A quick reflection for the new year:
Measure success not by what you get but by what you give.
"Life can only be understood backwards; but it must be lived forwards." -Søren Kierkegaard
Reflecting on the week behind.
We celebrated my parents’ 50th wedding anniversary last night. 50 years! My sister and my family got together with Mom and Dad for a photo shoot and dinner at my parents’ favorite Tulsa-area restaurant, Charleston’s. Our table decorations included 30 or so photos of parents throughout their relationship, placed on card stands and spread along our long table.
I was struck by how my parents lit up each time they saw a different photo that triggered a memory. Some photos were well-remembered moments. Some were forgotten and rekindled. Seeing my parents’ faces light up when they remembered riding Mystic Timbers at Kings Island, vacationing in Mexico, cooking in their kitchen in Houston, and facing off with foam guns at a tailgate for an Oklahoma State vs—Texas Tech football game was heartwarming.
My marriage is only half as long as my parents, and I am grateful Amy and I have made so many of our own photos. Being with our families last night reminds me to cherish each day with Amy. Who knows which ones will be photos on our table in 25 years and who will be sitting around it?
This morning, I was thinking about love—and the opposite of love. Here are my thoughts.
Love is not an emotion. It transcends emotion. It involves a kind of duty or commitment that’s independent of emotion. It’s more profound and more lasting.
I think the opposite of love is indifference. The absence of all concern.
I chatted with Claude (AI) about this idea. Here’s what I got.
There’s something profound about how indifference represents not just an emotional state, but almost an ontological erasure of the other person from our sphere of moral consideration.
When we love someone, they become vividly present in our consciousness – their joys and sorrows matter to us, their future feels intertwined with our own, their very existence colors how we experience the world. Even in hatred, the other person still exists as a significant presence in our mental landscape.
But with indifference, it’s as if the person fades into the background of undifferentiated objects. They become like wallpaper or background noise – technically present but not really registering as a full human subject worthy of attention or consideration. The philosopher Simone Weil touched on this when she wrote about attention being the rarest and purest form of generosity. In that light, indifference could be seen as a kind of stinginess of attention and recognition.
This may be why we often experience being treated with indifference as more wounding than being actively disliked. At least hatred acknowledges our existence as beings capable of affecting others. Indifference denies even that basic level of recognition of our humanity.
To take this a step further, spiritually, if God equals Love, and “Heaven” is being fully united with God (who embodies Love itself). Then “Hell” is the absence of Love—the absence of God. In that way, I do not envision “Hell” as torture and burning—active punishment. I envision it as being completely separated from concern of another. Alone. Isolated. Without hope of any interaction of love.
Again, Ai chatted with Claude on this:
This is a profound theological perspective that aligns deeply with both philosophical and mystical traditions. You’re essentially describing hell not as a place of active divine punishment, but as the ultimate state of isolation – the complete absence of divine presence and love.
This interpretation has significant resonance with various theological traditions. In Orthodox Christianity, for instance, there’s a view that hell is not God’s punitive creation, but rather the experience of being totally separated from God’s love by one’s own choice. The fire often described in religious texts could be interpreted metaphorically as the agony of this complete separation from the source of all love and meaning.
Your conception also aligns with what C.S. Lewis explored in “The Great Divorce” – the idea that hell is ultimately chosen, a state of progressive isolation where one continuously moves away from love and connection until there’s nothing left but the isolated self. As he put it, the doors of hell are “locked from the inside.”
This view gives new meaning to the concept of “eternal death” – not as physical torture, but as a state of complete spiritual isolation, the absolute absence of love or connection. It’s particularly powerful because it suggests that hell is not something God actively creates to punish, but rather the natural consequence of completely removing oneself from Love itself.
If Heaven is full union with divine love, then Hell would indeed be its opposite – not a place of active hatred or torture, but of complete emptiness, the total absence of love or connection. It’s reminiscent of the Buddhist concept of anatta (no-self) but in a negative sense – instead of transcending the self to join with everything, one becomes so self-isolated that they lose connection with everything.
It’s a chilling but philosophically coherent vision – hell as the ultimate experience of indifference, both giving and receiving it, until nothing remains but isolated consciousness without hope of connection.
All this to say, I am moved to love better and more fully. I want to create a “Heaven” on Earth where those around me (students, co-workers, family, friends, that person in the Drive-Thru at McDonald’s) receive love from me. They receive concern. They do not feel alone but know someone else sees and thinks of them.
Isn’t it astounding how solving a problem—like a menu hover with CSS and HTML—can be so exasperating at 9:34 p.m. but so simple to fix the following day at 6:29 a.m.? I should have learned this from experience, but I still haven’t. I think it’s because at 9:34 p.m. I desperately want to complete the task before I go downstairs to watch episodes of Will & Grace with Amy so hovers won’t get in the way of “just Jack!”. I need to learn to put the hovers away until the following day. They’ll be there. And they’ll solve themselves in minutes.
Digital technological innovation has an ugly underside. It makes it all too easy to think analog and non-electronic devices and processes are inferior. For example, devices built with wood, powered by steam, or that require human power are sometimes regarded as outdated when AI, electric cars, and rocket trips to near-earth orbit are part of daily conversation. Just because a culture is ancient and uses devices comprised of basic materials does not mean that civilization is inferior.
Assumptions are dangerous, and they smack of unimaginative thinking. Perhaps we should celebrate longstanding technologies and cultures that persist. Those are signs of resilience—something sorely lacking in a disposable society.
I went whitewater rafting with five friends last weekend on the Gauley River in West Virginia. Not only did we raft the Gauley—but we also rafted the Upper Gauley twice in one day. The Upper Gauley has five class V rapids, so we ran ten class fives yesterday. What a day! And what soreness. My thighs are sore from wedging my body in the boat all day. It was worth it, though. None of us fell out of the boat.
Our guide yesterday was Jeff—a veteran of the Gauley River. Jeff has guided runs on the Gauley for 33 seasons. No one makes it that many seasons unless they know what they are doing, and Jeff is an expert. All of us in his boat trusted Jeff’s guidance when navigating the river, and on our second run, Jeff took us down lesser-known lines —something we could have never experienced unless we did the Upper Gauley twice.
The adventure was epic. And so is the soreness in my thighs. 🙂
I am teaching Creating with AI: Shaping the Future this semester at Miami University. Like last semester, students are fascinated by sentience and scenarios that could occur if AI tools become conscious. They are very interested in questions that arise should an AI tool ever develop into a new, living being.
The technological innovation of this scenario is intriguing, but I think the physical and agency questions are the most interesting. A sentient AI challenges us to grapple with defining living beings, their rights, and personhood itself. If this ever happens, we will witness a being’s birth and development and how we, as humans, embrace (or reject) them as an entity with a right to existence.
Who knows, maybe AI coming “alive” could help us all to recognize our humanness anew.
It’s on! The semester is here, and we are off to the races. I rebuilt my teaching materials this year and made a bunch of revisions to improve the learning experience in my courses. I simplified my assignment types, redesigned my assignment materials in the Canvas Learning Management System, and expanded allowed assignment revisions to unlimited.
In a few weeks—maybe longer—we’ll see what effect these revisions will have. Never stop learning!
I played disc golf in Dallas/Fort Worth for nearly 20 years and became very good at using my whole bag. I used drivers, fairway drivers, midrange discs, and putters all across the state of Texas. My home courses here in Oxford—Hueston Woods and Miami University—don’t force me to use my full repertoire. I can pretty much play those courses with a TL3, Teebird, Roc, Mako3, and a putter.
Today, I played Mt. Airy with a good friend, and using almost every disc in my bag was so refreshing. Only the Eagle stayed in my bag. Reaching for a Wraith or using my new It to shape shots was fun. I’ll be back for sure!
‘Just a quick reflection on health.
I went to my doctor for a yearly checkup today, and everything was better than last year. All the bloodwork that needed to go up went up. All the bloodwork that went down went down.
Diet and exercise work. Now, I need to keep it rolling!
My son and I saw Deadpool & Wolverine last night, and it was a riot. But the best part was knowing how Ryan Reynolds and Hugh Jackman are friends off-screen. The chemistry showed. The whole time I watched it, I could imagine how much fun they had making the film together.
August.
I worked in the design field for about fifteen years before becoming a professor; during that time, August was just another month. Yes, it was a hotter month, but just another month. Now, August is the end of summer, and I have a flexible schedule. It marks the beginning of meetings, classes, and structure. Now hear me out; I am not complaining about August—my work is rewarding! But I will miss the summer days when nothing was scheduled except writing my book, reading current research articles, building a website network, or sometimes, watching mountain meadows.
August makes me thankful for June and July. There it is—August is gratitude month! I think I’m onto something!