James Altucher wrote an interesting article on dealing with sorrow the other day. He discussed friends and family dying or committing suicide, fear of losing one's house, loss of a fully satisfactory relationship with one's children due to divorce, and so on. I thought it was a heartfelt effort on Altucher's part to comfort those who mourn, truly a nice gesture. Oddly enough, there are those who disagree.

One commenter wrote, in a post full of expletives, "You guys are losers seriously.... Man ... up and get ... over it." Another responded to this comment (capitalization left as was): "i kinda agree. talk to any vet from wwII or vietnam or even the recent sand pits. black inside,  yeah many know that... and i hate cupcakes. people now feel 'so sad' if they don't get enough likes to their facebook post about getting a morning coffee. pathetic."

Now obviously the latter commenter doesn't speak for all veterans as he implies, but for the sake of argument let's assume that his attitude is representative of that of war veterans. This is a good reason to be a conscientious objector: Going to war will make you so self-centered and emotionally dead that the suffering of others is "pathetic" if they haven't gone through everything you have.

On the other hand, I know that a lot of veterans are truly kind people. People react to adverse situations in very personal ways, and sometimes in suffering they learn compassion for the suffering of others. As Altucher wrote, "When you go through so much sorrow you know that it makes no sense to be mean or cruel to the people around you."

Everyone suffers, whether it be the unimaginable sufferings of a prisoner of war in the hands of an enemy without conscience, or the emotional pain of someone who feels rejected from a lack of facebook likes. One might seem like nothing compared to the other, yet each individual experiences suffering in his own way, and different individuals have vastly different capacities for dealing with pain or sorrow. The morally mature person, rather than call people "losers," chooses to "mourn with those that mourn" and "comfort those that stand in need of comfort."

We all make mistakes, and it's easy to look down on someone who we consider to be emotionally weak. Nevertheless, now is always a good time to renew one's resolve to show compassion toward others...

Arguments over God’s nature are interesting in that it’s always assumed that the opposing party is doomed to an eternity of suffering in hell. It was a major point of contention in early Christianity that pitted Arianism and Sabellianism against the mainstream Christians. Sidney Rigdon was following this idea common among the various sects of Christianity when he taught that “a correct idea of [God’s] character, perfections, and attributes” was essential to salvation.

The doctrine of the Godhead underwent significant development during the early years of the restoration. The first edition of the Book of Mormon seemed to support the traditional trinitarian doctrine, the Three Witnesses in particular providing a very simplistic summary in stating that “honor be to the Father, and to the Son, and to the Holy Ghost, which is one God.” Later, in late 1834 or early 1835, the members of the Church were taught that “the Father [is] a personage of spirit,” and the son “is a personage of tabernacle” while the Holy Ghost is not a personage, but the mind of the Father and the Son. Finally, by 1843, the modern Mormon doctrine of the Godhead was taught: “The Father has a body of flesh and bones as tangible as man’s; the Son also; but the Holy Ghost has not a body of flesh and bones, but is a personage of Spirit. Were it not so, the Holy Ghost could not dwell in us.”

Why is this important? Based on the fact that the doctrine developed over the years rather than being made clear and consistent from the beginning, I had assumed that despite Sidney Rigdon and the assertions of all of Christianity, the details of the nature of God were of secondary importance to the moral teachings of Christ. I thought that the gradual evolution of the doctrine of the Godhead meant that man would be judged on his works rather than whether he was correct in his beliefs when it came to the details of doctrine: “And of tenets thou shalt not talk.”

I thought it was a reasonable belief: a person would be saved if they did all they could to follow the example and commandments of Christ, regardless of whether they believed God was a Spirit or a thousand foot tall robot. Elder Dallin H. Oaks threw a wrench into this assumption when he stated in a Mission Presidents’ Seminar last year, “Joseph Smith’s First Vision showed that the prevailing concepts of the nature of God and the Godhead were untrue and could not lead their adherents to the destiny God desired for them.” According to Elder Oaks, a correct understanding of the nature of the Godhead is indeed essential to salvation.

I’m comfortable with the fact that Church leaders are human and can err from time to time. If one of them comes up with something off the wall, I am happy assume that I’m right and he is wrong, especially if he or other leaders take a contrary view in later talks. I don’t believe there are people on the sun, I believe it’s good to have a personal relationship with Christ, and I believe God’s love is unconditional. I hope that doesn’t make me a heretic or an apostate; I think modern general authorities will agree with me on at least two out of the three points.

On the other hand, I’m not comfortable that Elder Oaks is wrong in this case. I don’t agree with everything Dallin H. Oaks says, of course. For example, I don’t think a government needs the power of conscription to survive; if a national government that has not abused its citizenry goes to war, it should find plenty of volunteers provided that the war is truly defensive. Political opinions aside, though, Elder Oaks is one of the most adept theologians among Church leadership. If he claims that a correct understanding of the nature of God is essential to salvation, he probably has a good reason to say so.

Why does Elder Oaks make this claim? Since he did not go into detail himself, one can only speculate. We’re in the unfortunate situation of not having access to the leaders of our movement: We’re just too big these days. Perhaps he is in agreement with Sidney Rigdon’s assertion that a correct understanding of God’s nature is necessary to properly exercise faith. Perhaps he based his view on Joseph Smith’s teaching that “It is impossible for a man to be saved in ignorance.” If the latter is the case, then Elder Oaks’ assertion is not necessarily in direct contradiction to the viewpoint I so recently espoused: We’re all going to die pretty ignorant anyway, so our actions in this life matter most, and we’ll have plenty of time to correct our mistaken ideas both in and after this life.

What does this mean? The big lesson to take away from this is not to take my word for anything. I’m not an official representative of the Church, and I’m not particularly good at expounding doctrine -- or at doing anything for that matter. What I write is merely my best effort to understand the meaning of life, the universe, and everything.

A friend recently told me about a product he was going to try out that was supposed to clean out the body and allow it to function and heal at its best. There were some striking claims about the product, including that it would cause one to expell his liver stones and gallstones painlessly -- and that every patient who took the product had these stones inside his body. Its promoters told of how they had lost a lot of weight and felt healthier than ever. I'm always somewhat skeptical of health products with grandiose claims, and these stories of painless gallstone removal raised a red flag in my mind right away. The fact that it was an MLM only further aroused my skepticism.

True2Life was the name of the company, though I hadn't been told right away and had to figure it out for myself. Apparently it was a very new company, so I couldn't find any criticism of them at all. Since I couldn't find anything except the company's own propaganda, I decided not to discourage my friend from buying into the product. I don't like multi-level deals, but I wasn't about to argue over that end of the principle. I told him I'd wait to see how it worked out for him, and wished him the best.

Two days after he started the program -- and he was really impressed by the results by this time -- I hit the jackpot I was looking for. An article called "The Truth about Gallblader and Liver 'Flushes'" described True2Life's LiverPure product that my friend had just used quite closely. I reviewed the supplement ingredients: LiverPrep was primarily magnesium sulphate (Epsom Salt), a laxative. Liver Clean was safflower oil, and was taken in conjuction with lemon juice. The oil and lemon juice formed into balls of soap in the digestive system, which were stained with bile (the Epsom Salt stimulates the release of bile from the gallbladder) and discharged from the body via a bowel movement. The clue here was that the so-called "stones" floated, which does not happen with gallstones. The company's propaganda states that "you will be thankful they are no longer in your body!" The untold truth is that they weren't in the customer's body until he took the product.

Customers are encouraged to send their "biostones" to the company for lab analysis. They are then told that the "stones" contained sulfate, sulfide, and other contaminants. What they aren't told is how much; if the lab actually found these compounds, they were in trace amounts which could easily happen through exposure to air or contaminated lab equipment. True2Life sends the stones to a soil analysis lab, not any sort of medical laboratory. Indeed if there were significant amounts of these compounds the stones would be acidic, not basic, though True2Life's website admits that the stones are basic. Basicity is a characteristic of soap.

It turns out my friend paid $350 for a laxative, some vegetable oil, and some energy drinks. One buys this product and poops out balls of soap, which are hailed as proof that his body is being purified. Maybe so, but True2Life has done an even better job at cleaning out his wallet.

A few days ago I went up to the United States to take care of some business. It wasn't going to be a pleasant trip, since it was coming on the heels of an argument between my business partner and me, the former concerned that in my recent 100-hour workweeks I wasn't dedicating enough time to the company. I shouldn't have taken that Sunday off, I guess. What I wouldn't do to avoid the drama.

The trip began with a ride up to Tijuana in a "route" taxi -- a van or minivan that says "TAXI" on the side, and crams as many people as possible inside to go along a predetermined route, sort of like a semi-privatized miniature bus. When I arrived in Tijuana, I walked on toward the San Ysidro border crossing. While strolling across a bridge I noticed the cars lined up on the next bridge over, quite a ways from me. "That's not a good sign," I thought. If there was a long line of cars waiting to cross the border, there would be a long line of pedestrians too.

During the day, a pedestrian border crosser at San Ysidro will often wait in line between an hour and a half and two and a half hours. I've been in waits as long as four hours. I often wonder, as I did this day, how the government gets away with making people suffer these long waits in the blistering sun or the cold rain. Suffering is admittedly a strong term; border crossers don't suffer nearly as much as a cancer patient, for example, but it's still not a pleasant experience. It is indeed a form of suffering the United States inflicts on its citizens, residents, and visitors. I remembered that some years back the news mentioned that two people died from carbon monoxide poisoning because of the long wait in traffic at this border crossing. A few weeks ago a death was reported from someone being shot by a drug cartel member while waiting in line. They may tell us that the process is in place for our safety, but the results don't seem to match the rhetoric.

"If they're not being honest about protecting us, then why this tedious process?" I asked myself, "Why do I have to wait so long in uncomfortable conditions just for the privilege of entering my own country?" I occasionally wondered if it was a form of punishment for the great crime of having left the physical boundaries of the United States. Perhaps they don't like us spending our money outside the country. I remembered recently seeing U.S. Customs officers holding up entry into Mexico as well, examining those southbound vehicles and persons. It was eerily reminiscent of East Germany: Without authorization from the authorities nobody comes in, and nobody goes out.

I turned my glance to the left. There was the SENTRI line for vehicles. The SENTRI line is for people who have purchased a special pass from the government which permits them to cross the border with minimal -- 15 minutes as opposed to several hours -- wait. It's a nifty system: You pay the bribe, you get special treatment. It's more than just a bribe though. You pay the money, and get an interview and background check to see if the government will grant you the privilege of having a SENTRI pass. If they decide they don't like you, there's no refunds. You're out your money. Ostensibly the background check prevents undesirable types from holding SENTRI cards. It was at this point that I found out who the undesirables are. I noticed that a large portion of the cars in the SENTRI lane were Mercedes Benz, Lincoln Town Cars, Hummers, Lincoln Navigators, and so forth. Of the rest, even the oldest, most worn out car was nicer than the banged up '96 Ford Contour my wife and I drive around Rosarito. Apparently our government thinks the terrorist vs. citizen dichotomy falls generally along working class vs. upper class lines. "Ah, well," I thought, "there goes the hopes in that SENTRI application I submitted a few weeks ago."

This thought still fresh in my mind, I made my way with the slow moving line into the customs building. Here my glance turned to the right, where stand the poor abused souls in what the customs officers call the "non-WHTI line." These are the people -- most, if not all, U.S. citizens -- without approved entry documents. They are punished with a wait that makes two and a half hours look quick. I observed this line carefully through the rest of my wait. It contained a larger portion of minorities than the other lines: Blacks, Hispanics, Asians, and so forth. There were Whites too, but everyone in the line showed the signs of working class status in their dress and appearance. In many cases their manner of speech bespoke a lack of secondary education. "This is how it has been set up," I told myself, "We've been divided into privileged, semi-privileged, and lower classes. And the minorities are more likely to end up in the lower classes." Well, maybe I should have taken the insane ramblings of those left-wing Democrats a little more seriously. These people probably couldn't afford the hefty fees for a passport, or for some reason the government refused it to them. Perhaps in some cases -- as happened once to me before the existence of this unhappy line -- their identification had been stolen in Tijuana. I know that many would simply brush this off by saying that if they can't afford the passport they don't need to be going down to Mexico. The U.S. is a free country for those who can afford it.

When I finally got to the front of the line, the officer asked what I was bringing back from Mexico. "Nothing," I responded. "What's in your backpack?" I had just told her that I didn't have anything to declare. If she thinks I'm being honest it's none of her business; if she doesn't believe me, she should search the backpack. Like they'll do with the x-ray machine in a moment anyway. Some customs officers are more obnoxiously nosy than others. Oh well, she has the gun, and it's a small issue not worth fighting over. I named off the contents of my backpack, and then proceeded when waved on.

The last step of in the San Ysidro pedestrian crossing is putting your purses, backpacks, or luggage through the x-ray machine. Funny, they don't seem to x-ray the contents of the cars. I noticed as my backpack was going through the device, that there was a logo on the machine that said "Rapiscan." That made sense; Rapiscan Systems was a client of Michael Chertoff, former Secretary of Homeland Security turned security consultant. "So it really isn't about safety," I thought to myself, "It's about making the money flow into the pockets of the right people." Well, as long as there are people willing to harass others in exchange for a badge and a gun... I walked out of the building relieved to be done with the ordeal, and with some former contradictions clarified in my mind.

After walking a few blocks up to a 99 Cents Store, I went to a payphone to call a friend of mine. I had chatted with this friend just before departing, and he had promised to come pick me up. I told him I only had a single quarter, so I needed him to answer, or at least drive straight to the meeting place as soon as the call came in. I dropped in my quarter and dialed. One ring. Two. Three. Voice mail. "Thanks Jimmy," I muttered as I hung up. I walked over to the street and waited for half an hour, just in case he noticed the call. Then I began the two hour walk to Imperial Beach.

Walking along the beach with my wife I began to look at the remains of the sand crabs. Even in the most tranquil settings of this world one can find reminders of death. I turned my eyes over to the birds wading in the shallow edge of the water. I wondered about the sea life; how much pain do they feel when they are being eaten? How developed are their nervous systems? Simple observation shows that fish can at least feel fear, but I'm not a biologist; I'm only a philosopher, and not a very good one.

We continued walking, and my wife pointed out a seagull standing on one leg: Its second leg was missing a foot. "For all its beauty, nature is very cruel," I remarked. She commented on what pain the poor thing must have gone through when it lost that foot. It's not just the prey that suffers. Human society is the same way. Everyone weeps at times.

I'm one of those unreasonable people who believe in God. It's comforting to believe. Atheism offers the somewhat comforting thought that suffering has an end, but that's not good enough for me. I don't like to think of the child born in disease and poverty, who knows only pain throughout his entire life, having it end with complete nonexistence. There may be no more pain, but it's unpleasant to think that pain was all he experienced in his brief existence. More pleasant is the thought of his life ending with rebirth into a perfect world in which he rests from his suffering and experiences the joy that others of us have felt for at least fleeting moments. That's the American in me: I demand a happy ending.

Suffering isn't my peculiar philosophical problem: It has bothered man since his beginning. We don't like a cruel nature, and our myths deal with this. God made the world good, and Adam and Eve messed it up by eating the fruit. Christianity adds the happy ending: Christ suffered and died for us, so that suffering might end and happiness be the final state of man. We just need patience and it will happen in God's good time. On the other hand, we also had to tack a hell onto our myth; we don't want happiness for our enemies, do we? Nature isn't the only one who's cruel.

My mind returned to the fish. Mormonism claims that the animals have spirits just like human beings. "John saw ... every creature that was in heaven," said Joseph Smith, "all the beasts, fowls and fish in heaven. ... John learned that God glorified Himself by saving all that His hands had made, whether beasts, fowls, fishes or men; and He will glorify Himself with them." I also remembered that Orson Pratt, explaining how the reborn earth will have room for all the righteous people who ever lived, mentioned that "the new earth is represented by the Apostle John, as being without any sea." "Where will all the fish go?" I asked myself.

Where will all the fish go? That question is representative of the unanswerable. There's always an apparent contradiction, an unknown, in any system of philosophy. Whether you're trying to explain existence through physics, biology, mathematics, metaphysics, or religion, there's always something beyond your grasp. There's always the Riemann hypothesis, and even if we solve it there will be something else. Kurt Gödel proved that there are unprovables. Occam's razor has failed us, because the universe is more complicated than it has to be. A human being can't know everything, and even humanity as a whole will probably never be able to figure everything out.

Maybe it'll happen in the afterlife. Is believing in God a cop-out? Perhaps, but it serves its purpose. If we can't know everything, we might as well believe in something nice. Something along the lines of suffering, the fundamental principle of existence on earth, being but a brief temporary initiation into an eternity of happiness. In the meantime we ought to do all we can to relieve suffering, and while doing so I'll keep that hope in order to avoid complete despair when realizing the monumental nature of the task...

In the past I’ve wrongly lamented the absurdity of prophets who don’t prophesy and apostles who haven’t seen Christ. If “Mormonism” is true, then the times in which we are living are very peculiar and have a special purpose. Doubtless if the Latter-day Saints were living up to their obligations and their leaders were completely fulfilling their callings, we’d have wonderful manifestations in our meetings, and marvelous new revelations would be regularly uttered by the President of the Church and other leaders and members.

Such things are only of secondary importance to our age, however. According to Mormon theology, there is a massive undertaking that needs to be coordinated between the world of the living and the world of spirits. In past epochs, the gospel was preached by prophets and apostles so that a handful of elect could be saved from each age who would be able to coordinate this work among the dead of their milieu. In our age, there is a responsibility beyond preaching the gospel to the living; certain ceremonies are to be effected for each and every person who has lived and died on the planet in conjunction with teaching efforts in the world of the dead.

Wilford Woodruff was told by Joseph Smith in a vision that “every dispensation that has had the Priesthood on the earth and has gone into the celestial kingdom, has had a certain amount of work to do to prepare to go to the earth with the Savior when He goes to reign on the earth. Each dispensation has had ample time to do this work. We have not. We are the last dispensation, and so much work has to be done and we need to be in a hurry in order to accomplish it.”

Mormonism is an optimistic religion. Its temples, where the aforementioned ceremonies for the dead take place, are a symbol of hope. They represent a hope for the salvation of all of humanity. Brigham Young taught that Joseph Smith, though dead, “will never cease his operations under the directions of the Son of God, until the last ones of the children of men are saved that can be, from Adam till now.”

Well, if it’s our job to make sure that salvation through Christ is provided, or at least offered, to every single person who ever lived -- if we can do something that can prevent as many people as possible from suffering eternal torment; if we can bring suffering in general to its absolute minimum -- then I could care less if we miss out on seeing some angelic manifestation or hearing some marvelous prophecy. Give me managers that can make this work happen, and leave behind the charismatic leaders who can attract a multitude of followers but can’t finish anything they start. If we’re relieving suffering, then this job is too important to play around with.

In a 1997 interview, when asked about modern day revelation, President Gordon B. Hinckley responded, “We don’t need much revelation.” He was right. We’ve already received enough revelation to put us to work. We can spend our efforts gathering the names of our ancestors and attending to the temple ceremonies for them. We can also baptize interested living persons into Church membership so they can do the same for their ancestors, and perhaps we can make some progress on the work we were given. Maybe then we’ll be counted worthy of some of the signs given to the faithful. Those are just sugar, though; let our leaders build us temples and concoct expensive PR campaigns to keep the rest of the world off our backs while we work to its benefit. That’s all we really need from them.

Yes, I had joined in the growing chorus of complaints about the fact that Church leaders don’t seem to teach anything but generic moral platitudes. I’ve complained about the increasing shallowness of each new revision of our lesson manuals. I used to consider that we were being spiritually starved in our meetings. Well, nothing’s stopping any of us from having our own personal relationship with God, and receiving whatever spiritual nourishment we need for ourselves. In the meantime, Joseph Smith provided us with a job to do, and the more recent Presidents of the Church have provided us with the means to do it. If we can save humanity, then let’s do it!

I recently installed cl-gd in order to manipulate graphics in a web application I'm working on in Common Lisp. I've made some notes below in case they turn out to be useful to other relative newcomers to the Common Lisp world...

If you installed the cl-gd library with Quicklisp you may come across an "undefined alien function" error when you try to use it. This is one of those libraries that has some "helper code" written in C. You'll have to compile this -- you'll find it wherever Quicklisp installed the library, which was "/home/jeremiah/quicklisp/dists/quicklisp/software/cl-gd-0.5.7/" in my case.

There's a nice Makefile provided which makes compilation as easy as typing "make" if you're a GNU/Linux user. If you're using Debian you may come across a "cannot find -liconv" error -- Debian simply uses the iconv() functions in libc6. You can just remove "-liconv" from the Makefile, unless you need to work with codepages that aren't in libc6 (which would be beyond the scope of this blog entry).

Make will create a file called "cl-gd-glue.so" for you, which is what you needed to be able to use the library. Happy hacking!