Spirituality & Society

I have migrated my blog here and hope to be writing more thoughts on spirituality as well as observations on society...

The Gospel of Glee

I do not like Glee. It is entertaining, but it is over-the-top in caricaturing people and promoting an amoral self-centerd approach to life. Everything's OK if you like yourself, and the weirder the better.

I have heard the actors talk about the message of acceptance and affirmation in the show, and how wonderful it is.

Now the creator of the show points out that acceptance and affirmation only goes so far... to those who like Glee! Hypocritical?

Well, fine, Ryan Murphy doesn't want to use someone like you, either. Nyah-nyah!

The Glee creator, in acknowledging all of the big stars just dying to be on the Golden Globe-winning series or have their music adapted for the show, made a special point of singling out the more reluctant Kings of Leon in a recent interview with the Hollywood Reporter.

"F--k you, Kings of Leon," Murphy said. "They're self-centered assholes and they missed the big picture."

And it doesn't get any bigger than Glee, apparently...

Meanwhile, Kings frontman Caleb Followill says he certainly didn't mean to be the Sue Sylvester of rock.

"This whole Glee thing is a shock to us," he told THR in response to Murphy's diatribe. "It's gotten out of hand. At the time of the request, we hadn't even seen the show. It came at the end of that record cycle, and we were over promoting ["Use Somebody"]. This was never meant as a slap in the face to Glee or to music education or to fans of the show. We're not sure where the anger is coming from."

"Usually I find that people who make those comments, their careers are over; they're uneducated and quite stupid," Murphy said, this time referring to Slash, who, unlike Followill, actually did make a crack about Glee, calling it "worse than Grease" as far as licensing went.

Increased Anxiety Among College Freshmen

I recently read a book by Tim Elmore called "Generation iY," and in it he stated that young adults today have higher levels of anxiety, in part because of our culture's emphasis on building self-esteem divorced from accomplishments. We want kids to feel good about themselves without having done anything to actually earn respect. This paradoxically can lead to higher anxiety levels as they do not have a foundation for their self-esteem.

Interestingly, this parenting and teaching focus on self-esteem is contrary to the "Tiger Mother" approach espoused by Amy Chua.

Here is recent data reported in a NY Times article, showing that college freshmen have higher stress levels than at any time in the past 25 years.

The emotional health of college freshmen — who feel buffeted by the recession and stressed by the pressures of high school — has declined to the lowest level since an annual survey of incoming students started collecting data 25 years ago.

In the survey, “The American Freshman: National Norms Fall 2010,” involving more than 200,000 incoming full-time students at four-year colleges, the percentage of students rating themselves as “below average” in emotional health rose. Meanwhile, the percentage of students who said their emotional health was above average fell to 52 percent. It was 64 percent in 1985.

The Gospel of Steve Jobs

Insightful and eloquent commentary on Steve Jobs' success and the worldview behind it - and how he epitomizes modern yearning and thinking. An excerpt from the introduction:

As remarkable as Steve Jobs is in countless ways—as a designer, an innovator, a (ruthless and demanding) leader—his most singular quality has been his ability to articulate a perfectly secular form of hope. Nothing exemplifies that ability more than Apple's early logo, which slapped a rainbow on the very archetype of human fallenness and failure—the bitten fruit—and made it a sign of promise and progress.

In the 2000s, when much about the wider world was causing Americans intense anxiety, the one thing that got inarguably better, much better, was our personal technology. In October 2001, with the World Trade Center still smoldering and the Internet financial bubble burst, Apple introduced the iPod. In January 2010, in the depths of the Great Recession, the very month where unemployment breached 10 percent for the first time in a generation, Apple introduced the iPad.

Politically, militarily, economically, the decade was defined by disappointment after disappointment—and technologically, it was defined by a series of elegantly produced events in which Steve Jobs, commanding more attention and publicity each time, strode on stage with a miracle in his pocket....

Apple made technology safe for cool people—and ordinary people. It made products that worked, beautifully, without fuss and with a great deal of style. They improved markedly, unmistakably, from one generation to the next—not just in a long list of features and ever-spiraling complexity (I'm looking at you, Microsoft Word), but in simplicity. Press the single button on the face of the iPad and, whether you are five or 95, you can begin using it with almost no instruction. It has no manual. No geeks required.

Steve Jobs was the evangelist of this particular kind of progress—and he was the perfect evangelist because he had no competing source of hope. In his celebrated Stanford commencement address (which is itself an elegant, excellent model of the genre), he spoke frankly about his initial cancer diagnosis in 2003. It's worth pondering what Jobs did, and didn't, say:

No one wants to die. Even people who want to go to heaven don't want to die to get there. And yet death is the destination we all share. No one has ever escaped it. And that is as it should be, because death is very likely the single best invention of life. It's life's change agent; it clears out the old to make way for the new. Right now, the new is you. But someday, not too long from now, you will gradually become the old and be cleared away. Sorry to be so dramatic, but it's quite true. Your time is limited, so don't waste it living someone else's life. Don't be trapped by dogma, which is living with the results of other people's thinking. Don't let the noise of others' opinions drown out your own inner voice, heart and intuition. They somehow already know what you truly want to become.

5 Happiest countries in the World

Five years ago researchers at the Legatum Institute, a London-based nonpartisan think tank, set out to rank the happiest countries in the world. But because "happy" carries too much of a touchy-feely connotation, they call it "prosperity."

Legatum recently completed its 2010 Prosperity Index, which ranks 110 countries, covering 90% of the world's population.

To build its index Legatum gathers upward of a dozen international surveys done by the likes of the Gallup polling group, the Heritage Foundation and the World Economic Forum. Each country is ranked on 89 variables sorted into eight subsections: economy, entrepreneurship, governance, education, health, safety, personal freedom and social capital.

The core conceit: Prosperity is complex; achieving it relies on a confluence of factors that build on each other in a virtuous circle.

The Top 5 Happiest countries in the World

1. Norway
2. Denmark
3. Finland
4. Australia
5. New Zealand

Economics of Tiger Mothering

This opinion piece in the NYT points out a crucial economic principle, and how it relates to Amy Chua's teachings on parenting. That is, that a person's willingness to forego present rewards may result in future greater rewards. We commonly refer to it as delayed gratification, and most parents hope that their children learn its potency - and are willing to go to college so that their future success is greater than if they started working out of high school. Amy Chua argues in her parenting approach, that it can be taught to children.

In some ways, Chua’s book is an extended disquisition on an attempt at using extrinsic incentives to try to instill intrinsic motivations. If a commitment device is something that “takes choice off the table,” then Amy Chua herself was the mother of all commitment devices. Amy made sure her kids stuck with her plan. She makes a strong argument that parents often have better information than their children about what their children can accomplish with hard work. Parents can use this informational advantage to push their kids to attainments that kids themselves could not imagine. As Chua says, “there’s nothing better for building confidence than learning you can do something you thought you couldn’t.”

Love in action

A tribute to Sargent Shriver from Bono. This is where liberals are great, with big-hearted compassion which they put to work to help the poor and needy.

for all the love in him, he knew that love was a tough word. Easy to say, tough to see it through. Love, yes, and peace, too, in no small measure; this was the ’60s but you wouldn’t know it just by looking at him. No long hair in the Shriver house, or rock ’n’ roll. He and his beautiful bride, Eunice Kennedy Shriver, would go to Mass every day — as much an act of rebellion against brutal modernity as it was an act of worship. Love, yes, but love as a brave act, a bold act, requiring toughness and sacrifice.

His faith demanded action, from him, from all of us. For the Word to become flesh, we had to become the eyes, the ears, the hands of a just God. Injustice could, in the words of the old spiritual, “Be Overcome.” Robert Sargent sang, “Make me a channel of your peace,” and became the song.

Make me a channel of your peace:
Where there is hatred let me bring your love.
Where there is injury, your pardon, Lord,
And where there’s doubt, true faith in you.

Oh, Master grant that I may never seek,
So much to be consoled as to console.
To be understood as to understand,
To be loved as to love with all my soul.

Make me a channel of your peace,
Where there’s despair in life, let me bring hope.
Where there is darkness, only light,
And where there’s sadness, ever joy.

The Peace Corps was Jack Kennedy’s creation but embodied Sargent Shriver’s spirit. Lyndon Johnson declared war on poverty but Sarge led the charge. These, and the Special Olympics, were as dramatic an incarnation of the ideas at the heart of America as the space program.

Why Chinese Mothers Are Superior

I love this article! Brilliant. It can spark unending discussions of cultural and parenting differences, and inform parents of how to best prepare their children for adulthood.

I have great respect for mothers like Amy Chua, and wish my wife and I were more like her. I am afraid we have been much too soft on our children, sensitive to their feelings and have caved in to their desires far too often. I am sure that has resulted in their poorer development and performance, and perhaps will result in greater anxiety and lower self-esteem as they move into adulthood because they are not as well prepared and disciplined as they could be. But the truth is that Chinese mothers like Amy Chua are incredibly self-sacrificing, and few parents, even Chinese ones, have the will to put in the work required to demand such performance from their kids.

This article is also incredibly idealistic. I live in a Chinese society, and know that for every ONE child like Amy's, there are 100 children that endure the shame and hardship parents and teachers heap on them without developing into brilliant successes, but rather, they struggle with mediocre performance (most Chinese children DO NOT get all As!), insecurity, depression, lack of self-identity/awareness and little creativity or individual initiative.

And only 1 in 100 Chinese parents put in the personal supervision that Amy did to drill their kids - most leave it to teachers and tutors and nannies and grandparents while they are out working long hours. Yes, they may scold their kids and demand high performance, but they do not put in the personal time with their children to make sure they excel.

There are good Chinese mothers, and there are poor Chinese mothers. I am not sure that Amy Chua's example is so much a proof of the superiority of Chinese mothers as it is a prrof of the superiority of Amy Chua as a mother. I have no doubt that her energy, intelligence, and dedication - applied to Western parenting styles - would produce as successful and as happy children as she did following Chinese principles.

Plus, it sounds like she has a Western culture husband, which may prove that the best environment is one that provides both the high demand and discipline of a Chinese approach WITH the high affection and affirmation of the Western approach.

Western parents try to respect their children's individuality, encouraging them to pursue their true passions, supporting their choices, and providing positive reinforcement and a nurturing environment. By contrast, the Chinese believe that the best way to protect their children is by preparing them for the future, letting them see what they're capable of, and arming them with skills, work habits and inner confidence that no one can ever take away.

Thoughts on Christian Leadership

...received from a friend today:

Christian leadership: Follow Christ so that when others follow you they’ll be following Him. Take the back seat at the banquet. Don’t tell everyone the good you are doing. Be counted as garbage for the cause of the Gospel. Wash the disciples feet. Die for the sheep. Pray so that people ask you how to pray. Love your enemies. Submit yourself to others. Sleep in the boat while everyone else is in a panic. Watch your life and doctrine closely. Be patient. Rejoice when they credit Christ and forget you. Be surprised that they let you lead. Weep over your city. Touch the lepers. Maintain a reputation of hanging around all the wrong people. Say you’re sorry – in public. Talk about your witnessing experiences. Forgive. Know your Bible. That’s enough, though it is not all.

Bruins in the NBA

UCLA leads all schools with 14 alumni in the National Basketball Association. Nine of the alums played for current head coach Ben Howland and six were selected in the first rounds of the last five NBA Drafts.

Cameron's DC Trip Photo Book

Click here to view this photo book larger

Best-sellling Christian Books of 2010

Interesting to see what people are reading - or at least buying.

I am only familiar with 26 of the authors on the Top 100 book list, and have read 3 of the Top 10 (#s 2-4):

1 Sarah Young, Jesus Calling
2 William P. Young, The Shack
3 Francis Chan, Crazy Love
4 Gary Chapman, The Five Love Languages
5 Dave Ramsey , The Total Money Makeover
6 Stephen Kendrick and Alex Kendrick, The Love Dare
7 Ron Hall and Denver Moore, Same Kind of Different As Me
8 Beth Moore, So Long Insecurity
9 Francis Chan, Forgotten God
10 Don Piper, 90 Minutes in Heaven

Places to Go in 2011

Here's my kind of list : ) I want to go places!

From NY Times, 41 places to go in 2011...

Which of these would you most like to visit?

My choices (though my most-desired destinations are not listed here):
1. Santiago, Chile
5. Milan
7. London
11. The Danube
16. Tlemcen, Algeria
21. Tallinn, Estonia
24. Port Ghalib, Egypt
26. Guimarães, Portugal
30. Zanzibar
38. Salonika, Greece
32. Tozeur, Tunisia
38. Salonika, Greece

2010 Top US Commercials

Something we never get to see in SIngapore, here are some of the most entertaining TV commercials from the US in the past year...

Hard Choices Ahead...

The kind of political leaders the world needs to thrive in the future, from Thomas Friedman:

We are leaving an era where to be a mayor, governor, senator or president was, on balance, to give things away to people. And we are entering an era where to be a leader will mean, on balance, to take things away from people. It is the only way we’ll get our fiscal house in order before the market, brutally, does it for us.

In my book, the leaders who will deserve praise in this new era are those who develop a hybrid politics that persuades a majority of voters to cut where we must so we can invest where we must. To survive in the 21st century, America can no longer afford a politics of irresponsible profligacy. But to thrive in the 21st century — to invest in education, infrastructure and innovation — America cannot afford a politics of mindless austerity either.

Confucian Ethics and Chinese Kindness

I read a couple of interesting opinion pieces in the Straits Times today. One was by Chris Patten, Chancellor of Oxford University and former governor of Hong Kong, who wrote on the positive role of religion in society. He closed by saying "we should listen to the core messages of all these great religions, above all the Confucian golden rule that we should never do to others what we would not like to be done to us."

I find that Westerners regularly prefer to elevate the morals of non-Western societies and religions above the dominant religions and cultural norms of the West. It was curious to me that Patten chose to elevate the Confucian "golden rule" above every other religious teaching. And it struck me that the message boiled down to the Google motto of "Do no harm."

In contrast to the Confucian teaching, the Christian "golden rule" taught by Jesus in the Bible is to "Do to others whatever you would like them to do to you."

Also in the Straits Times today was an article by Ho Ai Li entitled "Hard to be kind in China," in which she talks about the Chinese cultural norm of not offering help to people in public, even to those who are injured. She contrasts this with the American preference for volunteering to help strangers in need.

How do her observations relate to the Confucian and Christian teachings in their societies? Whereas the Confucian teaching is a matter of restraint, not acting in a certain way, the Christian teaching is a matter of activism, acting in a certain way. Christians, and the societies with strong Christian influences, are taught to actively reach out to do good to people, especially people in need. That emphasis is not as strong in societies with Confucian influences, which tend to emphasize minding your own business and not getting involved in other peoples' (or countries') affairs. We can see this in Chinese versus Western foreign policy as well as in individuals' social behavior.

I wonder if Chris Patten sees a correlation, and would prefer above all that individuals and societies stay out of others' lives?

Social Networking Revolution

I read today that Facebook has changed the way people relate to each other more than anything else since the introduction of the post office.

Do you think that is true? How has Facebook changed the way you relate to others?

An editorial in today's Straits Times by Robin Dunbar of Oxford University stated that "Emotional closeness declines by around 15 percent a year in the absence of face-to-face contact, so that in five years someone can go from being an intimate acquaintance to the most distant outer layer of your 150 friends."

How does Facebook affect that dynamic? I know it occasionally reminds me of my distant friends, but I am not sure it actually brings many of them closer to me. Maybe if I was better at broadcasting what I am thinking and feeling and doing, it would help others feel more emotionally connected to me. But I have to face it, I am not a broadcaster by nature. I am more interactive and inquisitive in relationships, not a pacesetter or opinion sharer.

Where to Retire in the US?

Not the best places, but the WORST states to retire in listed here:

Illinois, California, New York, Rhode Island, New Jersey, Ohio, Wisconsin, Massachusetts, Connecticut and Nevada.

States with the highest cost of living in the third quarter of 2010 were, in order, Hawaii, Alaska, California, New Jersey, New York, Connecticut, Rhode Island, Maryland, Vermont and New Hampshire, according to a Missouri Economic Research and Information Center analysis. The District of Columbia also makes the list.

States with the greatest tax burdens after New Jersey were New York, Connecticut, Maryland, Hawaii, California, Ohio, Vermont, Wisconsin and Rhode Island, joined by the District of Columbia.

Arizona, Florida, Illinois, Michigan, Nevada, New Jersey, Oregon, Rhode Island and Wisconsin joined California as the 10 most fiscally troubled states.

In a related survey, USAA and Military.com announced this week that Waco, Texas, tops the first-ever "Best Places for Military Retirement" list. In its report, USAA and Military.com focused on U.S. communities that offer "a high quality of life and help maximize military retiree benefits as service members manage their 'first retirement' from the armed forces and begin planning their 'second retirement' from civilian life." Other places on that list included, in order, Oklahoma City; Austin, Texas; College Station, Texas; Harrisburg, Pa.; San Angelo, Texas; Madison, Wis.; Pittsburgh; New Orleans; and Syracuse, N.Y.

Concentrate to breed happiness

“We see evidence for mind-wandering causing unhappiness, but no evidence for unhappiness causing mind-wandering,” Mr. Killingsworth says.

What psychologists call “flow” — immersing your mind fully in activity — has long been advocated by nonpsychologists. “Life is not long,” Samuel Johnson said, “and too much of it must not pass in idle deliberation how it shall be spent.” Henry Ford was more blunt: “Idleness warps the mind.” The iPhone results jibe nicely with one of the favorite sayings of William F. Buckley Jr.: “Industry is the enemy of melancholy.”

Secret Ingredients to Happiness

Well, they're not really secrets.

But with the way people ignore them, you would think nobody believes in the importance of sleep, diet, and exercize.

I mean, really, how many people do you know who take really good care of themselves? If they are, then they must not be working very hard, are they? And if they aren't busy getting ahead, how can they be happy?

Come to think of it, I know a lot of busy and unhappy people. Maybe they should read this article from Gallup Management Journal.

Not OK to be a bigot

From Christianity Today:

David Gushee of the New Evangelical Partnership for the Common Good said politicians who were using the mosque issue for political gain "deserve neither our sympathy nor our acquiescence, but only our condemnation." His words for Christians who opposed the mosque were just as pointed.

"For those mainly conservative Christians who are responding to this and other mosque projects with open expressions of anti-Muslim hatred, and open rejections of the principles of religious liberty from which Christians themselves daily benefit, shame on you! As a fellow Christian, I say that you bring dishonor to the name of Jesus Christ, you directly disobey his command that we love our neighbors, and you drive the watching world even further away from any interest in the Gospel message!" said Gushee.

China Becomes World's Second Largest Economy

China continues phenomenal growth, but as it becomes more developed, that will be harder to sustain. It is much easier to grow 10% when average income is $3,600 (China's) than when it is $46,000 (US's). Look at how the predictions of Japan's ascendancy fizzled. I do not believe there are the cultural pre-requisites in either Chinese or Japanese society for allowing their sustainable rise to the top. Good Q - what would those cultural characteristics be?

Tokyo said that Japan’s economy was valued at about $1.28 trillion in the second quarter, slightly below China’s $1.33 trillion. Japan’s economy grew 0.4 percent in the quarter, Tokyo said, substantially less than forecast. That weakness suggests that China’s economy will race past Japan’s for the full year.

Experts say unseating Japan — and in recent years passing Germany, France and Great Britain — underscores China’s growing clout and bolsters forecasts that China will pass the United States as the world’s biggest economy as early as 2030. America’s gross domestic product was about $14 trillion in 2009.

“This has enormous significance,” said Nicholas R. Lardy, an economist at the Peterson Institute for International Economics. “It reconfirms what’s been happening for the better part of a decade: China has been eclipsing Japan economically. For everyone in China’s region, they’re now the biggest trading partner rather than the U.S. or Japan.”

For Japan, whose economy has been stagnating for more than a decade, the figures reflect a decline in economic and political power. Japan has had the world’s second-largest economy for much of the last four decades, according to the World Bank. And during the 1980s, there was even talk about Japan’s economy some day overtaking that of the United States.

But while Japan’s economy is mature and its population quickly aging, China is in the throes of urbanization and is far from developed, analysts say, meaning it has a much lower standard of living, as well as a lot more room to grow. Just five years ago, China’s gross domestic product was about $2.3 trillion, about half of Japan’s.

This country has roughly the same land mass as the United States, but it is burdened with a fifth of the world’s population and insufficient resources.

Its per capita income is more on a par with those of impoverished nations like Algeria, El Salvador and Albania — which, along with China, are close to $3,600 — than that of the United States, where it is about $46,000.