The Friday Update - The Allocation

Happy Friday,

Jesus instructs us to stop “storing up our treasures on earth, where moth and rust destroy,” but to invest in eternity instead. He then says, “For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.” Some claim this means our spending reveals our heart. Yes. But while that is true, Jesus actually makes a different point: our spending shapes our heart. In order to love the true, beautiful and good, we must invest in it.  

The Allocation

This time lapse shows the changing ways 25–35-year-olds spend their free time. It’s neither surprising nor pretty. 

Plant Now 

After conceding that with enough caffeine, a student can cram a quarter’s worth of learning into the three days before a final exam, Covey’s Law of the Farmer notes that: 1) Farmers cannot live that way. If they want a crop in the fall, they have to plant in the spring; and 2) what might work in your 20s often works less well—or not at all—in your 30s and 40s. Recent grads: learn to farm while you’re young.

One Book

When asked what book he’d select if he was to be stranded on a desert island, G.K. Chesterton famously quipped: Thomas’s Guide to Practical Shipbuilding.

Overheard

1) One mark of a smart person is their ability to learn from people they don't like.

2) Competency gets you in the room. Character keeps you there.

3) The Bible never records someone hearing from the Lord and saying, “Of course. That’s what I was going to do anyway.”

4) Our wounds, past, failings and flaws do not define or disqualify us unless we hide behind them.

5) The OJ Simpson episode was a national-negative making everyone worse: the prosecution failed, the defense further marred lawyers’ reputations; Ito allowed the trial to become a circus; the media pandered; and the public showed their preference for soap-operas and sensationalized whodunits over sober news coverage. Oh, and the victims died and OJ went to jail anyway.

6) It’s amazing how little encouragement people need to keep going. And amazing how few receive even a little.

Quotes

1) “The digital revolution can bring big pieces of heaven, but it will drift toward hell unless we steer it and form the right kinds of habits.” — Ben Sasse

2) “Life is all about perspective. The sinking of the Titanic was a miracle to the lobsters in the ship's kitchen.” — Wynne McLaughlin

3) “Before I married, I had three theories about raising children and no children. Now I have three children and no theories.” — John Wilmot

4) “The pupil dilates in darkness and in the end finds light, just as the soul dilates in misfortune and in the end finds God.” — Victor Hugo 

Without Comment

1) In the 1950s, 88% of US women married before turning 30. In the 60s, 91% did. In the 70s, 82%. In the 80s, 68%. In the 90s, 55%. In the 2000s, 45%. In the 2010s, 32%. It’s currently 28%.

2) In an effort to cap grade inflation, Harvard is now capping As.

3) In 1900, global life expectancy was 32 years. Today, it’s over 70.

4) Although the market is at all-time highs, U of Michigan’s index of consumer sentiment shows Americans to be “gloomier” than at any point in the last 70 years.  

5) After looking at 370K personal statements from high school essays before and after AI, Georgetown data scientists found that students now write more colorfully while communicating fewer ideas. More depressingly, human judges found the new essays more impressive.

6) By some calculations, the annual European death toll from hot weather is higher than the annual American death toll from guns.

Weirder

A friend’s friend – who is studying at one of the world’s top universities – reports that his cohort in philosophy is divided between "Marxists and gay, celibate, Latin Mass Roman Catholics who embrace Antisemitism and anti-immigrant nativism.” The world is getting weirder. By this I do not mean: Western, Educated, Industrialized, Rich, Democratic, Ex-Christian and Romantic (ala Joseph Henrich and Andrew Wilson). I mean bizarre. There’s a crazy amount of crazy out there – especially in Higher Ed.

WOTW

Honorable mention goes to quiet thriving (an anti-burnout backlash) and the Thanatos Syndrome (a term from Walker Percy’s novel The Thanatos Syndrome that is being pressed into service to describe Canada’s slide deeper into M.A.I.D. thinking). Full honors goes to digital decay (although many think what goes online stays online forever, Pew Research found that one-third of webpages that existed in 2013 are no longer available). BTW, I am not selecting under-babied, which was recently used by a government official to who should have known better, because, well, one hopes it never catches on. (Although one does hope that those who use terms like under-babied remain personally under-babied.)

Resources

1) Click here to hear the first of a six week sermon series I'm giving on forgiveness.

2) Click here for your last chance to sign up for Andy Crouch’s talk on the habits that lead to a Tech-wise life. He's giving it at the Lake Forest campus of Christ Church on Monday at 7PM. (Sorry, this talk is not being live-streamed or recorded). 

Closing Prayer

“Remember, O Lord, those who are poor and in need, the widows, the orphans, the strangers, those in captivity and those in exile, the sick and the suffering. Remember, O Lord, those who love us and those who hate us; those who have asked us to pray for them, and those whom we have not remembered through ignorance. Remember all Your people, O Lord, and pour out Your rich mercy upon all. Amen.” (Liturgy of St. Basil, 329-379 A.D.)