I don't know if I will ever go back to Japan, at least as a missionary. But if I do (or if I go anywhere else as a missionary, for that matter), I will certainly approach missionary life differently the second time around. That is not to say that my experience in Japan was bad in any way. Quite the contrary, I feel immensely blessed to have spent time with an amazing people who are the caretakers of an amazing society. But my time there was also a proving ground for many of my initial thoughts about what a missionary is—what a missionary's job is.

For a long time now (really, ever since I read Kierkegaard's Philosophical Fragments) the problem of subjectivity has haunted my thoughts. The hauntings became even more persistent while in Japan, because here I found a practical example of the concerns I had seen Kierkegaard raise. Granted, I doubt Soren had been thinking about foreign missions at the time of writing his “little pamphlet”. All the same, I could not help but recognize a similar problem occurring in my own ministry as Kierkegaard had described through the guise of Johannes Climacus.

The problem of subjectivity is basically the difficulty we encounter as individuals in expressing our thoughts and experiences to other individuals. Put simply, I can never adequately describe my experience of the apple pie I just ate to you. Even if I give you a piece of the apple pie, your experience of it will be different. The pie is a few minutes older, perhaps you aren't as hungry as I am, perhaps you really hate apple pie. You will never know how it felt for me to eat the apple pie because you are not me.

This seems obvious, right? I mean, that's simply the way the world works. Very true. And the way we have come to deal with this problem is by simply ignoring it. We do our best to describe our thoughts and feelings to others, and when those others don't quite grasp what we want to express, we move on, slightly exasperated, but understanding of the barrier constructed between us by our own individuality.

Strangely, though, we have also devised certain categories of things/ideas/experiences that we expect absolutely everyone to know and understand in the same way. The “simple” term for this category is “objective truth.” Now, I won't be going into the difference between “subjective truth” and “objective truth,” but what I will say is that there is typically a misunderstanding about what it means for something to be objectively true. As I've already mentioned, we typically think of things that are objectively true as things that are true—and understood as true—by everyone equally. But that is not the case. Simply because something is objectively true does not negate the fact that we experience it as individuals, i.e. subjectively.

And herein lies the problem that I experienced with my mission in Japan. Read more »

The final episode (well, really final 4 episodes) of Avatar: The Last Airbender aired tonight on Nickelodeon. It has been a long, long wait for Avatar fans. For various reasons, production of the cartoon went in fits and jumps. I'm really glad that Nickelodeon went ahead and aired all the remaining episodes in one grand Avatar week rather than stretching it out even further.

The final "movie" was, in my opinion, a good ending to the story. They did leave a small opening for future shows (or, I suspect for the live-action movie already in production) to continue on. But, all the really unsettling loose ends of the story were summed up by the end in a very gratifying way. I did feel like the "solution" for ending the war was very Deus Ex Machina...but we're talking about the spiritual link and master of all the elements here. And, I really appreciated that there was such an emphasis on the idea of the sanctity of life.

I think it was this emphasis in particular that reminded me of my favorite Japanese anime: Trigun. If you're a fan of Avatar, and have never seen Trigun, I would definitely recommend it. Of course, it's a very different story. But many of the same story elements exist. It's just presented in a more...Japanese sort of way. Which is somewhat ironic, considering that Trigun takes place in a Spaghetti Western-style apocalyptic future and Avatar has really tried to work within an Asian cultural world.

spoiler alert
... Read more »

Does anyone here remember my first attempt at a website/blog. It was before those big blogging sites had caught on. (You know, like xanga or blogger.) It was called the Blue Cathedral. I coded the entire thing in HTML (no fancy backend like I use now), and I was just learning about fun things like CSS. I was pretty proud of how the site looked back then, though.

So, today, I got curious. The files for the site were long ago lost in some hard drive format, but thankfully there is archive.org to the rescue. I looked up the old bdwhite.com, and there it was, in all its former glory:

Blue Cathedral v2.0

This is actually the second iteration to the site (after I had learned about CSS and no longer used tables for all my html formating). I think the design has stood up well over time. The other things I especially like, are being able to check out the old "sister sites" of mine. Head to the "Entertainment" link and click on "BC Anime" or "Felix-Fansubs". While I'm still into anime...I was really into it then. The BC Anime expose on "What is anime" is espcially fanboyish. :-)

Once again, though, I think the designs for these sites are pretty good even now...if not a little oversaturated in blue. But it was the Blue Cathedral, after all.

I really need to pull those sites off of archive.org to save them for myself. They're kind of fun pieces of memorabilia.

P.S. funny to see I was still promising new chapters of elixir even then!

P.P.S. double comment points to anyone who can tell me which song the header's tagline comes from.

xkcd does it again. As a philosophy major, I'm allowed to laugh:

Hidden Text: If you think this is too hard on literary criticism, read the Wikipedia article on deconstruction.

Please don't be offended by the post below. I really am seeking for answers. I've just tried to be a little tongue-in-cheek about some of the language we use for these sort of situations, as I generally find that language very unhelpful at best.

If you are legitimately offended, though...do let me know. I'll do my best to set things right in the universe I have at least a little control over (i.e. my blog). Thanks.

I've attended all the seminars. I've gone to the meetings. I've even tried to put myself in others' shoes, working jobs I've had no business working, traveling far and abroad to those areas where my shining whiteness would set me apart even further, trying to escape who I really am: a Caucasian Male Overlord.

Seriously. I've done all those things.

Okay. I'll admit that I was never really trying to escape from my own cultural heritage. However, I've done my absolute best to be understanding and knowledgeable about cultures and peoples different from me.

But, especially after the seminars (yes, I have indeed attended several seminars intended to help me, as a CMO, to be more understanding of those I've trampled upon in my past lives), I just always came away with the feeling that...I was never meant to understand.

Perhaps part of it is my "problem-fixing" attitude. If there is a problem, I want to fix it. Tell me the problem! Let me fix it!

"You can't!" is the cry that is returned. "Look, there you go again. Using your Overlord powers, thinking you can just go around fixing things for us. The whole point is--we don't need you to fix things for us!"

Oh. Okay. I'll do my best to leave well enough alone, then. Is that what you want?

"Racist!" I am taken aback. "How can you just sit back and leave things as they are? Haven't you seen the oppression you have caused--the way society is broken? Doing nothing is the same as supporting the broken ways of society."

So what am I supposed to do?

Really. I'm asking. I want to know. I'm at a loss...

Okay, was that a bit dramatic? Probably. But it really is how I feel sometimes. I just read a blog post from one of my old students at Praise. A Korean-American. And a female. Certainly someone who can embrace the title of "minority", right? And yet, in her post, I saw her throw back the attempts of society's retribution with disdain. I've seen this before. One of my classmates, Prisca, often expressed similar opinions.

I'll quote only a small portion of the blog post (though it's worth reading the whole--she is an incredible writer)--and, ishelleyi, I'm not doing this to embarrass you, it's an amazing post, and it's clearly gotten me thinking:

yellow fingers tremble frailly as i pick up the thick, official envelope from my bed.

"Cornell University Office of Minority Educational Affairs"

...tears filling my slanted eyes, i turn my palms up to the ceiling, filled with nothing but overflowing gratitude toward the kind caucasians, for the great american way of life, in which we declare everybody equal, except that some americans might need a little bit more help, based on the tiny little factor of their coloration.

I think I understand where she is coming from (can I really say that...am I allowed to say "I understand"?). But...what are we to do ("we", as in I and my fellow CMOs)? We can't simply do nothing. We're not allowed to.

So what are we supposed to do?

I'm really asking. I know I have several minority (sorry if the term is insulting to you) readers--please tell me what I'm supposed to do.

I'm curious if perhaps there is some disagreement among minorities as to what "is to be done." That might explain some of my confusion. But, of course, that doesn't really make things any easier on me. After all, it's a hard job, being leader of the free world (and the un-free world, for that matter).

I hope everyone has remembered and been enjoying the new Avatar : The Last Airbender episodes on Nickelodeon. Today they just finished The Boiling Rock (really glad they aired both episodes in one day), which means starting tomorrow I will be viewing brand new episodes I haven't seen before. (Remember, I watched the previous "all new" episodes somewhat illegally off of the 'net.)

The big event is Saturday, 8/7c, when there is a 2-hour Avatar that will finish up the last chapter. Sweet!

I actually just wanted to upload this to my webserver so that I knew it was stored in a safe place. But, since it's on the server anyway, I figured I should just go ahead and post it here for anyone.

This is NPR's This American Life's episode on the mortgage crisis. Now, I'm a big fan of TAL in general, but this episode was particularly interesting because I had never really understood what all the hoopla was about before. This episode does a great job of explaining the problem--where it all originated, how things began going downhill, and why it is difficult to fix now that we recognize the issue.

Now, I'm not all that sure about the legalities of posting this here, so to try to do my part and ease my conscience, I'm going to post a link below, along with the mp3 download, to where you can donate to TAL. They've been calling for donations recently, asking for just a dollar or two per person. So, if you enjoy this episode, I would recommend checking out a few others, seeing if you like the show, and if you do, go ahead and give a buck to the cause.