WWJD: Where Would Jesus Download?

If you're a Mac user, newbie or veteran, you probably know of MacUpdate, one of the internet's preeminent websites for Mac software updates.

And if you happened to go to MacUpdate on Christmas Day, instead of seeing a listing of the day's software updates, you would seen something distinctly different.

Now, I understand that the vast majority of the people who read my blog aren't In-The-Know Mac users, so here's a fitting comparison: imagine if you went to your local supermarket, picked up a flyer to see what was on sale, and instead of seeing the latest prices on Tide, prepared salad, or macrobiotic yogurt instead saw something akin to a Jack Chick pamphlet.

I'd imagine that the range of reactions I'd be seeing would be from utter indifference to complete outrage. And that was what you'd be seeing if you'd looked around the Mac Web.


On Suitability

I remember the first reaction to the long black webpage I saw when I loaded up MacUpdate. "Huh?" Suffice to say, when you go online looking to search for software updates in preparation for your Great Leap Forward to a new version of the operating system you're running, the last thing you'd expect to see is someone pushing Jesus in your face in the same way your little brother or sister might slam a pillow in your face in the morning.

You can defend what the webmaster at MacUpdate did by saying that it's his website to do with as he pleases; and it's not like he made you go to MacUpdate. It's a free country and if he wanted to do that, more power to him. From a strictly (evangelical/conservative) Christian perspective, you could perfectly defend what was done at MacUpdate as being suitable in that they were simply doing what they saw as being mandated in the Bible.

But then again, think of Mormons/Jehovah's Witnesses who often love to practice the time-honoured ritual of door-to-door preaching and conversion. They easily justify it as allowable in that it is their right to show others the path to the way of life that they see is superior to all others, the one that should be practiced by all others. But in all honesty, just how effective is this? I wonder, how many people have they brought over from the Dark Side as opposed to those who they've simply pissed off? And were those people worth all of the ill-will they gained from the enterprise?

There are plenty of options that could have been done with MacUpdate if they wanted to promote a Christian message at Christmas time (and don't get me started on how the idea of "putting the Christ in Christmas" is a total sham). How about a revised front page promoting various charities? How about an interfaith "Peace on Earth" message å la Apple's multilingual Mac OS X introductory movies? Those are all Christian messages, aren't they?


Now How Come Things Aren't What They Oughta Be?

A common theme that I've tried to communicate in a lot of my posts here is how people often see the world in a way in which it isn't, and act accordingly. This isn't just a problem with "the Right"; it's just as endemic among people on the "the Left" as well. Amongst the Creationists/IDists, it's people who see science as simply an affirmation of their own religious beliefs: science is no longer a method of inquiry into the natural world but merely a rubber stamp on their view of how things should be. Ditto for the people constantly trying to inject conservative Christian values into an increasingly diverse society.

The message is always the same. Conformity and homogenity over diversity. In biology, all of the discussion and debate over evolution and ecology should be replaced with the single undying mantra: God did it, I believe it, that settles it. In politics and society, it's the conservative/evangelical Christian worldview trumping the views of everyone else by default.

And that I think is the reason why MacUpdate did what they did. There's always more than one way to skin a cat (so to speak), and you are only limited in what you can and can't do by the limitations you impose on yourself. The limitations MacUpdate imposed on themselves were clear: that to believe in their version of Christ and in their version of Christianity was the only way to go.

I guess the lesson to be learned in this is that when you want others to share in your beliefs (whether it be Christianity, animal rights, social justice, or computing on the Mac), the one thing that's easy to forget is that your audience has feelings too. They have emotions and opinions that aren't going to always run parallel to your own. They're not just an abstract wall at which you can thoughtlessly hurl your opinions.

Contrary to what some people may think, I like to believe that there's more to Christianity than seeing your friends and people around you as targets of opportunity to mark up on your celestial score card.

A gap in my knowledge

A girl I know said some pretty nice things to me not too long ago:

What can I say about you? You make my brain laugh, hurt, feel insuperior (a task in itself), explode, swim, and crave ramen noodle soup. You are truly a catch and anyone who's brain can withstand your awesome power needs to be studied. I'm so glad that I know you, even if it makes my brain melt.

Pretty heartwarming stuff, isn't it? Well, I thought so at least. However, after a few minutes of pondering over her words, a few thoughts started to pop into my mind...


You Think Too Much

Truth be told, I felt a little sad, but that's mainly because, (a) I'm a massive Drama Queen, and, (b) I have the disturbing tendency to blow things massively out of proportion.

Now, I don't want to sound arrogant or anything, but I fancy myself to be a reasonably well-rounded person; I'm somewhat intelligent, reasonably educated, fairly rational, and on the Female Jerk-O-Meter of Guyhood, I think that while I rate considerably lower than Prince Charming, I do rank somewhat above Prince Charles. Hopefully.

So this wonderful and kind person (God bless her) decides to expound on the virtues of my wonderful cranium. Then all of a sudden, I started to think: is that really all there is to me? My supposed massive intelligence? I mean, she's known me for two years. Okay, so we weren't bosom buddies, but she's seen enough of my interactions with other people we know that I'd like to think she can recognize some of my other virtues. There has to be more to me than just my head, right? I can't have fabricated all of this feeling out of nowhere inside my head...this has to have a legitimate basis in reality - shouldn't it?


I Seem To Have Lost Control

A few other people I've come to know have told me about something that no one's ever really told me before: that perhaps the reason why I have trouble socializing with people is that I unconsciously put myself so far above them that they feel intimidated by me, and because of that people are distanced from me. Which got me to realizing that perhaps it was a genuine problem on my part: I was acting arrogant about who I was, about what, and how much I knew, and it was something I needed to stop. But...what if that wasn't really the main cause? I mean, I can't help using words and phrases that people don't understand and know. No, really. Looking at everything I've written so far, the only "technical" or uncommon word I've used is "cranium". But how obscure is that word? Starbucks sold a board game called Cranium, and there was a fairly widespread ad for some kind of car accessory that was jokingly billed as being suited to fit "on the average cranium". And even if you didn't know what that word meant, in our modern day, education is only a google:define function away.

Whatever the reason, there seems to be this recurring trend among people I know that I apparently possess this massive well of intelligence inside of me, and because of that there seems to be this "ooh, ahh" factor which people seem to have about me. And people feel intimidated, turned off by it, perhaps. It puts up a wall between me and others: a wall which makes emotionally meaningful dialogue just too hard. All of a sudden, conversations shrivel up and die because the other party tries to say something but can't because of the all-encompassing fear of looking "too stupid". And I try to control it by stressing that no that won't happen because (a) I happen to care very deeply about my friends, and (b) I get that every day I'm at school, so why the hell would I do that to others? Being put on an ivory tower may seem fine and dandy for a few minutes, but after a while it gets really lonely up there.


Are You Special?

...which brings me to my point. We as a society attach a mystique to what we percieve as "intelligence". That person is so, so smart...how could he know so much? How could he get good grades? I'm sure we all know The Guy who our friends of our friends know who parties all day, drinks all night, doesn't crack a book, and yet effortlessly sails through all of his courses (this could easily be a girl of course, I'm just using the masculine terms for convenience's sake). Now I admit there are some truly naturally brilliant people out there. People who fall to the most extreme right tail of the bell-curve distribution of "intelligence", measured by whatever metric you plase. But how often do we know people like that? How common are they? Surely not every music student we know is Mozart or Mendelssohn. Every art student isn't a Picasso or a Rembrandt. And every science student isn't Einstein or Hawking.

My humble opinion, which is of course backed up by absolutely no empirical evidence whatsoever, is that most people are, well, normal. And in fact, I'm willing to grant that the majority of the people who enjoy success in the intellectual sense merely live their lives in such a way that they do what they need to do, to do well; things which are perfectly mundane and easily practiced by any ordinary human being. Their apparent intellectual superiority is not the result of the cosmic stars aligning on the night of their birth to grant them superhuman ability; it's simply an interest in what they do, and the desire to do it. To use myself as an example, I like to search for things I don't know about on Google or Wikipedia, or I look them up in books, if I can. I'm curious about the world around me and I want to know more. I don't think that makes me smarter or any more special than anyone else I know. It sure as hell doesn't grant me a special level of intelligence which elevates me above others around me. It sure as hell doesn't make smarter. A tad more informed than I was before, perhaps, but knowledge and intelligence are two different things.

If you've gotten this far maybe you're thinking that I should just shut up and take my compliment with grace and style.

So I will. Erin...thank you.