A Blow for Humanity, inspired by Lucy Van Pelt

Nothing makes me more frustrated than the creation of systems supposedly designed to make life easier but which wind up making life hard.  Take for example, on line forms.  I thought, great, I'll never lose a form again.  The problem with on line forms is, I can't run out the clock on things I don't want to sign people up for, because they know, the form is right there online.  Parental dodges become a thing of the past, along side rotary phones, VHS and conversations in public places owing to the down time waiting for whatever it is to happen. 

I tried to sign up my son for track, but he for some reason is not linked to my account.  It's like he's independent in the mind of the computer and the school system. For a moment, he remains free from all of us, and I must ponder whether affiliation with me is a net plus for him.   Still, if he wants to do track, he needs me to sign forms and get them submitted, but the form is locked, and only available to the family of the student which for some reason, the system doesn't recognize me as being.  So I send emails and fill out the forms trying to prove what already is a reality to a non-reality machine that wants independent proof of what I already know.  If it were a hard copy form, I could have finished it and sent it off.   If it were a down loadable form, I could have printed it and sent it off.   Because it only exists in cyber space, the regulations to protect against abuse of said forms, now prevent actual use of said forms to allow for a flesh and blood person to do a flesh and blood thing. 

His track form is hard on my health.  I also need a form printed up, brought over to the Dr.s, which I must then allow three days time to pass for them to print up a copy of the form with the right signatures and dates on it, and then return to pick it up so he can sign the forms saying he's in good health, proven by the forms the dr. signed, and thus sign up for track, while I sign up a form saying, he's in good health and even if he gets hurt while trying to improve his health via track, I won't sue.

Add to that, the obligatory phone tree to get to the gatekeeper for everything from checking your balance to scheduling a hair appointment and it's enough to make me search for all things Amish when it comes to the service industry.  Never mind the "service fee" for the convenience of being given the exclusive opportunity to do my work without help, the "service fee" now comes because the service exists at all, and not for energies expended or actions rendered by those who take the money.  I'm thinking, it's time to strike back at all these obligatory online formats for everything. 

I'm introducing my own personal service fee. I feel my time and efforts and energies in the service of everything that society throws at us, are undervalued.  As such, I'm now providing a "service fee" to any and all industries that demand I use a phone tree rather than talk to a person to schedule an appointment.  Likewise, I will have a convenience fee when appointments to deal with ordinary tasks require additional trips and/or waiting time.  Out of respect for everyone's time, I'll use paypal so no one need pay a fee to Visa/Mastercard, or worry about pesky checks being returned.   I'll tack a fifteen percent gratuity for extra services rendered when I deem it's warranted.  Yes, I think if everyone adopted this method of tip for trips, we might find ourselves with far fewer errands, far less nit-picky stuff to manage, or if not, we'd find it more bearable as a result of the compensation.

Just my little way to brighten the world. Such good advice...it ought to be worth more than just my two cent's worth of thinking...

Five cents please. 

7 Quick Takes Friday

 

1.  Yesterday I saw a Barred Owl.  It was on the ground, it flew into the tree.  It was nothing short of cool.   We watched it until it grew bored and pumped its great wings and vanished into the trees. Looking at these creatures, it is amazing. 

 

2.  Great News!  My oldest son got a job at his school!

 

Cue the celebration!

 

3.  Wasted words.  I'm giving up the Combox wars.  It happens all the time, I'll read an article, respond, and it turns into High School debate time.  I don't want it. It's not interesting, and it isn't discussion, most of the time, it's agree or go away.  Bleah. Who needs it?  The thing is, I like reading things, I like commenting, I like staying informed.  But I realized it was a means of not being isolated, of making a mark in the broader community, but it was not the mark I wanted. Most people have figured out not to fight the internet, but I had sites I liked visiting if only to know that day, my brain jogged around the park.   It was like grass, here today, burned tomorrow.  To be called conservative by liberals, and a liberal by conservatives, left me feeling like each site considered me the flying monkey of the enemy. 

 

Where's my banana?





 

4.  So what to do now?  Offer my own two cents of course, for a nickel. 

Intellectual club sandwiches served free of charge for special blockheads.

I should stipulate, I've always identified with Lucy Van Pelt.  My brother Joe can testify to this truth.

5.  So what started this? 

I read an article over at an online magazine, and I commented.  The tribe at the site had deemed a popular Catholic writer a heretic for declaring as excessive either dismissal of the value of the state in serving the poor, or the absolute virtue of the state in providing charity.  They felt otherwise.  They declared him the uncharitable heretic for pointing out that faith in the state created utopia is as heretical as putting full faith in the idea of sola rugged individual.

I found myself in agreement with the targeted scapegoat.   The state may serve, but cannot fully substitute for the charity of the human person to human person.  It may compliment, supplement and augment.   I'm not sure what they wanted as an alternative, only that this writer humbly submit to their scorn, acknowledge their favored ideology as pure, himself to be a heretic and take the subsequent much deserved in their opinion, lumps.  

I wondered, how spending mental and written energy ferreting out bloggers to take down, helped deal with the inequalities they felt this blogger failed to properly acknowledge by not agreeing with their non articulated orthodoxy.   This was an echo chamber, deeply committed to reminding everyone, only to repeat the echo.   Catholicism is not an echo chamber, it goes out, it goes into people's hearts, it imitates the universe, being universal, it ever expands. 

6.  So here's what I wrote: 

The reality is that we must in our own lives, to a person, to a people, to the world, be charitable; the Calcuttas of our world, the poor are everywhere. They will always be with us, but that by no means eliminates the charge upon all of us who have, to be generous.

 

It is a hard truth, one we've forgotten in the comfort of our capitalist Catholicism, which is not a demand we become socialist or confiscate wealth. We are called, to "sell what we have" and build up treasure in heaven. Being lazy, we like easy answers. I'll be the first to say, my initial reaction to that is, "You first." because I have a nice home, I have ten kids, I have bills. Surely someone else should take care of this.
Government to the rescue! Taxes and state redistribution seems like an easy answer. But I'm then reminded of the words of Christmas Present, the stinging rebuke to my comfort, "Are there no work houses? Are there no prisons?"
Merely confiscating the wealth of those we don't know, to give benefits to people we don't know, brings us only irritation, envy, resentment and inefficiency. Only true generosity, rendering to the poor the good we have to share, will bring about the true spiritual benefits of charity.

 

Poverty is never just money, it is the feeling of being isolated, alone, without recourse, without hope, without help, without someone who cares if you exist, without the ability to somehow, get out of the pain. If we would really change the world by how we live, we must recognize, it won't be without sacrifice, and it won't be if we do not freely begin to serve. Not easy medicine for any of us.

7.  I won't link to the place to give it traffic, since that is what the site wanted.  Plus, I now have the hard consequence of having begun this thinking in the first place, it can't just stay words.  

Here's what I didn't write on the site: 

It is discomfiting and inconvenient to our sensibilities to recognize the world and our lives do not live out the faith we profess, not fully.  Knowing this, we face two choices, prayer & service, serious study and sacrifice, a call to do something more than we are doing, starting with serious prayer for all those we scorn, or doubling down on what we already do, i.e. continuing to be as comfortable with our reasonable understandings of things, comfortable with our lives and sedated as possible in our current existence. 

If we are honest, most of us hope we can eek out a last minute deal with the Almighty by being okay, gambling we can slip into purgatory because we weren't ax murderers who ate puppies and gouged customers with cheap imports made on the back of child labor while underpaying anyone we had to hire. We weren't cartoon villains and pure evil.  We were comfortably bath water warm. 

Except we aren't called to be good or to win, or to be right in the comboxes.  We're called to be saints.



I'm so doomed.