- “Fly like eagles in worship…” At church this morning [Grace International Church, Baltimore, MD], Pastor Ken and the worship team improvised a lyric saying “Eagles take their prey to a higher altitude to suffocate them. Worship is moving to a higher altitude where problems and doubts can’t breathe.” Such an awesome exhortation! Worship takes our attention off of our inadequate resources for dealing with the problem at hand, and onto God’s infinite riches. We are reminded of the Psalmist’s exhortation in Ps. 131 [ESV] not to concern ourselves with things too wonderful for ourselves, but to rest in God:
O LORD, my heart is not lifted up;
my eyes are not raised too high;
I do not occupy myself with things
too great and too marvelous for me.
But I have calmed and quieted my soul,
like a weaned child with its mother;
like a weaned child is my soul within me.
O Israel, hope in the LORD
from this time forth and forevermore. - “Authority ranking vs. Authority appeal.” The idea is that recent generations have struggled against the hierarchical social arrangements built up by assent to authority on the strength of tradition, while later generations have not sought just to resist authority, but to appeal to that authority to redeem/reinforce/rebuild confidence in their role or service. I think that this is a powerful idea that can also appropriately be used to explain many of the trends we are now seeing in higher education. This idea is most evident when one reflects on the juxtaposition of expensive brick-and-mortar colleges and universities against the flexibility and individualistic appeal of online or distance learning. We are starting to see an “appeal” to the “authority” of traditional institutions of higher learning to ensure the integrity of their course offerings with respect to professional relevance, state-of-the art, and personal development. The challenge to authority exists in that mere content presentation can be offered to students more cheaply in many ways online or at a distance. Students believe in the value of education, but are now asking us to put more effort into “proving” it.
- “Suburban sprawl is a Ponzi scheme.” Chuck Marohn of Strong Towns shows us how suburban development is a Ponzi scheme. I don’t necessarily think it’s a Ponzi scheme, more than it’s us as Americans refusing to face the full costs of our behavior. More importantly, this Ponzi scheme is the emergent property of the interaction between exclusivist social systems, individualist culture, infinite-growth politics, and a plethora of real estate. Until we have the courage to confront these factors honestly and truthfully, then I guess the best analogy for our circumstance is a Ponzi scheme. To me, the crucial difference between a Ponzi scheme and our development problems is that in a Ponzi scheme, by definition, the insufficiency of requisite collateral is hidden from the investors. In our case, this insufficiency is not hidden… We just choose to pretend it is not there.
- “10 Best States for Growth and Innovation.“ I’m happy to learn that I live in one of the 10 best states for both growth and innovation [Maryland, #5 and #7, respectively].
- “Nixon an exemplar for withdrawal?” Maybe before Gideon Rose wrote this. But now that everyone would know that we’d be trying to mask defeat, this might be a hard sell. Perhaps Nixon could be Obama’s exemplar on environmental issues?…