There are a couple of conversations going on at the moment that have had me reflecting on the safety of conversation and the fear of depth. In one, Vanessa is talking about how her experience of being able to have deep conversations has varied depending on where she is and whom she is talking to.
When I was younger, I was under the impression that Boyz R Dumb because all of my friends were girls, and we were all of similar intelligence and interests. The few boys I interacted with were generally brilliant, but I assumed that they were some sort of oddball, not realizing that the girls I spent time with were also oddballs because of the sex ratio.
This flipped when I started working in software engineering because the population changed. I’d hang out with my male colleagues and marvel at their mental quickness and introspection, and then meet random women and struggle to focus on their conversations. I like to discuss fashion and media and parenting and such, but I’ve found that I discuss it too… well… deeply, and struggle to remain superficial enough to entertain my audience.
This has now flipped back again, as I live a more sex-segregated lifestyle. Hanging out with classical homeschooling moms leaves me with the impression that women are so deep and that it’s perfectly normal to stand around with a toddler on the hip while discussing whether equality is a purely social construct. Then I try to share our best conversational tidbits with the men I meet and am generally met with glazed eyes and redirection to the weather.
So I am going from that to one of the deeper passages in the Bible. One of those that scares me: the idea that branches can be cut off challenges the idea that we can be assured of salvation, and the need to abide, to stand, to fellowship with the Incarnate Almighty.
This passage challenges me with my unworthiness. I would rather talk about the weather, or be in a combox. It is a fearful thing to be in the hands of the living God.
1“I am the true vine, and my Father is the vinegrower. 2He removes every branch in me that bears no fruit. Every branch that bears fruit he prunes to make it bear more fruit. 3You have already been cleansed by the word that I have spoken to you. 4Abide in me as I abide in you. Just as the branch cannot bear fruit by itself unless it abides in the vine, neither can you unless you abide in me. 5I am the vine, you are the branches. Those who abide in me and I in them bear much fruit, because apart from me you can do nothing. 6Whoever does not abide in me is thrown away like a branch and withers; such branches are gathered, thrown into the fire, and burned. 7If you abide in me, and my words abide in you, ask for whatever you wish, and it will be done for you. 8My Father is glorified by this, that you bear much fruit and become my disciples. 9As the Father has loved me, so I have loved you; abide in my love. 10If you keep my commandments, you will abide in my love, just as I have kept my Father’s commandments and abide in his love. 11I have said these things to you so that my joy may be in you, and that your joy may be complete.”
It looks like, from this, that abiding leads to the production of fruit. The natural question, then, is what is fruit.
Well in depth lies danger. And one fruit that we have to account as such is raising children. There is a comment by Paul that women are saved in childbearing. This clearly is not fully the case: he also says that the celibate live is a calling and probably preferable — but the self sacrifice required to raise children forces women to stop being selfish and to ignore the feminist merit badges, as Elspeth points out.
Having the intelligence and persistence to succeed at something that is difficult is desireableLike educating a houseful of children, managing the family budget, helping him administratively with his business enterprises, and still managing to look halfway decent while doing it?
All of these things meet that criteria and none require a college degree.
In all of this, we need to be mistrustful of proxy measures. A proxy measure is something that correlates with what you want to measure but is simple, easy and cheap. An example would be ECG monitoring of arrhythmias or Q-Tc measurements: we want to stop fatal arrhythmias but the correlation between ECG changes and sudden death is but moderate (and one intervention that decreased ECG changes — lignocaine — increased total death rates).
I think that a fair amount of our credentialing — our IQ tests, the multiple assessments required in any training scheme, our degrees, is an attempt to find proxies for a successful and wise life, that produces benefits to those around us. In fact, chasing the proxy — that degree (and I have a few of them) — can lead you to becoming shallow, proud and fruitless, as this example demonstrates.
So, it seems to me that a few folks have their dander up because they’re not college educated and choose not to be. Hey, that’s your choice and if that’s what you want to do, obviously it’s working for you. The point of contention that seems to exist is the assertion that a man would rather have a pretty waitress as a wife rather than a pretty college-educated woman, all things being equal. I call that bunk.
…. Or the assumption is that the waitress is very pretty and the college educated woman must be hideous. Obviously this doesn’t hold true for real life as there are a good number of pretty co-eds in the world. Or the pretty waitress is nice and kind and the college educated career woman isn’t. Or the pretty waitress is sexually available to her husband while the career woman couldn’t possibly be. Or …
An arrogant attitude shuts down a conversation in depth. If you are around this in real life, you turn again to the weather, which at least changes every 15 minutes. And in the hope I can correct this, and to save one of the few places left we can talk in depth, I better go back to a certain combox and wield a cluebat.
