Christian mythology and Woman

What do you think the importance is in Christian mythology that woman was created from a piece (specifically a rib) of Adam... while Adam was created by the dust of the Earth?

MRS degree

I see nothing wrong with traditional gender roles or someone going to college for their MRS degree...

I am not advocating it personally, but I would certainly defend anyone who was attacked for being in that position.

Simply put, if someone chooses to use their time in life right now to prepare to be a great mother and wife, and they are primarily in college to advance their social skill sets, and to find the person they want to spend the rest of their life with... that totally sounds like a good idea to me.

As a caveat of my opinion though... so you know where I am coming from... The reader of this should know that I do not personally think a college degree is necessary to be successful... but I do think having a good family, and being in a relationship that encourages growth and prosperity (in all areas of life) is very instrumental in success after you get out of your time in school.

To me, college is first about learning how to live your life, and second about developing a skill set to make you valuable to society later on. If a woman has decided that she is called to marriage and a family that she would want to devote her life to, then by all means, that is what her time in college should be directed towards. So to that end, I think man hunting = bad... but preparing yourself for marriage, and going into college with the expectation of finding someone to marry = good.

This sounds horrible to make this comparison... but going into college for a MRS degree probably has the same net profitability in its intended major as any other graduate holding a separate diploma.... in simpler words, many people go to college for one degree, and come out with another. It would not surprise me if just as many girls who go into college for their MRS degree find their happily-ever-after (not just A marriage) as girls who go into college for any other degree.

Random opinion... you can direct your knives and fire at someone who is more of a sadist than I... haha.

Logic vs. Emotion

I am in the middle of reading a book that a friend let me borrow a while back... granted, I should have finished it a while ago, but alas, I procrastinate. Anywho, I recently came upon a section that really meant a lot to me, and so, I feel I will share its thoughts with you.

Generally speaking, people prefer emotional and subtle arguments to straight forward, logical arguments. This may make perfect sense to you, but please refrain from yelling your "DUH"s at me, as this is actually earth shattering to me, lol. I had a post a while back about how I was finding it extremely difficult to communicate with people. In fact, I think I had several posts on the topic. Essentially, I could not figure out why on earth it was possible to convey a single point to someone. Well, it turns out that I was going about it all the wrong way...

In conversation, for the last several months, I have divorced myself from emotional persuasion and subtle manipulation so that I could speak logically and directly with people. This was my way of showing them respect. Instead of using subtle vocal queues, or various emotional tactics to persuade someone, I was using simple and bland logic. Well, as it turns out, when you are blunt and logical with people, it actually offends them.

Now, I am sure at this point, many of you are like "HEY, I like blunt logic"... however, I would argue that you are probably fooling yourself. Or, at least, I was most certainly fooling myself to believe such a statement. While I wanted fairness and openness, what I did not expect was such a great divorce from emotion and passion. Suddenly, I found myself talking about death as if it were some abstract concept, instead of the end of a being's life.

For some brief background... there are probably some things that you should know about me. When I was a kid, I would question everything. More or less, I was this great funnel for "How the World Works", lol. That affinity for knowledge, however, was curtailed by several social concepts around me. Specifically, that a man can not survive reading books all day, lol. Fortunately for me, I was never allowed to camp out in my ivory tower, as my family was and is a very goal driven, success oriented family. When it came to volitle moments in my life, those times when I wanted to hide in my tower to either cry alone, or thrown down rocks from above, (especially once I entered high school) my parents were generally unforgiving towards me being emotionally reclusive. Whether it was something that made me upset or sad, both my father and mother always "resolved" the situation by reminding me that in the "real world", time does not stand still while you work out your problems. Now, in their defense, I do understand where they are coming from. They did a lot of hard work to get where they are at, and they do not want me to be controlled by my emotions in so far as it would hurt my productivity. Essentially, they were saying to me that it is okay to feel sad or alone, but those feelings should not make you hide under your bed.... To be honest with you all, I totally agree with that assessment... even though it was not easy to accept at the time. However, being the overachiever and perfectionist that I am... I believe I took that suggestion to far.

Approximately 7-8 months ago, I ended a relationship that I thought was going to last me my entire life. In ending that relationship, in many ways, I felt like I was giving up on love, on joy, on hope, and on my happy ending. This was one of those moments when I really wanted to hide up in my ivory tower and cry myself to sleep. However, I think I may have done something even worse. Instead of crying in my tower, I read... a lot. More or less, I just shut down emotionally, and decided that logic and reason were my gods. While I still held my faith in God, I most certainly became twisted as an individual. Within a few months, I found myself, for lack of a better term, thinking like an theistic agnostic, or perhaps even an atheist would. These thoughts were not pertaining to God, but rather to the way I lived my life.

I understood that God would love me no matter what kind of person I was, and so I began to question some fundament things about my lifestyle. For example, why I was not drinking.( For those of you who dont know, many years ago, I decided to wait until I was married to drink (for several personal reasons)). However, with my relationship gone, and much hope feeling abandoned, I started to wonder why I was not drinking. Now, just so you know, I am not talking about getting drunk, but rather just socially drinking. Also, I started to question why I was not just "dating around" with not specific goal for marriage. To me, it seemed like the thing to do for people my age, and I knew it would make me feel better, and yet I could not bring myself to do it... and I just did not know why.

Fortunately I was smart enough to realize that I was in a fractured state of mind, and so I did not allow myself to act on any of my decisions for that period of time. One I started teaching, I found joy and hope again in life. My knowledge and reason became extroverted instead of introverted... In time, I felt more confident in many of my personal reasons for abstinence (in many areas in my life). However, the general logic still remained to a large extent. I still felt like logic and reason were far better gods than emotion... and that when it came to conversations, they were best served cold and dry.

For several months, I taught debate at Metro. I taught on the issues, the philosophy, the evidence... you name it, we discussed it. Then came regionals, and I just knew that we were a shoe-in for state. The person who would later win regionals was using one of my sample cases that I presented to the class, verbatim. (his entire case, I defeated in class as an example, long before this tournament). When the awards were announced, I was in complete disbelief that none of my students even made it to the finals.

However, now that is all making a lot more sense to me. The first day after class, I returned and told them something that even I at the time didnt fully understand: "It doesnt matter how right, or intelligent you are... If you cant convey your Truth to a judge, you become irrelevant".

Their struggle was my struggle. Their failure was my failure. I had created intelligent, emotionless machines of Truth and logic. They knew their material better than anyone else. They found ways to be right, on both sides of the resolution... and yet to the world, we were nothing but monsters. It is not surprise that one of my debaters got really low speaking points, even though she is an excellent speaker. That only happens when you piss a judge off.

Through months of logic and reasoning and training, they were no better off than myself. They were right, but irrelevant to the rest of the world.



Now, all of that is about to change. I was once a very charismatic person, and I believe I would like that lifestyle again. It has been months since I have seen myself without dark circles around my eyes... and I think it is about time to remember the reasons why we live and why we even debate in the first place. Debate is suppose to be about conveying truth, not about defeating someone else. Debate is suppose to be about leading people to the light, and not simply being "right" on a given issue. Debate is suppose to be a search, not an Army march. Debate is suppose to be a dance, and instead I have been treating it like a machine.

In life, we do not give out attention or respect to the "right" or the incredibly intelligent... but rather, most people turn their ears to those that draw them in... those who seem to radiate a light that we want. There is a reason why we care what celebrities think about the presidential race... and that reason has nothing to do with their expertise in the field.

In teaching people to "persuade", I was focused on the arguments and the logic, and yet was ignoring the fact that 80% of communication is non-verbal. In the end, I will blame it on me being a man... as any woman knows that "it is not what you say, but how you say it"... :-)

I believe it is time for me to rethink how I am going about communicating to people... and it is about time that I start to capitalize on the skills of my persuasive female friends... seduction, here I come! :-)


Oh, and in response to my last question, this is why I am doing a vLog... because 80% of communication is non-verbal... and therefore text is just too limiting.

Born to be different

I think that men and women were created to function in separate roles. Now, dont get me wrong. If you are feminist, please pull your nails out of the desk... I am not talking about necessarily a feminine or masculine superiority. I speak only of different roles. It is no mystery that men and women are biologically different creatures. While I could rant on about how various biological difference would promote usefulness in some roles while not in others... I will avoid the 3rd Grade psyc lecture.

Today, I thought about something that I really found interesting. A few days ago I read the book "The Tipping Point". If you get a chance, you should check it out. It really is a good book. Anyways, in there the author talked about how, in recent studies of cigaret addicts, scientists, psychologists, etc. have noticed that the actual addiction to smoking isnt so much the nicotine as it is an addiction to what smoking does for a person's life. Now, the author did a way better job of articulating this than I can, so I will just cut to the point. Long story short, it turns out that anti-depressant medication is actually just as, if not more effective at stopping people from smoking than the nicotine patch/ gum ever has been. As it turns out, smoking actually helps stimulate the brain to release various chemicals (I use that word vaguely) that trigger happiness and warmth (emotional). Anti-depressants do the same and more-so. For those who smoked because of that good feeling it brought, the anti-depressant medication served their craving, and thus they had no desire for a cigaret, and when they went to smoke, all they could taste was the smoke, because they already had the good feeling. And so many quit.

This brings me to today's thought. I was watching a commercial for a new type of birth control pill, and interestingly enough, their main advertisement was for things like "clearing up acne", "stabilizing depression", "assisting hormones"... and the short story is that being on the pill actually made you what we would call "a better feeling woman". Now, as most of you know, what the pill does is essentially stimulate a woman's body into a state similar to pregnancy. What is really funny about this is that a large majority of young women are on the pill. There by, the societal norm that we project is a woman in a pseudo-state of pregnancy. The way she feels, looks, interacts, etc. The way a woman's body should be, hormonally, is similar to a state of pregnancy. This observation really just struck me because right now, the birth-rate, world wide is decreasing rapidly. And yet, women throughout America know that they only feel "right" when they are in a state of pregnancy. Now, I am not necessarily speaking against birth control or the pill here. I am just bringing up an interesting correlation.....

People smoke (in general) because it stimulates chemicals in their brain that make them feel happy. Instead of treating the problem, they treat the symptom. In the same way, millions of women, if not billions are on the pill today because they know that their bodies only feel right when they are approaching a state of pregnancy. And then, they wonder, why life feels void of purpose when they dont get married until they are 35, and even then only to have 1 maybe 2 kids. Yes, yes, I know that fits into the great plan of success and a controlled life. However, right now, the replacement rate for a family is 2.1. Meaning, a family has to have 2.1 kids to simply replace the husband and wife. In the next 50 years, Europe will loose over 1/4 of its population to death alone, and the lack of children to replace those who are passing away. I just wonder when our society will start treating the problem instead of the symptom. Children can be a wonderful blessing to any community. They bring hope, and joy, they push people forward and bind many people together... not to mention the fact that children actually help their mother's emotionally, physically, and psychologically. When the welfare system was created, there was something like 20 people working for every one person on welfare. Today, there is 2 people working for every one person on welfare. By the time my generation hits, there will be 1 to 1 if not worse. Irrelevant of your outlook on welfare, I think it can be agreed that we as a society need more people working and more children to support those who can not.


Now, just as another aside, and so you know I am not having a bash-fest on the women of the world... the same principle holds true for me. Besides childbearing, which unquestionably drives millions of men to push their self forward in life (to support their family), men face another interesting situation in life. Right now, the life expectancy for men is something like 5-8 years shorter than for women. Much of that is caused by early deaths including heart-attack, strokes, etc. Of which, is generally caused by a high amount of stress on a body that in no way can handle it. Many men have gotten smart about this, working out regularly. Besides the good the male-bonding brings, constant physical stimulation (I mean working out.... get your mind out of the gutter...)of the body conditions not only their body, but their mind and heart. Endurance, personal awareness, and strength, both gained through exercise is something I think we can all agree that today's men need more of... and to talk about this from the sexual side, as I did with women.... The other day I was reading a study done comparing our little blue pill against just common exercise. Interestingly enough, it turns out that while medication like Viagra is effective, a man who exercises on a consistent basis, and watches what he eats actually has just a sensitive of a sexual response as a common man on Viagra. Yes, I am being serious. Working out and eating well actually gives men the same effect as Viagra without any of the wicked side-effects.

It is almost like men were made to be active and physical in life (and not so much desk slaves), while women were created with childbirth and care in mind. Now, I am not talking about a 1920's mom stays home while dad goes out in work. I am just saying that I think the world would be a better place if men took care of their body, so that they could be prepared in all regards to support their family. Secondly, I think men should want to have families. If they really want to succeed, nothing pushes a man like putting food on a table for a family he loves. While family may seem like a burden to some, it has been the great success of man others.

In short, I believe that a husband and wife who have a healthy sexual relationship, open to the possibility of childbirth would really help them personally, as well as help the society as a whole. And, I think that while medication is a great resource to those in need, it is far more important to treat problems at their core than to just skate by constantly treating symptoms.