Biggest fear: giving more than I can. I do this often. Most people are already bereft of life with its drama that by the time I reach them—ready to do it again, to give my all—is almost a vacuous pursuit. They’ve been robbed by countless idiots and would rather waste their energy on annoyances than the treasure I have to offer. Why do I feel this way? I have no idea. I’ve met a wonderful woman. She appears to “fit.” Though it may seem a bit early, it seems like everything is working great, going according to plan, as it were. But there’s always that residual fear, the fear that all my past relationships plague me with—incorrigible doubt. For the mean time, I will smile and enjoy this. There is nothing that can cause me to doubt. It’s so funny because everything just seems so easy with her. I don’t have to try hard or think about what to say or do because it is easy.

How do I tackle this? How do I commit myself to a resolve? How do I maintain peace for my soul? Do I acquire my faith to solve it, or is my mind forever at a disadvantage to resolve my soul’s problems. I feel like I’m living under a shadow of an unnamed mass. There’s a shadow on the ground, but none to reflect it. Perhaps I’m looking for the body whose shadow I am under. Perhaps this shadow’s name is “happiness” and I can only experience a semblance of its reality.

Moving away from this cultural crisis, the church has scrambled as it seeks to plant itself as an institution (or movement) and provide somewhat of an alternative to the neo-Darwinian materialism. The only problem, however, is that the answer the church is giving the culture is a drastic shift away from the Scriptural mandate to proclaim the Word of God. Essentially the Christians have retreated and ignored the call to transform the culture around them. This is the current problem outlined in Reforming or Transforming (Johnson and Gleason). Leading up to this point, however, Schaeffer has some very important words to say,

The basic problem of the Christians in this country (America) in the last eighty years or so, in regard to society and in regard to government, is that they have seen things in bits and pieces instead of totals… This shift has been away from the world view that was at least vaguely Christian in people’s memory (even if they were not individually Christian) toward something completely different—toward a worldview based upon the idea that the final reality is impersonal matter or energy shaped into its present form by impersonal chance.

For Schaeffer, this move away from a holistic approach (what he calls a worldview) has led to the devastation and collapse of Biblical values in the culture. It is the unfortunate consequence of this status that we, as the Christian community, must reckon with and resolve.

    We are at this point still pressed by another matter plaguing the church. Though much of this problem is seen from without (meaning, the problem is stemmed on the outside patio of the church steps), the church has to deal with herself. Some in the church have taken steps to try to resolve this problem from the inside. Like a virus, the cultural problem has now become an ecclesiastical problem. Do you see what happened? A shift from correcting the outside has brought about a complete reorientation of change to the inside, namely the church. This problem, however, only begs a very crucial question: where are the Christians? Today, Christians still seem to be asleep at the wheel as the socio-political climate changes! These changes, however, are a result of the ineptitude and inaction of Christians in America.

    The new Christian consciousness, as spread by people like McLaren and most of the post-moderns, reply that we as the Christian community have thought of Christianity not as an organism of change but one of acceptance and love. And while this attitude—that’s what it is after all, an attitude—may seem appealing to the new Christian, propositional truths have taken a backseat. We are no longer concerned with truth as a mechanism, so goes the logic, but we think more in terms of people. The shift in propositional truth, namely the Word of God as an authority (or I should the only authority) that speaks both on the individual and corporate level, is now a synthetic “answer” to the culture war. In effect, the answer to this problem is not an answer in the strictest sense, since an answer would imply that there is something that needs to be corrected and only propositional truth can truly give us that. Gary Johnson, in his book Reforming or Transforming seeks to correct this line of thinking. He writes, “We cannot escape the powerful undercurrents of postmodernity that course through the times we live in. The question that confronts us all is, how do we respond to such things? Since the apostle Paul tells in a very direct way—we are not to be conformed to the pattern of this world (Romans 12:1-2)—exactly what do we do when we find ourselves being molded and shaped by the culture around us?” Truth as truth, the way we find it expressed in the pages of Scripture, comes down in fiat. God doesn’t merely suggest a way of living but speaks with authority to obey His Word (John 6:35-40).

    As we continue to look at the doctrine of Scripture, I want you to have this in your minds: every man and women has an outlook on how they see the world, what Schaeffer calls a worldview. That worldview does in large measure define and control (authority) our beliefs and ultimately our actions. The question that lingers is “what authority is running your life?” For some, the final reality of pure chance and material energy is apex (Darwinists). (Essentially, what we do doesn’t really matter in light of this philosophy.) For others it is the changing of cultural norms to fit a working order (postmodernists). For the Christian, there is nothing more sure than the hope we have in God, who speaks in every time and culture and violates the laws of nature to do. We need to follow Paul when hee penned these words: “For the word of the cross is folly to those who are perishing, but to us who are being saved it is the power of God. For it is written, ‘I will destroy the wisdom of the wise, and the discernment of the discerning I will thwart.’ Where is the one who is wise? Where is the scribe? Where is the debater of this age? Has not God made foolish the wisdom of the world? For since, in the wisdom of God, the world did not know God through wisdom, it pleased God through the folly of what we preach to save those who believe.” (1 Corinthians 1:18-21 ESV)

My problem is with the media and how it shapes popular opinion. What offends me most is the left’s habitual proclivity to shape the American people by “media bullying.” Often times, the left has a tendency to point out how unfair the right can be, but where is the left when the media tends to shape the thinking of the American people when it is not advantageous to its party, or even when it is detrimental to its party? The problem with the left, in my opinion—and it is my opinion—, is that they like to have their cake and eat it too. Lets call it what it is and nothing less: hypocrisy sprinkled with authoritarian totalitarianism. (Wow, those were two long big words.) This reminded me of a paragraph the late Dr. F. A. Schaeffer wrote in his A Christian Manifesto, quoting William B. Ball:

I propose that secularism militates against religious liberty, and indeed against personal freedoms generally, for two reasons: first, the familiar fact that secularism does not recognize the existence of the “higher laws”; second, because, that being so, secularism tends toward decisions based on the pragmatic public policy of the moment and inevitable tends to resist the submitting of those policies to the “higher” criteria of a constitution. (Qtd. in Ball 42.)

This is a sad state of affairs, but it’s true nonetheless. Where is my America?

In an interview with Massively, SOE’s John Smedley says the decision to end Star Wars Galaxies was a “business decision” largely related to the arrival of BioWare’s Star War’s MMO, Star Wars: The Old Republic, expected to launch within the next year. Smedley downplays speculation that recent hacking attempts, lay-offs or a still dwindling player population were behind the closure. (Kotaku)

“That was the way we did it in the past. Ultimately, we learnt that’s not the way you should do it. We had the discussions early on with Rage about what platforms we were going to go on,” he said. “Two-thirds of our sales are going to be on console, we’re going to make sure we have that gameplay feel tight [sic] first.”

He continued, “In game development, you have to tailor your gameplay to where you expect people to play it on,”

“So, while we’re developing Rage on the PC, we forbid anybody from playing it on a keyboard and mouse until we’ve played it first on a console controller. We pull the keyboard and mouse out and put in a USB 360 controller, even on the development staff. That’s not just the testers.”

…[Read more]

I have one job and I am grateful for it, but unfortunately it isn’t enough. It sucks that Americans have to work more than one job just barely to make it beyond falling off a conceptual precipice. I mean, seriously, the line is very thin and I don’t know how I am making it currently. My insurance has been cancelled, that’s for sure, and I’m still trying to figure out a way how I’m going to pay off all my debt. My debt isn’t so bad, but the fact that I can’t even begin to pay it off is pretty bad. Maybe I should quit waiting on the market to get better and just enlist. It seems like trying is just a Catch 22. Makes no sense in trying sometimes. The funny thing is that I’m the most competitive person in my family—which is a boon for business—yet I can’t seem to find a job. I don’t know. Maybe I should just keep trying the market until I know for sure that enlisting is the only and final choice left.

It would seem foolish for any Latino, like myself, to constantly regurgitate his credentials (honors, social clubs, etc.) in order to gain some modicum of respect. So the only other thing to do is show the education in everyday situations. If the person really is educated and wants to be perceived as an equal, he or she needs to show proper leadership skills and perhaps even a bit of risk. Also, the language one uses also extenuates (like that) or augments the ability to cogently use language to work for her or him. I also think that the most magnanimous attribute for an intelligent mind is to be deliberative. It is in no sense common or wise to act impetuously but instead to consider —intelligently— the options or judgments before him or her.

I know all this is purely anecdotal, but I think this helps me in social situations, especially when Mexicans are not widely respected. You can’t really argue with statistics which place Latinos at the bottom of the totem pole.

Things are going pretty well for me personally as well. Met a great friend—yes, a girl—and she has been amazing. Haven’t been like this with a woman for a long time. The things she sends me while I’m working or at school make me smile all the time. I always look forward hearing from her. Julio, OUT.

More on language later. Right now I have to get ready for class. Yay for biology. Just kidding. Oh, there’s another thing I think is worth mentioning. I met someone great. She makes an awesome friend. I love awesome people. Friends make me smile.

Psychologist Sam Gosling analyzed the Facebook profiles of 236 college-aged people, who were also asked to fill out personality questionnaires. The study, which will be published in an upcoming issue of the journal Psychological Science, included surveys that were designed to assess not only how study participants viewed themselves in reality, but also what their personalities would be like if they had all of their ideal traits. Specifically Gosling and colleagues measured openness, agreeableness, conscientiousness, extraversion and neuroticism. And when they sized up the survey results against participants’ Facebook profiles, it quickly became clear that, instead of putting out gilded versions of themselves, people’s online profiles were in keeping with what they were actually like in real life.