Moment of Truth

This is a repost of a quote by Alan Watts posted at nathancushing.wordpress.com

…a person who truly believes in God would never try and thrust the idea on anyone else, just as when you understand mathematics, you are not a fanatical proponent of the idea that two and two are four.

-Alan Watts

Writers and Parents the Selgados discuss to spank or not to spank on RVAnews.com:

His experiences with spanking were explosive and impulsive, mine were methodical and controlled. The result of both was fear and shame. I’m sure both sets of parents had the intention of love to shape, guide and protect us on some level. It just doesn’t strike me as an effective long term tool from any angle and can be potentially harmful. The message being, I am bigger, stronger and can hurt you and for this reason you will listen and respond to me.

Jenny and I don’t have wee ones yet but I’d say a good umbrella statement for this issue is “depend on the kid”. I think that the hard stance behaviorist has become a rarer creature than in the days of Dr. Spock (not Mr. Spock…Dr. Spock). A quick look at basic, naitivist linguistics as studied by Chomsky will show us that we are all born with certain innate qualities. Studies on separated twins have also yielded promising results for the argument that we are all born individuals.
All that being said, we can assert that since we are all born different people, we all need different things. One child may need that physical backing to revere their parent, while another may need to know “why we do this”. Some may need both.
The challenge is when we have multiple kids. Maybe one’s a naturally rebellious, hyper-hypo who needs a little pop to focus and the other is a pensively cerebral little fella who would be cut deep by the shame a spanking would bring on.
I was spanked on occasion. In retrospect, I don’t see it as a negative thing. I am so inheritantly obstinate that a fear of my parents would have lead to my being completely out of control.
I’d also like to note that, if you have Kid A who might benefit from a firm hand, there’s a right way and a wrong way. Don’t be angry (if you are then calm down before administering punishment). Spank, don’t hit (there is a difference). Finally, don’t frigging spank your teenager (that’s not a spanking, it’s a fight.)

Anyone with balls can MAKE a baby, but not everyone has the balls to be a Father!

It’s father’s day and my dad is in the third world helping people in need and sharing G-d’s love.

Seems to me I’m the one who got a gift today. What an awesome Dad!

My heart is with everyone who misses their Dad on Father’s Day, in today’s world we need to really affirm fathers who do or have done their jobs.

I just figured out that one of my intellectual and theological mentors, Shane Claiborne, mentioned me in his tour blog during the Jesus for President speaking tour. I’m geeking out on it a bit (which I’ve been less and less ashamed of)! Check out his stuff when you can, he has a great NPR interview somewhere and 2 really good books out.

here’s the post!

There are some proponents of the straight edge lifestyle that claim it to be about eradicating addiction from our lives. I won’t say I disagree because there’s no static rulebook to agree on when it comes to claiming “straight edge”, but I will say I see it differently.

I think it’s a fruitless venture to try and liberate oneself from ALL addictions. It’s like running on a treadmill and thinking you’re going to get somewhere. After coming to this conclusion I was inclined to contemplate my own addictions. Here’s what I found:

I am, as are most of us, addicted to modern life. This addiction is gripping and can be just as destructive as chemical addictions. Allow me to ecpound.

This morning I was doing some manual labor to help out a local non-profit and in the mist of it I thought “why isn’t my whole life this simple and fulfilling?” For those us who have found that an honest day’s work leads to a deeper sleep and bigger fulfillment of getting something other than paper work done at the end of the day, we are forced to ask the question “A simpler life, why not?”

Why don’t I just go the way of my amish brothers and head for the fields to leave behind the boring and complicated life of a city dweller? Simple, because I am addicted to Showtime original programming and Super Mario Galaxy. I don’t try to simplify my life because, like any addict, the idea of giving these things up frightens and agitates me. I believe, on some level, that I can not subsist without them. My rational mind says “go” but I allow my addiction to control my life and I stay. I work and make money to buy shit I don’t need and spend time doing things that have no real outcome.

I don’t quit simply because I don’t want to quit. I’d rather do what feels good than what feels right. The devil I know is better then the angel I don’t. All these things are aspects of chemical addiction that I share with people of that ilk.

Now, does this mean I’m abndoning my prior convictions because of some relativist epiphany? Of course not! THe abuse of drugs and alcohol on this continent is an imediate problem that, while I recognize the horror of technological placation through cable TV, seperates me from immediately painful injustices such as death, sexual abuse, and domestic violence.

So what am I proposing? The same thing I always propose, to think.

“The unexamined life is not worth living.”

-Socrates

Well, I renewed my GoDaddy registration for this .com

I breifly considered not renewing it as I haven’t written anything for awhile, but the reason I haven’t written is because my low-lying depression has seized my ability to write anything (songs, blogs, stories, essays). So, renewing the lease on the site is my subtle way of committing to the idea that I won’t feel this way forever and that when it passes I will write more avidly then ever.

Getting back to your blog ater such a lengthy hiatus is like seeing an old friend after years of not speaking.

It’s awkward, you’re not sure where to start, and you wonder if there’s even anything to say.

But I promise I’ll be back on the horse soon, for the 10 of my avid readers that have wondered what’s been up.

What is your favorite word? Bi-curious

What is your least favorite word? sexy

What turns you on creatively, spiritually or emotionally? resilience

What turns you off? ignorance

What is your favorite curse word? sonofabitch

What sound or noise do you love? the light playing of a xylophone

What sound or noise do you hate? whinning

What profession other than your own would you like to attempt? sound engineer

What profession would you not like to do? soldier

If Heaven exists, what would you like to hear God say when you arrive at the Pearly Gates? You’ll be rooming with Johnny Cash.

Click here to re-live the late night exploits of genius and renaissance man Michael Hawkins as he explores the grossest place on earth…a Floridian Waffle House at 2am.

It started to rain as I was walking around campus when a class of mine got out early. I was hungry so I ducked into the nearest restraunt to get out of the rain and get some grub. The place I ducked into is the stinkiest, crappiest place I’ve ever eaten (Mojo’s for the Richmond literate).

That being said, I’m sitting in a booth and behind me I’m listening to this girl her man-friend a story about two of her friends, while drunk, getting into a fight and one of them stabbing the other. The guy she’s with then begins to pontificate on why the stabbing was totally justified.

Obviously this urks me and I start an inner dialoug about how the guy behind me is a flaming idiot in the first degree. Then it dawns on me; doesn’t he sort of remind me of myself about a year ago? I can’t imagine what rational people must have thought of me while eavesdropping on ridiculous conversations I used to have about justified violence. This sort of drivle is totally the sort of things I used to convince myself were ok.

Man, praise the Lord I’m not like that anymore. I’ve taken on a million new flaws since my self-proclaimed “pascification” but I wouldn’t trade any number of them to be a hyper-agressive fool again.

The longer I work as a disciplinarian in a public school system the more I realize that it comes easily to me because the kids I work with actually need discipline. Like…NEED it. I think my background as a non-conformist makes me better suited to this position because I’m not coming from a “discipline for the sake of itself” point of view. The way I see it, as someone who’s been involved in punk rock for a decade, these kids I deal with aren’t rebelling. They just don’t know how to act. When one rebels or protests, they make a conscious decision to push back on an issue or lifestyle they find worthless.

The kids I deal with aren’t pushing against anything, they’re just ignorant and misbehaved because that’s how their parents are. If anything, my being a stuffy hard-ass will teach them how to act or AT LEAST give them something to consciously push against. You can’t go against the grain if the fields just part for you out of some bizarre, racist cultural anomaly that says “that’s just the way THEY act.”

But let’s not make it a race issue, it’s a generational issue if anything. The modern teacher or child care expert is dealing with the first generation of “kid culture” children. The advent of youth culture was during my upbringing in the late 80’s and 90’s “MTV Generation”. It used to be that school-aged children were viewed as adults in training. Kids WANTED to grow up and be adults because being a kid was hard! Not hard like we consider it to be hard today. It was hard like learning Latin in elementary school while simultaneously helping Dad prep the farm for harvest and not owning anything all the while.

Today, being a kid is hard because you deal with lots of temptations and are exposed to sexuality earlier and are constantly being marketed to. But these are not problems that pave a road to adulthood, these are kid problems all their own. Where it used to be that kids dreamed of being grown-up, now grown-ups get botox injections, watch The Hills, and hang out at college bars while dreaming of being a kid.

The result of this in the world of education is that no American kid walks into his 6th grade math class ready to learn. They walk in ready to wallow in childhood, yet we go through the motions of being the “buddy” or “cool” teacher and then are shocked when they act up.
Maybe, just maybe, by tenth grade they’re eager to learn about art, literature, and the way the physical world works. Then we can put on the “Dead Poet’s Society” hat and be the dynamic educators we all dream about becoming. But in a kid culture where there’s increasingly diminished incentive to grow-up (we all know credit card debt is fun but those 401ks are the best!), a little hard-nosed “school master” act will only do the kids good.

edit: the title above is actually a word (sort of).