Making a Movie

While I have liked the job that I do in Hollywood, I have always focused on the technical aspects of filmmaking, as opposed to the creative side.  I didn't go to meetings about script revision, or character development.  I dealt with things like file types, compression formats, and data security.  As time went on this became a more deliberate distinction, for a number of reasons.  For one, I was a leading expert on the technical front, and that was not true in the creative side.  With technical issues, whether an idea is "good" or not is measured by if it is true, and whether or not it actually works.  With creative ideas, whether or not a suggestion is "good" is measured by how much it is liked by other people.  I prefer to avoid such subjective issues, because I like being right.  Looking back, I guess I was afraid to lose the status I had earned of always being right.  I valued that my bosses trusted my judgment enough to take significant risks based on my technical input.  My ideas were very outside-the-box compared to the industry at large, and my company was willing to invest in unproven ideas based on the fact that they trusted I could make it work if I said I could.  And I always made it work, and never lost a single shot in ten years.  But I nearly always refused to offer my creative input, even when it was deliberately sought.

My avoidance of creative conversations may have been to my detriment in the long run, since that is where the upward mobility is, and those ideas and experiences are less time sensitive.  I was the best at what I did because I was well connected with the technologies that were being developed at the time, and what that meant for my industry.  Those technologies are still in use, but are no longer the area where the most significant innovation is taking place, so I am out of the loop in that regard.  The concepts of good storytelling are not going to become obsolete anytime soon, but that world can never be totally conquered by a single individual.  There is always more to learn, and ways to improve.

This is all on my mind, because after years of avoiding the creative aspect of filmmaking, I am considering trying to create a film of my own.  I won't be doing it on my own, but I will have to take the lead in regards to the creative direction, which is going to be a challenge.  Unlike my actual job for the last ten years, this is the role I was trained to play in college, with an Art Degree in Multimedia.  So I am pitching my idea for a documentary about the importance of Freedom to anyone who I think might be able to help or support the project.  Freedom is a fairly intangible concept, so illustrating that in a visual format is going to take some creativity.  But I believe it is possible, and that this is an important time for that idea to be better understood by the public at large.  It is unlikely to become a financial success, but it can still succeed in spreading the message due to the innovations in streaming video and online distribution.  If I can create something that presents and defends the idea that "Freedom is the opportunity to experience the consequences of your own actions," and that "Freedom is more important than life itself" then that will be a success in and of itself.

Worth my Weight in Gold

So it randomly occurred to me the other day that I was probably worth my weight in gold.  It must have been a God thing, because I don't naturally come to conclusions like that.  But I was curious to see if that was actually true.  It order to figure that out, we need to establish the value of the two items in question.  One is quite easy.  At 145lbs, with current prices, my weight in gold would be worth about 2.7 million dollars.

But am I worth $2.7 million?  Obviously it can be a philosophical question what one life is worth, and there are many answers.  Biblically one is worth more than all, so a human life or soul is worth more in the eyes of God than anything else in creation.  Another way or determining value is to evaluate how much something costs to create.  By that measure, we add up all of my parents' expenses in raising and caring for me, plus college tuition, as well as how much the government has paid in tax deductions and insurance companies have paid out in claims.  I doubt that would surpass $2.7 million in my case, but that is not usually how value is determined anyway.

Value is usually determined by what people are willing to pay for something.  Hence Biblically humans are worth everything because God was willing to pay his life for them.  But if we look past that issue, at a more limited scope of our impact here on earth, how would we determine one person's value?  If someone wanted to buy me, they are essentially buying my time, since that is all I really have to sell.  That is essentially what slavery is, so while I don't foresee myself going down that road anytime soon, let's examine it hypothetically.  If someone else could buy my productivity for the rest of my life, what would that be worth?

Our worth in that regard is not necessarily determined by how much we are paid, although that is usually a related variable.  Our work must be worth more than our wages in order for our employment to be worth something to our employer.  This is why we have unemployment when wages are artificially raised to a "minimum level."  Some people's work is worth more than others, based on their skill set and talents.  So what is my work worth?

The value of my work depends on what I am doing, because my tasks vary greatly, and I am usually on the spending side of the ledger instead of the income side.  I have had some periods at work where I was very aware of the fact that I was saving my company at least $1000/day, so my work was worth at least that much.  But that was only during times of major expansion where my innovations can be compared to the usual ways of doing things in my industry.  Other times it was less significant, but still valuable.  Based on my pay and the economics of what I spent my time doing, I would estimate that I was worth at least $100K/year to my company when I was working full time.  If my work was worth $100K/year, I would hit $2.7 million in value before I turned 50, assuming I started after graduating college.  Therefore, at least in the video technology world, I am worth my weight in gold.

Of course by that measure my "value" decreases as I get older, so at some point that would cease to be true.  Fortunately our value does not decrease in the eyes of God as we grow older.  And we are worth far more to him than our weight in gold.  But it does make for an interesting examination of value.

The Significance of Freedom

Freedom is a very interesting concept.  It is not at all tangible, and frequently misunderstood.  In one sense, no one can take your freedom away, but in another sense they can impose some severe limits on your available options.  Freedom is what makes good and bad possible in the world.  Without it, there would be no sin.  So is freedom a problem that must be overcome to remove sin from the world?  Is freedom a good thing or a bad thing in the grand scheme of things?

I believe that freedom is not only a positive thing worth pursuing more fully, but they most significantly important thing to pursue above ever life itself.  Most members of the Church would agree that freedom is a good thing, but I would ask them whether they believe that because they are Christians, or because they are Americans?  Basically it comes down to: "do they believe that God agrees with them that freedom is a good thing?"  I believe that God does agree, and see strong evidence in the Bible to support that claim.

When God originally created humans in the Garden of Eden, there was no death in the world.  Death was introduced only after sin entered the world through mankind's decisions.  God didn't have to place the tree of Knowledge in the Garden, allowing sin to enter the world.  He could have given Adam and Eve life without end in the garden, without the possibility of their fall.  But no matter how comfortable, they would have essentially been prisoners, with no option to leave.  They would be God's captive audience, not choosing to spend time with him, but doing so because it was the only option.

Instead, God did place the tree in the Garden, which allowed the possibility for sin.  So he chose to provide freedom at the expense of unlimited life.  Therefore he must have determined that freedom was more important than life.  And if God thinks so, it must be true.  Now the Judeo-Christian world has not always been the best at recognizing the importance of freedom, likely because of the restrictive nature of Old Testament Law.  But the Christian Biblical worldview is what eventually led to the creation of the first political system that valued the freedom of its citizens, when the US Constitution was ratified.  It is the logical conclusion of the Bible story, where God empowers his creatures to make their own choices and deal with the consequences.  He is constantly trying to love and shepherd them, but never at the expense of free will.

Fatherhood

I wrote down some thoughts about two months ago, the first week we discovered my wife was pregnant:

"My wife and I learned this week that we currently have a baby on the way.  The initial reaction was a strong feeling of the enormity of that responsibility.  And while that is true, it ceased feeling overwhelming after about 30 seconds, and the feeling has not returned.  We are as prepared as anyone without kids can really be, and it was assumed this is the direction we would eventually be going.  It will shift the focus of our marriage a bit, no longer fixated on each other, but towards the rest of our family.

It is crazy to think about the world that we are bringing a child into, and what it will be like as they grow up.  I see more negative changes than positive ones at the moment, but it is difficult to tell how much of that is perspective as opposed to objective reality."

It is interesting to look back on that and see how much my perspective has shifted with my experience the last two months.  My wife has been very sick most of that time, which has been quite challenging and stressful to deal with.  While I still believe that my original assessment was correct, and that we are as prepared as we could be as individuals, I don't think that our relationship was as prepared as it could be.  We have not been married for very long, and this happened sooner than we expected.  Not counting time spent on the road, we have hardly had 6 weeks of married life to establish "normal routines."  And nine months of pregnancy is a much longer time to get through, which has its own (hopefully temporary) "normal routines."  Those are not things that I want to continue to see happening after that process is over, but we don't exactly have strongly established patterns to return to.

So while I am excited to be having children, and believe this is the path God intended for us, I can't help but feel that I somehow missed out on most of what should be "newlywed bliss," or something like that.  I assume that after the baby is born there will be a whole new set of challenges and stresses that will tax our relationship in different ways.  Right up until they leave for college, right?  Now maybe this whole train of thought is just my reflexive response to the weight of the responsibility of having a child, and I would feel like I am losing my freedom, regardless of how long we had been married.  I don't know if it is, and either way, I don't know anything I can do to remedy the issue, besides just continuing to press onward.

Marriage in Game Of Thrones

Game of Thrones is a very popular TV series, set in a medieval world, during a violent conflict.  It has been criticized for violence, sexuality, and all sorts of other course things.  It is true that it depicts all sorts of terrible things on screen, but I don't necessarily see that as a bad thing as long as it doesn't glorify those things.  It usually graphically portrays all of the horrors and outcomes of those things that are very real in our own world, even if we usually sanitize any sign of them from our own daily lives.  But there is one thing that is portrayed in a very different light than modern society is accustomed to: marriage.

Marriage is clearly in the process of being redefined in our culture, from the unconstitutional "a union between a man and a woman," to the more open ended and acceptable: "a loving bond."  Notice that the word love is not even in the first "traditional" definition.  Modern society thinks that love is the only thing that matters, and that this recent change is a case where love wins.  But what happens when that "love" is no longer actively being felt.  If that was the basis for the bond, then the marriage is over, and it is time for divorce.  And then we see that on its own, love does not win.  But what if the marriage was based on something else besides love, namely commitment?  And if it wasn't about seeking happiness of the individual so much as developing a lasting relationship between different families through creating children they both valued?  What if divorce was not even an option?  That is the scenario we see played out in Game of Thrones.

The first relationship where we see this become clear, is the king and his wife.  They hate each other, and both cheat on each other, so their marriage is by no means the Christian ideal.  But it is clearly stated that their marriage, tying together two powerful families that are otherwise at odds with one another, is what preserves peace in the kingdom for 17 years.  Once one of them dies, the marriage is over, and all hell breaks loose in the power struggle that follows.  The closest thing we see to divorce is the young prince breaking off his betrothal to the daughter of a man he sees as a traitor, and this is still considered a serious decision that requires the approval of the gods.  And he doesn't live long enough to benefit from his replacement wife.  That daughter's brother spurns an engagement he agreed to for political reasons to marry for love, in a move that was criticized by all his advisors, and led to his death.  By contrast, another political marriage is forced upon a couple, and they develop a level of care for one another where there had been none before, even without the benefit of sex.  So clearly the commitment aspect of marriage is strongly reinforced throughout the show, in  a way that is probably more historically accurate than the passionate romances that we see in most historical movies.  But marriage is also presented as a tool for social stability and family advancement.  When motivated by greed, that is a bad thing, but when motivated by love, that stability provides a solid foundation for raising up the next generation.

Marrying for money is frowned upon in our culture even by those who actually do it.  And marrying for looks is ridiculed, but only because marriage has been decoupled from sex.  Having sex with someone based on their appearance is celebrated, but marrying them for that reason is not.  Society thinks that marriage is supposed to be based a strong passionate emotional connection, which is why many high profile marriages are so short, because strong emotions rarely last long or are consistent.  And that is why commitment is so important, as is the recognition that it is about more than the individual emotions.  Now I am not saying that marriages should be exactly like they are in Game of Thrones, I am just saying that those marriages do have a level of commitment that our current marriage culture appears to be completely lacking.

The Government as (a) God

In practical daily life, most liberal atheists still look to a higher power for help, to solve problems that are beyond their control.  But instead of looking to God for those answers and solutions, they look to the government.  Maybe this was obvious to everyone else before now, but I was blind to the idea until it was revealed to me a few weeks ago.  But now I can't go a day without seeing another clear manifestation of this principle.

The clearest example to see, is the concept of climate change.  The climate is changing, and pretty much everyone agrees on that.  The disagreement comes when trying to determine how we as people should respond to that obvious fact.  For thousands of years, people in cultures around the world have prayed to God or gods for rain for their crops, for less severe cold and snow, for less severe heat.  Christians continue to do that today, but there is a new trend.  Those who don't believe in God find themselves turning elsewhere for a solution to control the changes in weather and climate.  The only other higher power that they can see is the government.  Now from an objective human standpoint, the idea that the government has any control over the climate of the region they rule is laughably arrogant, but now widely accepted.  Now from the government's perspective, it's citizens are coming to them with a request that they have no true power to respond to, since they can't legislate the weather.  They can see that human activity has at least some effect on the weather, if not the climate.  So they respond that if we want them to deal with the climate issue, they need to have control over all human activity.  It's a win-win for those who want control, because if things they have no real influence over (read-weather) improve, they can take credit for that, and if they don't improve, they can claim they weren't given enough control over the situation, and demand more.

Another example is the war on poverty, as if that was something that the government could solve.  Instead of seeing those less fortunate and doing something for them themselves, they think: "the government should do something about that."  So they present the problem of poverty to the government, which responds with, "let's set a minimum wage, so that everyone has enough money."  But since certain jobs are of less financial value than others, those jobs under the minimum wage disappear.  That leaves many people with no one willing to pay them the legal minimum to work, so they are now unemployed.  So the government responds by creating unemployment benefits.  As each solution fails to solve the poverty problem, this is followed by social security, medicare, welfare, food stamps, and a myriad of other government programs to make poverty more comfortable.  Now poverty is not something that the government should even be trying to solve.   They are responsible for providing justice, freedom and defense, but not economic prosperity or happiness.   But this overreach is favorable to those receiving the benefits of it, as well as those whose consciences are eased by it, freeing them from any personal obligations to those around them in need.

So instead of believing in a God powerful enough to solve problems, they want a government powerful enough to solve all the problems they see, and they are willing to trade away their liberty and freedom to get it.  And those who are willing to trade away freedom for security deserve neither and will lose both.  God on the other hand goes to great lengths to give us freedom, when he has the authority and power to solve any problem by forcing us to do things his way.  Instead, he put the tree in the garden, making it our choice to solve problems or create new ones.  We are supposed to look to him for guidance and support, not a man-made government, which in that case becomes in idol.

Taxes

I am not totally opposed to taxes at a philosophical level (render unto Caesar what is Caesar's and unto God what is God's) but I am opposed to government expansion, which is what US taxes currently represent.  I am also opposed to governments using taxes to manipulate and control it's citizens.  Obamacare was ruled constitutional because it was enforced through a tax, reasoning that i strongly disagree with.  Taxes should be in place to raise needed revenue, ideally proportionally to benefits received, not to artificially incentivize certain actions.  For example gasoline taxes should be used to support highway infrastructure, and the tax rate should be determined by the needs of the roads, not increased as high as the public will stand for, to increase revenue and discourage fossil fuel use.

Rand Paul recently proposed a total reworking of the US tax system.  Although his new plan is not perfect, it is simpler than the current system.  It tries to remove most of the loopholes, and change the tax rate to a fixed percentage.  These are two separate changes, that are independent.  I favor simplifying the rules in both areas, but the tax rate isn't very complicated, the tax tables just distract from the the fact that the tax rate increases as income increases.  The loopholes and corner cases are the areas with the most need for improvement.  The plan would eliminate complex depreciation and amortization calculations from the business world, and most of the complexity from personal investments.  It would probably put a few accountants out of work, but I have no problem eliminating jobs that were only artificially useful in the first place.

Interesting as well are the loopholes he leaves in place, including the mortgage deduction.  Interest is tax deductible, which is the government incentivizing borrowing.  From a Biblical perspective, lending money with interest is prohibited, which seems to have been long forgotten by modern society.  I am not saying we should ban interest, but we shouldn't be incentivizing and encouraging it.  This is the single main loophole that remains in Paul's proposal, which I see no reason for, besides politics.

The other half of the plan is to flatten the tax rate to 15%.  Regardless of the effect it would have on Federal revenue, that is not longer linked to how much the government is spending.  I favor cutting government spending drastically, but due to the national debt, we probably shouldn't decrease revenues.  So I am not pushing to decrease the tax rates, just decrease the complexity and waste.

So the rate and the flat percentage will get lots of debate before the whole idea is canned, but the simplification is what we really need.  And some common sense and basic budgeting skills in Washington would be helpful as well.  Until then our tax money, regardless of the rates we pay, is just being flushed down the drain.