What I Liked About College, yo

Just my favoritest gas station in the whole entire world

 

 

 

What did I think of college? Now isn't exactly the moment I want to answer that question. I am broke, unemployed, and 22 years old. My stats fit better with criminality than with self-reflection. But I figure if I don't make this post now, it may never happen. And I owe the internet a debt of my two-cents.  

 

What the hell did I think of college? College was good. I changed a lot. People I have talked to about their college experience say that they changed too, but not to a great extent. The person they were in high school got some upgrades (a cool hat) and some downgrades (a drinking problem), but overall they stayed the same. In my case, college cracked open a shell whose contents had been brewing a strange stew for years. That must be why when I first got to Minnesota, I became involved in a weird mix of things. But #noregrets, cause I ended up having a wide assortment of experiences with a wide assortment of people in a wide assortment of places. I don't know how to make $$$ off of it yet, but maybe something is percolating inside my head.

...

When I look back at my time at Saint John's and Saint Ben's, I can think of four aspects that I appreciate aside from the wonderful, yet irritatingly optimistic, people I met. I appreciate the community, the "liberal arts education," the Benedictine values, and my study abroad excursions. Those four things, aside from the people I met, compose the totality of my college experience. aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaand on to list format.

1. The community

When I say the community, I don't just mean the monastic community. I also mean my plant and animal friends in the landscape around Saint Johns, and the merry townies in the bars across Saint Joe. When I first arrived in Minnesota I thought: "wow, so this is what nothing feels like." I also thought: "do Minnesotans know Olive Garden isn't good?" But into my second week of freshman year, I started taking bike rides between campuses. That served as a gateway drug into taking longer bike rides, which turned into taking nature hikes, which turned into camping, which turned into canoeing and so on. So I can never be thankful enough for the nature around the colleges, it nourished my soul. Seeing a deer cross the street, or a golden eagle above my dorm in Flyntown were well-received moments. Sometimes when I couldn't sleep I would get up in the middle of the night, occasionally even in the dead of winter, and walk around Saint Johns. It was at these moments that I felt most at home, looking at the clear night sky, sitting across from a quiet lake, as I froze my ass off in the nuclear winter.

The monastic community was also a constant companion. I was mostly good friends with my freshmen year FR Father Bill who would always host pancake nights every couple of months. Yet through my involvement with volunteer service at the school and working for Campus Ministry, I got to meet many others monastics. I have to thank Father Bill particularly though for indirectly causing the mishap that resulted in me receiving my college nickname "bear." Father Bill decided to tell a dirty joke on my floor the first official day of college, with every single resident gathered around. After the crickets had cleared from his joke, he asked for someone else to tell a joke. As no one else would volunteer (cowards!), I told a joke involving a misunderstanding between a hunter and a bear. People loved it so much that they started calling me bear. Or the joke made them so uncomfortable that they started calling me bear. I still can't tell. I translated the joke to Spanish in Chile and thus was called osito (little bear) on that side of the equator. Thanks to the better angels of my nature I kept my stupid mouth shut in China.

Another big aspect of the community, especially after I turned 21, were the locals in town. The owners of a few bars, the hodgepodge of off-kilter folk I met walking the concrete at night, I owe all these people gratitude. I have to give a shout-out specifically to Will, the owner of the Middy, for being a friend across the bar, Mary for making awesome cards I gave my family, and Mike for offering intelligent/delinquent conversation. I definitely already miss these guys. It is a weird thing for some Semitic from LA to somehow settle in so completely to a little cove in central Minnesota, but it happened. There were witnesses, although they weren't always sober.

2. Liberal Arts Education

Ah yes, we come to the liberal arts education. A liberal arts education is the white color term for unskilled laborer. However, that doesn't mean that it is without value. A liberal arts education teaches you how to think well. By that I mean that it teaches you to think with your entire experience. It doesn't rely on rote learning or memorization. It doesn't separate a single discipline from the impact that discipline may have on the world around it. It bases itself in reality. A liberal arts education gets you to ask questions starting with why as well as how, and argues that asking why is just as important.

My first year I had a professor who told us to call her E. She still remains one of the best teachers I have ever had. In her class on Justice, it wasn't the specific philosophies that we discussed, but the way we discussed them that made an impact on me. Every other day we were required to read the newspaper, and the next day we talked about it in class. Sometimes we would spend the entire class period discussing news or the books that we had been assigned to read. Sometimes we would spend it making up impromptu speeches, or reciting memorized poems, or filming a misguided class musical (I was okay with it because it took the place of a large research paper). After freshman year, some of us would go visit E at her cabin where she would cook us dinner while we talked and reminisced. A week ago she read a verse from the Bible at my friend Gregg's wedding. The verse was Paul's 1'st Letter to the Corinthians, his definition of love. Its the verse I sometimes end my blog posts in. The point is that every class had a strong relation to the business of being alive. And E had been doing this, being a part in her students lives, for decades. She lived how she taught, with honor. That is what a liberals arts education should be. Learning for learning sake is not a liberal arts education. Neither is learning for money. A liberal arts education is learning for the sake of life. To say I got that out of all of my classes at college would be a lie. To say that I got that out of half of my classes would be a lie. But it really was those few classes that I did get it out of that I remember the most.

3. Benedictine values

Yep, the Benedictine values. The long and the short of it is that after getting peddled them for years, I finally learned to (love the bomb https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dr._Strangelove) appreciate the Benedictine values and the wisdom contained within them. A moment I clearly remember was listening to a talk from Abbot John Klassen on the Benedictine value of stability and its relation to a community. According to the abbot, stability has two parts to it: accountability and affection. Having just one creates an unbalanced community. Accountability without any affection becomes a prison. In a prison people serve out sentence terms as dictated by the law, a pure form of accountability. The worst prisoners are sentenced to solitary confinement for 23 hours a day. The complete lack of human contact manifests a complete lack of affection in that case. Yet affection without accountability is just as unbalanced. Affection without accountability is any parasitic relationship you may have experienced in the business of navigating your life. A child addicted to drugs with enabling parents is an easy example. The parents show the child affection and clean up his/her messes, but without accountability they only get hurt themselves. Any healthy community, like a healthy family, has both affection and accountability.

Over time, I began to see the Benedictine values like I saw stability. Easy words to define, but difficult words to understand and live out. In practice, I sometimes saw the schools embody their use or become hypocrites in light of them, but ultimately I was content that these values existed as the professed ideals of my school. They set up an example of a life to strive for. If you want to read a really well written essay on them, I would direct you here: http://www.osb.org/acad/benval1.html#intro. Whatever your view on religion (I'm non-religious), I don't think you can deny that the Benedictine values are an example of the solid base that religion can serve in guiding people to be greater than themselves.

4. Study abroad

Twas awesome. Plant metaphor works best with this one. A human being grows on his or her corner of the earth for 20 some years. Then he or she is uprooted and placed in a different environment for a few months to half a year. The plant is able to then define itself, see what it is, where it's outline starts and ends in relation to its environment. Of course if you uproot a plant it will probably die from shock...and I'm still alive. Also plants are not usually sentient. Okay not the best metaphor. Point is 1) during study abroad I went to Cuba, Chile, and China (as well as a handful of domestic trips across the country) and they all had a profound effect upon my identity and 2) this post is already too long so I am going to end it at that. Peace. Damn, never doing list format again.

Truth comes as conqueror only to those who have lost the art of receiving it as friend - Tagore

What if I keep my head under a pile of dirt? Can Truth still kick my ass?



During a Bachelor Party Post

(this was written a week and a half ago, I've been around)

 

So…did you guys check the new wallpaper? Pretty sick right? Colored it myself.

I am not going to lie, this last week has been pretty difficult. Never in my life have I had so much free time and yet been so simultaneously stressed. Is this what they call unemployed? I am staying in Minnesota for an extra three weeks to attend a friend’s wedding before heading back to California. What I didn’t realize was that I would only make it three days before losing my mind. The situation sucks on multiple levels. Level 1, I don’t get to go back to California. Level 2, I have nothing to do but make blog backgrounds. Level 3, I have to say goodbye to good friends slowly and in small amounts, kinda like some form of waterboarding. Level 4, I have no money and have to buy dinner from the Mickey D’s dollar menu. Level 5, I have to be the guy who hangs out in a coffee shop for eight hours to go on the Internet (though this morning I’ve chosen to hang out in the McCafe). If this is what purgatory is like, I’d rather take the express checkout on the up or down escalator. Heaven or hell, I don’t care, anything is better than being in the after-credit scenes of your own damn life. That being said, the kindness of the people I have met up here continues to astonish me. Thanks for continuing to lay out places for me to stay, even if I don’t have an exact answer for “how long are you staying?”

Speaking of, what is more important, a question or an answer? There is a famous part of A Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy where a trans-dimensional supercomputer computes the answer to the most important question in the universe to be 42. Unfortunately the actually question whose answer is 42 remains elusive, and so the supercomputer designs an even smarter supercomputer to figure out the question. This supercomputer takes the form of earth, and the curators of the supercomputer disguise themselves in plain sight as little white mice. Unfortunately, minutes before the question is to be known, earth is destroyed by a space-version of an interstate highway. Crestfallen, the mice decide to just settle on the question “How many roads must a man walk down?” from that one Bob Dylan song.

Asking a question is a very human endeavor. A question does more than demand an answer, it frames what is being talked about, and it implies a direction in which we are thinking. 42 doesn’t mean much to most people. What is the meaning of life means a whole lot. Anyone can give answers. The integral part is asking the right questions. If we are going to make artificial intelligence, we will need it to ask important questions. Otherwise we might just end up with Skynet. And, I mean, I’ve been a misanthrope out of the womb, so I’m fine with that. But you might not be.

Getting us to prefer answers to questions is one of the ways that I think our technology is changing us. In the past answers were hard to come by. We had gods who kept secret and esoteric their reasons for why things happened as they did. Our ancestors looked up to the starry night sky and held elaborate ceremonies in front of giant burning pyres just to ask one question to the all-powerful gods. Nowadays we don’t even put question marks at the ends of our Google inquires. I don’t even know if any of you remember Ask Jeeves, but you actually used to type the question mark into the search bar. Now I go to Google and type “movie with fat guy from Superbad” and immediately get what I am looking for. We are becoming the androids while our machines are becoming more sentient. The question we need to be asking is who is really the machine? Whatever doe. The revolution will not be televised… or livestreamed, put on Worldstar, liked on Youtube, etc. The ghosts in the machines will haunt the houses we are building. Let Hercules himself do what he may. The cat will mew, and dog will have his day.

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Man I wish I was in my own bed again. California, don’t dry up completely with drought or break apart with earthquakes before I get back.

 

 

 

Family likes making fun of me

Oh My Goodness, Guey, It's a Long One

Just got back from the boundary waters a few days ago. It was a pretty sweet adventure, with a lot of canoeing along the lakes of beautiful northern Minnesota and soaking in the pristine wilderness around our camps. But instead of doing another travel blog, I thought this week I could do something a little more thought provoking. Or attempt to do something a little more thought provoking. At least something with a little more value than my usual cynical pretentiousness. I don’t wish to make you feel my self-hatred through the screen, that’s not what the internet should be for. I also freely admit that I am not a member of the patrician class, I merely find it fun to pretend to be. God have mercy on me for my sins.

CAMP SUNSHINE

 

One question that I have been thinking about recently is what is the difference between Monkey and Man? How do we as malformed naked primates differ from our animal cousins? Evolutionarily speaking, we are not that different. We share a common lineage, a similar anatomy, an even more similar cell biology, and the same genetic language. Furthermore, human beings and other primates differ by surprisingly little in terms of genetic makeup (be it granted physical expression of this genetic makeup may differ to a marked amount). It is always difficult to generalize research, but it is looking like the difference between the human genome and the chimpanzee genome may be less than 10%. Humans and chimpanzees only diverged from a common ancestor between 6-8 million years ago (seems like a lot, but life on Earth has been squirming for billions of years). Is that enough time for a large enough gap to emerge to say that there is a fundamental difference between us? If we can’t say that there is a fundamental difference, in what way do we justify our actions towards other species (putting them in little cages, making the movie Kangaroo Jack, etc.)?

In the past, the fundamental difference between human and animal seems to have simply been taken for granted. We are human; it is easy to put ourselves first before other species. Most animals seem to do this. You won’t see a wolf fight to save a baby squirrel from complete and utter destruction in the talons of an eagle. The wolf is more concerned with other wolves, it is more concerned with its own species. Yet only humans construct rhetoric for why we are better than other animals. One way we have constructed rhetoric has been through religion. There have been various narratives throughout recorded human history, but the common Western strain is that God gave us dominion over the animals, that we were the only being created in HIS own image, and thus we were able to subjugate the others. In Genesis, it was Adam who named all the various animals. This ability to give names to others is a metaphor of our power over them.

There is another Biblical story that may illustrate more on the matter. In the Garden of Eden everything is living in harmony. God’s favorite creation, man, is skipping around with God’s other favorite creation, woman, and everyone is having a grand old time (sex might be allowed!). Adam and Eve are depicted naked as well, having no sense of being without clothing, much like the other animals in the garden. And then the mean old serpent convinces Eve to take a bite of a fruit off of the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil and share the fruit with Adam. Suddenly both of them are aware of their stark nakedness, and they are kicked out of the holy garden to suffer by God. God’s punishment stems from the fact they disobeyed him, but also seems to stem from a fear that Adam and Eve would become too much like himself. There is a line in Genesis that seems to get skipped nowadays by the televangelists who much more interested in the fact that we were punished than the reason for which we were punished.

Genesis 3:22-23 states: And Jehovah God said, Behold, the man is become as one of us, to know good and evil; and now, lest he put forth his hand, and take also of the tree of life, and eat, and live for ever. Therefore Jehovah God sent him forth from the garden of Eden, to till the ground from whence he was taken.

Thus God is afraid of humankind becoming like (insert gender neutral pronoun)self. The two super-trees in the Garden of Eden would allow this. The tree of knowledge bestows the knowledge of good and evil, and the tree of life bestows immortality. Apparently the knowledge of good and evil + immortality = God.

It is certainly a strange story, and like most sections of the Bible, it doesn’t form any clear cohesive narrative with the rest of the book. There are a myriad of meanings that one can come up with just looking at the Garden of Eden account itself. However, I view this story to be about what exactly separates humankind from the rest of the animal kingdom.

There is a certain grace all life seems to possess. Grace in the sense that there is no second-guessing one’s actions. The simplest lifeforms work on simple signal and response frameworks. E. coli, the most widely used and studied bacterium on earth, undergoes simple changes in what proteins its DNA makes based on certain molecules in the environment. Organisms even simpler than E. coli, such as viruses, attach like matching puzzle pieces to the surface of cells, and unload their diabolical contents into the host cell as a consequence of that attachment. As life becomes more complex, especially with the development of the brain, grace becomes obscured. The bigger the brain, the less grace, because biologically, a constant stream of stimulus needs to be integrated by the brain, and a response generated by it. This is not to say that the integration is some abstract process by which the brain acts (A goes in, mysterious process, B comes out); integration is just like an incredibly complicated watch-mechanism. But this mechanism by which we do basic arithmetic and take selfies results in a lack of an immediate response to a signal, in fact it is based on a sort of evaluation of what response is best enacted. In turn this results in a lack of grace. In humanity particularly, we have to integrate information about our environment, which is socially varied and dauntingly complex. Thus humans are the most awkward animal. Awkward because of the fact that sometimes we have to think about what we should do. If we view animal life and its grace as a sort of continuum of cause and effect, then the close-talking weirdo at the post-office represents a sort of break with that fluidity of existence.

But all this about the brain doesn’t fundamentally differentiate human beings from other primates. We may have the biggest brain, but it isn’t really a different brain. The difference comes in the little extra accoutrements that our brain possess. Specifically the difference is in whatever structures and pathways enable our affinity for language. If we view animal life and the idea of grace from the continuum perspective, language represents the ability to create separation between the continuous; language is the ability to make things discrete. Calling something by its proper name, for instance a ‘cup,’ defines it by what it is not. But ultimately it is an artificial designation. A cup to us is a small vessel with an open top that serves as something to drink from. It is also a collection of silicon, oxygen, sodium, calcium, and carbon atoms. It may also be innumerable bands of energy vibrating in different dimensions (sorry not a physics major). What makes humans fundamentally different from animals isn’t anything physical; it is our ability to be artificial, our ability to lack grace, our language. Other animals who rank high in intelligence may have sounds that have meaning; they may have a similar ability to learn and express themselves in unique ways. But what makes human beings different isn’t innate in our biology, it is the curation of our language.

Back to the story in Genesis, the question that needs to be asked is what does it mean to know good and evil? To me it means being able to separate the two, which is the fundamentally human binary. When Eve took a bite of that fruit, she didn’t have ultimate wisdom and a perfect morality. She simply realized she was naked. She was able to separate herself from her surroundings. To me, the story of the Garden of Eden is about the metaphorical evolution of human language because once Adam and Eve eat the fruit, they are able to define what is and what is not. In a manner of speaking, they become able to draw lines in the sand. They also become the first scientists, able to examine reality because they can separate it into words.

This hardly seems like a God-like power, but think of this. The computer you are using to read this blog is the result of years and years of scientific investigation. That in itself is based on the development of the middle class, the development of agriculture, the identification and designation of what food was good to eat through language. It all adds up to make our interesting little electronic creation. God’s fear in the Garden of Eden is that we would eat of both trees; that we would know good and evil as well as be immortal. In a way, we have found a way around being mortal. Writing down our language, we enable the next generation to stand on our shoulders, reaching ever higher. We become like God, able to create whatever we will.

One more point and I promise this post will be over. It is not arbitrary that the Tree of Knowledge gave us the knowledge of good and evil. I feel that this whole discussion is missing a very important piece. Why did God fear us becoming like (insert gender neutral pronoun)self? What was the danger in it? On what foundation does the tower we are building stand? I don’t think God is a megalomaniac, so what is the reason?

 Love is always patient and kind. It is never jealous. Love is never boastful or conceited. It is never rude or selfish. It does not take offense and is not resentful. Love takes no pleasure in other people's sins but delights in the truth. It is always ready to excuse, to hope, to trust, and to endure whatever comes. Love has no end.

Premise A: Emotions are occur, persist for a period of time, and then dissipate.

Premise B: Love has no end.

Conclusion: Love is not an emotion.

 

In Nueva York

So I just got back from New York. It was a 8/10. That's pretty high on my scale.

My first thought when I got into the city was that it was going to swallow me completely, and that any illusions that I might have had about being able to keep being myself in a city like New York were just that, illusions. This city can consume little personalities and spit out something different, like one of those coin pressing machines that spit out flattened pennies with city-scape designs. But as I walked, and walked, and walked, I eventually found my city legs and stopped freaking out. I will admit, it was a little embarrassing because I believed, being from LA, that I would be able to handle myself. But the truth is that I have more of a suburban soul than an urban one. New York was a trip.

The bus dropped me off in the middle of Manhattan and so I ended up walking all the way across the Brooklyn bridge to my hostel in Brooklyn. It was a long freaking walk. I walked through a Black neighborhood hosting block parties, to a Hasidic neighborhood composed of Jews with large cylinder shaped fur hats, to a Puerto Rican neighborhood playing reggaeton. The real Brookyln experience.  I had walked through much of the lower half of Manhattan, including Wall Street and Ground Zero. They had just opened up the 9-11 museum but it was too crowed to go into. The two waterfalls they built around the site were impressive, but not so solemn as the flood of tourists was never-ending. The night before I got some drinks and a Panini at a local bar in Brooklyn. While I was eating my Panini I saw a cockroach crawl out from under the bar. I wrote it up as a New York thing and kept eating. Seeing as I still had a bit of time, and being a bit buzzed, I went to the local store and bought a pack of Reds (dammit). I can't even rationalize smoking at this point, its as spontaneous as an erection in a middle school classroom. I spent the rest of the evening smoking and walking up and down the neighborhoods. I met some guy from Bangladesh that definitely wanted something from me but didn't have the English language skills to ask for it. He awkwardly hung around me for a while. I got a bit annoyed, forced him to take a cigarette, and walked away. A lady asked me in Spanish where the local church was and if mass was in session. I got back to the hostel and didn't feel tired so I started to reread Heart of Darkness. No relation to my New York trip, it is just what was on my Kindle at the time.

The next day I basically walked back up Manhattan and saw Chinatown, Little Italy, NYU, MOMA, Central Park, and all around that middle area. It was pretty tight. The modern art museum was a little much. There was a cool display about future cities, the famous Warhol Monroes were a hit, but then the museum had to go and ruin that positive impression with a Yoko Ono exhibit. I would give it a 2/10. I had to leave within the hour or I was going to vomit my stomach out at the pretentiousness of the exhibit. When I got back on the subway I found to my chagrin that my track to Brooklyn was closed. So I walked the Williamsburg bridge back to Brooklyn. Along the way I encountered some real-life Jersey shore girls. It was a head scratcher as I wasn't sure that they were real human beings. And so on and so forth. I am tired so I don't feel like going too much more into what I did, but basically more walking, drinking, smoking, and people watching. New York is definitely an unlimited source of interest with some real cool people.


"Love is always patient and kind. It is never jealous. Love is never boastful or conceited. It is never rude or selfish. It does not take offense and is not resentful. Love takes no pleasure in other people's sins, but delights in the truth. It is always ready to excuse, to trust, to hope, and to endure whatever comes. Love has no end."

Remember to delight in the truth, but keep your teeth sharp enough to survive.

 Ground Zero

Brooklyn Bridge

My Neighborhood in Brooklyn

 

Pretty Sweet