A Most Complicating Elite

Competence is most always a good thing. But there are times when it's not exactly the best predictor - much less guarantor - of prudence, or judgment, of proportion and restraint, of discernment, or even of humility. And sometimes it can seek out extreme ways of testing and proving itself, and others, the implications of which may be very disturbing. And not always in a good way.

For instance, these past ten years or so,* I've been struck by the sheer glut of highly competent people - both in churches and out of them - who like nothing better than a good stiff challenge. And sometimes the bigger the better. In fact (if I didn't know better), I'd say they may even seem depressed, or demoralized, when they find an otherwise efficient procedure running a mite too smoothly. To the point, indeed, where many seem almost driven to insert a fresh challenge, or to hunt or scrounge around for one, in situations where in fact little or no pre-existing challenge exists. Almost as if (as I've ranted in other places), there were nothing really worth doing except in the degree that it's difficult.

*So maybe it is all Trump's fault?;)

But now imagine that more of the world's visibly effective people were to choose simplicity as often than they chose heroism. Imagine if, for a change, even a bare majority of all the conscientious, focused, purpose-driven people in the world simply did the simplest, most obvious, most humble duty lying in front of them. Even if it meant nothing more than holding a stiff, heavy door open at the right moment for a person on a walker. Instead of seeking out - say, for the purpose of distinguishing themselves - some task that's more complicated and challenging, which might lay two or three or four steps down the road. Which latter task they choose, not because it's the one most natural to them, or reflects some innate gift or propensity or talent. Or even the one that gives them the most joy.  Rather do they choose the more difficult (heroic?), less immediate task, because it's the surest way, these days, of being taken seriously by certain People Who Count. And of gaining the confidence of these People Who Count. And of being lauded and promoted by them. Because, in the final count, isn't it only through these latter's earnest mediation, and intercession, and sponsorship, that any of us can be effective at all? 

Or maybe even just keep our jobs?

The Return of the Naive; or, My Hopeless Unfitness for this Great World

Yes, maybe I'm just naive, on these recondite matters. (As no doubt I am in so many of the ways of this most wisely elitist, esoteric, complexity-loving Great Global World.)

But why is it these days, I never fail to be amazed at all the various podcasts out there - most but not all of them hosted by women - which presume to dispense every sort of urgent advice to lovelorn young men. Or if nothing else, love-perplexed young men.

What I notice - and again, it may be just my incurable world-dullness - is that, however wide-ranging the prescriptions may be, they seem in general to boil down to tips on one vital issue: how to succeed in being everything (and why should she settle for less?) - EVERYTHING every self-respecting attractive woman supposedly wants in a man. Everything except, of course, for being oneself. Because everyone knows how limited, how hopelessly quaint, how pitiably antiquated that resource most always turns out to be. 

What bothers me most is the compulsively analytic, break-it-all-down, almost chemical focus of all this. Really, since when did masculinity - or any other component of male personal attractiveness - come down to something as simple and manipulable as a lab formula? As if what any of us has been made were a thing somehow elixir-able, distillable, reducible to something else, that we in our bold shrewdness "create", or concoct, and control. And so may freely spice and doctor up. Usually, I notice, more or less to the death of any real flavor. Again, as if any bottling we do, any mere potion we make of ourselves didn't cut us off irretrievably from an illimitable Source. As if, indeed, any reduction we perform on what God has made, however well-seasoned, weren't always a thing done at immense risk, and inconceivable cost, to both chef and preparation. But all the more, as in this case, when the latter two are one and the same creature.

And yes, I know there are lots of love-perplexed young women out there who seem more or less obsessed with control. (Which in practical terms often translates into obsession with a controller.) And that is commonly rooted in a kind of horror of anything hinting at real vulnerability, whether in themselves or in their prospective partners. At least in the relationship's so-called initial phases. Which ensuing clash of Titans typically not only erodes any basis their (mis)union might have had in friendship; it pretty much precludes any possibility of friendship between them in the future. With famously glorious results for our 21st-century Western stabs at marriage and raising families. Indeed, I wonder if our modern attempts at bringing "up" children would be half so hellishly hard if their parents weren't so busy trying discipline each other.

Again, I realize this is the glorious world we have made, whose latest Great Global version comes with the same old injunction, only this time still more imperative: ADAPT OR DIE. My question is, What's all this got to do with adapting to the God who made us? Except, of course, as a brilliantly efficient method of driving us ever farther away from Him?