Category Archives: Musings

Hopefully a little more thought-out than the ramblings.

Moral Issues

Judgemental or good judgement?

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Please accept my apology. This apology is somewhat late in coming, and simultaneously given in advance. In my past blog articles, I have touched on topics that some may consider to be slightly offensive, and it is certainly my intention to continue that trend in the future.

Do I desire to be offensive? Certainly not. Am I judging you or anyone else? God forbid. In all seriousness, I see the danger of becoming judgemental in my writing, and especially in my own thoughts, and it is my fervent prayer that I be prevented from this danger, through both my own diligence and through divine intervention when my diligence fails me.

That being said, I have no intention of pulling any punches in my writing. I have very strong opinions about certain topics, and I feel compelled to share these opinions. I will pull no punches, but please know that you, dear reader, are not my target. Instead, I have my sights set squarely on good judgement. One of my goals in writing this blog is to demonstrate how I have applied the concepts of wisdom and good judgement in my own life, so that you may potentially apply similar concepts in yours.

If you follow my example and seek good judgement, I am well aware that it may lead you to very different conclusions from those that I have arrived at. Let me assert authoritatively, it is both possible and good for two people to have differing opinions on a topic without being judgemental toward each other.

Here’s the catch. Good judgement is personal. It is almost always situational. I am convinced that there are hard and fast precepts of morality that can be applied in any situation, and that one of those precepts is to always, unconditionally love your neighbor as yourself. However I am equally convinced that I am not always the most adept at applying those precepts in every single situation in even my own life. So I claim no right to attempt to judge any decisions you have made, or will make.

Now, given my opening apology, and my sincere promise to avoid becoming judgemental, there is still an onus on you, the reader, to attempt not to be offended. Assuming that I am meeting my stated goals of demonstrating good judgement, and of avoiding a judgemental attitude, there is still the danger of offense. Take, for example, my recent essay on drinking alcohol. I was very careful, when writing this article, to avoid any language that could be misconstrued as condemning an opposing viewpoint. And yet there are those who, when faced with a well-thought-out argument that is in direct opposition to their own opinion, will inevitably respond with the emotion of offense.

Let me stress that this is your own emotional response, and I divest myself here and now of any responsibility for it. This very statement may be offensive to some, but for this I do not apologize. I have the capability to do the following:

  • Demonstrate good judgement in my own life.
  • Coach others in the techniques required to acquire and practice good judgement.
  • Avoid judging other people.

I do not have the capability to prevent you from becoming offended. I assert that in all situations, offense is either a voluntary reaction or an involuntary but learned reaction, and that the emotional response of being offended can always be avoided and / or unlearned by the offendee. This is clouded by the fact that the offender can almost always avoid actions that cause offense. Since I have the theoretical capability to avoid offense, should potentially offensive actions or words be universally avoided? Absolutely not.

This is a path of folly, and I have no intention of attempting it. I refuse to tiptoe through life with the goal of anticipating and avoiding every topic that may potentially offend. Instead, I will attempt to think, to live, and to write with conscientious integrity, and to avoid judging others by always assuming that they are trying to do the same. Please try not to be offended as I do so.

– danBhentschel

All Things Dad, Ramblings

The origin of the stupid rule

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This morning, I was contemplating stupid rules and how they come about. There’s some pretty bizarre laws on record in the state of New York. Here are some that I enjoyed:

  • Slippers are not to be worn after 10:00 P.M.
  • A person may not walk around on Sundays with an ice cream cone in his/her pocket.
  • While riding in an elevator, one must talk to no one, and fold his hands while looking toward the door.
  • A license must be purchased before hanging clothes on a clothesline.

Please note that I made no effort whatsoever to verify that these actually are law. I am well aware that I may be spreading misinformation, and in the likely event that I am, I apologize.

Disclaimer aside, stupid rules actually do exist all over the world. Even in my own house, I have some pretty stupid rules. They all stem from a desire to maintain the kind of order that Marlene and I feel is appropriate and necessary. Here are some interesting examples that I was reminded of while getting ready for work this morning.

Children may not talk while in timeout

On the surface, this may sound good and innocuous. It originates from some very real problems:

  • Loud complaints about the reasons for, or enforcers of, the timeout
  • Verbal play with other children while in timeout
  • Constant pleas to be removed from timeout

However, there are some logistical problems with this rule:

  • What if there is an emergency?
  • What if the child needs to go to the bathroom?

Marlene and I have made the decision that the number and variety of exceptions to this rule are too many, and could pose confusion for a 2 to 5-year-old who is (presumably) trying to comply with the rule. More likely they are trying desperately to find loopholes in the rule.

Regardless, the easiest thing for all involved is to enforce the rule that absolutely no talking of any kind is permitted in timeout. If this strict ruling backfires, for example if a child really does need to go to the bathroom and pees all over the floor, Marlene and I will deal with the fallout. The downside this morning was that Jasmin was not allowed to say “goodbye” to me when I left for work, because she was in timeout and could not talk to me.

Jacob, specifically, is not allowed to anticipate his parents’ desires

Jacob has a real problem with just doing what he thinks is the right thing, regardless of instructions. This is a consistent, repeated, longstanding pattern throughout his life. Couple this with a very strong tendency to misunderstand and misinterpret situations, and it’s a recipe for disaster. Let me tell you authoritatively, disaster happens with distressing regularity.

For this reason, Jacob is reminded again and again, “Do what I told you to do, and not what you think you should be doing.” It’s a very strange message. Do I want my son to grow to be a mindless puppet who blindly follows the direction of authority? Absolutely not. But he must learn obedience before he learns the much more complex topic of when it is right and good to disobey. Here’s a hint kiddo… it’s actually right and good to disobey far less frequently than you seem to think it is. Jacob is still far from mastering the obedience lesson.

The fallout from this rule today? Jacob was helping me pack my lunch for work, and I very specifically cautioned him, “Bring me exactly the foods that I ask you for. I don’t want you to bring me everything in the refrigerator just because you think it might make a good lunch food.” Well, at one point, I sent Jacob to get me tomatoes, and he came back with tomatoes and grapes. His reasoning: “Dad, I assume you want grapes for lunch today too.”

In this instance, he was correct! I had seriously considered having grapes for lunch, and very well might have asked him to get them for me next. So how did I respond? I told Jacob that he was correct, and I did want grapes, but that he specifically disobeyed my instructions, and if it were to happen again in the future, I would not allow him to help me pack my lunch any more.

If any child mentions cows or mooing while singing “Happy Birthday”, that child will not get any birthday cake

This is the rule that got me thinking along these lines today. Jacob was playing “Happy Birthday” as part of his piano practice time, and was singing along with his playing, as he sometimes has a tendency to do. While listening to him, I was reminded of this rule.

For the last few years, the children have enjoyed adding the phrase “Cows go moo!” to the words of the “Happy Birthday” song whenever we sing it at a birthday party. It seems that each time, their ad-libbing gets more and more exaggerated. At the end of last year, at Jacob’s birthday party, the mooing and giggling were so intense that I couldn’t even hear any singing over the cacophony. Hence the rule.

So far, no child has broken this particular rule, despite its stupidity. I guess the consequences are pretty dire indeed.

– danBhentschel

Moral Issues, Musings

The wisdom formula

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I recently read through the story of Solomon in the Bible. Solomon was considered to be a very wise man. I too would like to be a wise man. But what is wisdom?

Wisdom is not intelligence

The dictionary defines intelligence as the ability to learn or understand things or to deal with new or difficult situations. Notice that intelligence is an ability. It is my assertion that intelligence is innate. All people are born with a certain amount of this attribute called intelligence. There is nothing that we can do to gain or increase in intelligence. Our God-given intellect is what we have to work with.

This statement could be considered offensive because intelligence is so highly valued. Some make the mistake of judging the worth of others based on their level of intelligence. So, to state that some people are born more intelligent than others, in the minds of certain individuals, is tantamount to saying that some people are born superior to others. That is not at all my intention, nor do I believe it to be true.

Wisdom is a much more desirable trait than intelligence, and while intelligence is an integral part of the wisdom formula, they are not directly proportional. A more intelligent person is not necessarily wiser, and vice-versa.

Wisdom requires knowledge

The Merriam-Webster Dictionary contains multiple definitions for the word “knowledge”. For the purposes of this article, I will be treating “knowledge” as synonymous with “stored information”.

Unlike intelligence, which is innate, knowledge is gained through experiences. When we are born, we have no knowledge whatsoever. As we experience things in life, our mind stores memories of those experiences. Our memories are the building blocks of our knowledge.

I believe it possible that people may have different capacities for knowledge, but measuring the amount of information stored in a person’s mind is a fruitless effort, and I doubt that any of us uses our mind’s knowledge store to its full potential anyway.

Wisdom relies on understanding

Understanding is the application of intelligence to knowledge. Our minds are incredibly good at discerning patterns in large sets of data. When we apply our intellect to a body of observations about a particular topic, we start to discern patterns, and thus gain a better understanding about that topic. The longer we apply our intellect, the more understanding we gain. The more information we gather, the more understanding we gain.

Understanding is proportional to the magnitude of our intelligence, the length of time we apply that intelligence to a topic, and the amount of information we have gathered on that topic. Hence, with faux mathematics, I propose the following formula:

understanding = intellect x knowledge x time

 Understanding with discernment

No matter how much intellect, knowledge, and time we have, we will never fully understand even a single topic. We live in a complex world where any number of seemingly random factors will affect any topic that we endeavor to understand. Climates fluctuate. Personalities and emotional states change and clash. Devices and machines wear out and break down. Software has bugs. Every day, in myriad ways, the unexpected happens. When it does, our understanding is invalidated to some degree.

Sometimes we are able to navigate this sea of uncertainty with surprising alacrity, seemingly predicting the unpredictable, and modifying our behavior to defy our preconceptions. Perhaps we are able to read the mood in the room. Perhaps we subconsciously notice some minute, but key, detail. We call it luck, intuition, instinct, gut feeling, serendipity.

I call it discernment. I believe that discernment is a God-given gift, and like intelligence, we are each gifted with differing degrees of discernment.

Wisdom is an action

Better, wisdom is borne out in action, or occasionally in deliberate inaction. Wisdom is the application of understanding. It is the decision, through an effort of willpower, to use our understanding to guide our actions in such a way that a desired outcome can be achieved. The action that is taken is seen by others as wisdom when:

  • The action that is taken builds on the actor’s knowledge, gained through past experience.
  • The action that is taken is demonstrably responsible for the resultant outcome.
  • The action that is taken seems logical in retrospect, but was not immediately obvious beforehand.
  • The resultant outcome is unquestionably beneficial to the actor or to others in the actor’s realm of influence.

If no action is taken, then no wisdom is in evidence. Knowing the right thing to do in a situation, but not doing it is the opposite of wisdom. Imparting advice to another is not wisdom, but only a transfer of knowledge. The recipient of the information now has the responsibility to apply their own intelligence and willpower to the information gained, and thus they have the opportunity to act wisely.

Continuing in the tradition of faux mathematics, I propose the following formula for wisdom:

wisdom = ( understanding + discernment ) x willpower

 A wise person

While a single act can be viewed as wisdom, it takes more than one act to be seen as a wise person. A man or woman who portrays the characteristic of wisdom makes wise choices reliably and on a regular basis.

Acquire knowledge. Apply your intellect to gain understanding. Learn of your intuition so that you can discern how to best apply it. Fortify your willpower so that you will be able to act decisively on your understanding. Be wise.

– danBhentschel