The Royal Bank is giving out diversity flags at their branches, but not to customers. Oh no. To their employees, as an internal show of support for diversity. Rah rah, diversity. It’s the rhetoric that makes Canadian politics and society revolve, but what does it actually mean? These “diversity symbols” are causing a fracas (I like that word, by the way), naturally. What if you don’t have one? Does that mean you don’t support diversity? Subtitle: you rat bastard son of a communist. So everyone has to have a diversity flag and bow at the altar of peer pressure and Canadian rhetorical idolatry.

But here’s the question: where’s the diversity in these actions? Why should one expect uniformity of opinion when it comes to diversity? Why not diversity of opinion when it comes to diversity? Or is diversity only tolerated along narrow margins, such as if you’re homosexual? Well, it’s okay to be diverse and pluralistic if you’re the latest en vogue cause, but not alright if you’re, say, and evangelical Christian that happens to know that truth exists.

This, my friends, is why I hate plurality. It’s not only incoherent, but fundamentally unlivable: you can’t tolerate and accept everything as equal because you’ve already defined into existence the terms of your argument. There is truth, it just happens to be the One Truth to Bind Them All, that is to say that every other
so-called truth is subject to Plurality and Diversity and Tolerance and Multiculturalism.

I have no problem with people exercising their own religions around the corner from me. Really, I don’t. They probably don’t have much of a problem with me doing the same. We even prosoletyse each other on the odd occasion. What I dislike is the faux-intellectual postmodernist idiot coming along and telling me and my peaceably religious friends that we somehow violate their Holy Grail of Tolerance, and by doing so we have sown the seeds of war in our society.

Let’s be clear: Tolerance needs terms, and it needs guardians. When you let individuals do as they please when it comes to religion as long as they’re not starting jihads, you attain at least some sort of resting state, where the government need not interfere. With Tolerance, one needs to enforce it somehow. There needs to be some way of weeding out the horrid Intolerant Christians, Muslims, and whatever else comes along. Frankly, Tolerance becomes the unofficial state religion, and the state become the totalitarian guardian of that religion. Until then, Tolerance is merely another truth claim amidst a sea of truth claims; an attractive one, yes, and much more simple, but all the more easy to disprove.

And this post went on much longer than I thought it should…

It’s odd. People in my circles tend to dislike pointing out flaws in other people. I’m not talking about nitpicking here, but when others genuinely see a fault, but don’t point it out. Are we sort of post-modern this way? Afraid of genuine honesty? Scared or reciprocation? Or is it some innate understanding that if I point out an area that needs work, I’m open to the same critique? Well, I think the same principle that applies to art, music, and movies would apply here: you don’t have to be a painter, musician, or film director to understand what is and is not a good film.

A survey recently disclosed that marriages based on friendship are the ones that last. And out the window goes this thing dating “experts” have been telling us for so long, that just friends should stay that way. Of course, not dating a friend is probably mostly a reflex so (in the case of society at large) you can screw them and not have to personally deal with the consequent emotional attachment; or, in some other cases, just plain fear. Date a friend, guys… it’s not so hard or complex as it sounds.

Steve’s children love the movie Monsters, Inc. Heck, I love that movie. It’s cute, it’s funny, and it has alternate dimensions and incredible imagination. That’s one thing that other Pixar movies just didn’t have: they followed the Disneyesque tradition of anthropomophizing anything (including clocks and candlesticks!), a pretty easy place to get when speaking in imaginary terms. It’s not difficult to see how a butterfly could talk where it’s quite a bit more ingenious to take a simple child’s myth and turn it into a full-blown feature. They have my respect for that.

I am rejecting cool. Cool is a myth, a status symbol. It’s like being Nobility in 1700s England: a positional good, something that’s by nature positive. Frankly, you can never be cool. Even people trying to be anti-cool are feeding the cycle: look at how often the anti-cool has become the new cool! Even if you are “cool”, you’re probably just cool in your local surrounding, where cool can be anything from wearing a skinny tie to church, to buying a freaking huge rifle in Alabama. And when you are cool, you have to move on from that point, cause even if you attain that level, everyone is probably attaining it at the same time, which makes it quickly uncool. You want to be cool? Okay, but you’re chasing a moving target: good luck with that. You’ll probably be spending a lot of money on that ride. Here’s a though: don’t feed consumerism. Don’t “dare” to be different. Everyone else is already different in the same way. Instead of daring to be different, dare to be the same. And if that means wearing a grey flannel suit and an undershirt, dammit, you do that.

You know, if you’re a girl without a boyfriend or husband and you want one, don’t be afraid to admit it. It’s a good thing to want. Having a husband (unlike being cool, and only if you’re a girl) is a fundimental positional good. And that was a pun. But only like six of you actually got it, and you’re groaning or gagging. I don’t know which.

I think I’ve become too reliant on smileys to tell me what emotion a piece of writing is written in. Also, to reliant on them while writing. Maybe stuff on the web should be more straightforward or something, but there you have it.

A sister of mine tells me that my blog is boring. So I’m thinking maybe I’ll put up a few pictures of Colin Farrel or that elf guy from Lord of the Rings. And a loud dance track. And fashion tips. And a “what’s hot and what’s not” or “what’s hip/what’s square” or “wired/tired/fired”. This paragraph has been brought to you by the Extreme Sarcasm Channel.

Oh, by the way, no one’s forcing anyone to read this bloggity. Really, you don’t have to.

Last thing: remember that I welcome your comments. If you’re posting anonymously, please leave a name or handle so I can file your name or handle away in the appropriate file. If you’re not posting anonymously, congratulations, Captain Courage. If I used smileys, there would be one there.

Just in case you were wondering, there was a delicious flaw in my previous post on this subject. That beautifully crafted flaw was, of course, a joke. And if you didn’t get the joke, well, that’s too bad; I feel sort of sorry for your obviously lacking sense of humour. Also sorry that you can’t read a blog with an ethic of at least a pinch of love. But the fact that I won’t dumb this whole thing down just because some ignorant cretin wanders off the internet and calls me an asshole is another issue for another time (or maybe never at all, hopefully).

The fact is, my logic was circular, and evidently so; I’ve admitted I was wrong in the past: that alone proves that I my axiom was false, because either I wasn’t right about being wrong, or I was right about being wrong. Either way, all Cretans are liars.

I find this problem crops up a lot not just in my little bursts of humour, but also amongst the secularist crowd, where this argument comes up a lot: “Well, I can’t prove that God exists with science, or any other discipline, so he must not.” It’s as full of holes as a soup strainer, of course, because it fails its own test. How can you prove, by science or any other discipline that God must be found by science or any other discipline to exist in, through, or outside of reality? You can’t. Most people, faced with this contradiction, merely become agnostic (which is like being agnostic about tsunamis until one hits your house: good luck Mr Denial).

But agnosticism is a hard line to toe. You can say that you just don’t know, but don’t you want to? At the end of the day, it all eventually comes back to what you pre-suppose the best way to true knowlege is. If you start from a purely materialistic, secularist standpoint (an assumption as circular as they come), you become an atheist. You’ve defined yourself into a corner.

The question should more legitimately be, “What is the way to find true knowlege?” In which case I’d tell you that the best way to find true knowlege is through Christian scriptures (also known as the Bible, a term I dislike, considering how it’s been so often co-opted as to be almost meaningless). The agnostic’s first instinct is to call that stand as circular as his, but the problem is that I agree. It is circular. It’s just a bigger circle. That’s the problem with logic: every bit of logic proceeds from somewhere to get somewhere. A lot of the from in our logic seems quite obvious to us until we start questioning why we can’t logically prove our starting point. We can’t even logically prove that we exist in the way we think we do, not even with the ubiquitous “I think therefore I am”. What does “am” mean? Even if you think, even if you are, what then? How do you get from there to “the universe is a concrete place of laws and physical interactions; there is nothing else”? It just doesn’t fit.

The fact of the matter is that it’s right to assume that one exists; one needs to assume it to function. It’s one of those things so basic to being that it needs no proof — it’s self-evident. There’s several things like that, one of which would be “God”, but I digress.

The point of all this is that the scriptures don’t need to be proved because they are the starting point for true knowlege. While philosophers were off figuring out they existed because they could think (brilliant job there, Descartes!), the answer was under their noses the whole time. Even if you’re not willing to admit to that, admit at least that the scriptures claim a sort of authority that human though cannot: that is, the authority of a divine Being who created this whole mess to begin with. Even on a purely assumptive level, without making a truth judgement, scripture has the edge.

When it goes past that level, everything else is icing on the cake. I don’t believe the scriptures because they are historically correct (though they are), or philosophically sound (though they are), or poinantly beautiful (though, again, they are). I believe scripture because it is true. And the testimony of scripture is enough in and of itself to function as the basis for rational though. That is to say, I only really know because I believe, a statement that stands in stark relief to the secularist idea that one must doubt, doubt, doubt, and doubt in order to know.

Circular, you say? Yes. But a circle based on the authority of God, not the foolishness of my own unaided intellect. It all comes back to scripture, no matter how hard one tries to evade it. It is true then, that some people expect to see in order to believe, but truer yet that in order to truly see, one must believe.

You know, apart from everything that happens on the internet, one thing that bothers me is people that put their emotions, thoughts, and (mostly) problems on the internet and then get angry when anyone responds. I’m not thinking of any particular examples, just in general. The internet is like a public building, for the most part. Writing out everything about yourself on the web and getting angry at the feedback is like taking off your clothes at the post office and expecting no one to point or throw a blanket over you. Or take pictures and post them on the internet, but that distroys the analogy by making it recursive.

I mean, people, suck it up. I know that’s not a particularly nice thing to say (and if you’re genuinely mentally depressed, go get help), but there you have it. Talk about something else than just yourself. It helps. Unless you have the most interesting life ever — and trust me, you don’t — why are you subjecting the denizens of the internet to it? Unless you want attention, in which case quit the whining about what people say back. Because you can’t have your cake and eat it too. If you don’t let people respond when and how they wish, they’ll probably get pissed and stop reading.

If you want a diary or a personal journal, keep one in a notebook or in a text file on your hard drive. If you want a blog, give me some ideas or thoughts; be funny; be satirical; link to a news item you find interesting, a news item you think others like you would be interested in too; something, please, something other than your petty little gripes about the life you’re squandering moping about feeling sorry for yourself.

Do you see that sort of thing on my blog? Yeah, maybe every once in a while. But not every freaking post. Frankly, my personal life isn’t going to be appealing to anyone but my closest friends and a few random stalkers (who really need to pick someone more attractive and famous than me, thanks guys).

For instance, the fact that I have links on the sidebar of my blog is a tacit indication that I want people to read it, and if they find nothing of interest here, go somewhere else that just might be a little more exciting or whatever. Unless of course I’m so self-absorbed that I have my blog as my own homepage and use it as a portal outward to the great web beyong. I assure you, I’m not that narcissistic.

Anyways, enough of that for now. Just, please, think of the people that might read your blog. You have it on the internet for a reason. If you want prayers, ask for them. If you want feedback, ask for it. If you don’t want anything of the sort, turn off comments, or even better, clear the blogosphere and get some real life friends.

It’s this superhuman thing I have. I’m always right. I can’t think of a single time in the Exaulted History of Me when I was wrong. Never. Isn’t that incredible? Wow. I’m so totally tripping out on this.

So I think, now that I’ve discovered this, I’ll make me an axiom:

1) I am always right.
2) If you agree with me, you are right.
3) You are always right if you always agree with me.
4) If you don’t agree with me, you are wrong.
5) If you always disagree with me, you are wrong.

So simple, yet so beautiful. Also, I’d like to remind you that if you think I’m not right about always being right, according to my axiom, you are wrong. And since I’m always right, my axiom must therefore also be right, so you might want to re-consider that. Yeah, you heard me. Yeah, you, I saw you there. Reconsider, and you might be right.

Every once in a while, there’s an invention or progression that I think is just great, because it seems so darn obvious that someone certainly must have thought of it before. introducing the Tweel. That’s right, a fancy new-fangled way to make sure that I never have a flat again. Well, thank you, ladies and gentlemen of the R&D department. There’s nothing quite as bad as changing a flat tire on the side of the highway in something aproximating -20 celsius: I think quite a few Canadians can identify with me here.

In other news, a tsunami destroyed Asia, or something like that. Apparently it’s the largest natural disaster in all of recorded history, in both expense and expanse, and in regards to death toll. I can only imagine what might have happened if this thing had hit Toronto or something. Probably not as much death, but still, damage in the billions.

Speaking of which, even by the most conservative of estimates, World War 2 caused a total of somewhere near a million million dollars. That’s a lot of money.

So Steve, this guy from my work, just redid his wife’s laundry room for her. And after approximately fifteen cups of coffee, he’s raving like a loon about it. Like someone took the freaking Waldorf Astoria and stuffed it in there. Hey, guess what? I don’t care! Not only that, he described it as “the laundry room that every woman wants”. I don’t suppose anyone might consider that a bit offensive? Like, oh say, everyone? Some woman want more than just laundry rooms, Steve, and by “more than laundry rooms” I don’t mean a nice kitchen and to be pregnant with your children.

In other news, I am a werewolf and my girlfriend is a vampire, two clans who perpetually hate eachother in the tales of yore. How odd.

I’m at a friend’s house, watching him watching a vapid and revolting movie, a movie named “The League of Extrordinary Gentlemen”, which apparently features a League, but not much Extrordinary, and certainy no Gentlemen. Oh well. You win some, you lose some. They can’t all have good taste. That’s right, Nick. You have bad taste in movies.

So how about those times when the parents of your girlfriend gather around (all two of them, but still, it’s like a flock of parents) and tell you stories of their youth and such? Interesting stuff, I tell you. I like hearing these things, mostly because they’re hilarious half the time, and also because they tend to explain why these people are the way they are.

I got pretty mad at the sermon tonight. In fact, I’ve been pretty pissed off in general at the preaching and attitudes that no one seems to challenge. This is how it goes: “Oh Lord, save us from this evil culture, this godless culture, this horrible culture. Help us not to be tainted by the world. Help us not to become like them.” Nothing particularly wrong there, except for my hyperbole, but if that’s all we ever hear, no wonder we’re so bad at evangelism. I know it’s a difficult thing to be out there but not be like the people out there, to not be motivated by the same things that they are, but we have to be. Really.

To pray the prayer of the Pharisee in the temple, complete with hand-wringing over the state of the union, is not enough: if there’s a problem, we need to change it. Is this not part of our mandate? To affect culture? We’re salt and light in the world. We’re charged with evangelizing the world. We’re charged with taking control of the earth. We have the hope, like Paul says in Romans 15. It keeps talking about hope, hope, and hope; what hope do we have? Do we act like we have hope? Do we talk and walk like we have hope? We should. I should.

Not to get didactic on anyone’s hind quarters, but frankly I’ve been wondering about the state of evangelical Christianity in Canada and the US today. It seems you have two extremes: either you’re too far in the world, or too far out of it. It’s either that people care way too much about the earth and things on it, or they just don’t care enough.

I mean, things that we do on earth are important, and they have eternal ramifications (this is sort of a new topic, but it ties in). In our worry about whether or not we’re spiritually minded, it seems that we’re forgetting this fact; it seems as if we’re dividing the physical and spiritual world up into two areas, labelling the spiritual good, and dissing the physical. I just don’t see the warrant from scripture to do that. What a person does on earth is important, not just how hard he prays, or how many people he touches, or how many good works he does; but also how he drinks his beer, and how he paints his living room, and how he goes waterskiing. All of these things are touched by spirituality, and though one may seem as if it were more important than the other, there’s a place for both.

This divide is the problem I have with John Piper. I mean, I normally agree with him, and I certainly agree with him that our primary purpose in life is glorifying God by taking pleasure in him. But that’s not to say that the only way to enjoy God is to “not waste your life” indulging in petty pleasures, and instead sacrifice all the time given you to other people. It is to say that there’s a time a place for everything, to help people, and to drink wine. To evangelize to the neighbors, and to enjoy reading a book. Life is enjoyable. God made it that way. There’s a reason for this, and that is that your life, what you enjoy, all these things, they all testify to God and about God, and enjoying them, even revelling in them, isn’t a denial of God’s purpose, but an affirmation in his existance.

I know people who beat themselves up mentally because they’re given so much when so many others around the world are given so little. Yes, help others. Do what you can with what you have, especially if that’s something weighing on your conscience. But also remember that God gave you what you have, and God gave them what they have, and in God’s plan this all makes sense. He will set the world at rights one day, but until that day there will always be inequity. Jesus himself said that there will always be poor people on the earth. They’ll always be with us. And so we have compassion, but there’s a place for that too, and it’s not all the time. There’s certainly no guilt in being rich, or richer than most. That’s what God’s given you. Use it wisely, like Abraham did. No one ever rebuked him for having too many camels for himself.

I think if we melded a holistic worldview like this into a postmillenial view of the coming end times (whenever that is), Christians would have a real chance to change the world, instead of just complaining about it. Isn’t it true? Oy with the hand-wringing already. There’s a life to live: live it the way you should. It’s the most attractive lifestyle every invented. Probably because the ruler of the entire universe made it that way.