Going to Boston right before the school year started was about the best thing I could do for myself beginning year two of my academic career at Ohio State, trying to figure out why planning and policy matter to God, and hell, anyone else for that matter.

It’s interesting how if you listen for it enough, you being to see how God answers questions for you – some that you didn’t even know you we asking until the lines of logic run themselves in a way that God reminds you He’s sovereign, and well, you’re not.

Two in particular things I’ve reflected on the last couple weeks that got some more clarity through the wonderful conversations of Chris, Hans, Rachel, Taroon, Jake, and all the other random people here I had the pleasure of meeting, spending time with, and asking them if they could have sex with any Hollywood actor or actress who it would be (Mr. Depp is in the lead).

One was a feeling that I was warring with for awhile was a feeling that, for the first time in my life, I didn’t want to be friends with everyone.  In fact, I was beginning to feel I didn’t want to be friends with most people.  It’s not that they’re bad people, or that I’m all of the sudden super anti-social.  No, it’s just that I’ve found that I don’t have time in my life anymore for people that aren’t interesting in some way.

I know that as soon as I write it that sounds elitist.  Ironically, I don’t mean it to, because by interesting, I don’t mean they have to be what one would expect interesting to be, because to tell you the truth I think I’d grow bored of the kid who lived in Africa hunting on daddy’s money and is at Cambridge studying Philosophy because “I wanted to find something that really spoke to me”.

…okay, so maybe that might be interesting.  And maybe I’m defining it improperly, but my buddy Chris and I really talked about this at length with each other, and it happened to find its way into other conversations.  Other friends of mine agreed – they just didn’t hang out with people they didn’t find interesting.

As I’ve thought about it since then, I think I’ve realized what it is.  It’s not I don’t want to deal with uninteresting people.  The uninteresting part is just  a byproduct of something else.  Instead, I don’t really want to spend time with inauthentic people. 

I’m tired of spending time with people that haven’t spent any time figuring out themselves and being that person.  This is why I don’t feel like hob-nobing with the top 1% would solve my dilemma.  People who are authentic, I think, are people who have seen all their good, all their bad, and take it.  It’s not that authentic people are perfect, they’re just aware of their imperfection, and are probably enough at ease with it that it doesn’t get to them too much.

I know one of the counterarguments to what I’m saying is often “well, you just have to get more comfortable with them”.  I call crap on that.  While every sane person will withhold certain things for more intimate locales and bedfellows, they won’t leave conversation to simple self-absorbed small talk.  With so many great, deep topics to concern yourself with, why not?  At the very minimum, shouldn’t someone be able to say what they what they’re about?  Can you, for instance, tell me what you do for a living?  Can you tell me what you think about what I do (for goodness sakes, I work with cities, we live in them… not that hard), and add an anecdote to it from your own experience?  Do you like… stuff?   Can you quote that Simpsons episode – any episode?

The reason why I think it’s being inauthentic as well, is that I think it’s reversible in both directions.  People can become more authentic, people can become less.  You can hear it in their conversations.  In the way they lead their lives. 

Not for just themselves.

The biggest hallmark of authenticity in my mind is a life lived for something outside yourself.  Think about the people you respect.  Why?  What did they do?  Now think about a bunch of people you don’t care about all that much.  What do they do?

You see?

I give slack to some people within my generation, because we still are trying to figure things out.  One should never expect an 18 year old to be authentic – most of them don’t even know much outside themselves and their world.  But after college, I don’t know if you have much excuse.  By then you choose to live for yourself or something else.  And even in the midst of the most altruistic things lie people who are in it for #1.

We’re even encouraged by Jesus (the most interesting man ever to live… I mean, polish of a couple Guiness with a dude who’s all man and all God and you tell me how that’s not interesting) that if we want a life worth living, we need to surrender the one we’ve got.  The thing is that I don’t think that’s just a Jesus thing.  There are plenty of non-Christians that I think are authentic.  They found something more important than themselves to live for.  They listen to things more important than them, they seek out things more interesting than themselves.

God help me to everyday be authentic.  To be more interesting in You and the world and less in myself.

God help me to be interesting.

So how’s this for a new idea: repackage Head, Heart, Hands and put it on the blog once a week.  I miss being able to do HHH because it gave me an opportunity to look at the world around me and attempt on the good and bad about it, and try to provide alternatives.  So, here I sit at the Grandview Ave Caribou Coffee with my little Netbook.

Recently on Facebook, I had posted an article from Ad Busters magazine about Hipsters, and their place in culture by Andrew Haddow.  In particular, one part struck me:

We are a lost generation, desperately clinging to anything that feels real, but too afraid to become it ourselves. We are a defeated generation, resigned to the hypocrisy of those before us, who once sang songs of rebellion and now sell them back to us. We are the last generation, a culmination of all previous things, destroyed by the vapidity that surrounds us. The hipster represents the end of Western civilization – a culture so detached and disconnected that it has stopped giving birth to anything new.

As an optimist, as a Christian who is aligned with a redemptive worldview and celebrates Christ’s work in this world, and as someone who tries to give people the benefit of the doubt, I still can’t help but agree with the sentiment. 

I’ve said before that I’ve secretly wanted to be hipster.  I own an American Apparel jacket and some t-shirts (I like fair labor), the last 12-pack I bought was PBR (cheap + not completely swill = bought), and I have an appreciation for indie music, because while sometimes it simply sucks, I’m glad there are still enough people who are willing to attempt creativity without completely giving in corporately. 

However, the malady of the Hipster (counter?)culture is that I think it lacks a (the) capability/desire/recognition to answer the “why” question of their life any deeper that what’s immediately in front of the screen or phone or glossy ad in front of them.

Haddow speaks to this a little more earlier in the article:

Hipsterdom is the first "counterculture" to be born under the advertising industry’s microscope, leaving it open to constant manipulation but also forcing its participants to continually shift their interests and affiliations. Less a subculture, the hipster is a consumer group – using their capital to purchase empty authenticity and rebellion. But the moment a trend, band, sound, style or feeling gains too much exposure, it is suddenly looked upon with disdain. Hipsters cannot afford to maintain any cultural loyalties or affiliations for fear they will lose relevance.

I would go so far as to say this is not limited to Hipsters, but just about every classification of people that an agency is capable of producing an ad for.  And my generation specifically (Millennials or whatever crap you want to call us) continues to allow itself to be vulnerable to this.  This is easily found when you ask someone in their mid born between 1978-1985 why are there doing anything.  Ask the guy next to you why he rides the bus.  Ask the kid why he goes to the parties.  Ask the senior getting her engineering degree why she’s doing that.  I get shrugged shoulders more often than not, and certainly more often than I wished.

I’m sure this is not a problem endemic to just my peoples, but I am sure it is exacerbated amongst them.  And it concerns me as we are in the very early stages of asserting ourselves in someway as leaders in this society that the balance of us are going to become completely irrelevant because we’re chasing the scene.

The best immunization against irrelevancy, I believe, is a deeper sense of purpose – knowing the “why”.  Living in a larger why helps in maintaining integrity, and I think staves of deeper insecurities.  People obviously feel this is important, or none of us would have ever heard of Rick Warren.  In this leading edge group of peers I have, however, I fear our purpose is encapsulated in consumerism, which is personified at its worst in the Hipster subculture.

In other words, I’m pretty sure Mark Zuckerberg now owns the majority of my peer’s souls, who in turns sells it to whomever dictates cool.  Hipsters at the very least recognize the irony in others (while perhaps not in themselves).

I don’t think most of the rest of us ever will.

When I used to work at American Standard, I would leave the blog website up all day and would come to it whenever I couldn’t deal with my work for awhile.  I’d type progressive through an idea and by the end of the day would have a nice entry for public consumption.  It kept my mind sharp amid the deluge of statistics, and I found I actually did both jobs better.  This has been proven now on shop floors, and I’m sure will apply to rendering site plans.

I’ve been motivated to write again, mostly because I sat down and read through my blog again and thought “hey, this isn’t all that bad!”  Furthermore, I like the ability to go back through my life since 2001 and know what I was thinking at the time.  And to tell you the truth, I miss things like “head, heart, and hands” which gave me a chance to talk about very simple things that meant something to me in my heart.

So I don’t think I’ll be a every day blogger.  I doubt I’ll ever make money off the deal, but at least I’ll write more.

Be looking.  I have a lot on my plate to get out.

My life has changed a little bit since the last time I posted, and I have bit more free time to dedicate to thinking and understanding why I do the things I do.  It’s something we should all repetitively take stalk in.  It’s not to say I don’t know what I want out of my life, but rather I want to continue to check and recheck my motives, and as the trajectory of my life continues to launch, I’m adjusting rightly.

So, as many of you know, I’m still doing the City and Regional Planning schtick.  For my first year I did well grade-wise, and I enjoy my internship.  But as the year progressed I began to think to myself “why is it that I do this work?”  I started to really dig into the question as a result of my Planning Theory class, and just my own rumination on the topic.

After watching plenty of college students languish in the “why-am-I-here-why-do-I-need-to-care-about-college” thing (which, for the record, I think at 18 is okay), I think coming to graduate school I should know.  After all, I have $40,000+ riding on it, and don’t want to waste my money.

I want to start posting these thoughts online because I’m hoping some of you that:

1. Do the Jesus thing
2. Do the Planning thing
3. Do both
4. Do neither

may have some insight into these things.  So I’ll throw some ideas out there, I’ll hope for some feedback, and I’ll keep moving on.  Let me say that I’m trying on some levels to be critical so that in the next year when I walk away I have a powerful reason why CRP is important, and why I should always be doing the work.  Furthermore, I’m also try to throw out as many ideas.  Those of you who may read this, please don’t take offence to what I’m saying.  I guess the bigger issue of that is if you take offense to this, you need to maybe grow some thicker skin because a planning board will probably eat you alive.

Here’s the first thing I’ve come to realize:

I think most of the reasons why Planning is worth anything are lousy.  I think 75% they don’t hold water.  For instance, there’s an aesthetic argument (Planners exist to make things look nice).  I think this is not a great argument for a couple reasons:

1. Post-Modernity: How, in our current culture, can I say one development is nicer than another?  How does it look better?  Relativism makes it substantially harder for me as a planner to say “density is great” and for you to agree.
2. Free Market forces: If the free market is left unabated, won’t it eventually make the right decsion?  People won’t buy houses they don’t want.  This should, as resources become more scarce and people begin to not afford certain housing types, lead to quality affordable housing.
3. Value Added: This is something I mentioned in an essay I wrote for class, that Planning is at worst simply Value Added work.  We do nothing necessary to life.  Maslow’s hierarchy of needs would seem to put planning as a “Self-Actualization” activity… if we are an aesthetic profession, we make things nicer.  People will being to secure themselves (ie posit #2).

At the worst, I think planners are the plastic surgeons of the policy/design world: we know the things that make us good doctors – hell, we went to the school and got the degree – but we’re more concerned about vanity most of the time, excluding that feel-good junket we take for people that are poorer than us and fix their housing version of cleft palates.

So that’s all I got time for right now, but I welcome all the comments and criticisms of this idea.

I need to update.

Not really for anyone but myself.

Over the 8(!) years I’ve had this thing, I’ve used it to think through my world, figure things out, and figure if someone wondered by, they’d read it, and if they wanted to let me know what they’re thinking and figuring out, great.

Deep down, more than ever in my life, I feel like I want to do something big… take all the great ideas I think about for 30 seconds right before I completely fall asleep and actually make them real and damn all the naysayers… I want to be the thing I get behind, not getting behind someone else’s thing.

I keep thinking “I want to shake foundations…”, and I believe more and more that God’s going to use me in a real and powerful way.  At least I keep praying to that end.

And right now, awashed in ennui (as is my custom in May and June), I need to believe it more than ever.

So I think this is the very first time I’ve ever put anything down about Support Raising in my blog, which you think would be something that I’d talk about because it’s been a major part of my life for the last 3 years, and will be for the next 2 years, but I thought I’d let my blogging community aware of my needs as I get started in Columbus.

Currently my support needs have changed, and if everything else stays the same, I need $2,361.50 over the course of the year, or roughly $20 a month from 10 people, or $10 a month from 20 people.  The way my support works is that I get a lot of support annually in August, and then progressively use that up.  So I’m making a personal goal of finding 10 people that could support my ministry to architecture students at Ohio State.  I’m excited for the possibilities, as it’s a place where there isn’t any serious campus ministry, and a chance to try something new in a place that has no restrictions.  I have some ideas I’d love to share with you if you’re interested.

Anyway, maybe you, oh dear blog reader, have thought to yourself maybe you’d like to support some cause, and maybe have it be something close to you.  This is a chance to change the lives of hundreds of people, and to be a part of God’s miraculous transformative work.  $20 a month is a small amount, and $10 a month is even smaller.

If this is something you are interested in doing, check out the website below… periodically I’m going to keep all of you updated on what’s going on, and hopefully soon have the 20 new people on my team!

Thanks.

This is the direct webpage, if you click “A CCO Staff Member” and select Adam Anderson, the money will go to me.

Or, if you want to check out more options, click here

But man, have I got something for you!

I was thinking of this issue anyway, and it came up as I was looking on Facebook (new wedding photos.  There is no man that looks bad in a tuxedo).

This was the advertisement I saw:

Alright, there are a couple things about this:

1. If being lazy and rich would require me to look like that guy, I’m out.  I’ll take hard-working and poor.
2. $1000 a day, for filling out surveys?  We all know that’s obviously the catch, and hence why this is RIDICULOUS.
3. But yet it finds airtime on Facebook, which, relatively of course, is reputable?

So yeah.  Sorry about my extended absence.  It’s not that I haven’t thought about blogging or anything.  It’s that this hasn’t been a priority of late.  Which it should be, mostly because it helps me think in a more stripped down sort of way.

And if what I’ve seen in culture is any example, people for some reason love hearing other people’s thoughts.

So, the 10 of you who still read my blog, let me “drop some knowledge” if you will.

1. I am going to Ohio State in the fall to pursue Urban Planning: I was accepted to Penn and OSU, and chose OSU on account it’s $40,000 cheaper and encourages internships (theoretical knowledge + pragmatic experience = best learning in my opinion), but it’s for some reason this move is more daunting than any other.  I think because I’ve been in Columbus a grand total of, oh, 48 hours, and to commit to being someplace for 2 years seems daunting.  But it isn’t much different than Erie, three years ago.  It just all feels different.  There’s something about not being thrusted out of something that makes it harder to go.   I didn’t have to leave Gannon.  No one else is.  It’s just me.  But I know, to the best of my knowledge, that this is what I’m supposed to do, what God wants.  And I have to do what I’ve done before – take a few steps in faithful service every day, and I will be fine.
2. Phil Kondas is married.  Wow.
3. I have a Master’s Degree in Higher Education (almost): I’ve completed all the requirements save about 12 pages of work.  I’ve never struggled with something more in my life.  A few pages on my thesis and a paper about worldview.  How about that.  I’ve already written better than 500 words of junk on my blog, which would easily fill a page two pages in an essay.  Which leads me to believe that I’m being lame, and should be writing my thesis.  Instead I’m writing here.
4. I still think about subjects.  I’ll start writing about those again soon.
5. Head, heart, hands was one of the most enjoyable things I did at Gannon.

Anyway, I think that’s it for now.  I’ll write my Methodology and some of my Findings tonight.  Let’s say I won’t wait multiple months before putting something on here again, ok?

27,000,000 people right now as we speak are slaves in the world.

27,000,000. That’s a lot. Texas has somewhere around 23,000,000 people. That means that the entirety of Texas plus Kentucky are enslaved somewhere around the world. They’re enslaved in the sex trade, they’re enslaved in the fields, and they’re enslaved in restaurants all over, and in fact right in front of us.

This is something that shocks me. To live in 2008 and to have all of the gifts and benefits that we have, and there’s people right next to me that very well might be unable to be free. That’s wild.

It begins to make me wonder about my freedom. I think that I’m free. I woke up this morning, got breakfast, wrote this article, went to lunch, did some more work, met with some people, and later I’ll do more work and go to bed. This is my decision; I could do nothing today if I wanted to, and it’s my choice.

And I suppose it’s become my choice to sell myself, too. This morning, when I had coffee, it was Starbucks coffee. I went to lunch at Bob Evans. I’m wearing an Old Navy Sweater and Jeans. I’m addicted to selling myself to things that I want and I like.

This is not to minimize the current amount of slavery, but I really wonder if, ultimately, any of us are really free. How many of us aren’t bonded by something else.

I graduated from Grove City College with a degree with Marketing, and if there’s something I remember most in our discussions there about being a good marketer, it was that if we kept going, we’d be given a lot of power. We’d have a power of influence in people’s lives. An influence in a part of people’s lives that’s particularly important – your money and what you want. The average American is bombarded by 3,000 advertisements a day, or roughly one every 20 waking seconds. My job, as a marketer, is to make my 20 seconds stand out in your mind the most. If you want my product, you’ll buy it, and I’ll make money, find products I want and buy them from another marketer.

What enslaves us to this system, I think, is that we really don’t need half of the stuff we have, we just think we do. I know this to be true on a personal level, as my emergency food supply also known as my love handles are testament to. Marketers, as part of the equation, make me believe my wants are absolute needs, and I, like lamb to the slaughter, gladly put my money down to take what they’re selling. I even know they’re doing this, yet if it’s sexy and sleek and makes me feel better, I’ll take it.

This last week I just got back from New York City, and Times Square. Over and over again, the people with me commented on how what a den of consumerism it is. So many towering, luminous lights telling me I need WaMu, CNN, and Avenue Q. Meanwhile, there’s 27,000,000 people enslaved. I wonder if one of those pre-teen girls enslaved right now in Indonesia in the sex trade were brought to Times Square if she’d be so impressed with Washington Mutual, or if she’d just be happy that she was standing on 46th and Broadway free.

In my mind, the saddest state of slavery are those who are enslaved and don’t even know it.

Head, Heart, Hands: God

So for the last semester and the beginning of the semester, I’m written about a lot of different things. I like that. There’s a lot of things worth talking about. Whether we talk about riding a bus, dating someone, breaking up with someone, getting mad about laundry, it’s all about life, and the pursuit of living it well. In fact, there’s isn’t much I haven’t talked about, except perhaps one thing you’d expect me to talk about: God.

This was intentional. It wasn’t like I left my Jesus bias at home when I wrote to you. In fact, I think I wrote about God each time I wrote in the Knight, but I didn’t feel it necessary to make mention of Him. That’s one of my favorite things about God, actually, that I think He’s just as obvious in the times you don’t see Him – but that’s another article, and I don’t want to give any of you too much.

Anyway, so I made the decision over the next few weeks to talk about God a little more overtly. But, before I get into some of things I want to talk about, I want to make some ground rules.

First, by and large, when I write to you, I’m not going to try to “convert” you to or from anything. If you are going to choose to make some drastic lifestyle change from a few hundred words in a University newspaper, I’d rather it not be mine. Instead, I’m going try to give you some perspective.

Some of you have been doing the Jesus thing for many years, and that’s great. I can give you perspective from someone who’s right there with you. Maybe you’ve started to wonder how God fits into your daily purchases: does God care about your toilet paper purchase, for instance. Important, I know.

Some of you have been doing the Jesus thing for just a little, and that’s great, too. I can give you some perspective from someone who’s been doing this a little longer, and maybe took the same path you did. Maybe you’ve started to wonder how God fits into your daily purchases, too: does God really care about whether I get five or fifteen beers, for instances. Also important.

Finally, someone of you aren’t doing the Jesus thing. Sometimes it doesn’t fit your worldview, sometimes you were really hurt from someone who said they loved God, but it didn’t seem to add up in their actions. I can give you some perspective from someone who really does love this God person, but loves you too, and would love nothing more than just sit and talk to you about what you think about God. You might not wonder how God fits in your daily purchases, but at least maybe you wonder why it matters to someone else. This is also important.

If you have been hurt by someone who a Christian, let me say I’m sorry, too. Christians can be hurtful and petty and silly. It’s part of being human, unfortunately.

Finally, let me say that I’m not here to necessarily to say what you want to hear. I hope you’re happy after reading what I said, but ultimately I don’t have the time or energy to placate you. Nor do I want to. So it’s possible you love God, too, and still be mad at me. That’s fine. Facebook me and let me know. I’ll buy you a coffee and we’ll talk. I guarantee it.