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Building for Joy!

First off, I think that is a great title for how we should live our lives.  Second, I’ve just finished skimming (I have read, but am still processing) an article on building joy in a digital world.  The authors suggest that there needs to be a positive outcome of our use of the digital.  So, for those presenting digital content:  what is your motivation, how intense is the experience, do you present with integrity, how normative is the content and how dependent are users on external factors (good and bad)?

Sounds like a lot of esoteric considerations.  But, perhaps there is something to this approach to the digital experience which better suits a Christian approach to life.  As I say, I’m just on the outer edges of this!  You can follow with me – here is a research paper that outlines these thoughts – https://research.gold.ac.uk/id/eprint/33895/3/978-1-958651-47-6_17.pdf

My latest article in our local social media/newspaper (Kindersley Social – November 15, 2023)

Measuring Man’s Misery

Touring carries its treasures but also its tragedies.

This last while has been a great opportunity to see relatives, visit friends and make new acquaintances. I’ve seen the snarl of traffic on one of the nation’s superhighways and I’ve travelled the expanse of land with no one near. In the next few weeks I’ll continue my journeys.

While the visiting was exciting, the discussions around tables often tended towards news of the world and news of local happenings. In an archaic phrasing, the longer we talked the more we were “measuring man’s misery”.

Words and Wounds – Victimization and Mental Health issues have been highlighted. There was a saying – “Sticks and stones may break my bones, but words will never hurt me!” I think we have come past that Stoic approach to life. There is a place for recognition of real harm done to others. But have we become so sensitive that we are no longer resilient in the storms of life, blown by every wind of offense?

Wisdom and Truth – Perhaps I’m just around the wrong people? The more we talk at table the more I’m sure we want truth and wisdom. The toll has been taken by a society that has many truths (one for each person) but no standard truth (using the word “standard” as a description of a truth that can be applied to all people). We have democratized truth to such an extent that there is no “true truth”. And everyone does what is right in their own eyes. How long until tyrants reign with power – fully justified by their own truths in a world that has no leg to stand on to combat that truth?

War and rumours of War – I don’t need to emphasize this table discussion item. One year since a war in Ukraine, weeks of Israel and Gaza in the news. Oh, and then there are those wars that have transpired for years in our globe but remained unspoken or unreported. Death and destruction are way too normal. Power and control take their thrones through bloodshed and violence. I’ve seen too much! When will the world find peace?

Will-fulness and Service – Years ago I read a book called “The Selfishness of America”. Enjoying a meal with friends and family reminds me: we live surrounded by the “me-ness” of the world. Whether it is discussion of family breakups or gossiped feuds, or perhaps the whispers of the lack of volunteerism within local institutions – I feel like we have lost the desire to work together, to serve others, to be humble. How can a world serve only themselves and live to see another day?

And then the conversation turns to Artificial Intelligence, the lack of proper privacy, the physical ills of a degraded health system and so much more. Even where people have tried to remain off grid, the whispers float into their atmosphere. We don’t need to step outside our daily life to be able to measure man’s misery.

I’m a believer in better things! There is a saviour from evil, a healer from harm. In a nation and a world with multiple pathways to peace, I walk the path of Jesus of Nazareth. Even around dinner tables I have frequented lately not everyone would agree with me. For the sake of those I “table” with, and those I am around, I sincerely raise this prayer: “Let the words of my mouth and the meditations of my heart be demonstrated in a heart of peace and good will towards others.” In this, I would follow Jesus.

Every once in a while I read a fellow by the name of Samuel James – his articles can be found on Substack under Digital Liturgy.  Here is a bit from one of his latest thoughts:

On proximity and plausibility (the closer you are to a situation, the more likely you are to think that doing the “thing” is plausible even though against a belief system you hold).

Let us grant that proximity creates plausibility. Let us also grant that the modern, 5G-connected person is proximate to just about anything, from violent pornography to kinism to “how to make a bomb.” What kind of plausibility structure is arising out of this? Just how far out are the limits of our conscience expanding? And why don’t we seem to talk about this more?

The key text for this idea is Proverbs 7. Have you ever wondered why Solomon goes out of his way to describe in great detail the encounter between a foolish dude and an adulterous woman? It seems at first glance that Solomon takes a long time to tell a very simple story. But I think Solomon belabors the details—the time of day the boy goes by her house, what she’s wearing, and what she says—because he wants us to feel just how powerful this moment is. Every aspect of this interaction builds up a plausibility structure of illicit desire, to the point that not even the boy’s best logic can resist. For Solomon, the lesson is clear. He concludes not with, “Resist her charms” or “counter her lies,” but: “Do not stray into her paths.”

In the age of the Internet . . . All of us feel in control of our input. All of us feel in command of our virtual worlds. And yet all of us have instantaneous, un-filtered, completely private access to every single behavior, idea, or identity imaginable. Everything, all of the time. We literally inhabit a digital universe that possesses the power, every second of the day, to conjure up any image, any scenario, any how-to, any bigotry, any kink, any manifesto, any truth-claim…..anything we want. “Desensitized” is too small a word for our imaginations in the computer age. We are constantly on the precipice of human (and nonhuman) imagination, every, single, day.

Any framework for Christian witness in the 21st century—much less any framework for political theology or the wielding of power—must account for this. Any framework that doesn’t cannot comprehend the modern situation.

Every 2.5 days since August of 2005 (18 years) I have blogged a post online.  Roughly that is 2720 posts on my website (www.ronbaker.ca).  You can read them all there.  I did publish a book on the first 3 years of blog posts (what I hope were the best posts).  That is still on Amazon (https://www.amazon.ca/beginning-2005-2006-Random-thoughts/dp/0995937001/ref=tmm_pap_swatch_0?_encoding=UTF8&qid=1697905172&sr=8-1).

Want to know a bit about me?  I’m hidden online!!