The Work of Salvation - Happy Ever After

Speaking to the Young Adults of Southern Ontario and surrounding locales.  

I love the YSA.  I love them because I was them.  I love them because they are so beautiful and so wonderful and so powerful.  The chapel is high energy.  That energy is a spiritual power.  The power of possibilities.  The power of change and of making a difference.  The power of truth and righteousness.  I love them because they have their future in mortality before them and they are all going to make it real.  They are all going to hold on and build each other.  They have the strength to hold on.  They have the faith to move and they have a voice.   

Take your journey to learn, act and become and find your voice.  This is your time.  

Hasten the Work of Salvation on Your Journey to Happiness

David and Goliath - according to Malcolm Gladwell, a very popular modern author, we have misunderstood the story of David and Goliath.  We are often invited to imagine ourselves as David and then admonished to have faith like David in overcoming the obstacles in our lives.  Goliath is the ultimate difficult obstacle.  He wants to kill you and he is a scary man.  He is like a boggart to the armies of Israel, something that appears to be what we would fear more than anything else.  

"So the boggart sitting in the darkness within has not yet assumed a form. He does not yet know what will frighten the person on the other side of the door. Nobody knows what a boggart looks like when he is alone, but when I let him out, he will immediately become whatever each of us most fears."

—Professor Lupin to his Third year class in 1993^[src]

A boggart is an amortal shape-shifting non-being that takes on the form of the viewer's worst fear. When facing a boggart, it is best to have someone else along, to try to confuse it, since facing more than one person at once would make it indecisive as to what form it must take, usually a mixed-up amalgam of the victims' fears. Because of their shape-shifting ability, no one knows what a boggart looks like when it is alone, as it instantly changes into your worst fears when you first see it.  Boggarts sometimes do not have the same strength or magic as what they imitate, for example, a Boggart transformed into aDementor has weaker magic than a real Dementor, according to Lupin, or having a deadly scream as a true Banshee, which would otherwise have slaughtered the entire class. This was partly why he chose to simulate a Dementor attack in Harry's presence to help him perfect the use of the Patronus Charm.

A boggart in the form of Professor Snape, while Neville Longbottom casts the Riddikulus Charm.

The charm that combats a boggart is Riddikulus. The charm requires a strong mind and good concentration. The incantationand wand movement alone will not affect a boggart.

The correct way to perform the charm is to push past the fear, and concentrate on something that will make the boggart look amusing. The charm does not, in fact, repel a boggart; it just forces it to assume a shape that the caster will find comical, inspiring laughter, which will defeat a boggart  

So what is the perspective with which we should face our Goliath?  The Harry Potter fictional approach to facing a boggart is a good clue.  The approach that Malcolm Gladwell takes is to transform our understanding of the battle between David and Goliath.

Three thousand years ago on a battlefield in ancient Palestine, a shepherd boy felled a mighty warrior with nothing more than a stone and a sling, and ever since then the names of David and Goliath have stood for battles between underdogs and giants. David's victory was improbable and miraculous. He shouldn't have won. 

Or should he have? 

In David and Goliath, Malcolm Gladwell challenges how we think about obstacles and disadvantages, offering a new interpretation of what it means to be discriminated against, or cope with a disability, or lose a parent, or attend a mediocre school, or suffer from any number of other apparent setbacks.

Gladwell begins with the real story of what happened between the giant and the shepherd boy those many years ago. From there, David and Goliath examines Northern Ireland's Troubles, the minds of cancer researchers and civil rights leaders, murder and the high costs of revenge, and the dynamics of successful and unsuccessful classrooms---all to demonstrate how much of what is beautiful and important in the world arises from what looks like suffering and adversity. 

In the tradition of Gladwell's previous bestsellers---The Tipping Point, Blink, Outliers and What the Dog Saw---David and Goliath draws upon history, psychology, and powerful storytelling to reshape the way we think of the world around us.

The Work of Salvation - Our personal journey in this life is to overcome the Goliaths we face and gain salvation from Death and Sin.  As a group, we can overcome and bring every one of us and many, many more to fulfill the full measure of our creation.  Our Potential is unimaginably powerful.  Our potential is all about simple doctrines and truths and developing patterns of life that are in harmony with correct principles.  These are "magical" in that we only partially understand their workings.  We are here to increase in learning, to act in doctrine and to fulfill our power to become.  Learn of Jesus and his powers and purposes and plans, act according to his doctrines, patterns and fulfill all that you have the potential to become and to be.

To quote Elder David Bednar, 
"Increase in Learning, focused upon the doctrines, principles, and patterns related to the learning imperative. Act in Doctrine focuses upon the doctrines, principles, and patterns related to our obligation to translate what we know into what we do. And learning and acting in accordance with revealed gospel truth ultimately can invite into our lives the “power to become” (Doctrine and Covenants 11:30) all that the Father’s plan of salvation makes possible for us."

Learning by faith and learning from experience are two of the central features of the Father’s plan of happiness. The powerful examples of latter-day learners—including Joseph Smith, Brigham Young, Gordon B. Hinckley, and some less well-known members of the Church—highlight for us the importance of continually seeking learning by study and also by faith (see Doctrine and Covenants 88:118).

You and I are here upon the earth to prepare for eternity, to learn how to learn, to learn things that are temporally important and eternally essential, and to assist others in learning wisdom and truth (see Doctrine and Covenants 97:1). Understanding who we are, where we came from, and why we are upon the earth places upon each of us a great responsibility both to learn how to learn and to learn to love learning.

That every man may act in doctrine and principle pertaining to futurity, according to the moral agency which I have given unto him, that every man may be accountable for his own sins in the day of judgment” (Doctrine and Covenants 101:78; emphasis added). This volume builds upon and extends the patterns described in Increase in Learning and discusses why we should and how we can “act in doctrine.”

We are admonished to search and understand “great knowledge” (2 Nephi 32:7)—even the true knowledge of our Redeemer (see Mosiah 27:36; Helaman 15:13; 3 Nephi 16:4). But we do not learn just to know, and we do not act just to comply or conform. Rather, our learning and acting are to be lastingly transformational as we become new creatures in Christ (see 2 Corinthians 5:17) and offer our whole souls unto God (see Omni 1:26).

Recall that Joseph Smith did not pray simply to know which church was true. He prayed to know which church was true so he would know which church to join (see Joseph Smith–History 1:18). And the same truth that led Joseph to the Sacred Grove to “ask in faith” (James 1:6) applies precisely to you and to me. We need to increase in learning of revealed truth so we can act in doctrine and thereby apply what we know and do for righteous purposes.

“Behold, I am Jesus Christ, the Son of God. I am the life and the light of the world.

“I am the same who came unto mine own and mine own received me not;

“But verily, verily, I say unto you, that as many as receive me, to them will I give power to become the sons [and daughters] of God, even to them that believe on my name. Amen” (Doctrine and Covenants 11:28–30; emphasis added; see also Doctrine and Covenants 39:4; 42:52; John 1:12).

In the tenth and final chapter of the book of Moroni, he declares that a testimony of the Book of Mormon comes by the power of the Holy Ghost, that spiritual gifts are dispensed to the faithful, and that we are to come unto Christ and be perfected in Him. As he then concludes his record, he says good-bye to his future readers and proclaims his final witness and testimony.

“And now I bid unto all, farewell. I soon go to rest in the paradise of God, until my spirit and body shall again reunite, and I am brought forth triumphant through the air, to meet you before the pleasing bar of the great Jehovah, the Eternal Judge of both quick and dead. Amen” (Moroni 10:34).

The phrase I find most interesting in this verse is “the pleasing bar of the great Jehovah, the Eternal Judge of both quick and dead” (emphasis added). Please note that Moroni described the judgment bar of the great Jehovah as pleasing. Many individuals likely find the thought of standing before the Eternal Judge to be frightening, intimidating, overwhelming, tormenting, and daunting—many things other than pleasing. But Moroni was not fearful of or apprehensive about this inevitable day of reckoning. He looked forward to meeting us at the pleasing bar of the great Jehovah! Moroni understood before his death, at least in part, what awaited him beyond the veil.

A simple question arises in my mind and heart from this benedictory scripture: How could and did Moroni come to know in mortality that the judgment bar of the great Jehovah would be pleasing?

Can you and I, like Moroni, truly come to know that the path we are pursuing in our lives pleases God? And if it is possible to know these things, how can we know? Such questions indeed are some of the most pointed and poignant questions of the soul.

As we increase in learning about the Savior and His gospel, as we strive with ever greater consistency to act in His doctrine, ordinances, and covenants, then we are blessed with power through His Atonement to increasingly become like Him. Our hearts and natures are changed, and our desires are directed to Him and His purposes. His will supersedes our will. His desires supplant our desires. His purposes become our purposes. These changes rarely occur quickly, dramatically, or all at once; rather, they come into our lives “line upon line, precept upon precept, here a little and there a little” (2 Nephi 28:30).

I started by indicating that you have a voice.  Through social media, you each have an enormous megaphone that is akin to the still small voice.  USE YOUR VOICE.  Hastening the Work of Salvation is a pattern that if acted upon will transform you and thousands of others of your brothers and sisters.

At the beginning of this blog, I inserted a family picture and I inserted a picture of friends and loved ones.  Women love missionaries.  Men love missionaries.  Missionaries are truly learning, acting and becoming in a most powerful way. Can you see more clearly now why serving as a missionary is such a powerful experience in our journey?   

Overcoming sin is no more difficult than overcoming a boggart or a Goliath.  This is the work of salvation.  Your real Goliath is sin.  Death has already been overcome for you.  Sin is standing at the door every day inviting and enticing you to embrace it's seductive and false beauty.  

Use your faith to slay this Goliath with the most certain victory - you need not fear sin.  The atonement slays sin and death.  You are David and you have the most certain victory and your victory will be no less glorious than David's.  Humbly gird yourself with armor (learning and patterns), with the right weapons (your voice and your media and the most powerful weapon for soldiers on the front lines - the spirit) and with the best horses (today we use planes instead of horses - a very small plug for aeronautical engineers).  Your car is a horse that can transform lives - please use it to take people to church and to the temple and to.....  Make no mistake - you are today's warriors in the eternal battle for the souls of men. 

The warfare is continued in mortality in the conflict between right and wrong, between the gospel and false principles, etc. The same contestants and the same issues are doing battle, and the same salvation is at stake. Bible Dictionary

MAKE THE ATONEMENT real in your life and the lives of many, many thousands through your voice.  I haven't even started on the temple.  Imagine your God constructing a house where he will personally teach you (endow you with learning), invite you and teach you to act (endow you with the patterns for life) and give you the power to become (endow you with trans-formative experiences of eternity)   You are His sons and daughters.    Take your journey to learn, act and become and find your voice.  This is your time.  You can hasten the work of salvation on your journey to true happiness.

Dad

Goobie's Notes version of CS Lewis' The Abolition of Man

Goobie’s Notes version of - The Abolition of Man by C.S. Lewis

The Abolition of Man is a 1943 book by C. S. Lewis.  It was first delivered as a series of three evening lectures at King's College, Newcastle, England on February 24–26, 1943. The National Review ranked the book #7 in its 100 Best Non-Fiction Books of the 20th Century. The Intercollegiate Studies Institute ranked the book as the second best book of the 20th century.  Professor Peter Kreeft of Boston College lists the book as one of five "books to read to save Western Civilization".  In my humble opinion, the book is prophetic in it’s predictions concerning future generations of male persons (those living today) who are unknowingly afflicted with blindness and have fallen terribly short in their potential to be men.

The following Shortened Content is taken verbatim from The Abolition of Man and condensed to focus on the ideas, concepts, predictions and warnings in the book.  The condensed version is approximately 1/10 of the total content.  If it strikes you as a powerful guide and insight for life, you can find the whole book for free on numerous websites. 

Shortened Content: Gaius and Titius are teaching a general philosophical theory that all values are subjective and trivial. The very power of Gaius and Titius depends on the fact that they are dealing with a boy: a boy who thinks he is 'doing' his 'English prep' and has no notion that ethics, theology, and politics are all at stake. It is not a theory they put into his mind, but an assumption, which ten years hence, its origin forgotten and its presence unconscious, will condition him to take one side in a controversy which he has never recognized as a controversy at all. The authors themselves, I suspect, hardly know what they are doing to the boy, and he cannot know what is being done to him.  What he will learn quickly enough, and perhaps indelibly, is the belief that all emotions aroused by local association are in themselves contrary to reason and contemptible.

I think Gaius and Titius may have honestly misunderstood the pressing educational need of the moment. They see the world around them swayed by emotional propaganda—they have learned from tradition that youth is sentimental—and they conclude that the best thing they can do is to fortify the minds of young people against emotion. My own experience as a teacher tells an opposite tale. For every one pupil who needs to be guarded from a weak excess of sensibility there are three who need to be awakened from the slumber of cold vulgarity. The task of the modern educator is not to cut down jungles but to irrigate deserts. The right defence against false sentiments is to inculcate just sentiments. By starving the sensibility of our pupils we only make them easier prey to the propagandist when he comes. For famished nature will be avenged and a hard heart is no infallible protection against a soft head.

Until quite modern times all teachers and even all men believed the universe to be such that certain emotional reactions on our part could be either congruous or incongruous to it—believed, in fact, that objects did not merely receive, but could merit, our approval or disapproval, our reverence or our contempt.  The reason why Coleridge agreed with the tourist who called the cataract sublime and disagreed with the one who called it pretty was of course that he believed inanimate nature to be such that certain responses could be more 'just' or 'ordinate' or 'appropriate' to it than others. And he believed (correctly) that the tourists thought the same. The man who called the cataract sublime was not intending simply to describe his own emotions about it: he was also claiming that the object was one which merited those emotions.

St Augustine defines virtue as ordo amoris, the ordinate condition of the affections in which every object is accorded that kind of degree of love which is appropriate to it.¹¹ Aristotle says that the aim of education is to make the pupil like and dislike what he ought.¹² When the age for reflective thought comes, the pupil who has been thus trained in 'ordinate affections' or 'just sentiments' will easily find the first principles in Ethics; but to the corrupt man they will never be visible at all and he can make no progress in that science.¹³ Plato before him had said the same. The little human animal will not at first have the right responses. It must be trained to feel pleasure, liking, disgust, and hatred at those things which really are pleasant, likeable, disgusting and hateful.¹⁴ In the Republic, the well-nurtured youth is one 'who would see most clearly whatever was amiss in ill-made works of man or ill-grown works of nature, and with a just distaste would blame and hate the ugly even from his earliest years and would give delighted praise to beauty, receiving it into his soul and being nourished by it, so that he becomes a man of gentle heart. All this before he is of an age to reason; so that when Reason at length comes to him, then, bred as he has been, he will hold out his hands in welcome and recognize her because of the affinity he bears to her.'¹⁵ In early Hinduism that conduct in men which can be called good consists in conformity to, or almost participation in, the Rta—that great ritual or pattern of nature and supernature which is revealed alike in the cosmic order, the moral virtues, and the ceremonial of the temple. Righteousness, correctness, order, the Rta, is constantly identified with satya or truth, correspondence to reality. As Plato said that the Good was 'beyond existence' and Wordsworth that through virtue the stars were strong, so the Indian masters say that the gods themselves are born of the Rta and obey it.¹⁶  The Chinese also speak of a great thing (the greatest thing) called the Tao. It is the reality beyond all predicates, the abyss that was before the Creator Himself. It is Nature, it is the Way, the Road. It is the Way in which the universe goes on, the Way in which things everlastingly emerge, stilly and tranquilly, into space and time. It is also the Way which every man should tread in imitation of that cosmic and supercosmic progression, conforming all activities to that great exemplar.¹⁷ 'In ritual', say the Analects, 'it is harmony with Nature that is prized.'¹⁸ The ancient Jews likewise praise the Law as being 'true'.¹⁹

This conception in all its forms, Platonic, Aristotelian, Stoic, Christian, and Oriental alike, I shall henceforth refer to for brevity simply as 'the Tao'. Some of the accounts of it which I have quoted will seem, perhaps, to many of you merely quaint or even magical. But what is common to them all is something we cannot neglect. It is the doctrine of objective value, the belief that certain attitudes are really true, and others really false, to the kind of thing the universe is and the kind of things we are. Those who know the Tao can hold that to call children delightful or old men venerable is not simply to record a psychological fact about our own parental or filial emotions at the moment, but to recognize a quality which demands a certain response from us whether we make it or not.  No emotion is, in itself, a judgement; in that sense all emotions and sentiments are alogical. But they can be reasonable or unreasonable as they conform to Reason or fail to conform. The heart never takes the place of the head: but it can, and should, obey it.

The head rules the belly through the chest—the seat, as Alanus tells us, of Magnanimity,²¹ of emotions organized by trained habit into stable sentiments. The Chest-Magnanimity-Sentiment—these are the indispensable liaison officers between cerebral man and visceral man. It may even be said that it is by this middle element that man is man: for by his intellect he is mere spirit and by his appetite mere animal.

The operation of The Green Book and its kind is to produce what may be called Men without Chests. It is an outrage that they should be commonly spoken of as Intellectuals. This gives them the chance to say that he who attacks them attacks Intelligence. It is not so. They are not distinguished from other men by any unusual skill in finding truth nor any virginal ardour to pursue her. Indeed it would be strange if they were: a persevering devotion to truth, a nice sense of intellectual honour, cannot be long maintained without the aid of a sentiment which Gaius and Titius could debunk as easily as any other. It is not excess of thought but defect of fertile and generous emotion that marks them out. Their heads are no bigger than the ordinary: it is the atrophy of the chest beneath that makes them seem so.

And all the time—such is the tragi-comedy of our situation—we continue to clamour for those very qualities we are rendering impossible. You can hardly open a periodical without coming across the statement that what our civilization needs is more 'drive', or dynamism, or self-sacrifice, or 'creativity'. In a sort of ghastly simplicity we remove the organ and demand the function. We make men without chests and expect of them virtue and enterprise. We laugh at honour and are shocked to find traitors in our midst. We castrate and bid the geldings be fruitful.

`Why should you suppose they will be such bad men?' But I am not supposing them to be bad men. They are, rather, not men (in the old sense) at all. They are, if you like, men who have sacrificed their own share in traditional humanity in order to devote themselves to the task of deciding what `Humanity' shall henceforth mean. `Good' and `bad', applied to them, are words without content: for it is from them that the content of these words is henceforward to be derived.

It is not that they are bad men. They are not men at all. Stepping outside the Tao, they have stepped into the void. Nor are their subjects necessarily unhappy men. They are not men at all: they are artefacts. Man's final conquest has proved to be the abolition of Man.

The wresting of powers from Nature is also the surrendering of things to Nature. As long as this process stops short of the final stage we may well hold that the gain outweighs the loss. But as soon as we take the final step of reducing our own species to the level of mere Nature, the whole process is stultified, for this time the being who stood to gain and the being who has been sacrificed are one and the same. This is one of the many instances where to carry a principle to what seems its logical conclusion produces absurdity. It is like the famous Irishman who found that a certain kind of stove reduced his fuel bill by half and thence concluded that two stoves of the same kind would enable him to warm his house with no fuel at all. It is the magician's bargain: give up our soul, get power in return. But once our souls, that is, ourselves, have been given up, the power thus conferred will not belong to us. We shall in fact be the slaves and puppets of that to which we have given our souls. It is in Man's power to treat himself as a mere `natural object' and his own judgements of value as raw material for scientific manipulation to alter at will. The objection to his doing so does not lie in the fact that this point of view (like one's first day in a dissecting room) is painful and shocking till we grow used to it. The pain and the shock are at most a warning and a symptom. The real objection is that if man chooses to treat himself as raw material, raw material he will be: not raw material to be manipulated, as he fondly imagined, by himself, but by mere appetite, that is, mere Nature, in the person of his de-humanized Conditioners.

Because we have to use numbers so much we tend to think of every process as if it must be like the numeral series, where every step, to all eternity, is the same kind of step as the one before. I implore you to remember the Irishman and his two stoves. There are progressions in which the last step is sui generis—incommensurable with the others—and in which to go the whole way is to undo all the labour of your previous journey. To reduce the Tao to a mere natural product is a step of that kind. Up to that point, the kind of explanation which explains things away may give us something, though at a heavy cost. But you cannot go on `explaining away' for ever: you will find that you have explained explanation itself away. You cannot go on `seeing through⁵ things for ever. The whole point of seeing through something is to see something through it. It is good that the window should be transparent, because the street or garden beyond it is opaque. How if you saw through the garden too? It is no use trying to `see through' first principles. If you see through everything, then everything is transparent. But a wholly transparent world is an invisible world. To `see through' all things is the same as not to see.

The direct frontal attack 'Why?'—'What good does it do?'—'Who said so?' is never permissible; not because it is harsh or offensive but because no values at all can justify themselves on that level. If you persist in that kind of trial you will destroy all values, and so destroy the bases of your own criticism as well as the thing criticized. You must not hold a pistol to the head of the Tao. Nor must we postpone obedience to a precept until its credentials have been examined. Only those who are practising the Tao will understand it. It is the well-nurtured man, the cuor gentil, and he alone, who can recognize Reason when it comes.⁹ It is Paul, the Pharisee, the man 'perfect as touching the Law' who learns where and how that Law was deficient.¹⁰ In order to avoid misunderstanding, I may add that though I myself am a Theist, and indeed a Christian, I am not here attempting any indirect argument for Theism. I am simply arguing that if we are to have values at all we must accept the ultimate platitudes of Practical Reason as having absolute validity: that any attempt, having become sceptical about these, to reintroduce value lower down on some supposedly more 'realistic' basis, is doomed.

At the moment, then, of Man's victory over Nature, we find the whole human race subjected to some individual men, and those individuals subjected to that in themselves which is purely `natural'—to their irrational impulses. Nature, untrammelled by values, rules the Conditioners and, through them, all humanity. Man's conquest of Nature turns out, in the moment of its consummation, to be Nature's conquest of Man. Every victory we seemed to win has led us, step by step, to this conclusion. All Nature's apparent reverses have been but tactical withdrawals. We thought we were beating her back when she was luring us on. What looked to us like hands held up in surrender was really the opening of arms to enfold us for ever. If the fully planned and conditioned world (with its Tao a mere product of the planning) comes into existence, Nature will be troubled no more by the restive species that rose in revolt against her so many millions of years ago, will be vexed no longer by its chatter of truth and mercy and beauty and happiness.

Parenting is fun when parents are humble and willing

Parenting is a Mission - like all missions, it can be Fun and Engaging, while also being one of our toughest assignments

My last blog on The attributes of Leaders who are World Class did not generate as much interest as my blog about aircraft safety and performance.  This could mean that I am more recognized as an aircraft buff than as a World Class leader, or it could mean that people are just more switched on by a technical article than a subjective opinion post.

For today, as a Dad of 25 years, I turn to the joy of parenting and it's many surprises.  There is a unique view held by members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints, of which I am one.  In this context, the word "unique" does not imply that other people do not hold the same view, only that all the members of the church would claim to hold this view or a close variation of it.  The maxim I refer to is that "there is no other success in life that can compensate for failure in the home."  The amazing and surprising thing is that what may appear as failure in the home seems to be very possible even when capable parents make the home their highest priority.  In fact, some of the very most dedicated and very best parents can have great challenges in establishing a house of order and peace and harmony and securing or at least facilitating the future success of their children.  

The reasons for this are many.  Children can be moulded to some degree, but they also come pre-packaged with attributes, predispositions, tendencies, vulnerabilities and their own views on what they want.  The ideals of the parents can quickly turn into confusion when a young strong willed and independently minded child decides to do his or her own thing instead of listening to well meaning parent teachers.

 It is for this reason that the most important advice for parents is to work hard but don't sweat the outcome.  This advice of course is somewhat non sensical as most Dads will not sweat and most Moms will, regardless of this encouragement.  This is not a gender equality issue, it is just that Moms are usually hard wired to worry about their kids and Dads not so much.  It is for this reason that my second advice is for Dad to not be too complacent in his role of teaching his kids right and wrong and steering them with a guiding (not controlling or punitive) hand.  Talking to your kids from the time they are young, even in a formal way ("time for your Daddy/Daughter semi-annual interview")  is a very good practice.  Your role is to teach your children things that they may not always agree with.  It is not a bad thing to remind your kids that you have this role in their lives so that they do not react so dramatically or surprised when they hear you taking a position that it is opposed to the way things are generally done in the homes of all their friends.  In other words, Dad, STAND IN YOUR PLACE!!  Teach you children and do not forfeit your role to Mom or anyone else.  Your role is indispensable in your children's lives, just as Mom's is.

I love the teachings in Barbara Coloroso's books on raising children.  She is very inspired.  Her analogies that describe different types of parents as "jellyfish", "brickwall" or "backbone" are very important to understand.  We often believe that there are only 2 choices in parenting, and finding the third alternative (backbone) is an important revelation.  As Stephen Covey said, "don't allow other people's weaknesses to control your life", including the weaknesses of your children.  This is a prerequisite to being the backbone parent we all admire.  I have found again that Moms are more likely to get ensnared in inter-meshing of emotions that allows children's weaknesses to take control of their parents.  Thus the importance, again, of Dad being vigilant in both protecting Mom's sanity and also setting up and maintaining the backbone role of both parents.  Like everything in the home, this is something that Mom and Dad do together as equals, and it is ok and there is no gender equality at stake when I say that Dad is often wired to take the lead in this important area of setting the backbone.  Please also remember that if you are going to "lean" from the backbone behaviour, towards jellyfish or brickwall, Barbara will tell you that it's usually better to lean towards being the loving parent than risking the total loss of respect and credibility as someone that is "in their corner" that is a certain outcome when you behave like a brickwall.  Apply the principles taught in the 121st section of the Doctrine and Covenants and you will always be a winning parent in the long run.

Do not abuse your children in any way, it will never pay off in the long run.  You may get their attention and compliance for a while, but the long term consequences will be very negative.  This is not to say that you cannot correct your children firmly and with definitive consequences.  Just do it in a way that is not in any way abusive.  Living on the right side of this "fine line" will come with practice.  Do not beat yourself up too badly every time you yell at the kids.  Just know that when you start yelling, you have stepped into the "their weaknesses are controlling my life" arena, where you don't want to or need to hang out.  See how all these encouragements to become good parents are connected?  Choose your battles is often but not always a good practice.  You don't want to create too many unwieldy precedents that work against you in the battles you do choose.  On the other hand, why think of your relationship as a battle?  Better to think of it as a mission.  In this spirit, the statement "choose your teaching opportunities" is a better statement.  Too much teaching will quickly be perceived as lecturing by your kids.  Regardless if they complain about your lecturing, do not stop teaching them - just work at improving your teaching methods and keep teaching, even if the kids are resisting.  Remind them that it is your role to teach and it is their role to learn.  You are both teachers and learners, so remember to be humble enough to learn from your children, while never forfeiting your role.

Parenting is a wild roller coaster ride and it is the greatest and most fulfilling experience, even if the rewards may be elusive.  Enjoy the journey.  It will be over before you realize it, just like every mission that you devote your best efforts to.

I will, by the way, be pressuring my kids to read this and give me feedback.  I can hear it now, "DAD, You are embarrassing me." 

 

My daughter, Meghan playing with the Apple Photo Booth app.  She is beautiful, even when her head is a little distorted.

Stunning, Dad!!

154 people have viewed my blog!  This includes 3 times reading my own blog!!  This (the 151 viewers, not my 3 personal reviews) is only important because it motivates me to keep writing.  I have no interest in being popular, only in being useful and enlightening.  I also have a minor sense of competing against my son, Jason, who also just started a blog.  How many viewers have you had Jason?  I have told Jason my whole life that I want to write a book and I am worried that he will beat me to it!!

Today was my first day being a "world class leader".  This is a designation that I shared with my wife recently when I stated "well, I am not a world class leader".  She then motivated me to become a world class leader and has been calling me one ever since.  I am not certain what the statement means, however, being called one and acting like one has definitely helped me to have a better day.

Here are the top 10 characteristics of a world class leader (in the Scott Goobie view of the world):

1) Humble
2) Patient
3) Decisive
4) High Emotional Intelligence (EQ)
5) Authentic
6) Generous Listener
7) Strong Presence
8) Deeply Passionate
9) Exceedingly Courageous
10) Visionary
11) Resonant (like a well tuned piano - in terms of relationships)
12) Left Brain Strong (analytical like an engineer)
13) Right Brain Stronger (creative like an artist)
14) Compassionate
15) Strong Willed

Yes, there are more than 10, so you can pick out the ones you like.  If I had to shorten the list to 10, I would combine #12 and #13 into 1, #8 and #15 into 1, and add sense of humour to #4.  I would combine #2 and #14 into 1 and then say, I can only reduce the list to 12.  Finally, I would add highly ethical to #5 and, in order to feel complete and help explain why there are still 12 top characteristics in my list of top 10, I would add "comfortable with ambiguity" to #4.

Now, if I boiled all 12 of those together and created the magical creature that had all of these in abundance, I am certain that the outcome would be somewhat different from me.  I am measuring those gaps and learning the practices and seeking the experiences that will grow Scott Goobie into this hopeful emerging future.

Thanks, Darling, for believing in me!!

Love, Dad

Good Morning,

In the latest court case which Apple lost, it seems that Apple had arranged with other publishers of  ebooks to pump up the prices of ebooks to address their concern over the low prices offered on Amazon.com.  It is hard to understand why this would be necessary given Apple's record profits, revenues and cash holdings.

This comes a month after it was revealed that Apple was also pumping up their earnings by skillfully moving their revenue around from country to country to avoid a reasonable level of taxation.  The term "reasonable" when applied to taxes is a difficult concept, when it is considered appropriate in most circles to do what ever is legally acceptable to lower the amount of tax that you are required to pay by sheltering your income.

For me, if the largest consumer products company in the world is achieving a tax rate below 10% of it's income, then this is unreasonable.  The company is employing practices which are uniquely possible due to it's overwhelming size and global reach.  It has lost it's shine as an attractive and reputable company in my view, due to these 2 recent events.

I remain a supporter of free markets and will continue to put freedom as our most cherished strength in North America.  The strength of all of our institutions is increased when companies and leaders and families and individuals follow good practices.  When we stop following good practices, trouble for all is sure to follow.

Be free and be good.

Dad

Welcome to my blog

I can foresee a time when my thoughts and words will be a benefit to someone.

Lighthearted, in love and always learning - my favourite place to be.  Airplanes, one of my favourite things to think about.

Something interesting about aircraft:  When a plane is taking off, it's performance limits (how far it can go, how many passengers it can carry) is calculated based on the requirement to continue to safely climb and land, even if one of the engines fails at the most critical point in the takeoff.  The most critical point in the takeoff is right as the aircraft is passing the point at which there is no longer enough runway remaining to stop the aircraft safely.  At this point, the aircraft is committed to taking off.  If one engine failed completely at that point, the aircraft would continue to takeoff safely and would declare an emergency and be permitted to go around the airport and land immediately.

The likelihood of an engine failing at any time during a flight is approximately 1 in 100,000 flights.  The probability, therefore, of 2 engines failing during the same flight (for reasons that are related to the engine and not to other problems like running out of fuel) is therefore 100,000 x 100,000 as the 2 engines are completely independent of each other.  That is 1 in 10 Billion, or essentially never.  Although the probablity of an engine failure is 1 in 100,000, the timing of the failure is also statistical.  The failure is more likely at takeoff than at other times of the flight because at takeoff the engines are producing the most thrust possible.  Assume, for example that the probability of failure of an engine during takeoff is 1/10 of the probability of failure at any time during the flight.  That is biased high, as the takeoff is normally a very small fraction of the total time of the flight (approximately 1 minute vs 2 hours for an average flight, or 1/120).   This means that the probability of an engine failure on takeoff is approximately 1 in 1,000,000.  The period of the takeoff that is critical right as the aircraft passes the point on the runway at which it must takeoff is only a few seconds.  If it is assumed to be 5 seconds, then the probability of an engine failure during that period is approximately 1/10 of the probability of an engine failure during takeoff, or 1 in 10,000,000.  Even if this failure did occur, the aircraft is still fully capable of a safe takeoff and landing with a full load of passengers and fuel.

Conclusion - aircraft are designed very conservatively to be safe - enjoy your flight!!!!

Dad