The one about leisure

When Elder Scrolls 3, Morrowind, came out, I remember playing sometimes 15 hours straight.  It was the first game like that I had ever experienced, and it was completely blowing me away.  Before that, all I had ever played really was Age of Empires.

That wasn't exactly good for me, though, playing long stretches at a time, so when Elder Scrolls 4, Oblivion, came out, I promised myself to play only two hours maximum at a time.  

I lied.  

I ended up playing Oblivion hours on end, too, because it was just so cool and so much better than Morrowind, I honestly couldn't get enough of it.  I even bought a new television to make the Oblivion experience all the better.

So now Skyrim has come out, Elder Scrolls 5.  It's compelling just like the others in the series, but for some reason, I have not sat on the XBox hour after hour playing it.  I have played for a couple hours then gone off to do other things, all without threatening myself or setting alarm clocks or anything more extraordinary than simply glancing at the clock and saying, "Hey, I want to go outside now."  Maybe I'm finally growing up?  Unlikely, but maybe.

The graphics and scripting and character interactions are the best ever in Skyrim.  For the first few days of play, I really didn't do much except wander around the game world enjoying how beautiful it was, how the butterflies flew, how the grass waved in the breeze, how people chopped wood and smithed blades, as well as how the occasional sabertooth cat could slice me in two with one swipe.  Fascinating.

But now I'm down to business and getting into the actual meat of gameplay.  I got married in the game world so I could have a steady and daily flow of income from my spouse.  That was never possible before.  There are children in the game, too.  Elder Scrolls games never had children characters before.  A lot of the grooviest stuff must have come from the game makers' experience with Fallout 3, because there are aspects of Skyrim that remind me of Fallout, and some of the voice actors were also in Fallout.  

Games like this are little escapes from reality, and that's not a bad thing.  It's a hell of a lot better than watching television.  TV as entertainment is a total waste of time. Everyone needs to have and enjoy meaningful leisure on a regular basis.  My job affords me the time and opportunity to engage in several different leisure activities; Skyrim is just one. 

I hope that you, too, have something fulfilling and fun and challenging to do when you are not working to make a living, be it reading great books, building things, fixing things, playing games, hiking, biking, or whatever.  Make sure you create leisure for yourself regularly.  It's what helps us stay sane in this crazy world.

All the photos here are swiped from the Internet because I cannot find my Morrowind screen shots, and I never played Oblivion or Skyrim on anything other than the XBox where you can't take screenshots.

The one about improvement and attitude

Before I came to Korea I had used chopsticks on and off and could at least get the food to my mouth without dropping it, well, most of the time anyway.  Over the years I have lived here, my proficiency with chopsticks has improved off the scale, yet I noticed something a few years ago.  I don't hold chopsticks the same way Koreans do, yet I can use chopsticks just as well as they can.  In that little observation, a whole philosophy of learning appeared before my eyes.  Proficiency lies not in technical imitation, but in the extent of usage.  Tell someone to reach a goal, give him a pointer or two, and let him go.  Given the opportunity to practice the skill, they will arrive at the goal, though maybe not the same way you had intended nor with the same style you expected.

Learning English (or any language) works the same way.  However, here in Korea, many are obsessed with technical imitation which ultimately defeats most of them long before they gain suitable proficiency in the language.  My observation isn't some novel approach to the whole English learning endeavor, because I have heard experienced English teachers say over and over that improvement comes with usage.  Speak more, write more, listen more, read more, and your language skills will improve.  However, instead of creating an abundance of opportunities for real and genuine use of English, many universities and communities in Korea discourage such things in favor of classroom rote and mimicry.  For example, I have online conversation classes in the 3D virtual world of Second Life.  Many of my learners appreciate that this environment compels them to use English extensively whether in my class setting or elsewhere in the online environment.  The virtual reality allows a much more realistic use of the language than they find in a brick & mortar classroom.  They can not only meet native English speakers as well as people from any number of other countries who use the English language within the virtual world, they can also exchange real and personal ideas and opinions in the common language and receive back the same from others. Usage improves skill.  It's true with a hedge trimmer, it's true with pastry, it's true with language.  However, our school is closing its presence in Second Life and enforcing the rule that language education must take place as though it were no different than a math, science, or history class. English is data to be learned, not a language to be used.

Another hindrance to learning, at our school anyway, is that the English speaking teaching staff are crowded into mass offices with many teachers per office.  My students find it uncomfortable to come to my office, because there are eleven other teachers sitting there listening to them, and I am in the least populated office.  It's intimidating, to the low level learner especially, to visit a teacher in this environment.  The university thinks it's the teachers who just want private or semi-private offices for our own comfort, but the reality is, it's the students who suffer from this secretarial pool setting where they are too nervous to come see their teacher because it's like stepping on a stage in front of an audience.  Nobody likes their problems or academic difficulties on display like that, especially if their language skills are minimal.  It's like seeing your priest or rabbi for a personal problem while a dozen strangers are listening in.  The university is discouraging student-English teacher interaction by denying the student-teacher privacy all other teachers at the university are favored with.  If I were a student, I would not come see my teacher in a room full of strangers unless I absolutely had to, but that's what we see not just here but all across the realm of the Korean English education system.  Our students don't come by our offices to talk; they come for incidental reasons.  They come to take make-up tests. They come to turn in a late homework.  They come to ask a quick question about when their midterm exam is.  They come to bring a can of Pocari Sweat as a gift. They do not come to consult with the teacher to help them speak English better, because in a room of many other teachers, you cannot speak freely, you have to lower your voice, you are distracted.  The Korean education system once again rallies to assert its time-tested recipe for failure.

There are thousands and thousands of native English speakers living in Korea, yet the schools and universities ignore us as a resource.  We are just foreigners and workers who need to be controlled and constricted.  Many of us have degrees in subjects that allow us to teach those subjects either in high schools or universities, yet the Koreans opt to use us only in "conversation" classes which meet once a week, if there isn't one of their innumerable holidays in the way of that.  Unless we have fluency in Korean language, we are not allowed to teach our subjects which defeats the whole reason we are supposedly here in Korea in the first place, to provide opportunities for them to use English in real-life situations.  The Koreans started this 'learn English' venture and invited the thousands and thousands of us here to help them fulfill it while at the same time tying our hands behind our backs, gagging us, and generally ensuring that we will not get too comfortable in their country.  Some teachers stick it out because there are no jobs back home worth taking.  Some stick it out because they believe there is no problem, that people like me are simply exaggerating Korean ineptitude.  Some, though, just get sick of the hypocrisy and lip service to education and go where their contributions will be appreciated.

Koreans amaze me in many ways.  They are obviously a long-established homogenous people.  Their nation is so old that no language has survived that is related to Korean. That's pretty cool.  Their general outlook on life and society can be thought-provoking and even admirable.  It's their inflexibility that also amazes me, however.  Their reticence to create or to innovate is holding them back too much.  I love Korea, and I don't say that flippantly.  Sure, I get irritated with the nuisances of daily life here, but so do native Koreans; when all is said and done, though, and I'm sitting at home with my cat on my lap and warm cup of tea in my hands, I can reflect and honestly say that I do love Korea.  It's not from any malice that I bring up the serious inadequacies of the Korean approach to language education. It's because I know they can do better.  It's because I know English is crucial to success in the modern world and I want every Korean to succeed.  If Koreans don't come to grips with how language is learned and implement changes necessary to ensure the common language takes root in their country, they will not be nearly as successful as they could be.  Korea, we are here for you, but if you don't change your attitude, we might not stay.

The one about garbage bins

Back in the States, I always just dumped my food waste in with my regular household waste, but here in Korea, they use these little buckets for food waste.  The lining is slatted to allow liquid waste to pass through so you can dispose of it in the waste water system and the solid food waste you can... well, I really don't know what to do with the solid food waste.  Some apartment houses have special containers out near the trash collection area just for food waste, but our apartment house doesn't have that, so I end up draining my food waste and simply tossing it in with the regular trash much as I have always done my whole life.

The other day the old lady who, with her elderly husband, kind of acts as the overseer of the building came ringing my doorbell at 8:30 in the morning.  I usually don't answer the door at 8:30 since I'm more than likely still in my underwear.  Each apartment has a video camera on the doorbell; I looked at the monitor and saw it was the old lady, so I slipped on some pants and answered the door.  She stood there telling me about these garbage buckets and something something "go bring you one" something something.  I couldn't really understand what she was saying, but I think the gist was "if you need one of these buckets [she was holding one up for me to see] I'll go and get you one."  She can hardly get up and down the stairs here, so I might have gotten mixed up on that bit.  She might have been telling me to go get one.  However, I already have one, but I don't know what more to do with it. There is a special truck that comes by and empties these garbage containers at buildings that have them, but since our building doesn't have one, I'm not sure what to do.  Should I just take my little bin out there and hope nobody steals it?  Who would steal a garbage bin? You never know, but these 2-dollar bins are small enough to walk off with unnoticed.

It's a good idea to separate food garbage from regular trash.  It keeps down vermin and the collected material can be used for composting.  I'm sure the collectors earn money from farmers for most if not all of it.  Maybe I'll start investigating this more, though not sure anyone in my building will understand me. I can order food in a restaurant and go shopping, use taxis, and read most posted signs around town, but my Korean language skills are abysmal for getting spoken information.  Maybe I need to try anyway, just because it's the right thing to do.  Isn't it funny how something as mundane as garbage can compel us to change the way we think?

The one about waiting in line

Every year when I visit America, something rubs me the wrong way so bad that I have to respond with passion.  This year it is that stupid way Americans stand in line.

This past summer I spent a month and a half in America.  One day at Wal-Mart in Bay City, Michigan, I approached the self check-out area and saw an empty station.  There was a woman and her child standing in the area, well back from the self check-out stations, but the woman made no move toward the empty station, so I walked up to it.  A few seconds later I hear this muttering, "He saw me standing here..."  I turned and after a few choice words, we argued, and I told her off because IF she actually were waiting in line, she shouldn't have been standing 15 feet away.  I'm not happy that I lost my cool, but sometimes these people have to hear how stupid they are or else they'll never know.



During one of my motorcycle trips around Michigan, I stopped at a Dairy Queen in Grayling, and while I sat on my motorcycle eating a cone, I snapped pictures of patrons coming up to the DQ and standing in line.

When I was in line earlier, I stood right behind the person in front of me, and when she had received her order, she turned around to walk away and shot me a look that said, "What is wrong with you?"  I was 2 feet behind her, which seemed completely normal to me.  To her, that was way too close for comfort.

Americans grow up with distance between them.  Our houses are usually not abutting the neighbors (except maybe in older crowded cities). We also grow up scared to death somebody will touch us.  At Wal*Mart, on this same trip, a woman brushed by me, literally her shirt brushed my shirt, and at her reaction I instinctively flinched because she turned suddenly on me and raised her arms and said, "Oh my god, I'm so sorry!"  At first I had no idea on earth what was happening and why this woman was frantically trying to appease me.  She proceeded to apologize more specifically for "bumping into" me (!)

All the while she's apologizing, I'm thinking about my last 14 years in Korea where bumping and pushing are just part of daily life.  She had no idea that her little brush of my shirt was literally nothing compared to what I'm used to.

Americans have conditioned themselves to need as much space as possible, both physically and psychologically.  The concept of personal space is real, but I think Americans take if way too far.  Humans have no real reason so keep such distance from each other.  We are all in life together; we are all related.

Distance does not create community.  Closeness creates community. If America is to become a real society, a peaceful, caring society, this notion of huge personal space has to vanish.  Get close to your neighbor.  Stand near each other in line.  Reach out and touch a stranger to show that you're no threat, that distance is not necessary.  Use your body to spread the message of peace and love for your fellow human beings by making your personal space as small as possible.

The one about Venus and stuff

Several years ago, in 2004, I started a search for solar filters for my binoculars so that I could watch the transit of Venus.  It was not easy!  If you live in Korea, you know how nearly impossible it is to get specialized items, so you can imagine that in 2004 it was even harder.  However, I eventually found a little astronomy club in Seoul that ran a shop for that sort of thing and I got my lens filters.  They worked great!

Unfortunately, the transit of Venus took place for us in Korea late in the day, so it would be visible only during sunset.  It was also on a work day.  I told the hagwon owner where I worked what was going on, that the transit was a rare event we would probably only see once more in our lifetimes.  I also suggested that since I had the binoculars and the filters, the middle school children might be interested in the phenomenon, too.  We could talk about it and then maybe look up information about Venus.  Hagwon owners are notoriously anti-education, and lest you think that it is strange for educational institutions to be anti-education, let me remind you that hagwons are for-profit businesses and are run as such.  Not only did the hagwon owner say no, emphatically, he forbade me to go outside during work to see the transit of Venus.  Of course, I went outside anyway, and some of the students came with me to see this rare event for themselves.  I'm a teacher; I'm not a businessman specializing in education for profit.  The business of education in Korea gets in the way of education all the time here.  This was just one example that I experienced, a rather glaring example of why Koreans don't learn anything.  They are some of the most ignorant and ill-informed people on the face of earth.  They start out with curiosity just like anyone else, but the business of education, that reach for the almighty won, squashes curiosity in favor of the ruts that lead to company jobs and million-dollar apartments in Gangnam.  Don't ever tell me that Koreans are better learners than Americans.  The only thing Koreans do better is memorize formulas, equations, and facts.  Americans go outside and see the world, experience the universe, learn for the sheer joy of learning whether it makes them rich or not.

Everything is finished!  The students have all had their final one-on-one interviews with me, and all the grades have been posted, the absences entered into the university system, and my semester portfolio turned in.  The students have two weeks to contest their grades.  Two weeks?  Yes, in Korea, a tiny country where almost every house has high speed internet access they still give students two weeks to contest their grades.  Usually, if they want to contest what they got, they'll do it right away.  So far no one has ... oh wait.  One student wrote me this email:


Hello!

Last semester I'm happy to listen your lecture.

I enjoyed talking with you and many students.

However, I saw my conversation grade yesterday.

I thought that my grade is a little low.

And I heard that in absolute evalutation many students get good grade.

Is everything left to your own discretion?

Why did I got grade B+? 

Please tell me~ㅠ_ㅠ

Would you upgrade my score?

I really need your consideration!

If I get A0 , I can take classes more. It is school rugulation.

The reason is that I complete a course in teacher education.

It means that I have two major subject.

I have to take lesson more than other people.

I need to take three required subjects next semester.

If I give grades 4.0 , I can do it.

But I can't do it. I got B+, so I lack point a little.

Please consider it again~^,^

My guiding criterion in that class was how much they talked.  It's a conversation course after all, and the more they talked, the higher their grade.  This young lady didn't talk even enough for a B+, but I was generous.  Now, I can guarantee that if I don't up her grade to A, there will be repercussions that could eventually result in my contract not being renewed,  That's how they do it here.  Korea is not known for its high academic standards, and every semester we have to decide whether our academic integrity is more important than our jobs.  I have learned from several mistakes that the job is more important.  It's their country; they set the standards.  They threaten us all the time not to renew our contracts unless we do as they say, and happy students mean they will stay at our school and therefore mommy and daddy's money will stay here as well.  Follow the money.  That's where "education" is these days.

The one that needed to be said

Nobody in my family will come and get me at the Detroit airport when I fly in from Korea. So, I had to make a car rental reservation to drive to my hometown of West Branch. The closest place to my hometown where I can return the car is a small airport 50 miles away. Even at that short distance, a mere 50 miles, an hour's trip (after my 6,700 miles and 13 hours to get there from Korea), nobody wants to go that far on "the fourth of July weekend" to drive me back after returning the car. They're afraid of the horrible traffic, even though the weekend doesn't start until Friday evening and the car return is Friday morning. Here is what I wrote to my family, then deleted and didn't send. However, I needed to get this off my chest:


The entire state of Michigan has a population that is one third the population of Seoul, South Korea, a single city. You do not have traffic, trust me. If everyone in Michigan decided to go to one place all at the same time, you still wouldn't have traffic.

I'm sick of it. I'm sick of my own family believing that me traveling literally halfway across the planet to see them is easy, cheap and stress-free. It isn't. There is not a one of you I wouldn't go meet at any airport, literally any, or risk life and limb to pick up even if you had only gone a few miles to get there. I could never allow anyone I love to be stranded anywhere for any length of time if I had the means to prevent it.

I know my value to my family, I have known it for years, but I persist in visiting you all anyway because you are dear to my heart even though I am of little account to you. When you're gone, any of you, I will be beside myself with grief. On the other hand, if I were to die tomorrow I can guarantee that not a single one of you would bother to come and collect the things that were special to my life or see where I lived or show any interest in my accomplishments. So enjoy this visit; it is the last I will make. There are places I would like to see, but I haven't, because I thought visiting you was more important. No more. I will see the places I want from now on, and if you want to see me, you'll do the traveling, you'll spend the money, you'll take on the stress.

Love,

Mike

The one about nothing

“For if those who are nothing think they are something, they deceive themselves.”

Letter to the Galatians 6.3

To accept that we are nothing is one of the hardest things to do. The more we understand about the universe and how it works, the more we realize that we aren't all that special as a life form. The rise of life on this planet has been remarkable. It's survival has been phenomenal. Life began from a single source, a simple cell that somehow multiplied and expanded into all the marvelous variation we witness today. However, for generations, for millennia actually, Mankind has believed that he is not just distinct from all other life, he is specially made. He has a soul that, unlike any other life forms, will survive beyond the death of the physical body.

Something about us wants to live on after the death of the body. We don't want to think about an eternity of nothingness, non-existence, and oblivion. Oblivion, a state of non-existence, a real oxymoron since “state” implies existence! See how hard it is to talk about this? Our very language constrains us because we have rarely confronted the true nature of human life. Like all other life that developed from the same humble beginnings as we did, at the end of our lives, we cease to exist. We do not have souls that go to heaven or hell to be rewarded for our good and punished for our bad. We do not become ghosts to wander the earth waiting for the resurrection of the dead on judgement day. To believe that Mankind is a special life would require a dividing line between our current form and our ancestral species. At what point did our evolving species gain these souls? There would have to be a generation of humans/protohumans where the children were granted souls and the parents were not. That's a very unpleasant thought. The first evolved humans with souls would not be able to live in eternity with their parents or grandparents. It is that logical reality that demonstrates the idiotic mentality of those who believe Man is a special creation. We are obviously evolved. It's a proven fact. But who is willing to draw the line in our evolution where this generation has souls and the previous one does not? The only logical conclusions are all life has a collective soul, each life form has a soul, or no life form has a soul. There is no evidence of the first two, so only the third option remains.

We are nothing more than a variation within the world of living creatures. We are not special except among ourselves. When the sun expands and engulfs this planet down the road a couple billion years from now, everything we were, had, built, or spoken will be disintegrated. Not even the dust particles of our long dead bodies will remain intact. Perhaps the descendants of our species will survive and learn to live among the stars. Perhaps another species will evolve and do so in our stead. A billion years is a long, long time.

Not wanting to die and disappear from existence is one thing. It's an understandable longing. Creating a fantasy where that really doesn't happen despite all evidence and observation is quite another. Facing reality is better. It's honest, and honesty is really the best policy, as the old saying goes. Knowing that this life is your only life compels you to live better. It urges you to live it to the best of your ability. It makes you stop to enjoy it more often. It chastises you for taking life for granted in yourself and others. It tells us that even if we are nothing in the long run, we are something in the here and now.

The one on the waterside

This weekend I had hoped to enjoy a motorbike trip up the eastern coast of Korea, and yesterday, I did do that, but I ended up coming home at the end of the day instead of staying at a min-bak (B&B/inn) or camping. I didn't like being alone. It kind of brought me down a little to be seeing all this beauty and experiencing the trip without having anyone to share it and talk about it. It was a gorgeous day, though, and I saw some interesting things, like this old lighthouse.




Some folks gathering and sorting seaweed to prepare it for drying.

People fishing off these old rocks at the base of the lighthouse cliff.

A lone fisherman.










A crew headed out to sea...













... from their peaceful little town.





Even though I felt as lonely as that man on the rock seems, the ride and the scenery made up for it. The Korean coast is a good excursion on a motorbike. It has several beaches, parks, seaside villages, inns, and little ma & pa diners, but also long stretches of open road to enjoy the view of the sea and the hills and the peaceful waterside life here. On the one side is the smell of the sea, a smell that reminds me of some of the happiest days of my life. It's the smell of untold ages of life on earth, the smell of danger, bravery, and power. On the other side is the smell of farms and barns and chicken coops, the scents of my earliest memories. I breathed deeply, and the simultaneous aroma of the sea and the farm aroused primal longing that ran through my soul so freely I couldn't stop it. I reveled in it. I stood naked and still within it even as the wind embraced man and machine.

I've never been comfortable with being alone, though it seems to be my destiny. However, even alone, the Korean coast is an adventure. Take it, if the opportunity arises. It is not the usual Korea.

The one about a parasite

America is torn sharply between the Republican view and the Democratic view. Both sides believe that the other is destructive. However, let's look at what is actually destructive about them.

Democratic governance, if we ever see it again, tries to limit the impact of excessive greed on the average citizen. It demands a lighter burden on the poor and lower middle class, a higher burden for the upper classes because they can shoulder the burden without diminishing their standard of living in the least. It demands that large corporations who benefit from the protection of the United States pay for that protection by paying taxes on their activities. Democratic governance tries to make sure that primary and secondary education are available to all in order to ensure the competitive edge America has traditionally enjoyed in the world. It refuses to consider the weak, handicapped, and elderly as useless appendages not worth the time and expense. It does not turn its back on children who happen to be born in poor families as unworthy of medical care simply because their parents are too poor to pay for it. Democratic governance uses the public money to invest in the growth, prosperity, and success of the nation collectively.

Republican governance tries to ensure a shield of separation for the wealthy that excuses them from paying taxes according to their ability. It makes sure that corporations pay little if nothing in taxes to the country that makes their activities possible. Republican governance tries to dismantle public education by undercutting the rights of teachers, introducing sectarian religion into the curriculum, planning to take apart the Department of Education, cutting education budgets, and propagating the lie that educated people are unproductive elitists. Republican governance sees no relationship between the prosperity and success of the United States and the skill of its population. It cuts money to train the handicapped. It takes away funding for the elderly and children. It fights to stop children from poor families receiving medical care. Republican governance uses the public money to prop up a tiny select class of wealthy patrons whose growth, prosperity, and success garner the nation nothing but more poverty, fewer job opportunities, and wider gaps between the social classes. The inevitable outcome of this short-sighted avarice is class warfare.

To look at the two sides honestly, it is obvious that one of them is destructive of society while one is not. One is a parasitical pest that uses the American public to gain obscene profits on the backs of the lower classes without any sense of obligation to help the nation that supports them. One needs to be swatted like mosquitoes, and I, for one, am willing to gladly join in the swatting.

The one about stupid people

I shouldn't, for my blood pressure's sake, but I do anyway.  I read and listen to stories about how the christ cultists around America are doing everything in their power to corrupt the educational system of our country.  Lately it's a bill in the Tennessee legislature that is about as blatant an attempt to make religious mythology a valid alternative to the life sciences as anything we've seen in the last 80 years.

I listened to a scientist from Vanderbilt University give a statement before the Tennessee lawmakers, a good statement, a solid statement, making the clearly reasonable point that the bill is religious in nature because there is no scientific controversy about evolution.  It is purely a religious controversy, hence any discussion of evolution as controversial is religious in nature and thereby beyond the purview of the government.  The logic is unassailable, and yet the religious lawmakers stumbled over themselves to declare the scientist's words mere "opinion" on a par with anyone else's opinion.  Let's call that what it is, stupid and arrogant.

It's frustrating to listen to stupid people.  It really is.  People who believe that religious dogma and doctrine are true are stupid people.  Can you think of a different word for those who take unfounded assertions and believe them as fact?  They don't "hope" there's a god.  They assert it as true in the face of no evidence.  They don't "wonder" if there was a universal flood 5 thousand years ago; they proclaim it as fact when there is no proof.  Stupid is the only fitting term for this behavior.  It is like knowing through observation and logic that the square of 9 is 81 and yet having to deal with somebody in authority who says it is not 81, it is something else,  and that this opinion must be allowed in math class.  That is not doing the young people of the state or the country a service.  It is not doing anyone a service except the business of church.

Evolution is a fact.  Natural selection is the only theory that anyone has put forward that has survived the countless tests and charges against it.  Religious mythology may, I mean a big MAY, have meaning to some people on an artistic level, but it is not fact.  Genesis is not true.  It paints pictures that may inspire something in the minds of its readers, but it is not history. It is not science.  It is not truth in any reasonable meaning of the word.

As the American public grows stupider and stupider (by choice), and as they continue to elect their stupid comrades to high office, it will not end well.  America will lose its scientific edge.  It will lose its leadership base to nations that do not put stupid people in charge.  America will lose. Period.

The one about mistakes

Here is today's email from the department I work in:

Dear teachers,

At first, I want to apologize to you about contract that you signed. I made a mistake again. Before as I know we have to get a signature from president, but it has been changed from this year. We need to get a signature from the chairman of the board. And Chairman said he want to get a contract in Korean, too.

So I want you to sign 4 contract. 2 - English version, 2 - Korean version After I get a signature from the chairman, I will give you yours. Second, you signed the contract before, we will destroy. But if you want to destroy, you could bring. We have your contract that you already signed before. Again, I am really sorry for this inconvenience. I will try to be more professional. I hope see you soon in the Lounge. Have a lovely weekend.

Sincerely,

[name withheld]

Our contract period begins on March 1st every year... every single year, the same date (our lowly status as faux-assistant profs makes us ineligible for multiple-year contracts). We are notified in mid-December if we are not going to be offered a new contract for the coming year. Those who are going to be offered a contract are not told anything one way or the other. I suppose it works, but what if they make a mistake... "again" ?

Since we are just now getting our contracts, what was that "contract" I took to the immigration office to get my visa a month or so ago? Hurried explanation from the office: that was just a generic contract to show the government. Great. Being a foreigner in a strange land and deceiving the government doesn't instill much confidence in me, but what if that's why they do it? Keep the foreigners off their balance. Make sure they're in a constant state of borderline confusion. And who signs what? Shouldn't that be known by the people who are drawing these papers up? Which contract is the legal one, the English or the Korean? My first contract here a few years ago, I discovered a discrepancy between the English and the Korean versions (which they fixed in favor of the English version).

When you come to Korea, there is a period, a grace period, I suppose, where the newbie expat is learning so much that he/she lets a lot of stuff slide to focus on basic survival skills. After the expat gets her/his feet solidly on the ground and is used to the landscape, then the bizarro world of Korea becomes the elephant in the room we kind of felt before but never looked at too closely. We complain about the nutty and incongruous behavior here, but then we learn that nobody likes to hear us complain, not even other complaining expats! And complaining does absolutely no good.

So we live with it. We live with the haphazard, slapdash way they do everything, from legal contracts and immigration law to painting the rusted out aluminum siding on the general store. We live (and sometimes die) with the reckless and irresponsible mania that passes for driving here. We tolerate the constant noise. We learn to ignore the thousands of children over the years who point at us on the sidewalk and scream "America person!" in Korean and run to their mothers' sides.

I'm not ranting about this email specifically. This email is simply another manifestation in a long string demonstrating what a fish out of water most of us expats are in this land. We were raised to try, try as best we can, to get and keep our ducks in a line, plan ahead so as not to make someone else's life a living hell for no reason, to drive politely and safely, to lower our voices in public places, to not stare at people who look different and certainly not yell out and point. (It's not polite to point, remember?)

Fourteen years of this, and what have I learned? I guess it's patience. Without patience, someone would have died by now.

The one with a cat's eye

Several years ago, before my believer friends stopped trying to reconvert me, I was in a conversation about religion and atheism. Of course, there are hardly any believers who really know what atheism is beyond the rhetoric spewed out of their not-so-friendly neighborhood pulpits. Consequently, when you have a conversation about this subject with a religious person, you have to set the vocabulary parameters before you can proceed. Atheism is simply the following: “There is no demonstrable evidence that any gods exist.” That's all. If you were to produce evidence, the atheist would change his mind. It's that simple. The believers deride that by saying 'the evidence is all around us.' You can even find a passage from the letters of Paul in the New Testament that agrees with that statement, so it's not a new idea. However, it is a reckless idea all the same.

When I look around me, I see a marvelous world full of life, a huge magnificent universe full of physics to boggle the mind, but I do not see anything that demonstrates whether a god, or gods, did any of it. A believer will ask, “How else could it be?” a question that a wise person cannot answer. The believer will foolishly take the atheist's inability to answer the question as tacit consent that a god produced everything we see around us. A wise person cannot jump to that conclusion, however. It doesn't follow that because nobody knows exactly how something happened that your guess is necessarily correct. Your guess might be wrong. An atheist is quite willing to say that a god or gods might very well exist; we just don't have any evidence of that. Conversely, a believer is quite unwilling to say that a god might not exist. It is here that any conversation with a believer will begin to fall apart. The atheist is expected to be yielding and open, but the believer is not. Maybe with that in mind you can understand the frustration that atheists express when trying to talk to believers about this subject. The believers say these “new” atheists are angry, when in fact it is the double standard believers apply to the two sides that create significant aggravation on the part of atheists.

For me, a universe without any gods is neither good nor bad. If there are gods or a god or a great intelligent force, so be it. Apparently whatever is out there, if it is out there, is unconcerned with us, so neither belief nor disbelief merits you anything. I live my life in the reality of the observable universe, not what I wish or hope there to be to satisfy my need for some “deeper meaning” to it all. So what if there's no meaning to life beyond living it? How could that knowledge possibly harm you? So there is no over-arching Lord of the Heavens to praise and worship. So what? What could be more awe inspiring than to know for a fact that every living thing on earth descended from one solitary cell billions of years ago? I can look at the lemon tree growing in my living room, my cat, hear a bird out the window, and taste the mold growing on my cheddar cheese and know for a demonstrable fact that all these manifestations of life are related to me, intimately. We all have a common ancestor, a fact proven over and again by genetic science and simple biological principles. Did a god start that first cell? I don't know, but why out of all the wonderfully natural elements that have arisen in this vast universe would this solitary item need the touch of divinity upon it when nothing else does?

Belief in gods, or even a single god, doesn't make you a better person in and of itself. The group you share belief with is what makes you who you are as a believer, not the belief itself. Lack of belief doesn't make you innately good or bad either. Neither you nor I know exactly how the universe started, and if there was a reason, we haven't the slightest clue what that reason might be. Therefore, it is only wise to default to atheism since there is no demonstrable reason to believe any gods exist. With atheism as the default position, there is no need to try to force others to adopt religious doctrines and dogmas as public policy since such doctrines and dogmas are tacitly meaningless. There is no reason for religious groups to expect and receive favors from the government since the government is designed to serve all citizens equally, believers and unbelievers alike. There is no reason to pin our national or planetary hopes for the future on ancient religious literature since the bible is ludicrously in error on more topics than I have time to list, and the quran is nothing more than the incoherent ramblings of a self-proclaimed prophet. I live quite contentedly in the default position, because it is the only one that makes sense. What is, is. What is not, is not. There is nothing beyond these two propositions as far as we know.  Live with it.

Photo: Nasa Hubble, Cat's Eye Nebula, as it was about 3000 years ago.

The one about abortion

In Western culture, abortion was generally permitted within the first 40-90 days of pregnancy until the christian cult came to dominate and abortion was pretty much outlawed based on the christian belief that inception is when a human soul is bestowed upon the fetus. Hence, any deliberate termination of the fetus is technically murder according to this doctrine. Of course, there were times and places of leniency with this rule, but it has remained doctrine since the earliest days of the christ cult whether or not is has always been enforced to the letter.  

The doctrine does not hinge specifically on the bible, though throughout the centuries, christians have used biblical passages and stories as backdrop to the doctrine. Notably these are the pregnancy of John the Baptist's mother, Elizabeth, the pregnancy of Mary, the mother of Jesus, and certain poetic passages from the Hebrew scriptures which mention gestation in the womb.

The fact that the bible is completely silent on the matter of abortion is of little account when it comes to the position of the Roman church on this subject. The church has always maintained the position that God reveals truths in many ways, not just in the scriptures, so it isn't surprising that God has revealed that abortion is always wrong but never said so in the bible. But what about the protestant heterodoxy? That whole movement came into being under the banner that the bible was the sole source of faith and practice, yet they, too, claim abortion is wrong even though the scriptures neither confirm nor deny it. Therein lies something difficult for the protestants to answer. The best you're going to get from them is a long and winding trip through philosophical Disneyland where there are several allusions to the bible, but nothing concrete from its pages. However, even if the bible had mentioned abortion, it would only be valid if the bible were a legitimate source of information about the world and the nature of life.

The christians' first unsubstantiated statement is the linchpin to their whole belief system about abortion: humans have souls. But there is no proof of that; it's just a belief. It's in the bible, but as I say, there is nothing that validates the bible as a legitimate source of knowledge or counsel. The authority of the bible is itself simply a chosen belief. But don't get me wrong. I do not care in the least whether you accept the bible or not. Believe the bible to your heart's content! Enjoy the poetry and revel in the exciting stories! Find your inspiration for life in its pages! It doesn't bother me one bit.  You are as free to believe as I am free not to.

The current mania of the christians to strong-arm their abortion philosophy on all of us is based on three beliefs that have absolutely no foundation. The first is, of course, people have souls.  The second is that God invests a soul on the zygote at inception, and the third is that the bible is true or at least mostly true.  Not a single one of these ideas can be corroborated by facts or observations.  If you want to force your religion, or even part of your religion, on others who don't believe in it, you'd better have a little more going for you than wild-eyed claims about ethereal elements and literary fiction. People have been killed at the hands of christians because of these unvalidated propositions. Now they are on the brink of wresting power unto themselves to enforce their cockeyed fantasies as law.

Abortion is obviously an issue, and it's a serious matter, but it is not a black and white debate where opinions fall neatly on one of two sides. When the church, both the evangelicals and the traditional church, create the false impression that there are only two sides of the abortion debate, they are simply doing that to lend the appearance of credibility to their unfounded assumptions. Creating a false dilemma is an old trick, but it only works on people who have abandoned logical and reasoned thinking. There are many facets to the question of abortion, not just two. Anyone who tells you otherwise is lying, which is a sin, but apparently not a bad enough sin to avoid.

Nobody is saying the christians have no right to their opinion on abortion. What I'm saying is that christians have no right to claim that all other opinions must be exterminated because they don't accept the idea that humans have souls and the bible is true. If you believe that humans have souls, that God imparts souls at inception, and that the bible is true, so be it. I can't make you see reason. But as soon as you cross over the line and attempt to compel others by force to adopt your unjustified philosophy, then don't be surprised at the opposition you encounter.   Free people do not willingly surrender their freedom to tyrants.  And don't be surprised if some of the opposition comes from those who actually believe the same as you do about abortion, but will not support your attempts to subvert American liberty under the influence of religious fervor.  If freedom isn't for all, then it's for none.

The one with conflict

During a recent segment of Glenn Beck's Bozo the Clown hour, he called in an "antichrist expert" to talk about where the current political situation in the world fits in to God's final countdown to the end of the world.  Beck and his "expert" often referred to the return of christ, and that just makes me plain old disappointed in Man's progress, and a little annoyed, if truth be told.  Anyone who has seriously looked into the subject of Jesus of Nazareth reaches no honest conclusion other than the Jesus of the New Testament is a mythic figure; there isn't the slightest shred of history behind the Jesus mythology.  Jesus as a flesh-and-blood figure was created to make christian principles more accessible to the uninformed masses and to place the salvific christ sacrifice into a setting that people could relate to.  The Gospels are not a record of historical facts or even doctored facts or even badly retold facts.  They are entirely made up in order to present christian principles in narrative format.  

When you're a believer, as I was for many years, you train yourself to ignore the problems in the bible that indicate Jesus was not real.  You gloss over biblical difficulties and in the back of your mind you trust those wise old preachers you adore to understand it all and comfort you that there really is no problem, these are not the droids you're looking for.  But honesty compels us to look at the bible squarely, expose it to the light, scrutinize its claims, in effect, treating it as if it were the word of God.  If it is God's word, then it will be perfect in all respects, as God is perfect.  Oh, but wait!  Now, the christians claim that because the bible was given to Man, and Man is imperfect, we have somehow corrupted the bible, the perfect word of God.  The perfect word of a God is able to be corrupted by Man?  That calls into question its original perfection, wouldn't you say?  Oh, but then wait again!  It is SO perfect that we just can't grasp it well enough to resolve the conflicts found within it.  Then why did the God give it to us in the first place if He knew we couldn't understand it very well?  Oh, but wait! And on and on in that vein... That's how the christians will lead you down the convoluted path of their circular logic until you get so mired in their preposterous nonsense that you either surrender (a word they LOVE to use!) or just give up on the whole subject. 

When the modern radical right, which includes the evangelical cults all across the country, start bringing in their mythology as though it were real history (or real future), it's a harbinger of serious conflicts to come.  The christians have talked about the "coming conflict" for as long as I can remember, and I'm not a young man.   They feed on conflict.  They become giddy in the anticipation of conflict.  War, battle, and bloodshed are very common themes among the evangelical cults, and when you have millions of people who have grown up inured to those three horrors, who knows what they're capable of?  They anticipate a "second coming" of a Jesus who never came a first time.  They have been hoping for this since the third century, and they have remained disappointed all that time.  Now they have slowly but surely grasped great political power in the most heavily armed nation on earth, the nation that holds the most wealth of the world, a nation whose general citizenry has a long tradition of political apathy.  Will they try to make their prophecies come true?  Was that what caused George the Second to invade Iraq, to invoke his cult's mythic views?  I wouldn't be surprised, though we'll probably never know.  Christians in politics is not in itself a bad thing, in fact, it's a good thing for as many citizens as possible to be active in politics.  However, they are not active in politics for the good of the nation, but to install their mythology and doctrine as the law of the land.  That is not a good thing.  Politics has to come to conclusions that benefit the most people possible, not just one strict ideology.  Politics has to deal with the real world as it is, not as some see it through bible-colored lenses.  

The one about civic duty

They're cleaning the building today.  As I sit here in my office and listen to the cleaning crew, it reminds me of seminary.  In our seminary, and I don't think this is common for seminaries, the student body was required to pitch in on a weekly basis to clean the common-use buildings, take care of the grounds, and any other chores that needed doing.  We also had to take turns washing dishes in the refectory.  It's based on an old christian principle called ora et labora, prayer and work.  It probably comes from years of communal sharing among earlier christian groups, reflected in St. Paul's admonition, "if he will not work, neither let him eat." There were some of the seminary who claimed that the principle was really ora est labore, prayer is work, but there is no historical evidence that any early christians thought about it that way, though at the time, many of us thought that this was not a bad way of looking at it.

However, there is something cathartic about mundane labor done for the community in which one lives.  When you share something, you take care of it for one reason or the other.  Maybe you don't want others to think badly of you for mistreating communal spaces, or maybe you take pride in your work caring for it, or maybe you like the others you share it with and want them to be as pleased as you are about it.  Whatever the reason, communal living offers many opportunities to serve and be served.

I've read that the ancient Greeks required citizens to participate in cult performances as a civic duty.  Of course, people are always people, and as the old religion was replaced with the new christian cult, the need for civic duty waned, the work done by the lower classes who couldn't afford to shirk the responsibilities, a situation that has remained unchanged to this day.  Though America is a diverse nation, technically neutral on religion, there are still many things that could be done by citizens pitching in.  Wouldn't that be an old fashioned idea come round if perhaps citizens could get their taxes cut in exchange for raking the public parks and sweeping the courthouse walkways?  Scooping trash from the creek and mowing the lawns of the town cemetery?  Civic duty is a phrase fallen by the wayside, or rather, pushed aside by that modern idea of Individualism, what we might be tempted to call "Me-Firstism" as we survey the panorama of it's insidious effects upon our country.  It's not a Democratic or Republican idea, definitely not a "Libertarian" or "Tea Party" idea, this notion of community and civic duty, social responsibility.  It's a human idea.  I am who I am because of the community that bore and nurtured me.

So we probably aren't going to go back to the townsfolk pitching in to paint the school, but we can at least cultivate a mindset of civic responsibility.  We can look at our town, our county, our state, and even our nation as our brothers and sisters.  We can be more patient at the DMV.  We can be respectful at school board and town hall meetings.  We can always be more generous and forgiving of the people we share our community with.  It's an old idea that might just get a second life even in these modern, fast-paced times.

The One About Faith

"Now faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen."     

These words are found in the treatise to the Hebrews in the New Testament, and just to piss off the evangelicals and fundamentalists, I will not give the chapter and verse.  My opinion of chapter and verse references is that if you are so ignorant of the bible that you cannot recognize it when you hear it, then you are a piss poor student of the damn thing and not worth my time in the first place.  That out of the way, let's return our attention to the words above.

Any commentary you read will have all kinds of qualifying and backtracking remarks about this text, because on the surface, it seems to say that faith is substantial and is evidence.  Yet, most of us who haven't completely closed our minds to the realities of the universe can see quite clearly that faith is the antithesis of substance and evidence, especially the evidence bit.  Believers in the heavenly bogey man have been and still are quite proud of the fact that they have faith in the presence of no evidence.  They believe without a single substantial element of reason, and they find it both pious and noble to do so.  But the human mind, in my opinion, cannot live with that irrational insanity without stress somewhere along the seams.  

The human mind needs to make connections that give structure and order to the world around us. We need to see that the chair has four legs before we sit on it.  We need evidence before we act.  When someone calls out at home, "It's snowing!" what's the first thing we do?  We look out the window for ourselves to verify the report, not with cynicism, but just because it's our natural reaction.  That marvelous characteristic is what protects us and keeps us alive and well. 

So why is it in every other aspect of human life, people need evidence before they act, yet when it comes to some of the craziest non sequiturs in human history, some people are willing to believe them fully, devotedly, and militantly?  For example, they say "something" must have made the universe.  Granted, "something" might have, but how to you get from "something" to the Apostle's Creed without a lot of making stuff up along the way?  Why do you believe what was written in a book a long time ago by people you didn't know?  How do you know they weren't lying? How do you know they didn't misunderstand events?  You don't know.  You simply chose to believe what someone told you, and you discovered that absolving yourself of all responsibility to think and reason for yourself makes you feel kind of good, a little euphoric, so you call that euphoria the "holy spirit" and there you have it!  A ready-made "inner witness", something the rest of us call circular logic.

The fact is, faith has no substance.  It is certainly not evidence of anything except maybe gullibility.  We all know that if there were actually evidence of anything the religious authorities try to push on us then the need for faith would disappear.  In the face of evidence, faith no longer exists.  To me, that means faith has no place in the human mind. To believe something stupid simply because I am told to believe is itself blatant stupidity.  If we apply to religious nuttery the same tests of substance and evidence we apply to all else, then we should easily and quickly see that religion is nothing but an illusion, or a delusion.

Photo: by Rembrandt, who is dead, so I'm using his painting of the Apostle for decoration. 

The one about Christ

When I was a christian, the ultimate guiding principle of my life was the life of Christ as revealed in the New Testament.  I was one of those guys who always had a pocket New Testament, not for show, but because I really believed in it.  I always read it when circumstances gave me spare time.  I was ridiculed by some in school because of my habit of pulling out my New Testament as soon as my ass hit a chair.  At one point in my life, I would have taken a bet that I could have quoted in order most of the New Testament.  In my mind, the New Testament was explicitly how God wanted his disciples to live.  The New Testament was expressly the word of God, and Jesus was the very presence of God in the flesh, and that made Christ the only model of life for believers.  Everything Christ taught both explicitly and implicitly became the only goal of my life.  It was the only possible way to live.  As far as I was concerned, God did not sanction any other way of looking at things.  The way of Christ was the only way God approved of.  I couldn't understand anyone who thought otherwise.  The whole world around me was seen through the eyes of Christ.  It was, therefore, impossible for me to ignore the poor, to disregard the helpless, to stand off from the needy.

When I realized, eventually, that right-wing partisans also claimed Christ, I was flabbergasted.  To me, it was impossible to be a follower of Christ and not believe in workers' rights, care for the poor and needy, equality of the races, respect for women, and social reform for the good of the community.  To realize that some whom I called brethren in the faith were working hard against the Christ of the New Testament purely to satisfy their own political or socio-economic agenda was disheartening to say the least.  However, it helped the light to dawn on me that very few people who claimed Christ actually revered and followed his path.  Even though time and experience taught me that religion is nonsense and christianism is a lie, that earlier devotion to the life of Christ somehow lingered within me.  I no longer believe Jesus was anything more than a carefully constructed myth, but what the myth stood for in real, personal terms has stuck with me.  I can talk about Christ and look up to him as though he had been real and continue to model my life on his example by not shunning the downtrodden, not turning my back on the needy, not refusing to help the poor, and not giving in to the liars who claim Christ yet do everything in their power to emasculate what he stands for.  Why?  It doesn't matter whether a real god-man savior existed or not.  What matters is we exist now and can save the world if we choose to.  It doesn't matter if there is a heaven or not; what matters is doing the right thing now.  If you claim Christ, and you reject what he stands for, how do you explain yourself?  How do you get off exalting your culture, your business, your banks above your Christ?  You probably believe he existed and believe that he will be your judge at the end of time.  You, then, of all people should be wary of acting against him.  I wonder at your kind.