Social Media Proliferation … and, Bridging the Gap

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So, how many social media sites are you on these days?

I ask because I’ve been watching with some amusement the mass exodus from X/Twitter to Bluesky. A great many folks on Facebook have announced their transition from the one with the blue bird logo to the one with the blue butterfly logo, often with snarky commentary about Mr. Musk’s management of the former and/or the results of recent election. (Alas, some of the commentary is more hateful than snarky.)

I’m still on X/Twitter, but the other day I set up a Bluesky account to see what it’s all about. As my first post, I submitted some verse:

Bluesky Beckoning

I see blue sky outside my window
Behind the few remaining leaves
Shaking as the autumn wind blows
And the smiling sun deceives me
Into thinking that it’s warm out
Despite the trees becoming bare–
Still, I’ll go stumbling down the scenic route
In the invigorating air

This makes the sixth social media site I’m on, which is probably three too many. In rough order of how much time I spend on them, I’m on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, LinkedIn, MeWe, and Bluesky. I was on Google+ while it lasted, though I didn’t use it much, and still have a Gab account which I haven’t looked at in ages. That’s in addition to bulletin boards like Baen’s Bar and Discord; sites that are considered social media but I don’t use as such, like YouTube; and things I’m not sure how to categorize, like Substack. Imagine if I were also on TikTok and Threads and Reddit and Snapchat and Pinterest and Tumblr and … what did I miss? I’m sure I missed some.

It makes me long for a treaty on the nonproliferation of social media.

Social Media Icons With Paint Splash Effect
(Image: “Social Media Icons With Paint Splash Effect,” by Lewis Ogden, on Flickr under Creative Commons.)

Which brings me back to the X/Twitter-to-Bluesky exodus.

From what I’ve seen, the majority of people posting about moving completely from one site to the other seem wistful, as if remembering X/Twitter as some idyllic playground where they waltzed carefree among sweet-smelling flowers of approval and likemindedness. And perhaps for them it was just so! Now that others have gained verbal ground on them, though, with arguments they consider distasteful and attitudes and opinions of which they disapprove, they have packed up their toys and moved to another playground.

Now, I’m all for spending time with friendly people rather than enduring hostility. But that Bluesky playground has its own unsavoriness. Much of the posting — and this may be because it’s still so new to so many people — expresses relief that they found a new playground, albeit often with no small amount of disdain for those who would choose to stay behind. Some of the sneering and condescension is amusing, though not when it seems to slide from simple dislike into snobbery and hatefulness.

I don’t know how comfortable all the Bluesky immigrants should be. One day, something may spark an exodus from Bluesky to some new platform yet to be imagined. Sites come and go — MySpace, anyone? — and some people will always be looking for the next, better thing.

I expect the end result will be more societal fragmentation, as the echo chambers resound in chorus and the political bubbles thicken and calcify by us-versus-them rhetoric, rather than minds meeting in ways that help us understand one another — even if we choose not to appreciate one another. But because I can be a glutton for punishment and believe that bridging gaps between people is important, I will stand in the middle, dipping my toes into each pond now and again, ready to engage with anyone on either side who is willing to discuss, debate, or even argue in good faith and civility.

Let me know if you’d like to stand with me.

___

For other musings and oddball ideas, see
– My latest release, also with some gap-bridging implications, A Church More Like Christ
– My other recent release! Elements of War
– My Amazon Page or Bandcamp Page, or subscribe to my newsletter

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You – Yes, YOU – Are Salt and Light

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Whoever you are, wherever you are, as you read this, I believe you are the salt of the earth and you are the light of the world, as Jesus told his followers they were two-thousand-some years ago.

If you’re not familiar with what Jesus said about salt and light, here’s a paraphrase from the Gospel of Matthew, chapter five, the Sermon on the Mount:

You are the salt of the earth. But if the salt has lost its saltiness, how will it be made salty again? It is then good for nothing but to be cast out, and to be trodden under foot.

You are the light of the world. A city on a hill cannot be hidden, nor do we light a candle and put it under a basket, but on a candlestick so it lights everyone in the house. So let your light shine before men that they may see your good works and glorify your Father in heaven.

To be considered salt is to be both useful and valuable. In the ancient world, salt was extremely important: not just as a flavoring but as a preservative and even as currency (the word “salary” derives from salt). A few years ago, in fact, I wrote a trio of blog posts about salt in which I examined such things as how just the right amount of salt is needed and “salty” language and even how “Immigrants Are Like Salt”.

And to be the light of the world is not only to be useful but to be, quite literally, illuminating.

I believe that you, whether you are of any faith — Christian or Jewish or Muslim or Buddhist or Shinto or Taoist or what-have-you — or no faith, are salt and light. Yes, whether you are a theist or an atheist, whether you are devout or agnostic, you are — not “might be,” not “ought to be,” but are — salt and light at least to some degree.

Why do I think that? Because

Jesus told his listeners that they were — and, by extension, we are — the salt of the Earth and the light of the world, and it is worth noting that Christ was not speaking to Christians because no one at the time would have been considered such. We must conclude, then, that everyone, whether a professed believer or a staunch antitheist, is salt that is either savory or has lost its savor; likewise, everyone is a light that is either on a stand or under a basket.*

Salt of the Earth
(Image: “Salt of the Earth,” by David Campbell, on Flickr under Creative Commons.)

It is true that Jesus’s audience was primarily Jewish, but I feel certain some Gentiles who either lived in the area, were passing through as merchants, or were observing the crowd as Roman soldiers might, must have heard what he said. I believe his words were meant for them as well. And while many things in the Hebrew Bible apply only to Jewish people, and many things in the New Testament apply only to professing Christians, this can be true of everyone, for all time.

So I conclude that you, in whatever situation you find yourself in, and wherever you go throughout your life, are salt and light. And so am I. As such, it is up to us whether we will be flavorless and thereby worthless salt, or whether we will be flavorful; and it is up to us whether we will be dim lights or hidden, or whether we will shine brightly on the world around us.

___
*From A Church More Like Christ, now available as an e-book, a trade paperback, or an audiobook.

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Is This Book Right for You?

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My latest nonfiction book, A Church More Like Christ, is now available for pre-order!

Specifically, the Kindle e-book can be pre-ordered, and will be delivered on 3 September. It costs $1.99, which I hope folks will find reasonable.

If you’re wondering whether the book is right for you, the back-cover copy may give you an idea:

A church like Christ would
• Teach like Jesus
• Worship like Jesus
• Pray and live and love like Jesus

Is your church a force for good, a light in the darkness, an outpost of God’s kingdom in the world? Do the wounded find comfort and healing in your church? Do the broken find repair and restoration? Do the vulnerable find help and hope? Does your church offer refuge for the oppressed, a hand up to the beaten-down, and recognition to the unseen? If so, this book may not be for you.

If not—if your church is divided against itself, or focused only on itself, or more judgmental than caring—it may be that the church is not as much like Christ as it could be. A Church More Like Christ can help you examine how Christlike your church is, and give you new ways to think about what it means for a church to live out the faith it practices.

If the church were quicker to comfort than to condemn, quicker to heal rather than harm, quicker to love than to hate, disparage, or ignore, perhaps it would be a greater source of inspiration, strength, and change in people’s lives—and in the world. If so, it would be, in effect, more like Christ.


(A Church More Like Christ graphic courtesy of Stephen Minervino.)

If you decide the book might interest you, by all means pre-order the e-book at this link; or, wait for the paperback to be released on 3 September and order that instead! (It’ll be $7.99, which again I hope folks will find reasonable.)

And if you know anyone else who might be interested, please let them know!

___

For other musings and oddball ideas, see
– My other recent release! Elements of War (paperback)
– My Amazon Page or Bandcamp Page, or subscribe to my newsletter

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New Book, New Cover!

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My new nonfiction book, A Church More Like Christ, will soon be available for pre-order, and here’s the cover! My son-in-law, Stephen Minervino, designed it, and I think he did a fantastic job!

The book is dedicated as follows:

To all who Seek, may you Find—
And may what you find bring you Joy, and Peace


(Front cover of A Church More Like Christ.)

Stay tuned for more details! Meanwhile, if you’re interested, you can check out my last nonfiction offering, Elements of War.

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Ignorance is Bliss Because Smartening is Hard

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I’ve watched a lot of finger-pointing this week as folks on either side of the Olympics opening ceremony brouhaha have become Internet-fueled art historians, art critics, mind readers and apologists. The number of reports available on the subject is overwhelming, and none of us is capable of absorbing and making sense of them all — yet many people are pleased to share what understanding they think they’ve gleaned. (If ever there were a good use case for the automatic aggregators commonly passed off as artificial intelligences, collating and distilling all of that data would be it … except they can’t be trusted because their programmers seem to have inserted curious biases into them.)


(Image: “Knowledge over Ignorance,” by thepixelsmith, on DeviantArt under Creative Commons.)

As the opinions and reference sources (complete with hyperlinks) flew back and forth, often with unnecessary barbs and insults, I thought about how hard it is for us to consider deeply and honestly opposing viewpoints and reportage that contradicts what we think we know. Robert A. Heinlein once wrote that “To stay young requires the unceasing cultivation of the ability to unlearn old falsehoods,” but it ain’t easy. And I was reminded of this passage:

Everyone is familiar with the experience of learning something, believing it to be true, and finding out later it was not quite accurate. Perhaps the difference was in the details—learning that the planet has two north poles, geographic and magnetic, for instance—or perhaps what we learned was false or incomplete, e.g., the characteristics of life at one or both of those poles. We “learned” that the moon was made of green cheese, that Mars had canals, and that the solar system had nine planets; one was nonsense, one supposition, and the third science; but, after the discovery of the tenth planet (at the time “2003 UB313,” now Eris) and then the rejection of it and Pluto as true planets in favor of the “dwarf planet” designation, we now know that all three things we learned were wrong—or, in the last case, premature.

This process—collecting new information, enjoying or enduring new experiences, and reevaluating what we learned—can be uncomfortable, so we may not appreciate it at the time. We may think of it as going through intellectual and emotional growing pains. But when it comes to history, this growth experience can produce mistrust if we put too much stock in what we already learned. We may deride new interpretations as “revisionist history,” forgetting that all history must be subject to revision —literally, “looking again”—as new facts are discovered.

Unfortunately, facts are not always recognizable or readily available. Where facts are obscure or absent, we must interpret, interpolate, and speculate in order to derive anything approaching understanding or discernment. This is a natural process, i.e., inherent to our nature as thinking beings, and we routinely accept an abridged understanding of things that cannot be proved by fact or rationale.

(If you’re interested, that’s from the preface to this book.)

The problem is when we think we know quite well, thank you very much, and how dare you present us with new information or contradictory facts to chip away at the edifice of our understanding? And when different authorities present alternative explanations, how dare you imply that our choice of one over the other was misguided? And so forth, and so on, with our emotions ratcheting higher with every comment.

Sometimes returning to the Garden, to the Age of Innocence, seems all too tempting. But would it be more satisfying? I’m not sure.

___

For other musings and oddball ideas, see
– My Latest Release! Elements of War (paperback)
– My Amazon Page or Bandcamp Page, or subscribe to my newsletter

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Sometimes I Hate My Brain

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(Or, the perils of “worst-case scenario” thinking.)

I’ve been a worst-case scenario thinker most all my life — at least, as far back as I remember thinking about anything. Sometimes it seems better than wearing rosy glasses, if only because I prepare myself mentally for pain or disappointment (sometimes, if I’m lucky), but maybe it would be more pleasant to be an optimist.

Anyway … I noticed a week or two ago that a friend seemed to have dropped off the radar (so to speak), and I immediately jumped to the conclusion that something dire had happened. She didn’t respond to my e-mails or text messages, and after a few more days I went so far as to prowl her Facebook profile and send messages to a few of her relatives to see if they had heard from her.


(Image: “Target Man,” by Nevit Dilmen, on Wikimedia Commons.)

Then, before I heard from her relatives, she replied to my text! Turns out her computer had gone kaput while she was traveling, and other than a little inconvenience all was well.

So why did I envision the worst? Was it just because she and I were working on a project together? No, I seem to do that all the time — and I don’t like it.

I wish I could look at situations — whether something broken, or a miscommunication with someone, or a revelation of perfidy — and see them in the best possible light instead of the worst. I think it might make for a more pleasant life.

What about you?

___

P.S. Even though sometimes my brain goes places I’d rather it not, at other times it actually produces something worthwhile. For such possibly interesting things, see
– My Latest Release! Elements of War (paperback)
– My Amazon Page or Bandcamp Page, or subscribe to my newsletter

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The Hard Work Begins

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On July 5th, 1776, the hard work began in earnest.

The first battles of the Revolutionary War had already been fought, of course — Lexington and Concord was back on April 19th, 1775 — but the unified effort did not begin right away. The Continental Congress approved the move for independence on the 2nd of July, 1776, and signed the Declaration on the 4th, but independence still had to be won. It would not be easy, it would not be free, and the outcome was far from certain.


(Image: “Declaration of Independence,” by John Trumbull (1819), from Wikimedia Commons.)

So, on this July 5th, a question inspired by my 11th grade English teacher, James “Dog” Parker:

To what will you pledge your life, fortune, and sacred honor?

Once we answer that, our hard work begins.

Press on!

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Yes, Keep Them Separate … and Unequal

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It seems to me that Church and State need not be separate if the people running them could be trusted to … well, could be trusted.

In other words, Church and State need to be separate so long as either seeks to control the people.

And since all too often both seek — sometimes in overt and sometimes in insidious ways — to control, to dominate, rather than to liberate the populace, they must be kept separate. It is bad enough to have two separate institutions seeking control, sometimes vying for it, but it would be orders of magnitude worse to have them acting in concert to control the citizenry.

Of course, each will claim to act in the people’s best interests. But do they? Consistently enough to be trusted to act without restraint or supervision? Well enough that, rather than paying them lip service (and, admit it: we quite often do), we should turn over our own agency and responsibility to them? In a word: No! Neither Church nor State may be trusted to act dependably in all our best interests.

To be clear, I do not believe that every single pastor, priest, elder, deacon, senator, representative, mayor, council member, and so forth is naturally untrustworthy. Some, no doubt, have unflappable integrity. But in service to their institutions, and when invested with the power of increasing authority, they may act more to benefit their organizations — and to secure their places within the organizations — than anything else. They may begin their service out of legitimate heartfelt concern for others, but the higher they rise in the hierarchy the more they may shift to self-interested service, if not outright service of self.

So it is in all our best interests — the best interests of those of us in the trenches of real life — to keep Church and State separate.

The Separation Of Church And State
(Image: “The Separation Of Church And State,” by Ian Sane, on Flickr under Creative Commons.)

And, in my view, it is in all our best interests to keep Church and State at least a little unequal, with the balance of power between them tilted in favor of the civil State. In our own lives we may place our thumb on the scale and pay more heed to the Church, but upsetting that balance for the nation at large would be a bad idea. The State at this time in our history seems to be leaning toward greater and greater centralization and ever more draconian and even tyrannical exercise of its power, but with a little wisdom and effort we may still check its excesses without open conflict. However, a State in service to a Church — no matter what brand or how well-meaning — would, by virtue of its finding its guidance in holy writ, be less likely to question either its motives or its actions and therefore more likely to stride into abuses that could only be corrected by bloody rebellion.

Speaking of bloody rebellions, think back for a moment to our Declaration of Independence. It posits that we institute governments to secure for citizens the rights they naturally have been endowed by their creator. That is as close as Church and State need to be: that the Church recognize the civil authority, and that the State recognize that it is the guarantor, not the provider, of the people’s rights.

And despite the name, it is good to remind ourselves that we do not establish a government in order that it will “govern” — i.e., control — our lives, but that it will use its power to prevent us and others from interfering with or damaging one another’s lives. Government is a necessary evil, as Thomas Paine wrote in Common Sense. Unfortunately, in our day it has grown so large that much of it is an unnecessary evil, but putting such an evil in too close proximity to the Church would sully the Church more than the Church would ever be able to sanctify the State.

___

For other musings and oddball ideas, see:
– My Latest Release! Elements of War (paperback)
– My Amazon Page or Bandcamp Page … or subscribe to my newsletter

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Now Available: Elements Of War

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My new nonfiction book, Elements of War, is now available as both an e-book and a trade paperback.

ELEMENTS OF WAR, cover by Christopher Rinehart
(Elements of War, cover by Christopher Rinehart.)

The book offers a decidedly nontraditional look at war, and questions some of the fundamental ideas that many of us learned in our professional military courses. It may even be a bit controversial in places.

I was very pleased that last weekend the e-book qualified as a “#1 new release” on Amazon in two categories: Military Strategy History, and Epistemology. But I’ll be even more pleased if readers find something interesting in the book!

If you know of someone who might be interested but who doesn’t follow my blog, please share this with them — and thanks in advance!

___

P.S. My previous blog entry, “Different Degrees of Victory … or Defeat,” included an excerpt from chapter 24 of the book, if you want to look at that.

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Different Degrees of Victory … or Defeat

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I’m releasing a new book very soon, a nonfiction volume entitled Elements of War (in fact, I released the e-book version today). I worked on this book on and off for decades: I started it while on active duty in the Air Force (some of its embryonic form was published in the USAF online magazine), and continued after I retired. I originally planned to release it nearly five years ago, but life events interfered.

To adapt an old phrase, I’ve cut bait long enough and it’s time to fish. So by way of introducing the book, I offer this excerpt from chapter twenty-four, “The System of War”:

It may seem odd to categorize war, which is not a discrete thing but rather an abstract notion describing events, as a system … a collection of interrelated and interacting parts that operate together toward a common purpose. A box of odds and ends is not a system; nor is a box of computer components until those components are assembled in working fashion. It seems that such a definition would not describe an abstract notion such as war….

Our purpose is not to apply any single methodology to break down war into its component parts, but to understand more of the whole by using a variety of different methods. By way of analogy, we can compare the art of war to the art of painting. In the case of historical wars, the painting is complete (though we may occasionally encounter a forgery, a reproduction, or a hidden masterpiece); in the case of current wars, it is being painted even now. We evaluate the paintings to determine if they are masterpieces—or if they even qualify as “art.” We must investigate light, shadow, color, and texture to practice our own art, but we need not chemically analyze the paint to learn what makes it burnt umber; instead, we consider the painting as a whole….

For the system of war, the purpose is to achieve victory (i.e., to seize the objective) by force or by the threat of force…. Failure to keep that objective in mind is usually the fault of the political rather than the military machine. Since the mid-1980s the US in particular has searched for “exit strategies” too vigorously, when it should have searched for victory strategies…. We should not be content to stop at a quick military victory unless we are reasonably sure that victory will gain us the long-term, overall victory we really need; however, we cannot know what that overall victory should look like if we have not taken the time to define it and figure out how to achieve it.

It is important to remember that, “there are degrees of victory, some better than others.” Planners and commanders might consider using the Victory/Defeat Space model shown in Figure 7 to determine the shape of the victory to be sought. By deciding beforehand the definitions for the minimum acceptable victory, the maximum anticipated defeat, etc., decision makers would not only approach any coming war with open eyes but may also be able to discern ways to move from the potential for defeat to the probability of victory. Our definition may, in fact, change as the conflict unfolds. And how we define the victory we want will determine the resources and tactics we need to prosecute the war—no matter what that war may be.


(Victory/Defeat Space. Figure 7 from Elements of War.)

You may have noted that the figure was adapted from a Nuclear Regulatory Commission handbook. That handbook was the text for a system safety and reliability short course I took at the University of Washington in the late 1980s (a temporary duty assignment from my post at Edwards AFB). I don’t recall exactly when I thought of the idea of using the Success/Failure diagram from the text to illustrate different degrees of victory and defeat, but I think it’s an appropriate application — even if it is a bit unusual. (Then again, I seem to have a track record of coming up with unusual things.)

With respect to things going on in the world today, how do you think Russia and Ukraine would define their respective maximum tolerable defeats or maximum anticipated victories? Or, given that China recently deployed forces in military exercises near Taiwan, how would those two countries — and, given our interests, the US as well — define those scenarios to cover an eventual Chinese invasion of the island?

It seems to me that planners and politicians on each side of a conflict would do well to place their different potential outcomes along the continuum, so that even if they cannot achieve total victory they might avoid total defeat.

___

If you think this sort of approach is interesting, or has any value whatsoever — whether in this context, or in the context of negotiations (minimum acceptable salary?), investing (maximum tolerable loss?), or some other aspect of life — I’d be pleased if you would share it with friends! And I’d be even more pleased if you’d pick up the e-book today and/or consider ordering a copy of Elements of War when it becomes available.

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