morning to review the reading list for Queso’s first year in High School. Yes. I am that old. And as she is quick to keep reminding me, she’ll be eligible for a learner’s permit (precursor to driver’s license) within the space of the next few months. But her soon-to-be-driver-status notwithstanding, what she is right now is a bit of a reader.

Not like I was, goodness knows. Though… she spends a lot of time watching YouTube, and I spent a LOT of time playing Ultima IV and Wasteland, so…

Anyway, as an involved parent, I started looking over the reading list for her high school career, and I saw a couple of surprising selections (The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy? Ender’s Game AND Ender’s Shadow? I can work with that), some reliable standbys (Twain, Shakespeare, Hardy, Hemingway), and a couple that made me roll my eyes (pretty much anything where the review mentions “magical realism” as a feature).

And as I was discussing the idea of reading lists and involved parents with some folks online as you do, a few things occurred to me.

Parents have to be familiar with the books on the lists.

Which pretty much goes without saying, right? If you want to know what your child is being taught, and that would be part of a baseline definition of involved parent for me, then you have to know what the kid is reading – and that includes being familiar with the books being presented in the classroom. Your kid’s class is reading Animal Farm by Orwell (like mine is)? You should know what the story is about. Because you want to be an involved parent.
Which means that parents should probably have read the books on the lists.

Which also almost goes without saying, right? I have an advantage in that I read a lot as a kid, so I’m already familiar with a lot of the books on Queso’s list – not all, not even most, but a LOT. I’ve read most of Twain – from Tom Sawyer to A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court. I’ve read a bunch of Shakespeare, and what I haven’t read, I can get to quickly and inexpensively. I’ve read Animal Farm (but not 1984 – potentially a glaring omission on my part) and Huxley’s Brave New World, which is why as a parent I can say this year is fine for Animal Farm, but I think we ought to wait a year or two before BNW, because of memorable scenes involving polar bear rugs. Which isn’t a problem. Shakespeare, the Greek Plays – these are not slow reads for me, because I’ve been reading these guys since forever.
Which means that parents should be readers.

And that’s where my eyebrows went up a bit. I’m a reader. My wife is a reader. We’ve read a bunch of stuff – to each other, to Queso, to ourselves. I’m not all that interested in Twilight, and she’s not all that interested in John Ringo’s March Upcountry. And that’s all right. We’re both reading. But there are parents out there who aren’t readers. Maybe they want to be involved parents. And they understand that they need to know what their kids are reading. But they look at something like Thomas Hardy’s prose, remember what their own high school experience was like, and balk. Return of the Native almost made me want to gouge my own eyes out. Today, I would probably just throw it against a wall. Or delete it from my e-reader with extreme prejudice.

(What I did in High School was just stop reading it. I listened during class, took a lot of notes, and when we were through and the teacher wanted to drag us through the entire book again as a review, I started making comments from my notes – where I’d been quiet the entire semester. I got an A, having never read the book. It was an illuminating experience.)

And that’s what I’m thinking about today. How do we help adult parents, with all the pressures of the day, work, kids, health, finances, news, etc., become readers?

Is it possible? Is there a recommended book list for adults?

Monstrous

Went to see Percy Jackson: Sea of Monsters tonight with My Sweet Honey and the Queso Kid. I hadn’t really planned on watching this until it came out on video. Effects were fine, the acting was passable, but it just didn’t really connect with me.

Don’t get me wrong, I liked the books. In fact, I liked the books a lot. That may be part of why it didn’t really click with me. But there were also a couple of moments where I felt like someone – and I couldn’t really put my finger on who – cheated a little bit. And… I think they created a lot of problems for themselves if they plan on making any sequels (which shouldn’t be too much of a surprise, as this was book 2 in a series of 5.

Cheated. What do I mean by that? Well…

THAR BE SPOILERS BELOW, ME HEARTIES!!!

Seriously. Spoilers. The movie doesn’t follow the book all that closely, if I remember correctly.

Still here? Okay then.

When I talk about “cheating”, that usually means that I think someone has broken a world-rule. Every fictional world (alas, unlike the real world) has to operate by certain rules that are set up by the writers so that the readers understand how everything in the world works. So, for example, you have to explain that when a God and a human woman… ahem… “love each other very much”, the end result is a human being. But when a God and a nymph “love each other very much”, the end result is some form of not-quite-human creature. Like a cyclops. Great. We get that, we understand it. We understand that when Percy clicks his pen, it becomes a sword.

And EVERYONE who is around Percy probably knows that about the sword, because when he pulls out a sword to use, that’s the sword he uses. So it makes no sense for people to tie him up and leave the pen in Percy’s pocket because… why, again? At this point, we’d already established that one of the people who were tying Percy up was at the camp at the beginning of the movie. So they should have known to remove the pen. That’s something I’ve heard described as an “idiot point” – or a point in the plot that only works if the characters are idiots. (likewise, any plot that can be resolved in about thirty seconds if characters would just talk to each other.)

That’s one example, but it’s not the most egregious one. The biggest cheat happens as they’ve just fought a battle for the Fleece. One of the characters suffers a mortal wound. Luckily, our heroes have the Golden Fleece, a magical item capable of healing any one or any thing. In fact, we’ve just seen the Fleece pretty much resurrect Cronus, and that process begins the instant they put the Fleece on Cronus’ little tomb-thing-a-ma-bob. Big light show, impressive effects, the whole nine yards. So, no problem. Monster gets dispatched pretty quickly. They put the fleece on the poor sap who got wounded and… nothing.

And for a couple of seconds there, the characters are having this moment where they’re all really sad. Never mind that none of them are questioning WHY this thing isn’t working, no one’s wondering if the Fleece will really solve the problem they needed it for, they’re all busy encouraging the character “not to give up”. Which has me raising my eyebrows. “Give up? What do you mean, don’t give up? The Fleece should be healing her. Why isn’t the Fleece healing her?”

The character apparently dies and then… WHAM! Lights! Effects! Character wakes up and wonders what just happened!

And I got really mad. Look, breaking the rules is one thing. Maybe there’s something we don’t understand about the rules, and needs to be explained by someone else. Maybe resurrecting a God has drained the Fleece, or maybe it needs to recharge. Maybe the character has to want to be healed. I don’t know. Something. But to break your rules without an explanation so that your characters can have a moment to emote a bit… that’s not just a cheat. That’s a cheap shot. One below the belt.

Anyway, events also occur in this that I really don’t remember from the original, which I think will make it more difficult for the writers in a potential sequel (which they did set up… a little problematically, but they did set it up).

I really liked the Percy Jackson books. And I would encourage people to read them. And the movie wasn’t bad. My Sweet Honey really liked it (said it was better than The Wolverine, which I disagree with, but to each their own). Anyway, I guess that’s the lesson as a writer that I take away, and will try to follow (no promises).

No cheating. Especially no cheating to get a cheap emotional response.

Exemplars

With Maybe Some Pacific Rim Spoilers Past the Jump

Earlier today, on my tumblr site, I posted a link to a talk given by Meghan Cox Gurdon, given at Hillsdale college earlier this year. In it, she talks about the need for “Good Taste in Children’s Books.” I guess a couple of years ago, she got into a bit of a scrum online when she lamented the state of children’s literature – particularly how dark YA was getting.

And it has me thinking a little bit today about authors and what it is that we’re doing, and a little about parents and what it is that we’re doing, and how to best raise kids.

Now, this is normally the place where people say they’re not going to tell you how to raise your kids. Which is a bunch of bull, because then they go on to give advice which can’t be interpreted as anything but “here’s how I think we can all raise our kids better.” Even when it’s presented as “here’s what I’m going to do with my kid,” there’s a narrative that gets left off there which says something like “because I think it’s right and I’m sharing this because I think other people should do it to, blah blah blah.”

Look, I don’t know your kids. Take this for what it’s worth.

Growing up is occasionally hard. We who have been through it a while ago can, with the benefit of perspective and some emotional distance, laugh at a lot of stuff. But while you’re in the middle of it, it’s not easy. And kids are looking for examples – for ideals. So, when we put “protagonists” in front of our kids, is it too much to ask that they be heroes?

PACIFIC RIM SPOILERS

I went again to see Pacific Rim last night, as I have a Brother-in-Law who had not seen it yet. And This Was Not To Be Borne. I’ve written before how much I really enjoyed Pacific Rim. Some people have criticized it because the protagonist didn’t really have a character arc. There was some other criticism about “another American rides in to save the day” (which, as an American, I’m actually pretty stoked about, but, hey, let’s all ignore the fact that without the Japanese lady, the protagonist wouldn’t have been able to DRIVE his giant war-robot, and oh yeah the African guy and the Australian guy who sacrificed their lives to give them a shot to get where they needed to be, the Hispanic guy who was running the com boards… yeah. Whatever.)

But the characters in Pacific Rim were people who could be looked up to. They were working for something bigger than themselves. Some of them were broken, some of them were jerks, but they were fighting for something worthwhile. Is that something you could say about the protagonists in the books you’ve been reading lately?

Is it something you could say about the books your kids are reading?

I think that kids wind up reading stuff that their parents do, at least I did. And the main reason for that is because those were the books I had access to. I had a deep love of reading early on, and when I picked up A Spell for Chameleon at eight years old, I was hooked. Sword of Shannara at ten. Tarzan, John Carter, as much Conan as I could find… they were great stories. And except maybe for some of the Conan, they were also deeply moral characters, showing strength not just of flesh and sinew, but strength of will, of conviction, and of character. Those characters remain the same kind of people they are at the end of the book as they are at the beginning, largely. They were heroes.

Where are those characters today?

The Fight in Us

It’s not the size of the dog in the fight, it’s the size of the fight in the dog, they say.

Over the last few days, I’ve been sort of watching a fight play out on one of my favorite blogs. A particular author whose work I have written admiringly about wrote a post that… struck a nerve with somebody.

Nine hundred and seventy two comments, and at least one banned troll later, I find myself thinking about the way we really persuade other people to another point of view. Because whoever the troll was, he was an utter failure at it. Goes back to a particular experience I think I’ve written about from my mission when I found myself “Bible bashing” with a pair of ladies from another faith.

Did that once. And I hope never to do it again. For a variety of reasons, but the number one reason is simply this: It didn’t help. No one came closer to my point of view. And believe me, we smoked these poor ladies. Utterly crushed them. The final blow was when I referred to one of their own tracts, couldn’t find the page number I was looking for, then pulled my own copy of the tract out of my backpack and used it to make a point that supported my argument. The expression on their face as I pulled the book out was what I imagine people refer to when they talk about someone dropping a brick. And despite annihilating their arguments, demolishing their viewpoints, and irrevocably asserting our own, it wasn’t like they suddenly “saw the light” and rushed to be baptized. Indeed, we never crossed the threshold of that house again.

Not that I think our troll had anything remotely approaching logic, reason, or consistent thought on his side. He was a name caller and a condescending jerk. Nothing I was going to say would change his mind, and the way he presented himself was so arrogant, so offensive in his presentation, I can’t imagine how he thought he would convince anyone that he was right and we were wrong. The poor troll eventually got ban-hammered when he descended to using particularly crude terms for female genitalia in reference to the aforementioned author whose site it was. I can only think that his purpose was, in fact, to cause as much havok and chaos as he possibly could, and get himself banned so he’d have a great story to tell about how intolerant those people are. They couldn’t handle the truth I was laying down. Which apparently extended to making 2nd grade level insults on people’s names and denying that he’d said something that he’d just said in an earlier comment. 

Bless his heart.

But it does raise the question. I have other friends who I’ve accused of “trolling”, and they’ve been pretty up front that they were, in fact, doing just that. I don’t understand the impulse. Yes, I’ve often joked about grenade-throwing when commenting on something, but… to purposely piss people off just seems so counterproductive… Can we fight bad ideas and bad philosophy without belittling the people who hold those ideas and philosophies?