Consuming vs. Creating

Last night at a Bible study discussion, while going on one of many tangents away from the topics of General and Special Revelation and the Creator-Creature relationship, the comment was made that intellectualism in America is dead or at least is dying. My kneejerk reaction was "That's because we're all consumers and nobody is expected to create anything anymore". I have no idea where that came from because I've never considered that idea before, but it just popped into my head. I didn't say anything out loud, because after 22 years of being able to talk, at some point I finally realized that it's a bad idea to just say things without thinking about why you're saying them or what the words you're about to say actually mean.

However, I've thought about it since then and ideas are starting to take shape so hopefully writing them down will help solidify that. When I think about the things I own, there are very few things that I use exclusively to create. Cooking utensils, some musical instruments that I don't play nearly enough, and my tools if you count fixing things as creating which I find borderline at best. I own a few things that allow me (in theory at least) to both create and consume. This computer I'm using right now, my cell phone, and my digital camera are three examples. I can tell you with great certainty that I currently use my computer and cell phone much more to consume than create, and more often than not, my camera is used to record things I've seen and events I've participated in rather than to do anything creative.

The internet, the iPad, mp3 players, smartphones, and most other new technology are all aimed at making us more efficient consumers.

Even when I think about those things that I do use to create, most of what I do is just attempting to recreate someone else's ideas, music, or food. I think that's pretty common. If you look on youtube, for every viral video there are a host of response videos full of people describing their experience of watching the video. But there are almost as many 'remix' videos that generally follow the same themes from video to video (e.g. slow it down, speed it up, add techno music and make it look like people are dancing, add a star wars theme, cut in scenes from a movie, do a mashup with another viral video, etc.)

But is it really that big of a problem? Is it necessary to create?

I know that for me personally, the main reason that I'm in grad school is because I saw a whole bunch of engineers doing the same thing over and over again day in and day out, and I wanted to do something new and different. However, writing this out, I can only think of one argument. If God is creator, and we are made in the image of God, then it is right for us to create. Using Van Tillian apologetics (likely a subject of a later post), that argument is pretty self supporting and foolproof. Although I can be satisfied with the logic, it is not necessarily a fulfilling argument. However, that argument coupled with my own innate desire to do something new and unique is all I need to convince myself, but I know others are different than me. What if someone does not have any desire to create? Should they be convinced otherwise? Is there any way to convince them? Does anyone have any other reasons why we should create?

Why blogging is stupid.

Hi. You should probably stop reading this now. There are links to blogs that are probably better on the top of this page. This blog will never be as funny as Gunnar's, and it's highly unlikely that it'll be as deep as Jake's either. My only hope is that it's funnier than Jake's and deeper than Gunnar's, but I wouldn't count on it.

I feel a little strange about doing this because in my mind, there are two types of people that write blogs: those who go out of the country for extended periods of time, and those who live in their mom's basement and spend what little time they're not on WoW writing about the latest technology news. Most of you know that I am not living in my mom's basement, and the geographically gifted amongst you know that North Carolina is not another country. So, given that information, most of you are probably assuming that this is going to be the third kind of blog, the kind that are written by people who pretentiously assume that everyone in the world wants to spend their time reading about what they had for breakfast yesterday and how disappointed they were by the stuffed french toast at IHOP and how they so totally should have gotten waffles. I can assure you that I will not be writing posts like that (I like waffle house way better).

Blah blah blah lame jokes about bloggers get to the point, right? Okay, here goes. Three reasons that I am blogging(in order of decreasing importance):

1. As I have been reading Jake, Gunnar, and Alissa's blogs I've been thinking that maybe if I went on a long term mission trip I would start a blog. Having been raised by good Calvinist parents, I have been lectured many times on the idea of vocation and calling, so I know that I should be a missionary no matter where I am and no matter what I am doing. I have struggled with my choice of major for years now, and have always come to the same difficult conclusion that it is nearly impossible that God is calling me to anything besides engineering. The difficulty there is that being an engineer is really easy for me. Being an engineer and making sure that I am serving the Lord to my fullest abilities is very difficult. It's easy for me to serve God by working hard to find an optimal control for the system or the most efficient, lowest cost circuit, or whatever I actually end up doing in school, but I know it will often be difficult for me to deliberately impact those around me. The goal is that writing this stuff down will help me be intentional and contemplative about my thoughts and actions.

2. I want to discuss ideas about faith, politics, ethics, and everyday life and have useful feedback from people that I respect.

3. My writing has suffered greatly since leaving college. Hopefully this will help, since I hear some grad schools make you write stuff.

So this is just my introduction post that's basically useless as you've noticed by now. Hopefully I'll have something worth reading on here eventually, but I wouldn't count on it if I were you. You can't say I didn't warn you.