Living life wrong ...

Things that backfire aren't always understood before the consequences start showing up.

Sex, for example ... moving sexual intimacy outside the boundaries of a healthy relationship is like moving sugar outside of a healthy diet plan.  Imagine hours of consuming just sugar.  It affects you immediately and will eventually ruin your health.
Sexual intimacy in a healthy relationship is a joy, but outside that context, it's just a gratification much like an addictive drug.  It will reshape your behavior, your thought-life, and your future.
Who pays the cost?  You, your family, your children, and your ability to relate to others will suffer.

Do the research yourself.
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Gratification, quick satisfaction of a desire with little regard for cost or consequence ....

E.g., a budget plan puts things in place and priority; food and shelter, health and development, and later years.
Spending outside the plan may be fun, but it's unwise, just gratification.
Spending what you don't have now ... will cost more and will shape your future.
Who pays the cost?  You, your family, your children ....

E.g., a healthy life-plan prioritizes relationships and family, recreation and work, eating and exercise, and future goals.
Binge living, whether consumption or luxury or intoxicants, may be fun, but it's unwise, just gratification.
Spending life on the wrong things ... will have a high cost and will shape your future.
Who pays the cost?  You, your family, your children ....
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Addiction - At some point, repeated behavior focused on pleasure, on quick gratification, becomes compelling, even compulsive like an addiction.   The brain changes, as we now know; it's physically reshaped to focus on progressively more pleasure.  It's a ferocious life-changer.
Who pays the cost?  You, your family, your children ....
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This is from a recent tv ad about  ...  toenail fungus   
...   on multiple  networks, daytime and primetime, 
perhaps the best example recently of 'sex sells'.

Our culture tends to push us off balance.  Sensually framed advertising, sexualized story-lines in popular media, and pornography, all have increased dramatically in recent decades.  Kinsey and Hefner gave us the sexual revolution, commercialized sex, and today's burgeoning porn industry.  The increase in sex trafficking and trafficking children we've seen is perhaps a by-product.  The cost is high and will be higher in years to come.
Moving sex outside the context of a healthy relationship has a price.
Who pays the cost?  You, your family, your children, your culture ....

Do the research yourself.  That's the world we live in; it's an active battleground.   So how do we equip ourselves and fight, and how do we lead our children?

Executive summary: “If we understand sexuality as being first about intimacy, then viewing pornography becomes a voyeuristic invasion of the sacred space of another. Instead of being life-giving, it becomes destructive for the viewer as well as the one involved in its production. It provides a false, or counterfeit, way of feeding the need for intimacy. On a cultural and social level, men and women are portrayed as objects for our consumption. The undeniable message here is that people are pieces of meat for our consuming pleasure and entertainment. If that is how the brain is being forced to respond to these images, the objectification and commoditization of people will seep into other parts of the viewer’s mind. It will affect the way he views people when he is not watching porn. The regular consumer of porn will begin to find that he fantasizes throughout the day about sex. Each woman he sees will be seen through a pornographic lens. People become an object of consumption or a competitor against whom they compare themselves. They will be evaluated as to their stimulating ability. It should come as no surprise that that these consequences can destroy a marriage, family, ministry, or career. While it offers the promise of intimacy and connection, pornography only delivers isolation, disconnectedness, and depravity.”   ~The Conquer Series (coming soon)

Reality vs. Rhetoric

The president admitted he hates taking in refugees. "I guarantee you they are bad." He added, "They are not going to be wonderful people who go on to work for the local milk people."

Actually, refugees are a benefit to America.  A report released in April this year suggests that the dire warnings about those who seek asylum in the United States may be unfounded. In fact, the report indicates, they're helping make America great.  They fill in the gaps in the work force, they get educated, pay taxes, buy homes, make progress, and become part of the American way.  In 2015, for example, refugee income nationwide totaled $77.2 billion and refugees paid $20 billion in taxes, according to the report. 

While vetting all incoming foreign nationals is appropriate, discrimination by race or origin in general has no supportable rationale.  Is racism involved in the decision making we seen?  Of course.  Is there unfounded prejudice?  Absolutely.  "Rapists" from "sh**hole countries", "they're not sending us their best."  Many among us think similarly, unfortunately.

"The US has become a dumping ground for everybody else's problems. Thank you. It's true, and these are the best and the finest. When Mexico sends its people, they're not sending their best. .... They're sending people that have lots of problems, and they're bringing those problems with us. They're bringing drugs. They're bringing crime. They're rapists. And some, I assume, are good people." Objective review and analysis suggest the statement is inaccurate.

These are folks fleeing for their lives; they're not sent by Mexico or anyone else.  Refugee admission limits have been reduced to their lowest level in thirty years.  Families and children are caught in the turmoil.   Is this our best national response, one of conscience and reason?

Photojournalist Steve McCurry commented , "In seeing this current global refugee crisis, it's almost like people in Europe and the US are scared of refugees. Or they simply don't want the burden of hosting them. But we forget none are actually more scared than the refugees themselves. They are forced from their country, their homes."

Conflict, why the stress?

Covert War - decade seven

My grandfather was born out on the mid-western plains.  He grew up on a farm and married a local girl.  They farmed for a living, and their friends were mostly members of a small church community.  His children were born in the 1920s and were raised through the Great Depression years and the aftermath.  Tough years, tough people; they were farmers, so they didn't starve.

By the time their grandkids showed up, Grandpa and Grandma had sold the farm and moved to the city for a normal middle-class life; regular job, regular home.

As one of the grandkids, I had them to myself for a week or two in the summer, sometimes.  They were really picky about tv shows we'd watch, and I remember wanting them to take me to see 'Exodus' at the movie theater, but they were uneasy about it.  They eventually did, but we had to show up just for the movie and not any previews of anything else.  Why would they do that?

It took a few decades before I connected the dots.  Our culture was changing, and they noticed but I didn't.  They had conscience problems with the entertainment industry and the way relationships were portrayed between men and women.  They had problems with glamorizing and sensualizing women.  They didn't want to think that way, and they didn't want me to, either.

We didn't talk about it.  Folks didn't talk about that sort of thing with any clarity back then.  It wasn't until the 1980s that we began to study healthy sexual behavior and its compulsive variants.

"The modern western society in which we live is slowly but surely conditioning women and men – children or adults – to a world where whatever we desire must be available for immediate acquisition. ...  In this context, one that would rather ignore the feelings of frustration associated with abstinence, sexual behavior has also known an evolution in which the laws of supply and demand have come to reign, along with the rules of free competition, giving to ‘sex’ objects the same status as any other product. In just a few decades, access to pornography has not only been developed but also became banal. We are far from the censure of the early 20th century when kissing scenes were simply cut from cinematographic reels. Consumer studies show that on Google, the world’s number one search motor, the terms ‘sex’, ‘love’, ‘porn’ arrive at the fore of all requests by both type and nature. Sexuality has become recreational, and even imperative. In effect, it was as if the slogan of the new societal Super-ego had become: ‘Unfettered and unlimited pleasure is a must.’"  ~ from the archives of the US National Library of Medicine - National Institutes of Health - Sexual addiction: insights from psychoanalysis and functional neuroimaging.

Culture change was underway in 1930s Hollywood, but aggressive warfare began in 1948.  If you're brave enough, trace the Kinsey Report (Human Sexuality, 1948-53) through Hugh Hefner (who declared he would be Kinsey's pamphleteer and then launched Playboy magazine) and note the removal of relational elements from physical intimacy.  As they've presented it, there is no relationship factor beyond the physical contact event.  No magnificent love, no covenant, nothing.  The decline has been precipitous.  Does that make a difference?  

Newsweek; admitting the obvious in 2011

THE TIME SPENT ON PORNHUB IN 2016 EQUALED 5,245 CENTURIES!

Every year, PornHub (the largest porn website in the world) publishes insightful statistics. In 2016, they racked up 23 billion visits to their site and collectively, 4.6 billion hours.  Porn is just one indicator.  

The war is on, much ground has been lost, and as yet, there is little public awareness of what happened.  For those who care about their own mind and the minds of their children, just standing on the sideline is no longer an option.

Churches are beginning to respond thoughtfully and effectively.  National programs with a history of success are being integrated into church education for men and women.  Talk to a trustworthy elder, get informed, be open and proactive.  The alternative is just being swept along by the changing culture along with our children.
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For a more specific narrative, see Playboy, Polanski, and Sex Trafficking, Dr. Judith Reisman, former principal investigator for the U.S. Department of Justice, Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention study of child sexual abuse and crimes suborned by "soft" pornography, and author.

For the relevant science, see Understanding Sexual Addiction, and note the referenced source material.

Shortcut to Change, just an opinion

We can complain a lot and criticize a lot, I suppose, but will that change things?  Years down the road, folks will perhaps remember what we did and whatever difference it made, but no one will remember what we said.  Or posted.  Even us.  So what can we do.  

The greatest change we need to make is from having to giving, even if only on a small scale.  If most of us did that, there'd be enough for everyone.  Hence the futility of critics  and complainers, who depend on the very system they attack, who produce words and recrimination, not food and shelter and life.  
My reading of Bill Mollison, an Australian researcher, author, scientist, teacher and biologist.

Did you know that you can help a kid in the developing world stay in school for maybe $50/semester; after the 6th grade, it costs maybe $150.  Seeds for crops are less.  You can send a young person through college for maybe 1/20th of what it costs here.

Here at home, you can help who you know easily enough, but you have to be open and involved to do that.  Everybody needs a hand sometime along the way.  We certainly did, and gracious people helped us through.

The real world - friends in Ethiopia

Churches are a good focal point for helping folks.  Efforts include volunteers and funds with administrative costs usually being covered separately.  You can contribute to a project, and all your gift goes there.  Enough for someone's gas to get to work 'til the end of the month, for food for the kids until payday, for heat in a cold winter.

So what can we do that will make a difference?  Answering that one puts our priorities and perhaps our budget on the table.  

Do I spend time and money on ...		(Ever wonder what 'elegance' adds to your life?  In the military for 25 years, we moved many times.  We lived in apartments and simple houses. and a few times, we lived in really fancy places.  They were all adequate, but the fancy ones took more time and effort.  Fancy cars were pretty much like that, too.  Living in non-western countries and cultures was an eye-opener.  I guess that sort of shaped our thinking.) (If I had a recommendation for young people, it would perhaps be to join a service organization and go live in the developing world for a few months.  Or more.  Learn some language, get to know people, understand real life.  Then go home and decide what's important.)
- Elegance?  Luxury?  Entertainment?
- Charity?  Helping?  Relationships?
- Saving for the future?  Of course.
- Working for the future of others?
- Making a way forward for my family?  Absolutely.
- Making a way forward for others?

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How rich do I need to be?  Around $20k per person per year is the dividing line between the richest 5% of folks in the world and everyone else.  That much puts you in the richest 400 million people in the world with 7.1 billion folks below you on the ladder.  Statistically, one group is normal and the other is an outlier, an aberration, and unconnected to 'normal' or 'reality'.  Want a proportional goal?  Change the world for 19 people.  
Or ninety, or nine hundred ... just my opinion, of course.  I'll shut up now. 

Eggs and Chickens

... the ancient battle.

Which came first?   The chicken and egg question was first asked by Aristotle and continued in debate among intellectuals for more than two thousand years.   

The debate was entertaining, but the question is simply one of origin, of first cause.  How did we get to the place we're in today? 

Practices and Principles ... the other ancient battle.

There are two parts to how we each view things, like a chicken and an egg, perhaps.

From the outside, we have the influence of family and friends, church and school; our environment.  Cultural traditions and expectations are continually fed to us in every venue.  That's our external world.

Then there's the world inside each one of us.  It's filled with what we hold to be true along with the values fed in from the outside.  We struggle back and forth trying to reconcile it all in terms of truth and worth.  It's a lifelong process for thoughtful folks.

For example --  the Boy Scouts of America are changing to boys and girls.  The resultant kerfuffle points interestingly to that internal battle.  Why were they separate?  "Because they should be; it's best that way," is the answer that pops up first, or some equivalent.  

Now, broaden your look to include kids in Israel.  Scouts are boys and girls.  In 1909, the Tzofim (Hebrew Scout Movement) became the first scouting movement in the world where boys and girls participate together on an equal basis.  All five scouting organizations in Israel today are co-ed.

(We're decades behind much of the world in the transition to co-ed scouting, by the way.  The UK and Canada transitioned in '91/92)

Here, we perhaps believe that Boy Scouts and Girl Scouts should be separate, but why?  Because they always were.  But why?  Perhaps because there were traditional cultural roles assigned by gender.  Was that the best choice?  
(Ask a boy scout what he thinks girl scouts do.  "They do girl things like sewing and cooking and selling cookies.")  

The internal battle continues between our commitment to truth and the interpretation that our culture offers.  It's unsettling to discover an inadequate foundation for values we've held.  

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The science -- “The truth is that sex differences in math ability, spatial skills, assertiveness and competitiveness are much more a product of gender socialization and segregation.  In other words, it is precisely because girls and boys spend so much time apart, practicing different skills and relational styles, that they walk into college classrooms with different types of academic confidence and career ambition.” ~Dr. Lise Eliot, Professor of Neuroscience at Rosalind Franklin University.  Neuroscientists refute the merits of gender differences between girl and boy brains.  And rather than creating more equitable schools, critics compare separating boys and girls to racially segregated schooling.

Co-ed sports --  How might that change self-image and social interaction?

The Girl Scouts and Boy Scouts are great organizations that have helped many children achieve their goals, but the benefits are not from single-sex enrollment. 

Unnecessarily sex-segregating schools and sports or after-school activities like scouting send the message that girls and boys are somehow fundamentally different - when they're not.  Such segregation perpetuates stereotypes and encourages discriminatory behavior.
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The law -- Remember Title IX?  We had to pass a law so that girls who wanted to play school sports weren't relegated to the parking lot. 

 "No person in the United States shall, on the basis of sex, be excluded from participation in, be denied the benefits of, or be subjected to discrimination under any education program or activity receiving Federal financial assistance." ~signed into law in 1972

There were no sports for girls at my high school in the '60s.  None, unless you count pep squad and cheerleading.
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Do your own research.  Can strength, leadership, and healthy interaction be modeled for all children together, or must we separate them by gender rules and roles?  An interesting dilemma.  

Thoughts on the issues?