David Michael Bruno

Three Ways to Spend Money and Change the Economy

I thought it might be nice to follow up my last post about not spending money in order to avoid economic disaster with a post on how we might better spend money. Here are a few tips on how we might spend money in a way that will change the economy for the best.

Make at least 50% of expenditures go to living things. Take a look at this chart. Spending half of our money on living things wouldn’t be easy for most Americans. But it sure would change the economy from one that makes, collects, and discards plastic junk, to an economy that helps life thrive.

Make at least 5% of expenditures go to making something of value for the economy. Small business. Craft that you can give as gifts or sell for gifts. Service to your community like tutoring or some kind of consulting or advising. Photography. A helpful blog. A garden to feed family and friends. This idea might sound crazy, but it’s totally doable and rewarding. It would revolutionize our economy if each of us were mini-producers of goods or services.

Make at least 5% of expenditures go to helping those less fortunate than yourself. Study after study, as well as the testimony of countless people, demonstrates that giving financially to help the less fortunate is both empowering for the giver and the beneficiary. Be a person who experiences the joy of giving. And be a person who helps another human overcome difficult circumstances.

These are just a few tips. If there’s a theme running through them, it’s that you and I absolutely can choose how we’ll spend our money. Instead of being unsustainable consumers of things, we can structure our lives so that we’re benefactors of a better world. It’s an enormous privilege. Take advantage of this opportunity!

You Cannot Buy Meaning

People want to live meaningful lives. They want their lives to count for something.

And, of course, crafty marketers take advantage of this basic human impulse. Crafty marketers figure out all sorts of shifty ways to make their products sound like they will make your life more meaningful.

Don’t be fooled; you cannot buy a meaningful life.

Notice that I did not say that you cannot buy something that will benefit your life. Lots of things we buy make life better. Consider examples such as chocolate, books, underwear, computers, garden hoses, and much, much more. All very helpful.

Yet, I’m not aware of anything that can be bought in a store that will make a life more meaningful. You gotta look outside the mall to fulfill that most basic human desire.

Review: The Hunger Games

Warning: like almost all my reviews, there are spoilers here. And it’s long.

My friend Mel recommended that I read the Hunger Games series by Suzanne Collins. She thought I would like the books and find some interesting connections between the story and my harangues against American-style consumerism. Frighteningly, Mel was right.
First, let me admit it’s real enjoyable to be part of a worldwide book craze again. That said, the Hunger Games is not Harry Potter. Harry Potter was more epic and brilliant. The Hunger Games has qualities of an epic hero story, to be sure, but its power isn’t that it utilizes the timeless plot of good against evil. The impact of the Hunger Games comes from the fact that, though bordering on the absurd, the story is eerily familiar.
In that way Collins calls to mind authors like Graham Greene and Walker Percy, whose plots are so fanciful that they keep you turning pages, but make you slow down with each page turn because of the growing sensation that you’re getting closer to an uncomfortable reality. The Hunger Games isn’t literature at the level of The Power and the Glory or Love in Ruins. But it is cultural commentary on a plane similar to those books and books like them. And that makes the Hunger Games dangerous. It’s dangerous to get close too reality.
The Hunger Games is about privileged people who take advantage of other people. Privileged people who prioritize their own entertainment and self-pleasure over the dignity and well-being of others. And it is about the reaction of the oppressed.
Take just one of endless examples from the books, the character Finnick. He’s from one of the impoverished “Districts” that serve the opulence of the “Capital.” Finnick has worked his way up from seemingly impossible circumstances. There is no way that a child born in a District can have any kind of privileged life -- unless he or she wins a Hunger Games. Finnick did. Now he’s a star in the eyes of the Capital people. A crown jewel of their amusement. So much so, the Capital government wants to keep using him for entertainment and forces him into a life of high-priced prostitution in the service of the Capital’s most powerful individuals. But Finnick’s celebrity is precarious. He is always one yawn away from becoming uninteresting in the eyes of the Capital people or one slip up away from a threat to the Capital’s government. He’s quite literally denuded of all his clothes and all his human dignity. All for the amusement of the people and the power plays of the Capital.
Seems absurd, right? A young person not born into privilege becomes the plaything of the powerful and because of that role becomes a celebrity and entertainment for the masses but only for a time because the people get bored and move on to be entertained by the next scandalous celebrity. Ridiculous. Unthinkable. Monica Lewinsky. Ashley Dupre. Collins has to making this stuff up.
The extreme nature of the picture that Collins creates of the Capital people is the most uncomfortable aspect of these books. They are people who are constantly after entertainment. They live to be amused. They alter their bodies with tattoos and surgeries. The consume endless portions of food. They buy endless things in search of satisfaction. Beware. These people are really creepy. And if you read these books they will sound way too familiar for your liking. I recommend the books, the exercise of reading and seeing. But proceed at your own risk. You may want desperately to not be a part of a culture that is debased -- not the culture in the Capital and not the culture too often in our real life communities.

Two final reactions come to mind. First, is it right to let children (in our case, our eleven-year old daughter) read the Hunger Games? A youth will learn about: extreme and senseless violence as entertainment, political oppression and evil derived from unchecked power, unbridled sexuality, and more. I’m reminded of a talk I had with a Christian author and literature professor. We were discussing Walker Percy’s explicitly sexual and violent novels and whether it’s a good idea to read them. He pointed out that the Bible is pretty explicit. And he made an appropriate distinction between a story that is graphic so as to arouse base desires and a story that is graphic in order to kindle thoughtfulness and ultimately virtue. Percy and the Bible, he argued, kindle thoughtfulness and encourage virtue. This is not always an easy line to draw. The Hunger Games, I think, fit into the thoughtfulness and virtue end of explicit literature. But I will say this. I did not feel uncomfortable with my daughter reading these books. In fact, I feel considerably more comfortable with her reading these books than if she were to watch, say, the over-sexualized ads during the Super Bowl or the violence-as-entertainment news or some human-dignity-stripping reality TV series. That said, you probably want to read these books first and evaluate their appropriateness for your son or daughter. It will require a level of maturity to read them.
My second reaction is my criticism of Collins’s series. In the entire series, amidst unthinkable tragedy, never once is there even a hint of the soul or the afterlife. There is not even a superior “I know better than to believe in God” nod in the direction of the religious. Nothing. Of course, as a Christian, I am bias on this point. But really? Despite tens of thousands of years of human civilization believing in the soul and seeking spiritual comfort when life gets difficult. Not one mention of one person -- even a foolish person -- who has any kind of spiritual sensibility? Though I could be wrong, I don’t get the impression that Collins left religion out as a commentary: “This is what humanity can become without religion.” Perhaps that’s what she did. It didn’t feel like that was going on though. Thus, despite what I felt like was a great ending that promoted a healthy view of recovery from tragedy, it was a graceless finish and so incomplete. For only by grace, as we’ve seen in the aftermath of too many genocides in our real world, can survivors pick up the pieces and continue to live.

A Participation

At the conference I was just at this past weekend, a panel of authors was asked to reflect on their definition of story. What is a story? There were a lot of good insights and answers.
Sitting in my chair listening to the panel, my mind got to wandering. It usually wanders. What is a story? After a moment of reflection I landed on what I feel is an accurate synonym for the word story. A story is a “participation.”
A story truly becomes a story when those who hear or read or watch it can take part in it. This seems to me like a reasonable understanding of what makes a story a story, though I don’t want to make a technical argument to backup this definition in this short blog post.

By this definition, there are many stories all around us. There are endless opportunities to participate. Certainly throughout our lives we are participants in many stories, small and grand. Well, but if we are going to be main characters in a story, then whose story are we going to take part in? Whose story are we going to focus our energies on? Participate wholeheartedly in?

BMW? The Gap? Apple? Patagonia? Frigidaire? This list could go on and on and on. It’s kind of late, though, so I’m going to trust you get the point.

A participation. It’s your leading role. What story are you going to take part in?

How I Came to Sell a Guitar

Thinking about music this week caused me to recall an outtake from my soon-to-be published book, The 100 Thing Challenge. It reminds me of a truism I’ve discovered the hard way, the humiliating way: if you aren’t good at it, you ain’t gonna get better by buying stuff at the store.

I felt a little too good about a song I wrote extemporaneously one night while tucking in our daughter Bridget, who was nearly three years old at the time. She liked the song. She is my daughter, and she loves me. To her it does not matter what my singing voice sounds like. I knew that, but I should have kept it in mind.
I finger picked a simple G, D, and C.

It’s time to go to bed my girl
Time to lay down your head
We wish the days would last without end
But it’s time instead to dream

It’s time to close your eyes my girl
See what the night may bring
We love the light and the warmth of the sun
But our hearts were made to dream

So dream your dreams tonight
And all things will be alright
And in the morning light, when the sun shines again
Won’t you share your dreams with me?
May your dreams never end

Then I finished tucking in Bridget and thought, “Look, I know I cannot sing. I know I am not a singer songwriter. But what I’ve just done is create a really good song. If I knew Bob Carlisle, this song of mine could get on volume three of the Butterfly Kisses album.” [Wait, what volume is he on now? I wrote this a while ago.]
I imagined work-hardened dads in rural American, who never learned how to be sensitive and who cannot say, “I love you,” to their young daughters, listening to my song and tearing up. I was amazed.
So I bought a whole recording setup. I bought a small portable preamp and two microphones, one for my Breedlove acoustic guitar and one for my own voice. I bought booms to hold the microphones in place. And I bought cords to connect everything to the old Apple laptop computer I owned. I was prepared to be a singer songwriter. I was set.
When all the accessories were ready, I crooned that tender lullaby in the dark of the master bedroom closet, using our hanging clothes to deaden erratic acoustic reflections. Recording in a closet full of clothes is an old makeshift studio trick of singer songwriters, I have heard. I made several takes. It felt good. Singer songwriters call the times they record their songs “sessions.” This session was going well. No one in the house knew what I was doing, but they sure were going to be surprised.
After I was satisfied, I unplugged everything and took my Apple laptop computer to my desk. I got my headphones comfortably positioned over my ears. I moved the cursor where it needed to be and clicked the playback button in Pro Tools to listen to the song.
Now, I was under no impression that I was going to hear a perfect take. Even in the midst of my pride, some humility found a means to temper enthusiasm for my talent. I figured that listening to my songs would be helpful and even inspirational. I judged that, even though “It’s Time for Bed, My Girl” was a damn good song, maybe by hearing recordings of my songs I could learn to sing better and write more profound words. I thought that. But I didn’t believe it. Really my heart was racing and I anticipated being shocked and thinking to myself, “Wow. Wow, David Michael Bruno. I never knew you were capable of this.” I clicked the mouse.
Surely I was not. Not capable of this. Worry and shame rung in my ears when my digital voice croaked back lyrics that sounded simplistic. My eyes shifted to make sure I was alone in the room. Where did the song I wrote go? What is this godawful noise?
Very soon thereafter I sold that small portable preamp and the microphones and the audio cables on eBay. I gave the mic stands to my father-in-law Billy, who is a professional musician, and I never admitted to him what my voice sounded like on a computer. Not long after that, I sold my last singer songwriter accessory, my Breedlove acoustic guitar.

After the 100 Thing Challenge ended, I decided to buy another guitar. Another Breedlove acoustic. But I’ve not recorded myself singing and never will again, God willing.

Materialism and Joy

Essentially, if you are not resisting materialism, you are being manipulated by stuff. The reason for this is that materialism is like a one-way conduit through which someone else controls you. Someone passes stuff and ideas about stuff through the conduit of materialism and, like it or not, you do their bidding.Joy is a conduit, too. Many things both material and incorporeal pass through the conduit of joy. It also controls you. Although, joy operates in both directions; you and someone else can send stuff through. It’s a lasting pleasure to lose control of yourself on account of joy. It's being manipulated by love.

Review: Inception - Dreaming for Certain

Yes, there are spoilers below.

Like the movie itself, my reactions to Inception, Christopher Nolan’s latest film, are complex. Rather than trying to write a flowing review, I’ve broken my reactions into sections.

What Annoyed Me

First let me get past the two things that really bothered me about this excellent movie: the music and the guns. It seems to me that the whole movie works because of its subtleties. Why then must the musical score act like a hyperactive juvenile? The totem keeps spinning . . . BUM, BUM, BUM, BUMMMM! Uh, yeah. Was there really a need to bloody my nose with that symphonic facial disgracial? I saw the screen go black.

And look, I’m no camo wearing, assault rifle owning, Guns and Ammo reading nut case, but I am a boy. One dream level down the entire cast would have been shredded into the consistency of confetti and spent the rest of eternity wafting their way down to limbo in their unwakeable sedated state. Couldn’t the van have been armour plated or something?

Some Observations

Capers. This movie is a classic caper flick. And do you know what is required of all heists? Real things. Something real to steal. Real clues. Real consequences. At all levels, from reality all the way down four levels of dreams into limbo, the movie remains committed to the coherency of truth. It’s not just one big dream. The rules of the movie’s genre are never broken. In other words, the movie isn’t trying to pull a fast one on us. This isn’t about how there’s no truth.

Paradox. Note how the dream architects use paradox to create the boundaries of the dream space. How might this correspond to our knowledge of the truth? At the boundaries of what we can understand exists, not untruth, but paradox -- two seemingly contradictory truths.

Waking up. My wife and I have been wondering about the significance of that one scene in the chemist's basement. I think I've figured it out. In the scene one of the characters seems surprised that anyone would want to dream for as long as the people down there do. The helper-guy responds, "They do not come here to dream. They come here to wake up. And who are you to say otherwise?" In other words, Who says that our dreams are not actually our reality? Well, right after that idea is suggested, Cobb tries out the sedative. What does he dream about? He dreams about Mal's suicide. Here's my interpretation: when we believe that our dreams (the "reality" we create) is more real than actual reality, it always ends in dysfunction and ultimately death. Upon reflection, I think this scene is the most direct repudiation of the notion that we make our own reality. [Note: this observation was added after my original post.]

Prodigal. My feeling is that the father relationships are fundamental clues to understanding the movie. What does Fischer find locked away in his father’s safe? He finds that his father loves and accepts him. Who is waiting for Cobb at the airport to pick him up? His father, Professor Miles. Listen to what the customs agent says, “Welcome home Mr. Cobb.” Notice that Cobb’s father is excitedly waving his arms while every other person picking up someone is passively waiting. Very much the imagery found in the parable of the prodigal son, where the father enthusiastically welcomes his son home.

Totems. Arthur’s totem is a loaded die. Arthur is the character who more than any other splits the difference between calculation and chaos. He’s always aware of everything, able to keep time through two layers of dreams and endless mishaps. But he has to set off the “kick” that brings them all back to reality using his intuition and feel. His totem is a symbol of chance, but one that’s been rigged for reliability. Ariadne’s totem is a chess piece, a bishop. She’s Cobb’s confessor, the only one who knows of his guilt. She’s also the one who leads him through maze of his mind with some pretty sound therapy. (Also, look up Ariadne in Greek mythology.)

Was Cobb Dreaming In The Final Scene?

No and Yes. Here’s my theory. Notice Cobb’s wedding ring. The cinematography goes to great lengths to establish throughout the movie that when Cobb is not dreaming he is not wearing his wedding ring. When he is dreaming, he has it on. While it’s not easy to tell, I believe in the final scenes there’s enough evidence to say that he is not wearing the wedding ring. No wedding ring = clue. (Remember, caper genre.) He’s not dreaming. He really makes it home to his kids.

But then, why are his children the same age and wearing the same clothes? This is what I think. They aren’t. I’d have to watch the movie one more time to confirm my hunch, but I think that a careful viewing would show what is very hard to see through the screen door, namely, that the children are dressed differently.

So what’s going on when he looks out and sees his kids seemingly just as he left them when he had to flee? Well, I think he is moving on. He’s forgiving himself for the thing he thought he’d “regret for the rest of his life,” leaving without seeing his kids’ faces one last time. He finally sees them turn around. There’s closure.

So Why The Hell Doesn’t The Totem Fall Over?!

Because it doesn’t matter anymore. He doesn’t need to check anymore. Cobb is back in reality, which is a place where absolute certainty isn’t the point.

No, Christian readers of my blog, this is not subjectivity. As my favorite Christian philosophy professor, Dr. Holmes, once quipped in class, “Whoever said you have to prove something for it to be true?” Reality is not dependent on our confirmation of it. Dreams are dependent on us. Truth isn’t.

In his book Telling the Truth, Frederick Buechner describes a fairy tale this way, “It is a world where goodness is pitted against evil, love against hate, order against chaos, in a great struggle where often it is hard to be sure who belongs to which side because appearances are endlessly deceptive.”

Our lives are not unlike fairy tales. If we insist on more certainty than that, well, we’re only dreaming.

Review: Inception...waiting for the idea

I saw Inception last night with my wife. Needless to say, I had some weird dreams. And now, I've been pondering it all day. Nutty thing is tonight's a guys' night and I'm going to see Inception with some buddies. Going to level two!

So I am going to hold off on a review. But I have to say this: that was a ridiculously awesome movie! More soon.

Oh, and I think I've mentioned before that I heard from a reporter who interviewed me about the 100 Thing Challenge that Leonardo DiCaprio likes the 100 Thing Challenge. Hope that's not just a wild dream. The guy can act!

Pixar and Hollywood - Night and Day

It’s as if Hollywood is afraid of people. Afraid that the people who go to see movies might actually be imbeciles. There are not that many stories to tell. There are love stories or unrequited love stories. There are coming of age stories or stories about people who never grow up. There are good guy or bad guy stories. And there are a few more kinds of stories. They get told over and over again but in new ways. Even though we’ve all read and watched and even ourselves lived most of these stories multiple times, still we can get all choked up when we experience the same old story again but with a new twist.

Yet makers of money are worried that spenders of money don’t want to spend money on something unfamiliar, because imbeciles prioritize comfort above all other stimuli. So Hollywood has mostly been comfortably remaking films for the past couple decades. Remaking films. Not retelling stories. The remakes have more special effects and, over the last couple of years, lots of 3D because that’s the difference between the old film and the new film: more realistic looking computer animated animals and more pieces of blown up things coming closer to the imbeciles’ heads.

While all this has been going on Pixar has been, most of the time, retelling stories. Pixar has been pushing the limits of Hollywood propriety by having the nerve to treat audiences -- even audiences of children! -- like they aren’t imbeciles.

The difference between Pixar and mainstream Hollywood is like night and day. Or, is that Day & Night? Sheesh! Who knows what message to tolerate anymore.

A New Recession In My Life

There is a new recession in my life. As certain as death and taxes, I have been positive that my lion’s mane worth of hair on top of my head would remain thick till my last days. Alas, I see scalp in the morning.

The previous couple of weeks have been wonderful. A delight in every way possible. Yet over the past several months I’ve noticed my soul has been rumbling. Weird feelings have been shifting within me. For instance, I work at a university. As a good Christian man, I try to keep my eyes to myself and not scam on the young women. But these days I sometimes catch myself doing a double take to grab a second peek ... at one of the college girl’s mothers! Shamed, I remind myself of my own wonderful family, which now includes a junior higher! There is no stopping. The guy named Dave, who was once called (rather awkwardly I might add) the “Italian Stallion” by his mother-in-law, is now in a slow trot to middle age with a loose grip on the reins.

I don’t have much more to say about the subject. This is just a small confession. A public bending of my knee to the inevitability of life. A reminder to myself that recessions eventually pass but often change the rest of one’s life. Not necessarily for the worst. Often for the better. By God's grace I'm anticipating better.