Category: Outside the Box

Non-mainstream thoughts and musings

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Don’t Complain: Minimize

I feel somehow stirred. I just read The Machine Stops by E. M. Forster. A short story written in 1909.

It is scary how much he knew about human nature and the possibilities of technology. Here we are, 110 years later, and so much of it has become true. Everyone lives in beehive-like cells. Their every need is supplied by “The Machine” which they worship. Until the machine breaks down.

I see it as something that precedes and underlays The Matrix, and Brave New World. And 1984 and The Giver. And Harrison Bergeron. And V for Vendetta and Fight Club. And, well, every dystopian story written in the last 100 years.

There is an inherent brokenness that permeates humanity. It is only becoming apparent in the last century or so, but the signs were there long ago… as The Machine Stops so clearly demonstrates.

I find it extremely ironic that the way we complain about technology and dystopia is through the internet. The internet, probably more than anything else, has contributed to the homologation and dumbing down of humanity. I was told a few days ago that I was foolish because it was “bad to judge anything on experience, and that I should defer to experts.”

I just laughed. Of course, he was talking about liberals in the FOSS community, but it’s symptomatic of everything in society. This is exactly what The Machine Stops illustrates: people who despise actual experience, and defer to experts (who in turn learn from other “experts”). Ultimately, there is a disconnection from human interaction except for the very unregulated act of intercourse…. which is of course no longer for procreation, only for entertainment.

Modern culture is an erosion of the very core of what humanity is. Is it pushing away everything that makes us human, and embracing everything that does not.

And as for “The Machine,” it is alive and well in the world today. We serve it constantly. I don’t think it’s become autonomous yet, but it wouldn’t take much for it to happen (thank you, Ghost In the Shell). And of course it doesn’t control every physical aspect of our lives yet (though in some places it does). But mental control is just as strong- if they control us mentally, then it doesn’t matter if they control us phsyically. We will do the machine’s bidding.

Mental Bandwidth

So for me, my push back against The Machine and the idea of mind control- which I assure you is alive and well in entities like Facebook, Google, Microsoft, and Apple- is to break from the digital input into my brain. I suppose I could do away with the internet all together, but in the underground, it is still useful in some ways.

When I think of digital input, I think the idea of mental bandwidth is a real thing. That’s part of why the internet, back in its inception, was so popular: it was text only. It required no more brainpower than writing a letter, or reading a book. There was limited bandwidth, so it was unusual for people to waste it with frivolous things like graphic header images and moving pictures. None of that was required for the transference of ideas. It was pure, not necessarily in intent, but in form. If you couldn’t explain your idea and communicate with the standard ASCII character set, then nobody paid you any attention. There were much fewer regulations. Much less surveillance. No advertising.

We weren’t constantly force-fed a steady diet of high-bandwidth information (of which only about 2% is useful). And that’s not to say there weren’t trolls, but they were quickly dismissed. Nobody took you seriously if you couldn’t articulate ideas.

Now, none of that is required. Nobody needs to have ideas; only cute snapshots or memes, or copy-and-paste snippets of nothingness. And in a high-bandwidth world, everyone’s senses are so overwhelmed with useless information, they never get to think about what’s actually important.

But you know… we shouldn’t complain. Can’t buck against the goads.

I’ve written about Digital Minimalism before. Numerous times.

Complaining won’t change anything. But limiting my mental bandwidth can, very definitely, improve my own life and mental capacity for things that matter.

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Have Computers Ruined Music?

After watching Rick Beato’s video “How Computers Ruined Rock Music” I had to sit down and think about music, and how it impacts me. Beato obviously knows what he’s talking about, and is good at producing tracks. But does the idea that “rock music was ruined by computers” ring true?

Well, sort of.

If you expand the idea of “computers” to technology in general, then no, it hasn’t ruined rock music. Without some of the technology we have now, things like the Digitech Whammy wouldn’t exist (and neither would Rage Against The Machine’s iconic sound). There wouldn’t be John Mayer’s “Bigger Than My Body.” We wouldn’t have affordable synthesizers and amplifiers and effects. Technology has come up with some amazing tools for making music, which have greatly impacted rock-n-roll for the better.

But on the production side, I think Beato is very much correct: Perfection is the enemy of Good. He goes into great detail explaining why editing songs so that every part is perfectly on beat and in tune ruins the “feel” of the song. He’s absolutely right.

Music performance, as an art form, is being over-produced into oblivion by the Photoshop generation.

Continue reading “Have Computers Ruined Music?”
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Coming Out Of The Clouds

Doing more thinking about minimalism (surprise!).

I was looking at cloud storage alternatives out there, and was thinking about the ones I’ve used in the past. Evernote, Google Drive, Dropbox, and now (self-hosted) ownCloud.
(Edit: How could I forget the ill-fated Ubuntu One? It was gone too soon.)

Back in the day, we had what were called “file servers.” They weren’t cloud servers, or blades, or fairy-dusted unicorn farts (or whatever the Cloud claims to be now). They were old computers sitting in a closet, running Windows 98 (or NT 4 if you were swanky) with a simple folder share. You backed up your stuff to that, nothing else. Every once in a blue moon, you would make a backup of that backup, for good measure.

But the idea of “cloud computing” is just file servers, on the internet, served over bloated www API’s. They just transfer documents back and forth. The nicer ones have revision history, or built-in note tools and such. But in the end, they’re pretty much just file servers. You’d still need end-to-end encryption, but that does you no good if the cloud providers are compromised- and they often are.

So I got to thinking, “do I really need the cloud at all?”

And of course, the answer is, no.

We, as consumers, have bought into the idea that we need all this cloud stuff, and I understand the frontend packaging is slick. But it’s just not really necessary for me.

Could I use a file server? Sure. On the internet? Yeah, I could make a secure FTP site, or something to that effect. SSH or whatever. Doesn’t have to be a web interface, doesn’t need a slick front end, and doesn’t need a monthly fee. Just a good old-fashioned secure VPN would be good enough.

On top of that, my ownCloud server runs on a database, which is slow. Can’t run it on cheap old hardware. I just need a simple computer with a big hard drive. And apps? Don’t really need them, other than whatever I used to create the document with.

Anyway, there’s plenty of stuff I can simplify on my end. One of my (long standing) projects is to go through all the old backups I have and delete all the digital crap I don’t need. Save what I can use, delete the rest. Pretend it never existed- imaginary housefire style.

(I once read minimalist decluttering described as an “imaginary house fire” where when people would ask “what happened to item X?” they would just respond “Oh, we lost that in the fire.” That blog post has since been lost to the obscurity of the “not-on-google’s-first-results-page” web.)

More to come. Work is progressing slowly on my static website and gopherhole, but that will happen sooner than later.

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Friday Musings

I’m coming up on my birthday this weekend. I’ll be 45. I know it’s just a number, but I know there’s things I have to work through.

I know I need to simplify my life… I’ve been writing for years on minimlism, but I need to put more of it into practice. I moved the G4 Mac to my coffee table today. I’m thinking I might still give the iMac to Andy… there’s not much it can do that my laptop can’t. And in the case that the laptop dies, I can just get another one. That’s just less stuff I have to work with. I could just use a decent monitor with my laptop (any laptop) instead.

Minimalism. What does it really mean? I slimmed down my phone, removed as much junk as I could. I’m scaling back my website so I don’t have to worry about constantly fixing it, or updating it from hackers. I just want stuff to work. I want to find the Rambler a better home(sort of, I still like it). I would like to take that money and put it into playing music and furthering my ministry. Lord knows, there’s plenty of music gear I could use. But even that: how much is enough?

And what is my ministry? What exactly is it that God wants me to do? Do I even know?? Should I consider myself qualified? No- I’m not qualified. But God will work through my weakness. I need to remember that. Even when I fail- sometimes daily- God wants me to seek him and believe in his salvation for me. If I don’t really believe in his work on the cross, can I really understand his love for me? Can I really know his heart, if I can’t accept his gift freely?

Freedom- freedom from things, freedom from fear, religion, from condemnation, and shame. Freedom from guilt- not guilt from my sin, but from feeling guilty for being who I am.

I think I really do have a worship pastor’s heart, but only God can make that happen in my life. And I haven’t been very faithful. Not in my heart, not in my actions, not in my mind. Not in my body. In fact, I’m a pretty horrible person by God’s standards, so it’s really hard for me to understand his love for me in spite of that.

I need to pray for God to show me his love for me the way he sees me, not the way I see myself.

I think I like journaling with mostly text. The Gopher server project is coming along nicely, and I expect to have it up and running shortly. I might need a better keyboard if I get back into writing, though. This one is better than nothing, but it kind of sucks.

Okay. Will post more soon.
(This post was composed in RedNotebook, and copy-and-pasted into WordPress.)

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Digital Minimalism

As funny as it seems, there is an entire movement that exists to resist advancement and innovation in technology. There have been books written about it, movies made about it, and who knows what else. It’s called “Neo-Luddism” though I don’t necessarily subscribe to it. However, there are several reasons for resisting technology and wanting to go back to the way things used to be:

  1. The new thing isn’t really better than the old one, it’s just more expensive
  2. The new thing does one thing better, but everything else worse
  3. The new thing requires you to upgrade other things you didn’t want to upgrade
  4. The new thing requires more personal sacrifice than you’re willing to give

There are examples of this in every aspect of the marketplace now. Even when buying a car, the car is “connected” and wants to pair with your phone, your personal information, and possibly share that with the manufacturer- and you can’t turn that off. And when the marketplace only has vehicles with these “features” you don’t really get a choice. As I’ve said before, freedom is choice, and when you’re only offered choices you don’t want, you’re not really free.

This is the driving force behind Digital Minimalism: choice and freedom.

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New Directions

I feel like God is drawing me into wanting to do music ministry full time. I don’t know what that will look like yet.

I don’t know if that’s something I need to go back to school for, and I’m not really thrilled about that. It would be exciting, but at the same time… I don’t feel like I could do it with my current job.

I really like my current job, but I know it is not my life’s calling. I would much rather teach music and lead worship for a living. But how can I do that? I can’t just quit my job. Not yet, at least.

What would that (going back into music ministry) look like? How could I (understanding it’s not me) make that happen? Why is God showing me this? Why is God giving me a desire to make worship my career, after so many years of me saying “I will never do professional music ministry again”? Can I do that without sacrificing my heart? I want to be pure in motivation. I never want to make money worshipping. But I would love to be able to do that all the time.

Continue reading “New Directions”
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How Luxury Makes You Lazy

Luxury: a condition of abundance or great ease and comfort : sumptuous environment: something adding to pleasure or comfort but not absolutely necessary: an indulgence in something that provides pleasure, satisfaction, or ease


Merriam-Webster

Have you ever heard the phrase “Affordable Luxury”? The biggest rage nowadays is “affordable luxury” items. This is a marketing exec’s dream come true. But by definition, a “luxury” is something you don’t need: it’s something you want.

There are entire industries built around this tactic. Billions upon billions of dollars of stuff that people don’t need. Sometimes, you didn’t even know you wanted it until some salesman shows you. But all of a sudden “now you have to have it.”

What a crock of baloney.

The truth is, comfort is overrated. Convenience is overrated. Sometimes it’s better to work through something than just have an “Easy Button” (there you go, marketing in action…) Because when you do more, you learn more, and you make mistakes and grow. If everything is easy, then you never learn how to struggle through difficult things.

Sometimes people say “I’ve worked hard for this” as justification for buying something expensive or luxurious. But you didn’t earn anything that God didn’t give you the ability for in the first place. We don’t deserve it, we don’t need it, and almost every time, it ends up being all about us- and nothing to do with God.

Continue reading “How Luxury Makes You Lazy”
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Things of Eternal Impact

Triangulum Galaxy

A while back, I started working through a book titled “The Nine Laws” by Ivan Throne. There’s a lot of philosophical content there, but one of the biggest things I really had to think about was the Third Law of Purpose.

Clearly, my purpose in this world is to worship God. This has been evident in my life for as long as I can remember, though as a child I didn’t know what it was to be used for. Everything I am passionate about, everything I am gifted in, every opportunity I have taken has led me closer to this realization.

I am a worshipper. So why doesn’t my life reflect that singular purpose?

I am distracted by non-essentials. I think one of the greatest crimes of our generation is pushing the idea that nothing has eternal value. And if nothing is eternal, then everything is temporal, and you might as well get whatever you can, right?

But there is so much more to life than “getting the most toys.” As a Christian, we know Jesus (the Ultimate Sensei) was focused on things of Heaven, not of Earth. He knew the mundane things we care about have no lasting impact in the spiritual realm. Repeatedly, He spoke “What is the Kingdom of God like?” because people naturally have no clue.

Which parts of my life have eternal impact? Which parts of your life have eternal impact?

My job? My writing? My music? My prayer life? Where do I see God moving, and where do I want to spend my time?

I’ll be honest, I don’t see God moving much in my job. I work in an office. It’s nice, I like my coworkers, and I like my job. But it’s not a ministry. It’s not serving God as much as it’s serving my family and myself by providing a wage.

Don’t get me wrong: there’s nothing wrong with providing for my family. But despite people telling me “that’s a ministry!” I never feel like it is. It doesn’t fulfill me, it doesn’t provide opportunities to minister, and it doesn’t fulfill my purpose- to be a worshipper.

I don’t know where God wants me to be just yet. But I’m praying that He shows me where I can minister, and what that will look like. I’m okay with going into ministry full time now; but for years I wasn’t. I remember telling God “I will never do worship ministry for money ever again” because I’d been burned so many times.

There’s something to be said for that, though… most churches I’ve been in didn’t have worship ministry as much as they had music ministry. And just because you’re playing music in church does not make it worship. Not even close!

No, I don’t want to be part of “music ministry.” I want to worship with everything I have. No restraints, like King David. Holding nothing back. This is true worship. Most churches have never seen that, and wouldn’t know what to do with it if they did.

But I’ve seen true worship, and it’s changed me. And I’ve discovered it’s an honor to help train other people to be worshippers as well.

This is my life’s purpose: to worship God with complete self abandon, and train up others to do the same.

This is my eternal calling. This is my purpose.

Everything else in my life is secondary: I need to live like it.

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Cardboard Boxes

I was recently having a discussion with a friend about certain churches teaching very poor doctrine. We talked about Word of Faith teachers, faith healers, and the root of why the modern church is so enamored by it.

If you’re here reading this, and you’re involved in a church (or listen to a preacher) who teaches that it’s God’s will that everyone be healed, and that you just have to receive it- please understand that I desperately want this to be true, but it’s not biblical.

There will always be people who defend these preachers, mostly because they accept their word over the Bible and sound doctrine. (People who do this, by definition, belong to a cult.) People want insta-faith healing and prosperity to be true. But God’s will isn’t a toy that we can manipulate.

There are plenty of websites out there that can rip apart the Prosperity Gospel with scripture all day long. Just do a search. One of my favorite teachers who calls out these charlatans is Mike Winger. You can check out his Youtube channel here.

But really, if we expose Prosperity (aka “Health and Wealth”) preachers, there will be a dozen more that pop up in their place. To fix the problem, you need to expose the root of the sickness- because it’s obvious people who want to believe it will flock to it.

Continue reading “Cardboard Boxes”

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Taking Out the Trash

Once again, I was alerted to the fact that my WordPress site has been hacked once more… I don’t think I’m really surprised at it any more. There’s so much going on, and between PHP, MySQL, and WordPress, there’s tons of exploits that allow people to take over a website.

Thankfully they didn’t delete everything. Which reminds me… time to make backups again.