Luke Ford

* A Jew I know in Hawaii complains he can’t find a rabbi to marry him to a shiksa on October 4, 2014, which happens to be Yom Kippur.

* It is no more a good idea to interact with strangers who can’t spell and punctuate correctly (unless there’s a good reason) than it is a good idea to interact with strangers who don’t know the basics of protocol. There are just certain rules for meeting people and interacting with strangers and when you meet people online who can’t be bothered with the ordinary rules of our language, it means they are likely to ignore other basics of decency and hurt you. When I get an email from a stranger that begins with, “Dear Mr. Ford” and proceeds along those lines, I take it seriously. When I get an email from a stranger that starts, “Wassup?”, I tend to ignore it unless there’s a compelling photo.

I’ve never met someone online who couldn’t spell and then later I said to myself, “I’m glad I let that person into my life!”

* I wonder what percentage of the inappropriate things I say comes from being Australian? I remember working with a Vietnam vet at PUC in 1983 and after a few weeks, I asked him, “Did you kill any babies in Vietnam?” It was a horrible thing to say and I’m ashamed of it, but it was the kind of brutal humor that I grew up with in Australia. I didn’t say it out of the blue. I said it after weeks of working together and we were all teasing each other and he was pretty brutal with me too (so much so that one day a religious Mexican guy intervened on my behalf and told everyone else in my crew to leave me alone).

Brad: “A few days ago I watched a documentary called Bustin’ Down the Door, about how some young Australians revolutionized surfing in the 1970s. In the movie they talked about how growing up in Australia you had to be tough because everyone was tough with everyone else, so you learned how to take your knocks and give them too.”

* What do I do with my shameful feelings? Sometimes, when I feel close to someone, I become jealous of his spouse because she’s closer to him. Or, sometimes I see my therapist with another patient and I feel insecure.

* I appalled/amused my therapist with some of my more outrageous FB posts over the past week. Walking out of the session, I instructed her, “Don’t try this at home. Leave it to the professionals.”

* I’ve gone six years on FB without ever reaming someone (“You’re horrible” or the equivalent) publicly and then blocking them, but then again, I’ve gone through 47 years of life without ever having been offended by a contrary point of view.

* I grew up eating dinner at 5pm (per Ellen White, you shouldn’t eat late into the evening). I still eat dinner at 5pm on secular days, one of hundreds of habits I continue from my SDA childhood.

* A co-worker told me he wanted to see Thor this weekend. “You’re Thor?” I said. “I’m so thor I can hardly pith.”

The poor bloke didn’t know what to say. He tried to be polite and then get away as quickly as possible. “Hehehe,” he said and grimaced. Probably a born-again.

* English literature (Shakespeare, Milton, Byron, etc) is ten times greater than American literature. American Lit isn’t even in the same league. British newspapers are far more eloquent than American papers and the average Englishman is invariably more eloquent than 90% of American PhDs in English.

If you say that American literature only began in the 19th Century, I say you’re forgetting the Proust of the Sioux and the Shakespeare of the Shawnee.

* A thousand times hot women in business have said to me, “If there’s anything I can do for you, please let me know.” And I have to stifle my response because I’m a mentch. They talk about, “Let me take care of you,” and I am as silent as Jesus on the cross.

* Why are there so many Holocaust films? Because Jews are influential in Hollywood. Why are there so few films about other genocides? Because those groups don’t have the same influence in Hollywood that Jews do. Why does the media portray Jews in America as underdogs when in most cases Jews in America are over-dogs (as measured by wealth, education, influence aka about half of America’s leading public intellectuals are Jewish)? (Steve Sailer) I’m tired of false pieties.

Monica responds: “Luke, I really don’t think that Jews in Hollywood are the reason we have so many Holocaust movies. I think our culture is Holocaust obsessed because it haunts us in a way that other genocides don’t necessarily (unfortunately). It’s not just the whole “it’s ineffable” thing, either. It is alluring because it defies our understanding, and it defies our understanding because we can’t figure out how a culture/country as educated and sophisticated as Germany could carry out such barbaric acts. It’s frightening to think that people “like us” could do such a thing–I think that’s why Hollywood fixates on it. We can’t answer the “why” question so we keep on asking it via art/film/literature. The Holocaust is not worse than other genocides, but it is different insofar as the way it was carried out, by whom, and our proximity (geographically and symbolically) to it.”

Thank you for this thoughtful post, Monica Osborne. Interesting stuff. I think the primary reason the Holocaust haunts us is that it happened to the Jews and we make a lot of noise and have a lot of influence. Do you seriously think we would be as preoccupied with it if it primarily happened to any other group? Millions of non-Jews were murdered by the Nazis and they get almost no attention. One Israeli gets killed by terrorists and the world gets told about it while a million African blacks are murdered and almost nobody says boo. There have been many other genocides carried out by cultured societies, so why so much attention then to this one? Stalin and Mao murdered over 100 million but this gets no attention.

Monica: “It’s a good question, Luke (whether we’d hear as much about it if it had happened to another group). I think that you are right in part, but not for the reasons you suggest. So much of the academic scholarship that came out of the Holocaust (Trauma Studies, etc.) was written by Jews but is now used by everyone in multiple disciplines. Jews tend to be more educated than many groups of people, which means they were able to write about and process the event (the trauma) in more sophisticated ways. Jews are thinkers and writers and artists, so anything that happens to them is going to be processed in that way, and ultimately repackaged for the world. This makes it enticing to people. Sadly, this was not the case for people in Darfur, for example. There’s not a lot of education, so people don’t necessarily have the means to tell their story.”

Precisely. Jews have better means for telling their story than any other group. Three thousand years ago, a group of slaves escaped from Egypt and they’ve been talking about the Exodus, slavery, redemption, Sinai ever since and commanded the attention of the world.

Charlotte Allen: “I hope this doesn’t sound harsh, but I’ve OD’d on Holocaust movies. I’ve just gotten tired of them. Yes, the Holocaust was dreadful–but I think there are no fewer than three Holocaust movies coming out this year, nearly 70 years after the Holocaust. How about some other Jewish-theme movies? The Bible is a treasure-trove of great stories, but no one makes Bible movies anymore.”

I get it and yet that is an extremely un-PC thing to say. The goyim are supposed to have an unlimited appetite for hearing about our suffering and how dare they ever view us as anything but plucky underdogs.

Monica: “Mark Burnett and his wife Roma Downey are currently making a film about the bible (I’m guessing you saw their wildly popular bible show that aired on the history channel a number of months ago).”

Charlotte: “There was a good German movie a couple of years ago about a counterfeiter who survived the camps because he was really good at his trade. But that’s the last Holocaust movie I’ve seen except for an as-yet-unreleased documentary about Hungarian Jews made by a friend of mine. But when I saw back-to-back previews of two upcoming Holocaust movies at a theater last week, I just groaned. Spare me. How about some movies about Israel?”

People prefer to watch movies about smart accomplished people (such as Germans, Jews) than dumb ones (won’t say).

Charlotte: “I agree with Luke Ford. My friend’s documentary is about fantastically cultured–and thus interesting–Hungarian Jews who got sucked into the Holocaust in late 1944–so late that about a third of them survived. The interesting thing is that the supposedly fascist Hungarian dictator, Horthy, actually protected the Jews by keeping the Germans out of Hungary until the very end, when the Germans kicked out Horthy and began to run Hungary directly.”

* Some men park it wherever they find a space.

* Most people don’t seem to pause to consider if their unsolicited advice will do more good than harm. I see in shul all the time people with no education telling educated people what to do. Once somebody gives me stupid unwelcome unsolicited advice, I tend to regard the person as a moron from then on and rarely consider listening to them.

* Student loan default rates by race/ethnicity: “Black students who graduated in 1992–93 school year had an overall default rate that was over five times higher than white students and over nine times higher than Asian students. The differences for Hispanic students are not as large, but are still substantial. Hispanic students’ overall default rate was over twice that of white students and four times higher than Asian students. And these differences cannot be fully explained by differences in borrowing patterns or salaries. The 1994 percentage of monthly income going to student loan payments—an indication of both how much debt a student has and their earnings—was actually lowest for Hispanic students and only slightly higher than average for black students.”

I’m interested in reality and if you are familiar with my FB stream, you know it is largely a stream of consciousness of whatever interests me. You keep asking for a point. I don’t have a point. I write whatever catches my interest.

Graduating from college does not make you a better person. Neither does a high IQ or a Porsche or track speed or whatever. We’re all God’s kids. BTW, I never graduated from college.

* Filipinos are looting on a massive scale after the storm while the Japanese did not loot after the Fukushima earthquake. I wonder if that tells you something about the social capital of Japanese and East Asians vs other Asians? East Asians have the highest IQ on average and perhaps people with a higher IQ think more clearly about the future and are more likely to see the sense of abiding by the law and helping their neighbors. Low IQ folks tend to be prone to instant gratification. Compare the behavior of residents of New Orleans after Katrina with the residents of San Diego who had to evacuate after massive fires.

There’s almost no violent crime in Japan but plenty in the Philippines.

I wonder why Japan is first world and the Philippines is third world? I wonder why one country has a serious emergency response and the other is marginal? Could it have something to do with IQ and social capital?

Something broke in my system in February of 1988 so that since then, when I exercise much past a mile or two daily, I quickly or slowly get a Chronic Fatigue Syndrome relapse that matches exactly the level of my exertion. For example, sustained exertion over weeks brings a sustained relapse that lasts weeks while a one-time exertion of many miles brings a sudden but short-lived relapse of a few days. Given that I can’t exercise much in real life, I’m experimenting with active visualization of my past experiences with jogging and working out. I find this makes me feel alive and fills me with adrenalin and provokes memories and strong feelings. I don’t want to live passively, so I’m writing everything out.

Remember my jogs through Angwin, hoping to find a better way? I was frustrated with my life. I was disconnected. I was lonely. I was unpopular. I knew what I had wasn’t working. I had to try something new. So off I went on a run. I’d chew up the miles and hope to run into a girl who liked me. I thought that by getting ahead, winning awards, pushing myself forward, securing fame and fortune, I’d get more of what I wanted — connection, friends, family, love.

I was ill at ease, restless, discontented, and I tried to run away from my problem. I’m always trying to run away. Get away. Fix the damn thing! F***! F***! I hate my life. It’s not working. And my attempts to fix things don’t work either but I won’t go down without a fight. Something is so wrong.

I was a 12 year old kid and I was running 40 miles a week. Something is wrong here. What’s wrong with this picture? Why does the kid have so much desperation and unhappiness that he runs marathons at age 12? I found a measure of distinction through my running but that ended in the fall of 1979 when my knees began swelling up, they couldn’t take the pounding, and I had to abandon running for the next five years.

I’ve lived many places aside from Pacific Union College but there was something special about that place and I keep returning to it in my visualizations. The place is pregnant with meaning and emotion for me. As I close my eyes and experience myself racing up Howell Mountain Road and hear the honk of the horns of friends and see their waves and I wave back and I feel connected. I feel part of the group.

When my parents were gone, those six months finishing up eighth grade at PUC, that’s the first time I felt at least a normal level of connection with my classmates. That was my first taste of sustained and deep happiness. Over the next four years, I kept returning to PUC to fill up on this feeling. Those were definitely the best times of my high school years. PUC was my community. People knew me there. We were bound by a similar religion and way of life. It’s just easier to connect when you’re part of an insular group. And when those tanks of connection are filled up, it’s easier to face the world and to want to explore. Without that connection and community and love, I feel weak and fragile, ill at ease, restless, discontented, angry, frustrated, broken.

When I was at PUC, I never saw myself living there. I just wanted to launch myself into the world, knowing that the place would still be there for me forever. I had a home. I had a place for me.

My God, that evening in May of 1980, when I found out we would not be returning to PUC, that we would have to live elsewhere, my heart broke. I was glad to find out we were going to Auburn, it was less than three hours drive away from PUC and my friends the Muths.

Auburn was so lonely compared to PUC. PUC was lonely for me too but at least there were lots of people there I could potentially connect with, but in Auburn, our religious community was much more spread out. There was no one to hang out with on most Sabbath afternoons. It was just me and long walks and books and I felt so empty and sad and longing.

Remember all my jogs through the fog along the canal that flowed a mile below our home at 7955 Bullard Drive? I’d just run mile after mile and there was nobody, nobody I wanted to ****.

I had my moments at Placer High School, a public school. It was an opportunity for me to spread my wings outside of Adventism, outside of Christianity, and to begin to explore the wider world through the tool of journalism. I had success, but it didn’t fill me up the way life at PUC did. There’s something special about belonging to a close-knit religious community with transcendent purpose. Everything becomes more meaningful. Life has more depth and texture and color. There were so many great people at PUC, we shared values and a way at looking at life, it was easier to communicate and to eat together and to do everything together. The outside world is much more complex.

I took that year off after high school and went back to Australia and felt so lonely as my mates back in California moved ahead with their lives. So I came home and I still couldn’t get it together at Sierra Community College. Imagine Desmond Ford’s son taking a semester off — only six unit! — to work as a landscaper. Oy! In that miserably cold winter, I was slogging away in the mud and rain for $4.50 an hour. I was nuts. I made such bad choices.

I was desperate, searching, trying things, shaking up my life, looking for a better way, and I was lonely. I thought my muscles and toughness would help me find a woman, or at least build a foundation upon which I could accomplish great things and then get the woman I deserved and then things like friends and community would fall into place.

These visualization exercises, taking me back to my daily runs of seventh grade, do get my blood pumping. Sometimes, when I remember running along a beautiful trail, I feel strong and I pump with endorphins, even though I’m just lying on the floor listening my favorite pop songs of the era.

Remember how much of the time I was hungry? Eating between meals was a sin. Eating much for dinner was a sin. I was starving, sad, lonely, miserable, disconnected. I wasn’t cared for and I didn’t know how to care for myself. I kept seeking out sustenance and I usually found it through my friendships with the bachelor PE teachers Chuck, David, Duane. I’d hang out in their offices. I could talk to them about everything that interested me. I was closer to them than my classmates most of the time.

What would I say today to my miserable seventh-grade kid? My God, I am today just the type of mentor and friend that I sought out in 1978-1979. So what would I say to my 12-year old self? What kind of conversations would we have? What wisdom would I impart? Let’s imagine that friendship.

He’d come into my office. I’m the school’s Alexander Technique teacher. He’s awkward, scrawny, carelessly dressed, only washes his hair once a week.

Luke Senior: “Son, the quality of your life is the quality of your relationships. Reduce doing the things that separate you from the people you want in your life.”

Luke Junior: “But I feel driven to antagonize people. Driven. It’s in my DNA. It’s beyond my control. I can squash it for a few days but it always roars out. Look at you. You’re constantly antagonizing people, keeping them at arm’s length. You’ve never married. You have no kids. You don’t have so many friends or why else would you be hanging out with me?”

Sr: “You’re right. I’m right. We both need to get help. This is why there are psychologists. Religion and running are not enough. We can’t just distract ourselves from our problems.”

Jr: “If I can only be great, these problems will disappear. If I can win some races, get some fame and fortune, I’ll get more friends, I’ll get a girlfriend, I’ll be honored and people will want to be close to me.”

Sr. “There’s enough to what you say that I can’t dismiss it entirely, but let me ask you, how’s that working out for you? Do you have any talent as a runner?”

Jr. “It’s not working out. I don’t have any talent as a runner beyond an ability to discipline myself to do it.”

Sr. “That’s not going to be enough to get fame and as for fortune, there’s no fortune in being a famous runner. You’re a writer. It’s fine for you to devote all your effort right now into running. It’ll give you insight you can use in your writing, but at core, you’re a runner with no special gift, but when it comes to writing, that’s not just your gift, it’s your mission in life. Channel your frustration into your writing. Write every day. Fill up notebooks and don’t lose them and don’t let your parents read them.”

Jr. “I have no place I can hide them that my mom won’t find them and read them, so it kills all desire I have to pour myself out into a diary. So I pour myself out to you instead.

“I gotta know. Does it get better?”

Sr. “It gets better but there are also necessary losses every step of the way. There are things you have now you’ll never have again. With every year, you’ll gain stuff and lose stuff. In all likelihood, as you age you’ll gain more independence and you’ll be happier. But you gotta get help. You can’t be proud. You’re survival, your happiness, your life is at stake. You can’t just will your way out of the rut you’re in.

“Let’s go for a run.”

OK. We set off.

Jr. “My knees knock when I run.”

Sr. “That’s no good. You’re not exactly poetry in motion.”

Jr. “I know. I run as awkwardly as I talk to girls as I do everything, just ill at ease and constantly banging into myself and going in circles.”

Sr. “You’re heavily armored with unnecessary body tension and this is distorting your gait and making jogging more painful. You’re jolting your connective tissue with every step and straining yourself and putting yourself at risk of injury. You need Alexander Technique.”

Jr. “It’s too expensive. My parents can’t afford it.”

Sr. “There are easier ways to run. There are easier ways to talk to people. There are easier ways to relate to yourself. There are easier ways to go through life. When you tire of the results you’re getting now, you’ll be open to learning new things that will impart more grace into your efforts.”