Topic Statement

Over the past few evenings, I've read 22 final papers for my class at Fels.  I've said it before and I'll say it again: these students are really sharp.  Which has made for some stimulating reading. 

It helps, too, that they've picked really interesting topics.  Here's the full list of subjects I've gotten to get into through their final papers (these are my summaries, not their titles):

1. How and why to use economic incentives to woo gun manufacturers leaving states that have passed stricted gun control laws

2. Welfare-to-work programs in Pennsylvania

3. A transit oriented development in Coatesville

4. The economics of solar energy

5. Garden State Parkway Racetrack

6. Workforce housing in Kensington

7. Impact of higher bridge tolls on households, commuters, and tourism activity

8. An age-restricted development in Bucks County

9. Business Improvement Districts in Philadelphia

10. Philadelphia Energy Solutions at the Navy Yard

11.  The effect of climate change on agriculture in New Jersey, and what the state should do in response

12. Funding ideas for the School District of Philadelphia

13. The economic case for Cira Centre South near 30th Street Station

14. Economic evaluation of stimulus funding in Philadelphia

15. Feasibility of a hotel in Parsippany, New Jersey

16. Whether to preserve or demolish Royal Theater in South Philadelphia

17. Economic benefits of community gardens

18. Economic benefits of greenways

19. Economic role of SEPTA

20.  Whether to buy or rent county government workspace, and where

21. A mixed-use development in Towson, Maryland

22. Expanding a Philadelphia charter school into a neighboring state

One Maker or Many Made Things

Picking up on yesterday's post, here are two pics that were snapped after our morning service on Sunday.  The first is after folks have placed blocks on the table to represent things we look to - individually and as a church - instead of God.  The second is after we've cleaned up all the blocks.

I realize I am a generally tidy person, so my perspective is skewed.  But it doesn't take a neat freak to know that God is dishonored when we have lots of things we turn to instead of Him - for help and protection and happiness and meaning.  Would that we as a church and a generation be less cluttered.

Sermon Transcript

Here's the transcript from my sermon yesterday.

***

Where Does My Help Come From:
One God or Many Made Things
Psalm 121 / Exodus 20:1-3

[read Psalm 121]

Let me start by saying how much I appreciate the work of the Worship Band.  You guys prayerfully and diligently lead us into worship.  And we are fortunate to have people like this who are so skilled and so committed.

In fact, they are so skilled and so committed that I bet that if we asked them to do what they just did, only while hiking a mountain, they could do it, and they would do it well.  Can you imagine that, singing while trekking up a hill, or pushing a piano and drum set through a rugged trail?

It seems absurd, but for God’s people way back when, it was commonplace.  Not the “pushing the piano and drum set through a rugged trail” part, of course.  But, three times a year, God’s people made a pilgrimage to Jerusalem for a religious festival.

If you know the local geography, you know that Jerusalem is the highest of hills and is surrounded by hills.  And they sang while they made that pilgrimage, the people of God lifting their voices in praise as they literally and figuratively ascended to Jerusalem.

What did they sing?  They sang what we now know as Psalms 120 to 134, which we often refer to as “the Songs of Ascents.”  Over and over again, three times a year, God’s people sang these psalms to God and to each other as they made their way upwards to worship together in Jerusalem.

Journey is a powerful and recurring theme in the Bible, as you may know.  The Exodus, out of Egypt and into the Promised Land, was a defining moment for God’s people.  And much of the action in the accounts of Jesus’ ministry in the gospels is of Him and His followers on the move.

It is for this reason that when a Christian brother or sister tells me that they are making a big transition in their lives – moving to a new city for a new job, or heading out to the mission field – I always encourage them to take time in the tumult to receive God’s presence in the transition, and to wait for what He is trying to teach and do while they are on the move.

God is God where we were, and God is God where we will end up.  But God is also God in the transition.

I hope that that is a good word for you individually and for us as a church.  We may know who God was, last chapter.  And we may want to hurry up and get to the next chapter to find out who God will be.  But God is not in a hurry.  He is with us in the journey.  And His people knew, way back when, that while they were journeying, they ought to sing.

Which brings us to today’s text.  Psalm 121 is one of my very favorite passages in all of the Bible.  Many of you know it by heart, thanks to that song that we often sing here in church.  But I pray that as we unpack its meaning this morning, we will know it in a new way.

You know how the psalm starts: “I will lift up my eyes to the mountains; from where shall my help come?”  How many of us, when we are despairing, instinctively look up to the hills?  It is a natural response.  But I don’t think that is quite what the psalmist meant.

Maybe if we transport ourselves back to the psalmist’s time, we remember that travel back then was fraught.  Someone could be lurking in the shadows, waiting to pounce on us, harm us, take our stuff, and leave us for dead.  Or, if we were in the midst of battle, an opposing army could be just around the ridge, ready to charge us and overwhelm us.  But I don’t think that is quite what the psalmist meant either.

My understanding of the original intent of the psalmist in Psalm 121 is informed by Dr. Eugene Peterson’s delightful book, “A Long Obedience in the Same Direction.”  Peterson writes:

During the time this psalm was written and sung, Palestine was overrun with popular pagan worship.  Much of this religion was practiced on hilltops.  Shrines were set up, groves of trees were planted, sacred prostitutes both male and female were provided; persons were lured to the shrines to engage in acts of worship that would enhance the fertility of the land, would make you feel good, would protect you from evil.  There were nostrums, protections, spells and enchantments against all the perils of the road.  Do you fear the sun’s heat?  Go to the sun priest and pay for protection against the sun god.  Are you fearful of the malign influence of moonlight?  Go to the moon priest and buy an amulet.  Are you haunted by the demons that can use any pebble under your foot to trip you?  Go to the shrine and learn the magic formula to ward off the chief.  From whence shall my help come?  From Baal?  From Asherah?  From the sun priest?  From the moon priestess?

There were, essentially, gods for every woe.  And they were all there on the hills, waiting to be called on for help.  “I will lift up my eyes to the mountains; from where shall my help come?”

This all may seem primitive to our modern eyes.  And yet, do we not also have gods for every woe?  Are we not also tempted to lift our eyes to the hills and pick from among them for the help we need?  When we are in transition, do we not also flail around for help from all sorts of places?

We don’t know how long the psalmist pauses between verses 1 and 2.  But we do know what his answer is to his own question: “My help comes from the LORD, who made heaven and earth.”  “My help comes from the LORD, who made heaven and earth.”

Two things to point out here.  First, he calls on a specific God: Yahweh, the God of Israel.  (When you see “LORD” in all caps in my Bible, it means Yahweh.)

I actually find it kind of annoying that we don’t use the name, “Yahweh,” more.  The name, “God,” is so generic.  We’re not calling on a generic “God,” one whose specific identity is amorphous and can be bent however we choose.  No, we are calling on a distinct God: Yahweh, the God of Israel, the God of the Old Testament and the New Testament.

Second, how does He describe this God, Yahweh?  He made heaven and earth.  The other gods on the hills, that offer the promise of help for our every woe, are all made things.  But Yahweh is the Maker of all.  Which would we rather choose in a pinch: A made thing? A generic, catch-all God?  Or a specific Helper: Yahweh, who made heaven and earth, and who has revealed Himself to His people as they journey through life?

Lest we are still on the fence, the psalmist proceeds with this God’s credentials:
·       He won’t let our foot slip
·       He won’t sleep
·       He keeps you
·       He’s your shade
·       The sun and moon won’t smite you
·       He’ll protect you from all evil and keep your soul
·       He’ll guard your going out and your coming forth forever and ever

The psalmist doesn’t need to say it but he means this: Yahweh can and do all these things, and all of your other choices on the hills cannot and do not.  Yahweh is supremely able and supremely desiring to protect you and keep you, and all of your other choices on the hills are not.  Yahweh is where your help should come from, not from anything you can find on the hills.

This, I believe, gets to the core of God’s character, and the reason He is the way He is with us.  People often wonder why Christians insist that God is “the only way”…why can’t the Christian God be good for Christians but others be free to choose other gods that are good for them?

But that misunderstands Yahweh’s perspective.  He is the Maker of all.  He is able to keep us and satisfy our every need.  He desires to be that for us.

And so He is greatly honored when we say, when we sing as we ascend, “Yes, God, we choose you.  Our help comes from you.”  And so He is greatly dishonored when we choose our help from the hills instead, from made things that cannot and do not protect or provide.

I want to close by doing something a little different.  I believe that all of us were made for our help to come from Yahweh.  I believe that we as a church were made for our help to come from Yahweh.  But I believe that all of us, and we as a church, have chosen to look to the hills instead.

Instead of one God, one specific God, Yahweh, we have cluttered our landscape with made things that we turn to for help.  And our clutter is an indictment of our misplacement of faith in these made things rather than in our Maker.

I believe it is time to see just how cluttered our landscape has become.  I have a pile of toy blocks.  I want you to think about one or two or three or ten things that you personally or we as a church look to instead of Yahweh when we are in distress.

It could be our intellect or our health or our reputation.  It could be our jobs or our savings accounts or our social network.  It could be constancy or constant change, a commitment to tradition or an openness to break from it.

It could be our bad habits, or it could be our good works.  Some of the things on the hills way back when were wicked things.  But some were neutral or even positive things.  They just weren’t where our help should come from.  And so it is, perhaps, with the things we turn to – individually and as a church – instead of God.

I want you to take however many toy blocks for however many things you thought of, and I want you to place them on this center table.  And when we are all done, I want us to see just how cluttered we have made our lives and our church, when what God wants and invites us to is for Him to be our help and keeper.

And, of course, God sees this clutter and any other clutter we’ve cluttered our lives and our church with.  So this stack of blocks is not news to Him.  But perhaps it will show us just how cluttered we have become, and how much we need to unclutter, in terms of where our help comes from.

We all want God to help us.  But we need to clear out all our other help sources first.  So we’ll close by confessing our turning to made things instead of the Maker, and then by clearing the table of the toy blocks and asking God to help us choose Him and only Him when we – individually and as a church – need help.

Retooling

Tomorrow is the last session of my class, Quantitative Tools for Consulting.  I look forward to having my Saturday mornings back, but I know I'll miss meeting with this group of students.  I was told ahead of time that they were an impressive bunch, and they haven't disappointed.  I'm not selling myself short when I say they're all smarter than me.  In fact, they say that good hiring means hiring people smarter than you, and I hired one of my students (she starts next week) and it's definitely true that she's way smarter than me.

Last weekend's class, I took the last half-hour or so to get their feedback on how the class went.  Since I consider the class to still be "in beta," I told them I wanted to hear from them about everything - content, format, miscellaneous.

True to their insightful and productive ways, they offered a slew of useful and constructive feedback.  I now have a much better idea of what worked, what didn't, and how to tweak things for next time.  I know for sure that, if I am so privileged to get to teach the class again next summer, I'll be making more changes and putting in more legwork between now and then than I did between last year's class and this year's, because I got so many good ideas that I can't wait to put into motion.

All in all, it was a rewarding and enriching class for me, and hopefully my students can say the same.  I look forward to keeping in touch with them, least of all because it is almost certain that I will be working for one or more of them in the future.

Other, Earthly Influences

I didn't mean to downplay the role of people in my life journey, as described in yesterday's post.  To be sure, God warrants centrality in any discussion of how I've gone from there to here.  But He worked through people in large part to do that.

Consider the three men that went before me: my dad and my two grandfathers.  My dad's dad was a doctor, as was his wife (my grandmother), and they ran their own thing in the village where my dad grew up, so you could say he was a small business owner of sorts.  My mom's dad was in business, and between that, his big nose, and his deadly farts, my mom marvels at the similarities between him and me.  And my dad was an engineer, but he had some social entrepreneurship in him as well, starting his company's fitness program and always volunteering for running races and health expos.

I was still a shy Taiwanese kid from the suburbs of San Jose.  But I also had other things in my blood.  And God used them to take me places my childhood self wouldn't have dared imagine.

Well This Has Been Unexpected

“I’m LeBron James, from Akron, Ohio, from the inner city. I’m not even supposed to be here."

So said the now two-time NBA champ when asked about all his haters.  And it's true: haters can hate, but James is happy with what he's done, and he should be.  It's also a reminder that while we can hold him to an impossible standard of excellence because of his considerable talents, we should also marvel at how far he has come and how much he has overcome.

I especially like the "I'm not even supposed to be here" part.  It is an acknowledgement of how dissonant it is for someone of his background to be among society's royalty in fame, fortune, and achievement.  What a country we live in, and what inner strength by James to push through so many obstacles en route to the mountaintop of success.

James' path is almost straight up.  Mine is much more sideways.  But I often feel the same feeling of "I'm not even supposed to be here."  I was a painfully shy kid from suburban San Jose.  By all accounts, I should be productively toiling away at a high-paying and well-regarded technical job in Silicon Valley, geographically and relationally close to my parents, and avoiding controversy.  Instead, I'm 2,500 miles from where I grew up, running a small business that has me in the middle of a swirl of co-workers and clients and politicos and power brokers, mixing it up on issues of taxes and policy and race and religion and cities and justice.

Where my life has gone is not inherently better than where you'd expect it to go if you knew me as a kid - that's not the point I'm making.  Indeed, where I've ended up might be considered sideways or even downward, depending on what you value.  My point is that you never know where you'll end up.  I believe that if you trust God, and even when you don't (I didn't become a Christian until I was 18, and since then have obviously had moments - nay, entire seasons - when I wasn't really walking right with God), He will guide you to a place that will be fuller and grander than you could've imagined.  Even if it doesn't seem like it's better in the world's eyes.  And even if it doesn't seem likely at all when you first started.  

I'm Lee Huang, from San Jose, California, from the suburbs.  I'm not even supposed to be here.  And I'm loving every minute.

Lazy Linking, 95th in an Occasional Series

Stuff I liked lately on the Internets:

95.1 Melted ceramic art…mind officially blown http://bit.ly/1arXZ40 @thisiscolossal

95.2 David Brooks coins a phrase for the ages: 70-year-olds have “a great horniness for service” http://nyti.ms/1334lS6 @nytimes

95.3 I believe healthy churches often need to do fewer things…and here’s how to know when that’s true http://bit.ly/11UBTVJ @tonymorganlive

95.4 Posting calories doesn’t work, but posting how long it’ll take to walk off that cheeseburger might http://bit.ly/ZUsHwp @sciam

95.5 Is there so much vacancy in Lower North Philly that we should just make some of it semi-rural? http://bit.ly/17tBauV @curbedphilly

Preaching at Woodland

On Sunday the 28th, I will be preaching at the 10:30am morning service of Woodland Presbyterian Church.  I will be preaching out of Psalm 121, and my working title is "Where Does My Help Come From: One Maker or Many Made Things?"  I hope you will consider joining me that morning. 

Marrying Two Perspectives

Picking up on yesterday's post, about sex and relationships on campus, I want to riff on this notion of marrying young versus waiting.  Yesterday's angle was that college might be the best time and pool to find a partner, rather than romance getting in the way of more important stuff like maxing out on classes and extra-curriculars and angling for the ideal first job.  Today's is whether you should "find yourself" first and then get married, or find yourself by getting married.

Slate recently published dueling articles, by Julia Shaw and Amanda Marcotte.  Shaw's position can be summarized as follows: "Marriage wasn’t something we did after we’d grown up—it was how we have grown up and grown together." Marcotte counters: "I grew up in one of those red states where young marriage is the norm, and we didn’t call the man you married young your 'soul mate.' Our preferred term was 'first husband.' There may be something to the idea that your young marriage helps you grow up, but all too often, the beneficiary of the marriage-matured person is the next spouse. It’s a tremendously stressful and expensive system, and it’s no wonder that younger generations prefer to keep those starter relationships a little less legally binding."

You can probably guess who I agree with more.  I heard a wedding homily put it like this: "You are each committing, for the rest of your lives, to whoever is in that body - even if whoever is in that body changes."  In other words, people change; our commitment is not just to the person we know now but to who they become over time.  And: "You are committing, for the rest of your lives, to being the number one influence on the other person, and to the other person being the number one influence on you."  In other words, what we're signing up for is that how we change will be to change together.

I actually found Ms. Marcotte's words to be unconvincing and cynical.  But her perspective is not without its merits.  There is a very real sense in which marriage does not and cannot "complete" you.  Yes, you have your whole life together to grow up, to evolve, to stretch to new ways and new places you couldn't have imagined when you were at the starting line.  And yes, marriage means two independent and distinct units become one entity, forging a new identity together.  But it all has to build on some kind of base understanding of self.  Or, as I once heard it said that about marriage, less than one plus less than one equals less than one (i.e. two incomplete people make one incomplete unit), but one plus one equals way more than two (i.e. two complete people make a unit far greater than the sum of its parts).

There is the practical matter of actually finding a good mate, which was ground covered in part in yesterday's post and which is part of the thrust of Ms. Shaw's exhortation to marry young.  Sometimes we can't or don't choose the if, when, and who as much as circumstance does.  But if we're thinking conceptually about if, when, and who to marry, let's at least mine the wisdom from Ms. Shaw's and Ms. Marcotte's perspectives.  No matter where you're coming from, socially and politically and religiously, it's an awfully important decision in your life.

On-Campus Living

A heavily posted link from my Facebook friends is this New York Times article about the attitudes of women at the University of Pennsylvania towards sex and relationships.  The central premise, based on yearlong interviews with about 60 Penn women, is that the hard-charging environment has rendered relationships non-existent, making sex simply something one does with a guy as needed rather than indicating anything emotional important about the person or the act.  It's ground I've covered before (see "Dorm Food" or "Let Me In," for example) but, at the risk of repeating myself, it's worth another musing.

There's not a lot to be optimistic about here, especially for a father of a daughter who hopes she follows in his footsteps and goes to Penn.  Where to start?  Well, for me the following excerpts were telling:

“'If I’m sober, I’m working.'”  Double ugh.  Ugh that drivenness has crowded out the innocence of finding yourself in college and the cultivation of deep relationships that last a lifeime.  And ugh that getting unsober is seen as the only way to get off the hamster wheel.

"It is by now pretty well understood that traditional dating in college has mostly gone the way of the landline, replaced by 'hooking up' — an ambiguous term that can signify anything from making out to oral sex to intercourse — without the emotional entanglement of a relationship."  I'm not sure I would go so far as to say the most important thing a woman can do in college is to find a hubby - a Princeton mom recently made news by suggesting this to the school paper - and a romantic relationship is not a necessity during your college years, but you don't even have to be a prude to know that casual sexual encounters are a pretty poor substitute. 

"Ask her why she hasn’t had a relationship at Penn, and she won’t complain about the death of courtship or men who won’t commit. Instead, she’ll talk about 'cost-benefit' analyses and the 'low risk and low investment costs' of hooking up."  I'm not hung up on the use of "cost-benefit analysis" in the context of sex and relationships - in fact, I welcome that line of thinking - but I am saddened that people think casual sex is low-risk and low-cost.

"Paula England, a sociologist at New York University, who led an online survey of 24,000 students at 21 universities called the Online College Social Life Survey, said that women tended to fare much better sexually in relationships than in hookups.  'Guys don’t seem to care as much about women’s pleasure in the hookup, whereas they do seem to care quite a bit in the relationships,' Dr. England said. By contrast, women 'seem to have this idea they’re supposed to be pleasing in both contexts.'"  There's a silver lining here, that the women feel more able to assert their own preferences rather than always being subordinate to the men; but that's swamped by the same old power dynamics when it comes to the sex itself. 

Are there glimmers of hope?  I can find at least two:

 

"In Catherine’s view, her classmates tried very hard to separate sex from emotion, because they believed that getting too attached to someone would interfere with their work. They saw a woman’s marrying young as either proof of a lack of ambition or a tragic mistake that would stunt her career."  Wait, that doesn't seem very promising.  And it isn't.  But it's followed by a countering point of view that realizes that (1) who you marry is one of the most important decisions you'll make in life (even if you plan to be really successful), and (2) it's harder to do if you've postponed it until after you've built your career and set up your life.  Or, as the author of a recent article in Slate about marrying young puts it, "Marriage wasn’t something we did after we’d grown up, it was how we have grown up and grown together." Again, I'm not applauding the view that a women's top priority in college is to find a man to marry, but rather that a good marriage is so valuable that it trumps other seemingly preferable goals.

"Physically, they had not gone further than making out, Mercedes said, and she thought she might want to wait to have sex until marriage. 'It’s not like I’m doing it because of my reputation,' she said. 'It’s not because a religion tells me to wait. I think of it more as, this is the way I want to emotionally connect to someone, and I think that only a person who deserves me to be emotionally attached to them should have that opportunity to see me in that way.'"  In other words, not hooking up makes sense even if you don't factor in religious upbringing, personal morality, and reputational risk.  If any of those three things matter to you, it makes even more sense.  Interestingly, people of lesser means seem to understand this and live this more frequently than people of greater means: "They found that the women from wealthier backgrounds were much more likely to hook up, more interested in postponing adult responsibilities and warier of serious romantic commitment than their less-affluent classmates. The women from less-privileged backgrounds looked at their classmates who got drunk and hooked up as immature."

I think it's false to say that "we had it easier back then," because the college years and sex and relationships and emotions have always been fraught.  I think it's also false to say that "things were better before" or that "I can't believe how primitive things were before," because there's some good and some bad about how we used to think about stuff.  The fact of the matter is that life is about making good decisions in a minefield of bad advice and bad intentions.  Now if you'll excuse, I'm going to go say an extra prayer for my daughter, that she would make good decisions, and for me and my wife, that we would guide her towards them.   

Lazy Linking, 94th in an Occasional Series

Stuff I liked lately on the Internets:

  

94.1 Awesome beatbox at TedX Sydney http://bit.ly/13fUffB @rsvlts

94.2 This car is so cool…and it’s what’ll get built if we start taxing carbon properly http://yhoo.it/184iiah @yahooautos

94.3 Wow…air pollution has cost China 2.5 billion people-years http://bit.ly/18VHEXb @pnasnews

94.4 Average rent in NYC now >$3K, which is about what I pay for my 2700SF house…every 5mo http://bit.ly/15uaqLm @gawker

94.5 Don’t diss the nose….it does a lot for us http://bit.ly/13fU1Vx @readersdigest

94.6 “How to be racist, unprofessional, and insensitive,” by KTVU http://bit.ly/15oojsh @angryasianman

94.7 # bike commuters in Philadelpihia doubled from 2000 (4,900) to 2010 (9,800) http://bit.ly/11yqXyF @phillymotu

94.8 When I retire, I’m moving to Oakland for the A’s, the Raiders, and the diversity http://bit.ly/1dbVO42 @nerdwallet

94.9 DC’s “Walmart minimum wage bill” will hurt its poorest the most http://bit.ly/12AD0FE @neighborhoodfx

94.10 Another casualty of the European financial crisis: McDonald’s pulls out of Iceland http://bbc.in/16hCMu @bbcnews

What's Next

Woke up this morning to check my Facebook feed.  The George Zimmerman acquittal was the subject of over 90 percent of my friends' posts.  I did not follow the trial but am obviously aware of its existence and of its social, racial, and legal significance.  There is so much here, and the full gamut of it was captured in my news feed:

* Outrage over the acquittal and what it represents for black folks and for the justice system

* Sadness for a family over the loss of their son

* Arguments about whether the case was properly decided and whether the laws upon which the verdict was based are just

* Musings about what this means for George Zimmerman, for the state of Florida, and for the issue of race in America

Thanks to all who shared something; I learned from everything.  We will all remember this moment.  Let us pray, so that what we remember is that we went forward from it.

Business Attraction Committee

I have been asked by the president of the Spruce Hill Community Association to form and implement a Business Attraction Committee, which I will be doing later this summer.  Residents and businesses alike benefit from thriving pockets of retail in a neighborhood, whether it is having food and shopping options within walking distance, or having those options lend a positive aesthetic and social flavor to our blocks.  And residents and businesses alike deserve to have a voice in what they do and do not want to see on those blocks. 

It may morph into something else, but at its heart I see this committee fulfilling three functions.  One, we will figure out regular and multiple ways for folks to chime in on their preferences.  Two, we will be a place (not necessarily the only place, but a place) that developers, property owners, and retailers can come to ask the question, “What does the neighborhood think?”  Three, we will aim to coordinate our role in the first two things with others that are thinking on the same things, like other civic associations, business groups, and neighborhood-serving institutions. 

That’s all I have for now, so I’m open to how this thing evolves over time.  If you’re interested in getting involved, leave me a message in the comments and I’ll be sure to include you in our first meeting later this month.

What's Government For

Government.  It's everywhere around us, peeking in on us, doing stuff for us.  Some of us work for government, some on government, and some wish they could work apart from the government.  Obviously, it's a constant presence and an important topic in darn near everyone's life. 

But what's it for?  From Aristotle to Madison to Scalia, famous men have spent their lives deconstructing that question and articulating an answer.  What's yours?  I can think of six possibilities.  Government is . . .

(1) . . . for helping others.  Whether based on your faith or your heart, you think of government as a vehicle for doing the most good to the most people in the most places.

(2) . . . for helping me.  Whether a specific agency or an amorphous conception of an all-encompassing bureaucracy, you think of government as existing to meet your needs - for resources, for help, for a job.

(3) . . . for the efficient allocation of scarce resources.  You think in terms of economics, of supply and demand, and of the scarcity of resources and therefore the need to allocate them fairly and efficiently, for which government can play a role in that allocation.

(4) . . . the enemy.  Nothing good can come of government, at any size and in any shape, and apart from mass anarchy, your stance is to shrink and squeeze government wherever possible.

(5) . . . about politics.  Who knew that the "reality" in reality TV shows like Survivor and Apprentice was so, well, "real," since that's how government works - forming alliances and counting votes and using others to get what you want.

(6) . . . for maintaining a delicate balance of powers.  "Checks and balances" is something we learn in 6th grade, and yet how profound and important is the principle, when organizing people, distributing resources, and exercising power.

Of course, in this country, we have folks who think all of these things, and we have a government that is all of these things.  As much as I like to complain about it, I wouldn't have it any other way.  Would you?  And, two more questions: (1) Have I left out anything? (2) What's your definition?

Half a Life Ago

Twenty summers back (goodness, that’s half my life ago!), I interned for two stockbrokers at what was then called Dean Witter.  For a business-crazy Wharton student between my sophomore and junior years, who had grown up watching Wall Street Week and writing down stock info for my dad, this was somewhat of a dream internship.  Not that I harbored delusions of wanting to be a broker myself, but I figured it would be a great learning experience.  And it was.  

I still remember stuffing resumes and cover letters into manila envelopes in my college dorm spring semester of my sophomore year.  The plum internships went to students between their junior and senior years, and though I lacked confidence I had enough chutzpah to give it a shot.  Out of 15 or 20 inquiries, I only got a few call-backs, but one of them was with Dean Witter, and so when I was back in San Jose for Spring Break, I scheduled an interview.

That morning, I promptly overslept, and then blamed my poor mom for not waking me up in time.  (Sounds like a 20-year-old!)  The brokers were very accommodating, offering to see me later that afternoon.  I got the internship, which was less a function of them being impressed with me and more a function of them ramping up considerably and needing the extra labor.  (The fact that they weren’t paying me probably made it easier to say yes to me, also.)

I remember them sitting me down on the first day and saying, “By the time the summer is over, you’re going to know for sure that you want to be a broker or that you don’t, but either way you’re going to have a great work experience.”  And it was true; I knew pretty early on that I didn’t want to be a broker, but I had a great time and soaked up a bunch of knowledge.

Working for two brokers, you really get to see a lot of different things.  You get to see how stocks are evaluated, how portfolios are constructed, and how customers are handled.  My two bosses gave me an incredible window into these and other things, and let me do some really cool stuff, like research stocks, develop slide show presentations, and organize seminars. 

Of course, I also did quintessentially interny things.  I personally collated three 6,000-contact mailers that summer.  I cold-called 1,000 pension fund managers.  I ran errands.  (How many of today’s 20-year-olds would deign to do such things?)

All in all, I’m glad for the experience, and thankful for two bosses at Dean Witter.  At the end of the summer, they took me out to lunch and handed me a big wad of cash for all my hard work.  It was a great gesture and I certainly welcomed the money.  But my real gain from that summer was far greater.

Living Vicariously Through Others and Loving It

I recently added my 1,000th Facebook friend, which for some is ho-hum and for others is outrageous.  I consider myself pretty introverted and not super social, but I am fascinated with people and have a desire to see how a wide range of folks are doing.  So, without sounding too stalkerish, I’m glad I have a window in on how 1,000+ of my friends, family members, colleagues, and acquaintances are doing.  And I suspect that most people on social media are the same way.

What can be dangerous about social media is if our look-ins into other people’s lives make us feel bad about our own lives.  Whether it’s business (“I just got a promotion!”) or personal (“what fun we just had at Machu Picchu!”), others’ posts can make us feel we’re not really living life to the fullest by comparison.  Never mind that with 1,000+ connections, even if everyone takes vacation one week a year, that means that on average 20 of my connections are having the time of their lives at any given time.  When we’re bombarded by all this excitement, it can make our lives seem like Dullsville City.

If we get like this (And who doesn’t? I know I do), our problem isn’t social media.  (Although neither is there anything wrong with social media “fasts,” which can be good for the soul.)  Rather, the problem is within us, and it is a common one to modern-day Americans.  And that is the problem of contentedness.

The fact of the matter is that more – more money, more possessions, more experiences – doesn’t necessarily make us feel fuller.  If we think this way, then not only will more not help, but seeing others getting more will make us feel emptier.  (As I reread this myself before hitting “Publish,” I’m nodding my head sadly at all the times I’ve been guilty of this.)

The Christian perspective is that discontentment is a sin, not because being unhappy is morally evil but because we believe in a God who knows us and provides for us perfectly, and so for us to look around at what we don’t have and sulk about it is to say to God that He either doesn’t know us well enough, doesn’t have our best in mind, or hasn’t provided for us sufficiently.  In other words, discontentment is a direct offense against what matters most to God, which is that we honor Him as all-knowing, all-loving, and all-sufficient.

But you don’t have to be a Christian to have a reason to root out discontentment.   Let me repeat: it won’t come from “just a little more.”  There’s nothing inherently wrong with more money, more stuff, more accomplishments, or more experiences – in fact, I’d argue that they’re usually very positive things – but if they are sought after to fill a hole in your life, they won’t fill that hole.

Gratitude can seem corny.  It’s edgier to complain, to mope, to grumble at others’ success or happiness.  But it’s a far fuller and nicer life than one characterized by discontentment.  When you see a Facebook friend post about their new love, an awesome family experience, or a big professional success, and you are genuinely happy for them, and yourself feel fuller and not emptier for it, isn’t that a better place to be?  Isn’t that something to aspire to?  I think so.

Lazy Linking, 93rd in an Occasional Series

Stuff I liked lately on the Internets:

93.1 Big Food: cause of or solution to America’s obesity problem? yes and yes http://bit.ly/12H5B2Z

93.2 Capping the tax exemption on muni bonds would mean less for vital schl/govt infrastructure http://bit.ly/1a1vyrs

93.3 Forget fancy cafeterias and on-site perks; Tony Hsieh wants to give his company a chance to help save Vegas http://nyti.ms/1a0wdLD

 

93.4 Mirrors allow daylight to reach everywhere in a building; somewhere Ben Franklin is smiling http://bit.ly/11uydL5

93.5 #1 success factor: self-control; love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness also? http://bit.ly/14T9NJ0

Detroit Strong

I’ve had the opportunity to travel to Detroit two times in the past two months, for a consulting engagement my firm is leading on.  The first trip took me to the downtown and midtown areas, where there has been a lot of positive buzz, and the second trip took me into the neighborhoods, where there was a lot of blight and abandonment. 

The plight of this proud city is well-documented in words and images, and I won’t add anything on that front.  Obviously, the city has suffered greatly and is in terrible financial straits.  Now that I have established a personal connection, I will be following the news with even greater interest, rooting for the city to make a comeback and evaluating its various attempts to do so.