I've been blogging more on my personal Facebook page lately, and have gotten a really good response.  I took some of those blogs and compiled them here, which I will do from time to time.  They are much shorter than the essays I normally write on the blog.  Enjoy

Tearing Down or Building Up?

I was thinking this morning as I was drinking my coffee and doing some reading......We all like to complain from time to time, but how often do we contribute to make things better? How much are we getting involved? How much are we trying to make our communities better? How much are we trying to create value in our jobs or businesses every day? How much do we set the small goals that lead to big things? How much are we encouraging people? How much are we doing the little things to make the situation better, every single day? This applies to so many things. 

Most people like to tear down, but few people want to put in the effort to see what could be, and to make it happen. 
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It's easy to tear down, and criticize, but it's a lot harder to till the soil, plant the seeds, cultivate, nurture, fertilize, and produce something better for the future.
Are you tilling the soil? Or are you poisoning it?

A Good Article

To understand culture and politics, and even health, in America, you have to have a solid grasp on metaphysics. What is that ? Metaphysics is a type of philosophy exploring the nature of concepts like being, existence and reality, things people rarely think about.

I quit reading the newspapers years ago, because normally the writers have an agenda and little more than a passing grasp of history, religion, science, and culture, and lack a coherent metaphysics. You'd be better off reading classic literature. FIRST THINGS magazine is the one periodical I read on a regular basis, and I have found it to be some of the best writing I've ever read. If you haven't read it, check it out. Be patient because the articles aren't easy reading. 

This insightful article reveals one of the hidden things of our times. What are we living through now, though this time period is now exhausted and is winding down, is a period of secular progressivism (characterized ironically by a utopian reading of history and a dangerous religious fervor), where the beliefs of our fathers and ancestors is being replaced by the gods of the self.  What will come next remains to be seen.  

​You may enjoy this FIRST THINGS article:

Our Secular Theodicy

Healthy Work at Christmas Time

As we move into Christmas here's something to think about. How many of the products, food, and services you buy do you feel good about buying? Do you know who you buy from and can you look them in the eye? Do you have a personal connection to the people you buy from? Have the people who build the things you buy been treated well at work? Probably not if made in China.  It's kind of ironic considering corporate America likes to lecture people about morality now.   I buy things made in China, like everyone else, but I try to buy less and less and I try to shop local and spend money local. When you go out to eat, if you eat at local restaurants, money stays local. If you eat at chains, profits go mostly to abstract investors in far away places. These abstract investors usually don't care about your local community. Healthy Work is about doing work and buying from businesses you feel good about. Healthy Work is about using your mind and your hands to produce value in an ethical way. It's about re-investing in local communities. It's about producing an economic transaction that is healthy, good for you, the buyers and sellers, and the community.

One reason Chick Fil A, even though they are a very large corporation, is such an admirable company (for now) is that they are connected to Georgia, have a face to face connection, the Cathy family, and have remained a private family owned business. Some places I like to shop at in Chamblee are Zen Tea, Southbound, and the Antique shops and Furniture Consolidators. I also like to eat at all the ethnic restaurants on Buford Highway, and to go to the coffee shop in Southbound, called Mooonbird. Casey, the proprioter of Moonbird, may not have a ton in common with me as far as hobbies or interests, but we have a a lot in common when it comes to our coffee transactions. She produces a warm fresh cup of coffee, freshly brewed on her Italian espresso machine, and I drink it after chatting with her a few minutes. It's delicious and I like her because she is making money engaging in Healthy Work. She puts a lot of love into that cup of coffee.

A lot of people might think that just because I'm pretty conservative overall that I might not have an appreciation for Karl Marx, the socialist philosopher and economist. I've read all of his work, and actually, he was dead wrong overall on the redistribution of wealth, but his critique of the downsides of the industrialization of labor was on the money. Industrialization, even though it was / is obviously good and it brought us a high standard of living, has the potential to be dehumanizing. The way around this is to stay connected to each other. Look people in the eye when you spend money, buy things from people you know and like, and live near you. Buy from people who are going to reinvest in your local community. 
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If you like this essay, you might enjoy my book Healthy Work. It teaches you how to get more out of work and feel good about it. Now, you'll have to excuse me because I'm off to have a local beer!

An Easy Way to Lose 10 Pounds
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​10 Pounds is 3500 Calories times 10, So if you skip one meal every other day, that is 35,000 Calories in 140 days. Which means you can lose 10 pounds in 5 months just by skipping one meal or snack (500 calories) every other day.

7 Pasta Tips

7 Pasta tips: 1) moderate the size of your portion, think about the size of a baseball 2) choose a whole grain pasta 3) cook pasta “al-dente” - firm to the bite, or about 7-8 minutes, which lowers the blood sugar response 4) go easy on the sauce and cheese, sprinkle cheese lightly and use less sauce and low sodium sauce or real tomatoes 5) throw steamed carrots, broccoli, mushrooms, cooked cauliflower and / or spinach in your sauce 6) sometimes skip the meat 7) use a minimal amount of oil 8) try veggie pasta to lower caloric intake
I love pasta, I just try to eat it in moderation. If you’re trying to lose weight and having a hard time, it would be helpful to take 3-4 months off from most non-fruit carbohydrate sources like bread and pasta. Otherwise enjoy in moderation and use these tips.
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Music & Exercise

One unique way to approach exercise:
Follow me.....Once I had a guitar teacher who liked to smoke pot while he taught. He would occasionally go off on these long riffs and play for 15 min without stopping. I didn’t mind because I liked him and he was a jazz musician and like me a Grateful Dead fan. I never smoked pot with him, but I learned something about scales. Once you know scales you can improvise, have fun, and make something beautiful. You can even play off of band mates. A good workout can and often should be structured but you can also improvise like you would as a jazz musician- push, pull, rotate, stretch, flex, extend, run, jump, stabilize. These are your “scales” so to speak and you can hit every note of a great workout, and even feed off of training partners or coaches.
Once you hit every “note” the possibilities are endless!

3 ways to be healthier today:

1) Have goals but live in the moment. Be happy for what you have.
2) Breathe deeply and more often. This will lower your blood pressure and anxiety.
3) Simplify and downsize. Create a small space of order and beauty out of what might disordered. Example: clean your room.

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Read Next:  In Defense of Walls

“Our growing dependence on technologies no one seems to understand or control has given rise to feelings of powerlessness and victimization. We find it more and more difficult to achieve a sense of continuity, permanence, or connection with the world around us. Relationships with others are notably fragile; goods are made to be used up and discarded; reality is experienced as an unstable environment of flickering images. Everything conspires to encourage escapist solutions to the psychological problems of dependence, separation, and individuation, and to discourage the moral realism that makes it possible for human beings to come to terms with existential constraints on their power and freedom.” 

― Christopher Lasch, The Culture of Narcissism: American Life in an Age of Diminishing Expectations
 
Of the books that have influenced me the most, I’d say Christopher Lasch’s “The Culture of Narcissism” is one, and “Ethan Frome” by Edith Wharton is another, the latter because it instilled a love of reading in me as a maturing teenager.    The former because it’s the most accurate picture of our age.  The reason Lasch’s book struck a chord with me so much is that it perfectly encapsulates the time we live in – the pervasiveness of media, technology, and distractions, as well as the decline of personal agency, adulthood, and the rise in social isolation that has come with the disappearance of communal life. 
 
There’s been a lot of controversy in the news lately about immigration.  This blog is not the place to argue for or against a wall on the border of Mexico.  I’ll leave that up to the pundits and politicians.  What I will do though, is make an impassioned case for more walls, not less.  Let me explain. 
 
For anything significant to happen, or anything worth loving to exist in the first place requires walls.  We all need a place to sleep at night, and a place to call home.  For any life worth living to be lived, any class worth teaching to be taught, any business worth running to be started, family worth having formed, city worth living in lived in, or any nation worth fighting for and loving, requires a wall.  Tearing down all walls makes it impossible to build any community. 
 
It’s easy to tear something down, to criticize, to alienate, and to obliterate.  It’s much easier to destroy than it is to build.  It’s much harder to build walls worth building, than it is to take them apart blow by blow.  It takes blood, sweat, toil, courage, tears, and effort to build walls, and it takes an appreciation for the sacrifices of the past to keep walls up that need to stay up.  If you conducted a survey of the younger generations of Americans and asked them what it means to be a citizen, what do you think they would say?  Would they even understand what the word meant? Citizen?
 
The idea of a city-state, which inferred citizenship, goes back to ancient Greece, but this cherished idea of citizenship came primarily with responsibilities, as well as rights.  Most Americans have no idea what it means to be a contributing member, a "citizen" of something bigger than themselves.  Most modern people don't see themselves as an active and participating member of a continuing covenant, with commitments to the past and to the future, and that's a tragedy.  There are many different types of these walls of community and citizenship - literal or metaphorical- walls of instruction in becoming an expert, walls of moral formation, walls of worship, walls of familial, walls of tribal gatherings, and walls of communal belonging, and they are falling all around us, and I’m not of the opinion that’s a good thing.  
 
We need more walls.  Not necessarily walls with armed guards and barbed wire, but what we need is walls of meaning.  The effort to tear down and obliterate all walls of meaningful identity- family, neighborhood, ancestry, sexuality, trade, tribe, clan, religious-  has taken on almost demonic energy and momentum.  Tearing down all walls is an act of de-creation and an assault on healthy living.  Walls build agency.  Walls build expertise.  Walls build belonging. Walls tell us who we are, and thus who they are. Walls represent diversity that is truly beautiful because they allow for human growth, communal life, and for achievement and distinction.  Without distinction there is no joy, no erotic love, no difference, and no admiration, there is no life.  

To some, a wall represents isolation, but to others walls represent belonging.  Again, I’m not advocating anything political necessarily.  I’ve been to the Berlin Wall, and I know first-hand how dangerous walls can be.  But what I am saying is that the “Empire of Nothing” as I've heard it called, pushed on by a faceless global consumerism, is equally as dangerous.  It kills the soul and spirit.  Should we be surprised when suicide skyrockets, and mass shootings, and nihilistic terrorism happen on a seemingly daily basis?  Only in relation to each other, and with each other, in grounded walls of situated and permanent cooperation and belonging can we reform what needs reforming, and create any kind of healthy and meaningful future.  Only within walls can we as individuals, craving health and meaning, have hope of survival. 

Only within walls can we make a home in the world.  


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Read Next: Carbs 

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I always raise an eyebrow when the topic of carbs come up.  It usually has something to do with the latest fad diet, or "cutting-edge" research, which changes every year.  Years ago, it was the low sugar diet, then the Atkins diet, then the Mediterranean diet.  Now the talk is of "Paleo".  Bread is the enemy, right ? Wrong.  I've read and studied the topic for over 20 years, reading dozens of nutrition books and helping countless people lose weight and perform at a high level.  

The truth about carbs is it depends.  It depends on what type of carbs, on how much, and on the person. It may be helpful for many people to take a break completely from bread, rice, cereal, and pasta because they do come with their downsides, and insulin resistance is a real issue for many people.  For me though, I eat some significant carbs, including wheat, rice, oats, and fruits, and I need to.  What needs to happen is a differentiation between good and bad carbs.  For example, it is a complete myth that Gluten is bad for you, unless you have a food allergy.  Wheat, which contains gluten, is a viable and healthy food if eaten in moderation and in the right form.  Consuming whole grains is the key for this type of carb.  Look for healthy carbs, and avoid bad ones, and you'll be fine.

The problem with carbs works like this:

Simple Carbs > ^ Blood Sugar > ^ Insulin > ^ Fat Storage > ^ Insulin Resistance > ^ Insulin > Repeat, Repeat, Repeat  

Here are some tips about carbs:

• If you are obese or overweight, try going 3 months with very little carbohydrate in order to prime your hormones to become more sensitive to insulin, which is one key to weight control, health and aging.
• If you are extremely active, like I am, standing up at work 8-10 hours per day, reading 2-3 hours per day, and doing some type of activity 1-2 hours per day, you will need to eat at least some carbohydrates. Otherwise you'd have to eat so much protein, you would damage your kidneys and immune system.
• Fiber is one key to carbs.  Choose carbs with high fiber and your gut will be healthier, your blood sugar will remain more steady, and you will eat less. Apples, oatmeal, berries, whole grain breads, and brown rice are excellent options.  
• Avoid any wheat product which contains the word "Enriched Bleached Flour" or something like that to begin with.  What you want to look for is the phrase "whole grain". Simple carbs like bleached flour turn straight into sugar.  
• Sugar, simple carbs, and fried foods are really the worst things you can eat.  In this form, carbs are bad for you because of the havoc they play on your insulin and blood sugar.
• Carbs can be stored as glycogen in the muscles or worse, converted to fat by the liver. 
• The Glycemic Index (GI) is a helpful measure in evaluating carbs.  If a food has a high GI, that means it turns in to sugar quickly and you want to avoid it.  Consume foods with a low GI.
• Practically speaking, if you have a desk job like most people, you won't need more than 100-150 grams of carbs per day, and you should mainly consume fruits.  
• Consuming healthy fats or proteins in conjunction with a whole grain carbohydrate can blunt the insulin response and make it healthier metabolically.  For example, a turkey sandwich, which contains some protein, is better than just eating bread because the protein in the turkey slows down the insulin response.
• By controlling and reducing your simple carb intake (sugar and processed foods), you will feel better and have more energy, because you will have fewer energy crashes.
• The worst possible thing you can eat is a french fry, hash brown, potato chip, or tater tot.  A combination of addictive salt, unhealthy fried fats, a high insulin response, and no nutritional value is deadly.
• There is nothing inherently wrong with eating carbs.
• Foods should be chosen for their nutritional value, not because they fit a trendy diet.  
• Foods which don't come in packages are usually healthier than those that do.  
• Fruits, which are carbohydrates, are some of the healthiest things you can eat.  They come with vitamins, energy, minerals, and phytonutrients, which are all good for you.  
• Again, use a food tracker for the only way to guarantee weight loss, otherwise just focus on eating healthy and enjoying your life.

Eat smart with your carbs, but don't think you can't eat them.  It's not necessary to give them up completely.

Read Next: Scott Godwin's Quick Guide to Nutritional Supplementation