A Show of Faith
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A Show of Faith
Episode 183: Games, Metrics, And The Values We Miss
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A survey hits your inbox after a coffee, a doctor visit, a flight, even a car rental and it quietly teaches you what the world rewards: the score. We start with Memorial Day, because gratitude and sacrifice are a reality check for any talk about freedom, values, and public life. From the history of Decoration Day to personal stories of immigration and refuge, we name what’s easy to forget: the ability to speak, worship, and live openly is carried by people who paid a real price.
Then we turn to metrics and the modern ratings culture. We talk about why feedback can improve service, but also how “only nines and tens” can flatten everything that matters into a single number. When organizations and individuals chase the algorithm, the measurement stops being a tool and becomes the mission. That same logic shows up in social media, where likes and hearts can start to feel like proof that we exist. We connect that to identity, work, and the way recognition can become a substitute for deeper grounding.
Games give us a surprisingly clear lens. They build a simple world with rules that create a kind of freedom, and they can be joyful, social, and formative. But games also reveal the temptation to treat real life like a scoreboard, complete with respawns and do-overs. We explore why some of the most important human goals are the hardest to measure, why true leisure is different from “fun,” and how an aesthetic posture toward beauty, play, art, and comedy can help us recover what metrics can’t capture. If this conversation helps you, subscribe, share it with a friend, and leave us a review.
Opening And Host Introductions
SPEAKER_10There's something happening here, but what it is ain't exactly clear. There's a man with a gun over there. Tellin' me I got to beware. I think it's time we stop. Children, what's that sound? Everybody look what's going down.
SPEAKER_14Welcome to a show of faith, where professor, priest, millennial, and rabbi discuss theology, philosophy, morality, ethics, and anything else we find interesting. If you have any response to our topics or any comments regarding what we say, we would love to hear from you. Email us at a show of faith1070 at gmail.com. You can hear our shows by listening pretty much anywhere podcasts are heard. Our priest is Father Mario Arroyo, retired pastor of St. Cyril of Alexandria, the 10,000 block of Westheimer.
SPEAKER_06It's a freaking honor to be here.
SPEAKER_14The honor is all ours. Professor is David Capes, Protestant Minister, Director of Academic Programming for the Lanier Theological Library.
SPEAKER_16Thank you, gentlemen. Good to be with you.
SPEAKER_14Our pleasure. Rudy Kong is our millennial. He's a systems engineer, has his master's degree in theology from the University of St. Thomas.
SPEAKER_03Howdy, howdy.
SPEAKER_14I'm Stuart Federal, retired rabbi of Congregation Sha'ar Hashalo in the Clear Lake area of Houston, Texas. Crystal is our board operator, and she is the one who makes us sound fantastic. And David, you are the show director. I'm the show director. But before we go to that, I know.
SPEAKER_16Before we go to that, we gotta recognize what this weekend's all about.
SPEAKER_14Absolutely. Got to tell you that when I was a kid, Memorial Day was when you remembered the school year, and Labor Day is when you went back to the labor of the school year, and pretty much that's what
Memorial Day And Freedom’s Cost
SPEAKER_14it meant. Picnicking, whatever. That's not what Memorial Day is all about. Freedom does not come free. And we want to take out the time take the time out in order to say thank you to those who are who served and remember those who gave their lives the ultimate price for our freedom. Yeah, exactly.
SPEAKER_16You know, this whole tradition started after um the Civil War is the way it started. Um they they started in the 1860s, maybe 1870s, somewhere in there. They would call it Decoration Day because that was the day that they would take rags and flowers to the graveyard and and you know, maybe cut the grass or whatever they would do to to uh beautiful. Make it look nicer. And and that tradition grew and grew and grew, and then finally, uh it was both north and south, by the way. I thought it was mainly in the south. Growing up in the south, I wasn't sure about that. But it's it was really north and south. And the emphasis came along a bit later, particularly after World World War I, that we have a day that commemorates not just the people from the Civil War, Confederates and Union soldiers, but also who passed away, but also those who died in that very serious way.
SPEAKER_14I didn't know the history.
SPEAKER_16Yeah. And then finally, I can't remember, I think it's back in the 1970s. You should remember this. You're old enough to be able to do that. My memory, who are you kidding? I think the Congress made the the declaration that it would be the last Monday of the month of May was the Memorial Day. So uh we we honor those, we thank them. The very fact that we can be on the radio talking about this, the very fact that we can worship freely and saying what we want on the radio without government intrusion.
SPEAKER_14Exactly.
SPEAKER_16Right. All of that is because of the men and women who paid that price, who fought for freedom, and we are so grateful to them for what they've done.
SPEAKER_06It's not only that, uh you know, as a naturalized citizen um uh I I'm very well aware that um the fact that I have been able to have a a life uh here in the United States meant that uh those people who died who to make the United States stay stay free gave me a place to to be a refugee.
SPEAKER_16Uh you're a refugee from Cuba in the late 1950s.
SPEAKER_06Because let me tell you, they were gonna kill my father. Uh and uh yeah, they were gonna kill him. Mainly because my uncle uh was he passed away. My uncle was the ambassador from Cuba to Washington and they were gonna arrest my father and and uh to get my uncle to come back, and then if they got my uncle to come back, they were gonna shoot them both. So I'm very glad, you know, that I was accepted here. And the other thing I want to remember is You've had a good life here. Yeah, yeah, no. And I've uh I am I am such a a pro-American. I mean you talk about me. I'm I'm fully MAGA Make America great again. Because whenever I see these i uh I'm going to use the word idiots with so socialism and stuff like that. They have no idea what they're dealing with. You know, right now I'm I'm very uh very well aware that Cuba has been gutted. It is a place that over over almost a million and a half Cubans have left Cuba and uh and and all of it because of socialism and and communism. So to me it's a tremendous honor to be here. And if you think about it, you know, this is the only country in the entire world that you can become part of. What I mean by that is I can move to France, but I'm never going to be a Frenchman. I can move to Japan, I'll never be Japanese. I I can even move to Canada, I cannot be a Canadian, but I can move to the United States and be an American. And that because this country is founded not upon blood, but upon an idea, the idea of freedom. And uh freedom under God. Which I think we still need to fight for.
SPEAKER_16Yeah, yeah. I don't think I don't think we we end up uh walking away from that, right? And we say, look, this is central to who we are as people of faith, but also uh uh as as as Americans, right?
SPEAKER_06Is Rudy there? Rudy, Rudy, I'm listening to Rudy, Rudy, if you you're an immigrant, uh what do you what does that mean to you?
SPEAKER_03I have a similar sort of story because it's it's interesting when you um I find that I don't know, and and this doesn't I don't need to sound um the meaning of natural born Americans, but I think sometimes um foreigners that are naturalized, that come here, that come from other countries in my experience not everybody of course, but they they're very in for my case I think very, very grateful. Um I was naturalized as well. My my mother fled Nicaragua, um during Clovis, and uh there was a whole I mean look there's a whole conversation about American intervention and this and and you know we could talk about that maybe one show, but but the reality is that all these countries, where do people want to go for the state, right? And and it was in the United States that I was able to achieve some semblance of of let's call it liberty of peace. I was educated, there was schooling, um you know I was able to apply so my mom at at at uh when I was growing up, she had a low income, so I was able to apply for FAFSA. Um so with FAFSA and the scholarship that I got, I pretty much had almost no cost for going to college. And and so it's just it's just really a land of opportunity. It's not perfect by any stretch of the imagination. But golly, you know, when you consider the rest of what's out there, let me tell you, it's it's uh it's it's it's pretty amazing. It's pretty amazing what what America has done and for so long, right? I think that's kind of the the the real test there. It's um it's the time that it existed and and been a refuge for so many people. I mean, this is going back hundreds of years. Irish, Italians, I mean it's there's over three million Guatemalans, something like a million changes, also uh Nicolavans. I mean we're we're kind of the new chapter now, right? Father, I would say the the Hispanics, right? But the US has been a refuge for for hundreds of years for all sorts of immigrants, you know.
SPEAKER_16It's uh well said, well said. Well we do give thanks. Give thanks to God for those men and women who uh have served so uh honorably, and for again for those who unfortunately lost their lives in that in the conflict as well. Thank you. Thank you to all of you.
Survey Culture And Chasing Ratings
SPEAKER_16Tonight we're gonna talk about uh something different than we've talked about before. We're gonna talk about games. We're gonna talk about metrics. We're gonna talk about values. Now we've talked about values before, but we've not talked about that in concert with things like games before. Let me let me begin with this, and I know we've got we've got a couple minutes uh before we we go to break. But uh one of the things that's happened and Rudy, I'd be interested to know if this is happening in Guatemala, but it's happened over the last 15 or 20 years. That anywhere you go and do business pretty soon, right after you do business with this person or this group of people, you're gonna get a survey. And in that survey, they're gonna ask, well, how do we do? And they're gonna want you to rate them from what you go to the doctor's office and you know, you see the doctor, and you you a few days after that, they'd like to know how do we do? If you go to a coffee shop, they'll ask you your phone number very often, and they'll or they'll ask you your email, and if you give it to them about three days later, you'll get a survey that says, hey, we'd like to know how we did. You know, and they'll ask about the seating and they'll ask about the coffee, let's say, or they'd ask about how hospitable the barista baristas are, those kinds of things. And if you go to an airline or a hotel, it's just the same thing everywhere. Have you guys seen that? Oh, yes. Has that been your experience?
SPEAKER_06And I like it.
SPEAKER_16You like it a lot. I like it.
SPEAKER_06What do you think why because what has happened is that not only that these restaurants, but think about it. When I now have to, for example, I wanted to get a different door lock on my on my condominium, okay? I didn't know who to call. What would be a good what would be a good locksmith? Okay? I wanted to get a combination lock. Well, I was able to go to Yelp.
SPEAKER_16Yelp.
SPEAKER_06Yeah. And that and I was able to look at the reviews and the ratings.
SPEAKER_16Yeah.
SPEAKER_06And I was able to pick an excellent one. And so what it duh has done, it has democratized. You just I don't go by advertising anymore. I go by whose rating and how the experiences that people have had. So I think it has made places much more accountable. Trevor Burrus, Jr.
SPEAKER_16Well, that's a different thing than what I'm talking about. What I'm talking about is different. Yelp is an outside service that people can go to to get to get notes. But what's happening internally is they are trying to say, what can we learn about our organization?
SPEAKER_14What can we do better? What can we do better? Trevor Burrus, Jr. Well, but it's it's more than that because what happens is that they'll take only those things that they are asking you to measure, and then that becomes the only thing that they care about. And I I see that as I I like the idea of the Yelps and everything, and the even the surveys, which I don't always fill out. Yeah. But I don't want that to be the only thing they think about either. But but at least they're asking.
SPEAKER_06Right.
SPEAKER_16No, I absolutely it's a part, it's a part of what what we're going to talk about tonight in terms of metrics. Rudy, does this happen down in Guatemala? Do you have the same phenomena happening down there?
SPEAKER_03Everywhere. And I think though it's more pronounced in the U.S. I think the U.S. is a little bit more um techno-friendly, if you will. I think here in Guatemala, we have still a very large sort of rural population that still only handles cash, doesn't have bank accounts, you know, they're not very uh, how would you say, um, trusting of the system, you know, but but yeah, I mean, when you have an organization, right, and you have a large, think of something like Walmart, right? Or FedEx or or Amazon, you know, anything that that, and I'm gonna pick on Amazon, check that's like how does he know that his employees are acting right, that there's not anything going wrong with the client? I mean, you have to give the client a voice. And so there's it's a it's a tricky sort of line, right? Because it's it's it's uh it can create a lot of noise and it can kind of guide you into something. I'm gonna give you a quick example. My brother used to work at Marriott, and they had a client rating system, and my brother would always come home and he'd be like, they just don't understand, you know, if we're not getting nines and tens reviews, they don't even care, and that's all they want to know. And so there was a lot of frustration because this review was how they gauged everything about uh the business. So it really can become something um sort of monolithic, right? Something kind of uh distracting almost.
SPEAKER_16Yeah. Well, I was I was renting a car in some city, and and I know we gotta go to a break. We I was renting a car in one city, and and the guy wanted to explain everything to me and everything, said, Oh, I'm really very satisfied. And he got in res almost like he got in a car with me. He said, How satisfied are you with this? You know, and he and he finally said, I want to tell you my name. My name is the Nicholas, and I I want you to go on and give me a high rating kind of stuff.
SPEAKER_14Right, they're chasing the algorithm.
SPEAKER_16There, yeah, in in a sense, I think it can go a little bit too far and over the top, but I do see some value in terms of what could be happening in in issues of customer service.
SPEAKER_06We had to go to a break. Uh but I want you to think about this. Every time you take an Uber, I look at the rating of the driver.
SPEAKER_16Oh, I do too.
SPEAKER_06I want to make sure the the driver is somebody trustworthy.
SPEAKER_16That's my initiative though. It's not the company's initiative. That's true. That's a little different.
SPEAKER_06Well, this is KNTH, and we're rating people. And actually, we're going to ask you to rate David at the end of this program. KNTH, and we'll be right back.
SPEAKER_15Larry O'Connor explains the dilemma of a politician. And this is always the sort of juxtaposition that elected officials have. Do I do just what I think is best, or do I also do what the people of my state or my district want me to do? Sometimes those are instincts, sometimes they're not. Do you set aside your own personal beliefs, ego, and narcissism and do what the people that put you there want you to do? I think so.
SPEAKER_05O'Connor Company with Larry O'Connor. Weekday morning to 5 on AM 1070 and FM 1033. The answer.
SPEAKER_07Johnny Angel. Johnny. You're an angel to shake it. Johnny Angel, how I love it. How I jingle when he passes.
Games We Loved And Hated
SPEAKER_14Welcome back to a show of faith on AM107 the answer. And by the way, speaking of ratings, we were our A Show of Faith was recently rated the best show on Sunday night. Yeah. All four of us. All four of us. Yes.
SPEAKER_06We all voted.
SPEAKER_14We all voted.
SPEAKER_16We all voted, exactly. All right. Changing gears a little bit, keep in mind that issue of metrics. Let's talk about games. Games. Let's talk about games that we have played that we have really enjoyed in life and why. Stuart, let's start with you. What games did you play?
SPEAKER_14We my brothers and I used to play Monopoly, which bored me to tears. But we also played Risk, Stratego. We played outdoor games like I Loved Kick the Can, uh, Hide and Seek, you know, those kinds of games.
SPEAKER_16And I really like a lot of kids. Have you played games of late? Is there any games you play? Do you play card games at all? Do you play none of that? You play Twister?
SPEAKER_14I don't even think I could get on the Twister board on the floor anymore.
SPEAKER_16Yeah, that's kind of that'd be kind of tough. I actually actually have played Twister of my granddaughter. She's a lot better than I am at that. Father Mario, what about you? Games that you played.
SPEAKER_06Well, I have to tell you that when you asked me that earlier, I I had to really tell you that I don't remember playing any games when I was a little kid. Now, I did answer because in my first four years of junior college. Now I want you to hear that very well. First four years. My first four years of junior college. It was a four-year stint because I spent a long time in the student uh union in the student center, uh playing poker and playing hearts and uh you know, plus just playing cards. But that is the only time I have played, I have liked games.
SPEAKER_16You really did like games then.
SPEAKER_06I have always hated them because I have found them to be uh at first yet people got upset or they were too big putting too much energy into them. I always found that they were stupid. You know, what why have why have I don't I don't I'm not even having fun doing this. I'd rather read. I'd rather watch something.
SPEAKER_16Yeah, but but w when you started playing poker with those guys, I guess they're guys.
SPEAKER_06Yeah. Yeah.
SPEAKER_16Uh something kicked in. What kicked in?
SPEAKER_06Uh yeah, it kicked in that you know that uh I wanted to uh beat the hell out of them.
SPEAKER_16Okay. You wanted to win, a competitive streak came out.
SPEAKER_06It did, but that that's when I stopped that when I quit sports. I quit sports, I quit sports, okay? Because I used to follow the Oilers. And I quit sports when I analyzed what I was doing, because when they'd lose, they go, ah, you know, and I wasn't happy.
SPEAKER_16And you would be upset.
SPEAKER_06And so the question is, why am I upset at this? There's a group of men that don't even belong to my city. They're hired to identify with my city. They are fighting one another over a ball, over goals that are totally determined by arbitrary. And so why am I I would rather give my life and my my excitement and my emotions to something that matters. Something that matters.
SPEAKER_16Rudy, how about you? Games that you played, games that you love, why why you love them?
SPEAKER_03I've played so many games. I've played so many games from uh Cox and Robbers when we were young, tag, uh Risk, Monopoly. Um I played sports as well, like baseball, love baseball, soccer, um, video games. I used to love video games, I don't have much time for them anymore. And and I kind of it's interesting here from Mario talk because the more I think about it now, and and I'm older and I'm thinking about my family and and uh and and you know the family expanding, and it's like I'm there's a lot of time that that I could have been doing something better now. To be fair, my favorite types of games were like strategic games. There's games called like Civilization 3, Civilization 4, Civilization 5, and they were like empire building games, and that's so I like that type of like complexity. I wasn't so much into the like the kind of uh Call of Duty games, and I mean they're entertaining, but I wasn't kind of like my game.
SPEAKER_06He's talking, but the fact is we didn't have internet when we were growing up. That's right.
SPEAKER_14Yes, he got lucky. But Rudy, Rudy, let me ask you a question. With all those games that you that you were uh involved with, did you tell your bride before you got married that you're a playa?
SPEAKER_03That I'm a player?
SPEAKER_14You're a player.
SPEAKER_03I know. She knows. She knows.
SPEAKER_16This is this this is degenerating very quickly. Very quickly. Well, I mean, I mean, uh there's there's actually a whole theory about gaming that is very sophisticated. It's very interesting. There's a new book out by a guy named C. Thai Wynn called The Score: How to Stop Playing Somebody Else's Games. And he talks about, and part of the book talks about how games themselves can be very joyful, very meaningful, very enobling, uh, very connecting with people. You probably maybe kept friendships with people you played balls with or you played poker with or those kinds of things. They the it it helps you to connect, and we do that with now with a family. Now, Rudy, what about now that you're married, uh are do you still play games?
SPEAKER_03No, very rarely. I'm mostly working on my business, and you know, I just yeah. I mean, yeah. Well, I used to, like, for example, we used to play World of Warcraft when I was like freshman in high school, and like we would do large groups, you know? So it's you really do build a community.
SPEAKER_14All right, I I I have a question to ask all three of you. Right now, on your cell phones, do you have games or and have a lot of games, a few games? Do you have games on your cell phone?
SPEAKER_16I have games on my cell phone because my granddaughter will take my cell phone. Well, I meant for you. Yeah. I no, I don't mean that. Neither do I.
SPEAKER_06I don't have a single one.
SPEAKER_16Rudy, do you? Sudoku, that's it. Sudoku, yeah. Yeah.
SPEAKER_06Okay.
SPEAKER_16Yeah. Which is one game. So one of the things that game theory teaches us is that, and this there's a very again, sophisticated philosophical framework for this, is that games create a very simple world with clear rules allowing people to get totally absorbed into the game. It's hard to multitask when you're playing a game. Right. You can't read a book and play poker, right? You can't you you can't uh you can't do the dishes and play baseball. All right. There was a game that I discovered many years ago. It was called Mealborn. It's a French card game. Meal born. It means a thousand miles, basically. And the goal of the game is to go a thousand miles. And people who are on different teams playing have what are you what do you what's the matter?
SPEAKER_06I found a game in my phone.
SPEAKER_16You found a game on your phone? Oh, so ashamed. So anyway, in this game, the goal is to go a thousand miles, but along the way you get out of gas. Along the way, you might have an accident, along the way you might uh you know have speed limit and that kind of thing. Your goal is to get there as quickly as you can. Now, think about this just for a second. Here's a game that you can laugh at, the goal of which is to go a thousand miles and it's but it's not really real, right? Right. But really a real law. If you had to really drive a thousand miles in real life, and you had you went out of gas and you had an accident and you had a flat tire, you would be pretty spent after that, right? Right. So again, what the goal of the game is is to take something maybe like war, like you were talking about, risk and strategico, those kind of things. Take something very complicated and very thick uh philosophically and boil it all down to something very, very simple.
SPEAKER_14And fun.
SPEAKER_16And fun uh all at the same time. That's the goal of of of games. But we've gotten to a point between games and matrices uh uh uh not matrices, I'm sorry, metrics. We've gotten to a point where those metrics and the games that we play or the games that other people play become very format formative in terms of our values.
SPEAKER_14Like a game Well, not exactly.
SPEAKER_16We're gonna talk about that when we come back. I know it's time we gotta go to a break.
SPEAKER_06Yeah, we really do.
How Games Simplify Reality
SPEAKER_16Yeah.
SPEAKER_06I found it like the only game I had is called Pocket God.
SPEAKER_16Pocket God? God. That's a game. Yeah.
SPEAKER_06There's 1070K NTH we'll be right back.
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Rules That Create Real Freedom
SPEAKER_16All right, tonight we're talking about games and gaming, and we're talking about metrics and values. You know, we were talking about games a little bit earlier. There's there's some things about games that are a little bit of a problem these days. But one of the things, Stuart, that you were you were mentioning had to do with the fact that games come with rules, and those rules give you freedom. Right. And that's part of that's one of the arguments that it's made here in the in the in the article is that yeah, the games provide rules. Those rules, just like life, exactly have some boundaries. But if you don't know those, then you you don't you don't get the freedom because you live the freedom inside the rules.
SPEAKER_14And because you know the rules, you are free to work within the rules. It's the rules that give you the freedom. And there's you I as I was telling you during the break, there's a song in the Broadway musical Pippin, where one of the lines of the songs is, But if I'm never tied to anything, I can never be free. And you find that in rock and roll songs too, where the con the idea is is that within our attachments, it's having attachments that give us the freedom to work, to be who we are.
SPEAKER_06Well, no, it's uh the actually the uh the song is c is called Loving Arms. And uh it's by d um by Doby Gray.
SPEAKER_04Oh, okay.
SPEAKER_06And uh he it it's kind of like it was if you could see me now, you know, uh uh and and it talks about uh uh the if you could see me now uh looking back, he's goes the lyrics go like that looking back and a longing for the freedom of my chains and being in your loving arms again. Because this guy wanted to be free. And he wanted to be free, but when he got freedom, he found out it was empty.
SPEAKER_14Right.
SPEAKER_06Because he was not and he was talking about the freedom of his commitment to this growth.
SPEAKER_14Exactly. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, the c the the connections and the obligations give us freedom.
SPEAKER_16Yeah, yeah. There's w one of the things that that you see a lot today in gaming, and I don't know if you see it in World of Warcraft or not, is that in the games that kids play, and teenagers, and this is 20 year olds and teenagers, uh you know, uh preteens and such, um there are characters that die but they respawn. And they might come back. Death doesn't mean the game is over. It means you just gotta wait around a second and your character shows back up again. That's one of the characteristics that you see in a lot of video games today, right?
Respawn Logic Meets Real Life
SPEAKER_16Is that death comes so quickly and life comes so easily as well. Was that World of Warcraft as well, uh Rudy?
SPEAKER_03Yeah, you could you could what's called respawn, and there sometimes it was punishing. There's a couple games I've played where you like Mario, you know, you would have to like restart the entire thing over again. But you could always restart, you know, so there was always a respawn you could do. So yeah, it's definitely sometimes you would lose like all your loop, or if you had picked up a certain amount of gold or whatever. Um but then what's interesting is that there were areas too that you could quote unquote save your game, right? So you could go to uh uh uh an inn and then save your game and then you know go to school, whatever, and then pick up the game there. So if any progress, then you can come back. Yeah.
SPEAKER_14And you could also do uh do-overs where you could redo a a play or something you did again and try to do it better. Right. And golf is a real mulligan.
SPEAKER_16Call it a mulligan in golf, right? So so a part of what what what people have discovered is that is that particularly he's expert is that games themselves, you can't just extend the logic of a game into real life. Real life is not a game. Real life is not like a game. But we have had murders and we have had killings done because they were inspired by those same video games, right? And that whole series, the Hunger Games, seems to me to be emblematic of the idea of we can turn, you know, we can play a game, but now we've turned that into a life and death sort of struggle at that point, just to entertain ourselves. And clearly a lot of people were entertained by that. As as this article goes on, he he goes on to say something like, and and this is my this is my way of saying it, it's easy to measure things that don't really matter with metrics and with games. It's hard to measure things that really matter. Now, let me give you an example in education.
Metrics And The Things We Miss
SPEAKER_16In education, a goal of a university might be we want to graduate more of our students. So you can you can say, okay, well, I we can measure that. That's something we can measure, but that's not really what matters. What you're really trying to do is you're trying to create people who are mature, who are good citizens, who are well-rounded adults.
SPEAKER_14And who can think critically.
SPEAKER_16And who can think critically, exactly. How do you measure that exactly? You can measure who graduates and how long it takes them to graduation that take four years to get out of junior high or junior college or whatever. You know, you can you can do that, but what really matters is are you forming human beings who are bright, who are intelligent, who are going to be good citizens, well-rounded, who will make a contribution, who will flourish in their life. That's what you're trying to do. That's what a college is supposed to be doing. But how do you measure that? We measure things very often that are easy. It's the low-hanging fruit. It's harder to measure those things that really matter. So that's a part of the challenge between the metrics. When you're thinking about big institutions, I'm not talking about Starbucks, I'm not talking about even your doctor's office. I'm talking, I'm talking about the government of the United States of America. I'm talking about all of higher education organizations like that. Or it could be secondary education or elementary education. They use the same sort of metrics in a lot of ways. The question is, how do you form those metrics to where you are really promoting values and not just sort of dumbing things down to just to get whatever score. And I think everybody is in here coughing. I don't know what I don't know what's going on here. So there's a whole lot about uh in the in the rest of this article about uh just a variety of things.
Leisure, Sabbath, And True Rest
SPEAKER_16And I know we've got to take a break here in just a second. But one of the things he talks about, and Mario, I know you've you're big on this, is that when we when we spread games and when we spread metrics too far, there is a a cultural inability, this writer says, for us to re experience true leisure. True leisure. This is a concept that's been developed by Joseph Pieper. He says leisure is not merely relaxation, but a top posture of receptivity toward reality, God, and other people.
SPEAKER_06Yeah, he he probably uh Dr.
SPEAKER_16Piper, it's Piper, Piper.
SPEAKER_06He wrote uh Leisure, The Basis of Culture.
SPEAKER_16Yeah. It's an excellent book. It's a great book. I know you've talked about it before.
SPEAKER_06Yeah.
SPEAKER_16Yeah.
SPEAKER_06And I I understand, I understand that uh, you know, there we don't experience leisure um because what we experience mostly is fun. And there's a difference between fun and leisure. I mean, yeah, fun and leisure. Uh leisure is um it's actually a kind of a a restful, fulfilling something that doesn't leave you tired. Have you ever gone on vacation and come back more tired than you were? Yes. Okay, that's fun. Fun leaves you tired. Okay. Leisure is when you have the ability to return to being your the human the humanity. It's the closest thing to Sabbath. You have a an ability to come back to your humanity. You have the ability to engage in things that that fill you, that uh make you a better human being. That's what leisure is all about.
SPEAKER_16Yeah. Yeah. And even our leisure is peppered with I'm gonna go running and I'm gonna count my steps. Right, everything and I'm gonna see how long it's gonna take me. And you sort of you start taking these measurements, everything. And so you're not really doing leisure anymore. As I as I've read a little bit of of Piper, it sounds like it's more of a posture that you have toward God, toward what the real world, and toward yourself and toward other people. Yes. So it's not something you do necessarily, it's just your your connection with it. Trevor Burrus, Jr.
SPEAKER_06It's an interesting i and this is uh a thing for a Baptist because I I need to I need to ask a scripture question. All right. And what is there is a an an an a sentence in the scriptures that said, I swore in my anger God speaking, I swore in my anger they shall not enter into my rest.
SPEAKER_16It's in the book of Hebrews, but I I can't tell you exactly where. Uh it's probably chapter two or three.
SPEAKER_06But it's it's an amazing thing to say, because what is God's rest? And I think that's the closest thing to read leisure. Leisure is when what the Sabbath is supposed to be. It's supposed to be a time that reconstitutes you the way God intended you to be. Okay, and and to and and then you feel full. You feel uh you feel like uh I I'm back to being my true self. You're not just spent.
SPEAKER_14That's the problem. Mario, you're you remind me a couple years ago when I retired, they asked me, what do you want to do with your retirement? And I said, nothing. That's the leisure. Is it though? Yeah.
SPEAKER_16Is it though the fact that you do nothing?
SPEAKER_14It's not I'm it's not that I'm doing nothing, it's I'm doing what I want to do. It's what it's spending the time on things that I choose to spend it on instead of you know running here, running there, visiting people, you know, doing what a person does when they're clergy. When they're clergy. Yeah. Okay.
SPEAKER_16Well, I I got you you know, and and and Piper talks about that we in the West live under a cult of work.
SPEAKER_06Yes.
SPEAKER_16That that that that seems to be the dominant thing that we worship or we venerate at least work. Yes. And find our identity there, find our meaning, find our purpose. Yeah. I know we gotta go to break.
SPEAKER_06Yeah, we gotta go to a break. This is 1070 KMTH, and we will be right back.
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Likes, Identity, And Needing Recognition
SPEAKER_14Absolutely.
SPEAKER_06Yeah.
SPEAKER_16I remember older people doing the twist, but I don't just kidding. Just kidding.
SPEAKER_06Just because you're you're the youngest person of the three of us.
SPEAKER_16I'm the youngest person in this room except for Crystal.
SPEAKER_06Well, yeah, right. But Crystal doesn't count because she's a young lady.
SPEAKER_16She's very young.
SPEAKER_06She's a young lady. And actually, the youngest person is actually King Kong.
SPEAKER_16Oh, you think so? That's true. He is. He's not in this room, though.
SPEAKER_06That's true. How old are you, King Kong?
SPEAKER_03I am forty years old. She's forty years young.
SPEAKER_14Oh my god.
SPEAKER_16He's a kid. What are you talking about? Anyway. I'm talking he's a kid.
SPEAKER_06I was talking about Do you realize Charlie? Charlie, I could turn to my dog. Do you realize that when you were born, Rudy, I was thirty six years old.
SPEAKER_03Unfathomable. You know, can I tell you something? Sometimes I hang I hang out with my grandma. My grandma's 88 years old. And I look at her and I and I think about she was born in 1937. And I think about every single thing. Like I try to think about history and just the amount of stuff that she created. It's just it's just incredible, honestly. I I find it's just so many changes. I don't even know how you guys keep it together, honestly.
SPEAKER_16You're assuming we have it together. Yeah. That may not they may may not be the case after after all. May not be the case.
SPEAKER_03Well we'll have to do a metrics on how to keep it together.
SPEAKER_16Yeah. One of the things that that I find interesting, and and going back to the metrics and but also the entertainment piece is in social media. How people live for likes. How they post toward likes. And they want people to like what they put up. And if they if they put up ponies and ponies don't get enough likes, they may put up kitties. And if the kitties get more likes, they'll keep doing kitties. Right? And so we are we are in a sense being measured and we're measuring our value by the fact whether people want to see kitties or ponies.
SPEAKER_14And it's also subscribers. Please subscribe and like my post.
SPEAKER_16Yeah, yeah. I mean, that's part of it as well.
SPEAKER_06Well, yeah, but you know, that's the same thing with television ratings. With ratings.
SPEAKER_14I mean it's all about the ratings.
SPEAKER_16It's all about the ratings. It's all about as if everybody has a show. Right?
SPEAKER_06Well, because it's interesting because uh uh uh Carl Truman, uh my favorites one of my favorite authors, uh constantly talks about the popularity of what uh today of what's called expressive individualism. And expressive individualism is based on the fact that you must like my expression because the fact that you recognize me gives me life. If you don't recognize me, I don't matter. I don't I don't exist. So it actually goes along with your thing without metrics. It's almost like we we need those things to know that we are liked, therefore that we exist.
SPEAKER_16And that our life has meaning.
SPEAKER_06Yeah, yeah. Yeah, because if you don't think about it, if you don't have a relationship with God, what makes you think that you're alive? What's the point? And a lot of times people need the recognition of others uh to in order to uh to feel alive.
SPEAKER_14To feel alive. Yeah. I I've known somebody when they naturally retired out of their job and they didn't have a job because they retired, it's like their whole world crumbled. It's like they didn't know who was in the mirror anymore because that's how they completely identified with their job. Right, exactly. They are their job, exactly.
SPEAKER_16Well, that's what that's the whole basis of that movie about Schmidt many years ago. I don't know if you ever saw that movie. It's gosh, I'm trying to remember who the actor was. About Schmid about Schmidt. Schmidt had Schmidt was this guy who ended up um retiring and had a nice little party and everything, and then he when he came back to the office, everything had changed. He had been kind of in charge and been an important person. Now he was pretty much nobody nobody. But he became a pen pal in the movie with some kid in Africa or South America, something like that. This was uh golly, the famous actor, I can't recall his name.
SPEAKER_06Okay, but what happened now you got me?
SPEAKER_16Well, I mean, he he found his purpose in being a pen pal with this kid.
SPEAKER_14It was also like giving uh money, like a adopt uh uh I can't think of the name of the organization.
SPEAKER_16Uh uh one of the charities, you mean something like that? Give him money. Jack Nicholson, that's who it is.
SPEAKER_14Oh man, pictures I not remember. You got pictures of the kid and all this because he gave money every month.
SPEAKER_16Right. And so this he became important in his post-retirement years because of this connection with and there's a great scene at the very end of the movie when he opens uh uh a letter or something from this kid, and and for about 40 seconds you just see the face of Nicholson change from depression to joy. Right. And uh it's it's really a phenomenal bit of acting. But it's all about that. It's about our identity is tied up in this cult of work. And if we can't do, or if we don't do what we did before, how are we gonna be measured now? How are we gonna measure our own value, our own work?
SPEAKER_06Well, see, in in some way or another, you have to explain you have to understand in some way or another that you are loved, or that you are liked, or that you are recognized.
Love, The Trinity, And The Heart Button
SPEAKER_06Because the human being, you're not gonna like this, but that's okay. Well, I know you're wrong. From a Catholic perspective, because I know I'm right. For the Catholic perspective, it's we are a made in the image and likeness of God, which is of course, you know, but but the understanding that we have of God is the Trinity. And and and for us, we can say God is in himself love. And so when we are made in God's image and likeness, we are made in the image and likeness of love. And love requires being loved as well as loving. And that's why when you're not recognized being recognized positively, or actually in any way, is actually being brought into being, because we are relational humans. We are we need relationships in order to be sure that we can say we exist. And so the ratings and all see if you have a a life in which you are not you don't have a relationship with God and the importance that you have of your life is not based on God, then you need affirmation in one way or another, and you will get it cheaply in any way you can. Right.
SPEAKER_14You need it, you need it, otherwise you will crawl. And Mario, don't you think it's interesting that the way well in some social media that the way you show you like someone, what you click on is a heart. I think that's significant. It's not just always a thumbs up, but sometimes it's a heart, which usually indicates love, not like.
SPEAKER_16Huh. Give me more. What do you what do you think?
SPEAKER_14I I I think that I think what that indicates is that we're we're looking for likes because to us it indicates love. Love is not like. So when we get the heart, when we get the like, not all of them, some of their some of them are indicating thumbs up, okay? But some of them are hearts. I think TikTok is a heart. I can't remember, I'll have to look at it. But one of them is a heart. I just think that that's significant. We're looking for love. Yeah. And that that's what Mario was talking about. Right. Yeah.
SPEAKER_16So you would agree with Mario about that?
SPEAKER_14On part most of what he said, but not all of it.
SPEAKER_16But not right, yes. Okay. One of the things I l I like about this article is it's something that that he proposes.
Beauty, Play, And Learning To Lose
SPEAKER_16He says that what we need to do is to develop an aesthetic attitude, a way of engaging with the world that values beauty, playfulness, art, and comedy for their own sake. These activities are worthwhile just in and of themselves. Playing a game is worthwhile in and of itself. Even if you don't rate the game later. Or get rated by it. Going to a comedy show might be something you do for its own sake, not because you know, just because it's fun. But developing an attitude of playfulness, connection with other people because the activities you don't need measurable outcomes. He says games can help us sort of release the child, as it were, that was in us, th the the the young'un that would that's in us. And to play these games together uh with your friends, with with coworkers, because it helps bring out kind of a a playfulness and a competition that's fun, you know. Competition can be pretty rough, yeah. Yeah, but competition can be really important as well. So anyway, Rudy, any final thoughts?
SPEAKER_03Uh if anybody has a chance, uh Dr. Peterson, Jordan Peterson, he does a uh a show on in infantilization. And it's about how kids, and when you're talking about games, they need these spaces and environments uh to learn how to win and lose. And it's just so critical, these types of games uh for our development as proper adults. So it's good. It's just a good article. So thanks for sharing, David.
SPEAKER_16Yeah, no, I think that's great. I think that's what sports does as well, because you have to learn how to win and win graciously. And you know, you're gonna lose a lot of games along the way, and you have to learn how to do that and and not become a jerk at the end of it. I've seen it with a lot of coaches, unfortunately, along the way. Yep. All
Final Thoughts And The Five-Star Joke
SPEAKER_16right. Okay.
SPEAKER_06Who's next to who's next? Is it me?
SPEAKER_16I think it's you, yes.
SPEAKER_06Yeah, I think it is me.
SPEAKER_16You're the man.
SPEAKER_06Okay. Well, we look forward to you listening next week so you can rate if I did better than David and rate.
SPEAKER_16Yeah, rate. Five stars. Five stars. Five stars.
SPEAKER_06Well, thank you for listening here to the show of faith today. We are real priest, real rabbi, real minister, and real engineer. Uh what is anyway. This is millennial. Keep us in your prayers. You're gonna be in ours.
SPEAKER_05Find us at am 1070vanswer.com. Download our apps. Stream us 24 7, K N T H and K277 D E F M, Houston.