Twitter.

I gave in. My friend Edward gave a seminar on Twitter this past Tuesday, and I felt like it was time to sign up. It seems like a good way to share news and an easy way to update my Facebook status.

But I have one big reservation: I don't want to know what Ashton Kutcher (or anyone else that I'm not close with) does throughout the day. It feels like I'm intruding, like I don't care enough that I should know his lunch menu or the color of his dog's poo. And likewise, I don't want to share things about my daily routine with my random followers--I would rather share that stuff with people that I am close with.

Or am I missing a great opportunity to brand myself?

Am I the only one who has this problem? What do you guys think? Twitter: useful tool or privacy killer?

I don't drink coffee, but if I did...

(I'm going to business school in the fall, so I thought I would write a business related post. But please, let me know if it's just boring, and I won't do it again.)

Americans have started to save money. In March we saved about 3.5% of the money we earned--and some economists are freaking out. Saving means less spending, and less spending means slower growth (at least, that's what it means in America). Over the past two decades--really, since the rise of the credit card--most of America's economic growth has come from domestic consumer spending.

But now, instead of going to a hip local coffee shop (or Starbucks), folks are going to McDonald's to buy their coffee. I don't drink coffee, but I hear that McDonald's coffee is better than Starbucks and about a buck cheaper. Good for McDonald's: their stock price has been mostly steady through the financial crisis. But as we keep saving money on coffee and other necessities and deferring purchases of luxuries (flat screen TVs...), our economy keeps shrinking. When will we snap out of it and start spending again?!

Okay I'm being facetious.

I don't think there is anything wrong with a 3.5% savings rate. It's actually sort of low. The average savings rate in America post-1929 is about 7%, and really, we should still be saving at about that rate. We were wrong to think that rising property values would allow us to live off our home equity, and we are wrong to think that we will be able to attain our financial goals (both individually and as a nation) without spending less and saving more.

But if Americans continue to save, then our economy must find a new avenue of growth. Economists have different theories about how this can happen. I'm not an economist, but I have an idea: America needs to start producing something that the rest of the world needs to buy. We've done this well in the past, first with cars, then food, then microprocessors. But now other countries can produce all of these more quickly and more cost effectively than America.

What the world needs (and what I hope twenty-first century America can offer) is technology that can produce and transport energy with little environmental impact. If America can corner the market on solar, wind, geothermal, or other technologies, then our economic dominance is far from done. But to advance these technologies will require investment in higher education and research, and it will require the government to extend visas to the best talent in the world.

America has been the world's dominant economic force throughout my life. I don't know any other way. Perhaps our world would be better served by a group of cooperative and competitive nations driving the system. But if America hopes to retain even a share in the global hegemony, then we must begin to produce something worthwhile.

How to become a genius.

Here is an article that ties together Malcolm Gladwell's ideas with the ideas from my last post about the quarterlife crisis. Enjoy!

And so that you guys don't think that I'm all work and no play, here's a ridiculous video to enjoy.

The Quarterlife Crisis: Then and Now

Right. Though I hoped to avoid it I feel I was bound to post of the quarterlife crisis. I'm sure you've heard too much of it, particularly if you are quarterlife crisis-ing currently. So forgive me, but I have a point that I would like to make.

(For those of you unfamiliar with the term "quarterlife crisis", here is a link to the wikipedia entry)

Without meaning to, I read a couple of novels this spring that dealt with the crisis indirectly (these books have been great catharsis as I've emerged from my own quarterlife crisis). What follows is a brief review the books.

Dave Eggers wrote a great novel a few years ago that is quintessential quarterlife crisis. A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius is strange and hilarious. The main character/narrator is in his early twenties; he grew up white in a privileged, white suburb, but was struck by tragedy when both of his parents died of cancer within a few months of each other. He is sympathetic, but he's also arrogant and narcissistic with a major victim complex. He vehemently believes that his generation (generation X...) will save the world from all that is white collar and cruel, and with that conviction he and his friends start a magazine. The magazine holds his interest for a couple of hundred pages, but eventually he decides to pursue something else...but we never find out what. Women come and go; he cannot commit. Most of his relationships are unhealthy, and he admits as much. Sadly (or artistically?), he is static. In the end he has no revelation, no breakthrough.

To me, the quarterlife crisis seems a natural fit for Generation X, the same for Generation Y. But I have seemed to think the Baby Boomers never had quarterlife crises. They were busy either becoming white collar workers or protesting society in a way that had impact--I thought. But John Updike proved me wrong.

Updike wrote a series of novels around a character named Rabbit Angstrom. It's an interesting series: as Updike aged, Rabbit aged, so each book found Rabbit experiencing the problems and pressures that Updike was presently experiencing. Rabbit (Updike?) is 26 in the first novel, Rabbit, Run; it's 1960 and Rabbit is having a quarterlife crisis.

Rabbit was a high school basketball star, but his star came crashing down with graduation. He joins the army, then settled down with a wife and a son and a daughter on the way. He works as a kitchen appliance demonstrator at a local market. And he is miserable--dissatisfied with being an adult. Rabbit spends the novel looking for a way back to the freedom and the glory of being 18. He begins by schooling a bunch of middle schoolers at basketball; for the moment he is satisfied. But when he returns home to find his wife drunk in front of the TV, he freaks and decides to run. He gets in his car and drives as far away as he can think to drive. In a moment of irony Rabbit does not feel adult enough to embrace his freedom, so he returns to his home town--but instead of going back to his wife, he moves in with a prostitute who is everything that his wife is not. The book proceeds, tragically, with little change to Rabbit's character.

(As an aside, Rabbit, Run is an excellent novel--anyone interested in American fiction should read it)

Okay, earlier I promised that I had a point, and I do. Rabbit's life is very different than mine and than most of my friends. He is settled: he has a growing family and he's working on getting a mortgage. Generation Y is not so settled: many of my friends and I are still trying to discover what we want to do, and starting a family is still on the horizon. However, I think Rabbit's choice to run and Gen Y's continual search for a calling are two sides of the same crisis. We grew up with big dreams, but the reality of adult life is not like our dreams--and so it takes us a few years to sort through the professional, relational, and emotional letdowns. It doesn't really matter what generation we're a part of, at some point our childhood dreams have to be altered to fit with reality.

"You cynic!" you say, "Don't you remember Yes We Can!"

I am certainly a realist, but I don't think I'm cynical. CS Lewis has taught me to love the romance of childhood. But more, I love seeing the redemption and the transformation of our world. Such work is our task as adults and requires blood, sweat, and tears as much as it requires inspiration.

Christ Against Culture?

Forgive me while I psychoanalyze...

I'm reading Christ and Culture by H. Richard Niebuhr--I'm about half way through and it is excellent. Niebuhr pieces together historic Christian approaches to how Christians ought to live in the World (which he calls culture and spends a chapter defining. Niebuhr in short: the World is the value systems, philosophies, art forms, politics, and economics that make up a culture).

The problem, it seems, is that Jesus promises eternal salvation, but we're not dead yet. How ought Christians live (and how should I live) in the interim?

Niebuhr examines five answers that Christians have posited to this question, and each answer is fascinating. Each approach has taught me more about my self and my faith.

Of particular interest has been the approach that Niebuhr calls 'Christ against Culture' or the 'radical' approach. These Christians--represented by groups like the Benedictines (back in the day) and the Mennonites, and people like Leo Tolstoy--were convinced that the Christian must separate from culture in a radical way, either through vows of poverty, disavowal of political action, or, in Tolstoy's case, disengagement with culture altogether. These men and women are to be commended.

"In history these Christian withdrawals from and rejections of the institutions of society have been of very great importance to both church and culture. They have maintained the distinction between Christ and Caesar, between revelation and reason, between God's will and man's."

Amen.

I have been drawn to this approach in the past and am drawn to it now. I dream of living a radical life and were it not for video games and girls I might pursue it more seriously. It seems to me that Christ is worth being radical for. Some people are radical Marxists or radical libertarians--that's fine--but those ideologies have very defined material ends, while Christ promises change and transformation that transcends politics, culture, and economics; affecting and saving the soul. He promises a new society, a new ethics, a new life, and a second chance for anyone who has failed. What a Man to follow radically!

But at times the 'radical' approach is not the right approach:

"Now that we have recognized the importance of the role played by anticultural Christians in the reform of culture, we must immediately point out that they never achieved these results alone or directly but only through the mediation of believers who gave a different answer to the fundamental question. Not Tertullian (a radical), but Origen, Clement of Alexandria, Ambrose, and Augustine initiated the reformation of Roman culture. Not Benedict, but Francis, Dominic, and Bernard of Clairvaux accomplished the reform of medieval society often credited to Benedict...in every case the followers did not so much compromise the teachings of the radicals as follow another inspiration than the one deriving from an exclusive loyalty to an exclusive Christ (against culture)."

Augustine, Francis, and the other followers took ideas and values from the radical approach and used them to engaged culture. They saw tremendous change. Whole countries, whole empires became more just and more God-fearing because of their work.

Now, I'm trying to figure out how I want to live my life, and I keep getting pulled back to this desire to be a radical Christian. For some reason, I can't pull it off. I try to be a radical, but lose my desire after about 45 minutes. It seems like I just wasn't made to be a radical. In light of this struggle, I appreciate Niebuhr. Perhaps I can live for Christ as a radical-inspired non-radical. Perhaps I can take the ideas of Benedict and St. Antony and apply them in the context of my normal life. And as Niebuhr suggests, perhaps living this way I can have more of an impact than if I were a radical.

What do you think?