Posted on by Abe Austin

The Power of Your Voice- Summary

Some Concerns)

Over the course of this series I have examined the notion of our voices being powerful, looking through the lenses of historical observation and scriptural example. Key takeaways that have emerged are that yes, our voices our truly powerful, but there are some very important caveats and concerns related to them. Specifically, we identified the three following issues:

  1. Not everyone has their own voice. Many use their voice only to echo the ideas and feelings of what is popular. Thus, they are not so much a voice as a loudspeaker for another person’s voice. It should be the great endeavor of all of us to find who we truly are, and that will only be accomplished through God. Only when we are our true person will we have true voice to share.
  2. Voices are much more powerful when compounded and interwoven. Communities that remain isolated remain stuck in the past. Ones that commune with each other make great leaps in technology and ideology.
  3. Combining voices gives great power, but that does not necessarily have to be good power. Indeed, we have seen that the more interwoven the voices of the world have become, the more we have developed the tools of our own demise. Self-destruction increases in lockstep with creation, creating a situation where our power to eradicate ourselves far outstrips our power to protect.

Conclusion)

Combining the first two points together, we see that there can be incredible power in keeping people mindless, making them drones repeating the same incantations over and over in unison. This is exactly how the most incredible acts of evil have been accomplished.

But surely that is not the only form of unity available. Every now and then, in brief and isolated moments, we get a glimpse of what happens when voices remain distinct, authentic, and self-authored, yet unite over shared ideals. On a larger scale, we have examples of this in the growth of the early Christian church, in the founding of America, and in the healing of the Alcoholics Anonymous program. These are only a few examples. There are other, smaller ones that occur all throughout the world.

True utopia will only occur when all the world is in such a state of individual synergy. Only when people have universally found their true selves, through God, and use their unique voices to progress the unified heavenly vision will we attain the ultimate potential of mankind. We can only imagine what incredible leaps and bounds we will make then. It will be an uncompromised advancement such as we have never seen before.

Posted on by Abe Austin

The Power of Your Voice- The Dangers of Our Voices

Compounding Power)

We have discussed different aspects of the power in the human voice. As shown in the last post, when different voices are combined together the power grows exponentially. There are even scriptural examples of this, such as when the shout of the Israelites broke down the walls of Jericho. That is very impressive, but whether it is a good or a bad thing depends on which side of the wall you are on.

As we saw in the last post, the compounded power of universal communication has led to the most tremendous advances in technology, which have included many things that are good for mankind. But at the same time, we have also increased our methods of self-destruction. Historically that has involved the creation of artillery shells, nuclear bombs, and the ability to hack a nation’s infrastructure systems. Today we are seeing all-new threats, such as individuals becoming displaced by robotics and AI and social media dividing us into deeply entrenched factions. Our ability to divide and destroy has always grown in lockstep with our ability to create.

The scary thing is just how far our compounded power extends. Just as one Israelite shouting at a time would never bring down the walls of Jericho and one man working at a time would never build the Golden Gate Bridge, so too our weapons of destruction surpass any individual reach. Once these looming threats start to tip over, it will be well beyond anyone’s power to right them before they come crashing down on our heads.

Divine Forewarning)

And this danger was already known thousands and thousands of years ago. It was recorded for our own education, but we did not heed it. In the book of Genesis, Chapter 11, we read:

And the whole earth was of one language, and of one speech.... And they said, Go to, let us build us a city and a tower, whose top may reach unto heaven; and let us make us a name, lest we be scattered abroad upon the face of the whole earth.

There was one language, and one people, and they spoke with one voice, desiring to build a tower all the way to heaven. While the scriptural account does not get explicit in their ultimate intentions, tradition has assumed it was to for a direct assault on heaven. Whether literally or symbolically, their effort was to make something so great that it could dethrone God.

Breaking from the hand of your own creator is logically the greatest act of self-destruction that anyone could ever do. Thus, it was an act of mercy and preservation when God broke their tower, and made them unable to combine their voices, and scattered them across the world. Yes, it made them weaker, but it also limited their ability to destroy themselves.

Today, we have progressively broken down those barriers. We have rediscovered each other, learned one another’s language, and found ways to combine our voices as one. We are much the same now as the people who built the tower of babel, and we seem to quickly be approaching another act of hubris and self-destruction.

Of course, every vision of paradise does necessitate all the people united as one, but it assumes that mankind has learned to let go of his tendency for self-destruction, so that he may unite without danger. That certainly has not happened today, so the danger of our united voices is very, very real.

Posted on by Abe Austin

The Power of Your Voice- Communication and Technology Revolutions

Leaps and Bounds)

Yesterday I mentioned the direct correlation between inter-cultural communication and the advancement of technology. The more people share their voices with one another, the more each is fertilized with the other’s ideas, and the more we advance as a whole. Also, as a culture expands in its technology, that has included enhancing their means of communication. Thus, one advancement leads more and more quickly to another, and so the pattern has been one of exponential growth.

In fact, every major advancement in communication leads to a spike in technological advancement. Here are the most notable examples:

  1. Early writing systems from 3000-2000 BC, followed by large-scale agricultural systems and bureaucratic states.
  2. The printing press from 1440, followed by the scientific and industrial revolution.
  3. Telegraph system from 1830s-1840s, followed by trains, long-distance transit and transportation, factories and distribution.
  4. Radio, telephone, and television from 1920s-1950s, followed by consumer appliances, personal automobiles, and rocket science.
  5. The internet from 1969, followed by software and home computers, globalized manufacturing, and robotics.

The Road Ahead)

Our communication technology has progressed from talking to our neighbors, to meeting each other across great distances, to writing down words that could be carried elsewhere, to having instantaneous communication with millions across the globe. Today we appear be on the cusp of yet another advancement in communication and technology. With the advent of AI, for the first time ever we have the ability to receive messages from the aggregate sum of millions of voices all at once. Given the wealth of historical writing included in these models, that includes being able to have conversations with those who are already dead. What sort of leaps in technology this may lead to remains to be seen, but we can only assume it will be similarly transformative.

It is also left to our imaginations what higher forms of communication could yet await us. Perhaps some sort of thought-to-thought or spirit-to-spirit communication would unlock the highest era. Perhaps some of those higher forms of communication are reserved for the life after this one, though.

Of course, we have to acknowledge that not all advancement and technology is good. There is much to be concerned about, much division and destruction before us, and the scriptures predicted this exact dilemma in the story of the Tower of Babel thousands of years ago. Tomorrow we will take a closer look at that story, and what it means for us today.

Posted on by Abe Austin

The Power of Your Voice- Cultural Advancement

An Old View)

Yesterday we discussed the physical range and speed of the human voice, and its ability to vibrate an awesome volume of air. Today we will consider another power of the human voice by examining its abstraction: communication.

One of the old mysteries of anthropology was the great disparity in development of different cultures. As the Western world expanded into the most remote corners of the world, it found people that were technologically far behind. Isolated tribes that lacked even writing systems, the wheel, and agricultural systems, to say nothing of firearms, ships, and medicine.

At the time, the simplest explanation was that some groups of people were fundamentally more advanced than other, almost like a different species. It was assumed by many that the savage could never be an educated man. But as these different worlds became more overlapped, there came opportunities for the tribesman to participate in the systems of the more advanced cultures, and it was discovered that any race and color could attain the same understanding and integration as any other participant in that culture.

A New Theory)

Now we live in a time where this experiment has played out repeatedly and universally. The old theories of superior and inferior races do not hold up to the reality that we have perceived. Having so many more data points to draw our conclusions from, a new pattern has emerged.

The factor that determines whether a culture is advanced or not is the amount of inter-cultural communication that that culture is subject to. Trade routes first caused drastically different people to become intimately familiar with one another’s language and customs. The English had to have an understanding of the Chinese, and the Chinese of the Arab. And they did not only trade in goods, but also in ideas. On the other hand, the isolated tribe in the wilds of Africa remained as a people frozen in time, remaining at the same level they had been for thousands of years.

It is now clear that communication, not race, is the driver of technology and advancement. And any race that becomes integrated in communication with others soon shares the same technologies and patterns of thought. It as we members of humanity share our voices together, everyone advances. As we remain isolated, we stagnate.

This causal link probably went unrecognized for so long because our level of communication is easily taken for granted. It transforms us seemingly effortlessly. We will explore this fact a little further with tomorrow’s post, where we examine the different milestones of communication that we have achieved, and the sudden and automatic spikes in technology that followed.

Posted on by Abe Austin

Always Right

It is often easier to accept that God’s laws and principles were right for ancient people than to accept that they still apply today. So much has changed since the time of chariots and slings. Jesus and his apostles never had smartphones or cryptocurrency or space travel or AI. Can words of scripture from thousands of years ago truly never expire?

This is the testimony of all true believers.

Faith in God includes faith that His way was right in 3000 BC, 34 AD, and even in the 21st century. While the situation surrounding man is in constant flux, the word of God is rooted in something eternal, something that runs from before our root and extends beyond our end. So long as we remain human, God’s way will always be right.

Posted on by Abe Austin

Give Thanks- Technology and Memories

I am grateful for technology that makes it so easy to relive fond memories. The effort to preserve the images and sounds of loved ones goes back for centuries, but historically it has been greatly limited by cost, inconvenience, and physical constraints.

Today it is a very different story. I can ready a smartphone’s camera and speaker in a matter of seconds. I can preserve literally millions of digital imprints in terabytes of cloud storage. I can filter that mass by date, media type, and even faces that are recognized by ai algorithms.

Almost every day I call up at least one image or video of my children, and have a perfectly clear recollection of what they were like at each stage of their development.

#givethanks

Posted on by Abe Austin

An Invitation

I want to start off by acknowledging that there’s almost always “an angle” in the blogosphere. So many comments and likes are left only in the hope of receiving comments and likes back again in a sort of ego-exchange. And I’ll be perfectly honest, in my early days of blog-writing I did exactly the same thing.

But I do believe it is possible to do something nice just to be nice, and I do believe that a real sense of community can be built even in the virtual world. And so I’d like to extend an open-ended offer to all of my readers, inviting them to let me know if there’s anything I can help them out with.

This is not about wanting a cross-promotion, a guest appearance, or a testimonial. I mean, let’s be honest, it’s not like I have nearly enough influence to be useful in building your brand anyway, and I stopped caring about building my own brand a while ago.

So Wait, What Exactly Are You Offering Then?

There are other blogs where’ve I wished I could reach out and have a personal chat with the author, but have felt that that would be too forward. There are people who I’ve respected and would like the opinion of, but don’t want to burden them for their insights. There are people that I would like to work with, just to make something together for the fun of it, but then worried they’d think I was just trying to get something from them for free.

In short, with today’s culture most of us feel like we need to have an invitation to connect. So this is my blanket invitation. This is me saying that if you want to chat, I’d love to chat. If you want me to look at your stuff, I’ll gladly tell you what I think. If you want to try making something together, I’d love to see what we can do and you keep the intellectual property!

My only stipulation is that we approach this in the spirit of genuine friendship. I sincerely do want to help…but even more than that I just want to get to know you better.

My Interests

It’s an open-ended offer, and if you decide to reach out you don’t have to keep yourself constrained within the following categories and examples. But just to get your ideas flowing, here are a few of the things that I have at least some experience in.

SPIRITUALITY
I know, I know, never talk about religion or politics if you don’t want to ruin a friendship, but if you’re on this blog then you already know that this is a very large sector of my life. I’d love to have theological discussions (though never an argument!) with anyone who cares to.
Most of us carefully couch everything we say about religion in order to not say anything offensive, but we all need to find a place where we feel safe enough to talk about very real frustrations and confusions. We need a friend who understands that partially formed ideas are only partially formed ideas. The relationships I value most in life are the ones where I am able to say “hey, this might sound crazy, but what if God is actually like this…?” If that sounds interesting to you, I’d love to chat.

STORIES
I love writing, and I will always write. Never mind if I’m any good at it or not, I’ll always be trying! But we writer’s are notoriously reclusive. None of our work is good enough to share, because if we show it to someone else they might think its terrible, and then they’ll hate us forever by extension.
Well, let me tell you, I’ve read the work of people that I love dearly and it was astoundingly bad. Yet, in spite of all temptation to forever loathe them for coming up with such a monstrosity, I somehow was still able to respect them as a person. I know, crazy! Not even sure how I came by this ability, but so long as I have it feel free to make use of it for some honest, but kind, feedback!
Or tell me about the idea you’ve always wanted to get rolling, but would like a fellow creator along the journey. Or ask me about my own work, see if I have a starting point laying around that you could build off of. Or just start a conversation about our favorite stories by others.

TECHNOLOGY
By profession I am a software developer. That doesn’t necessarily mean that I can fix your computer or build your website…but, depending on your exact situation, maybe I can! If you want an opinion for what your next laptop or cell phone should be, let me know what you’re use-case is and I’ll try to help you find something that you can really love.
Or maybe you’ve wanted to learn a bit more about technology? Perhaps you want to find out what we mean by “its all just 1s and 0s,” or you’d like to setup your first coding environment, or you’re about to take the plunge and build your first PC…let me help, I’d love to.
Or ask me about the hobby projects I’ve been coding up on the side. Tell me about your little game idea that you’ve always wished someone would make. Perhaps you’re a programmer yourself? Why don’t we see if there’s an intersection of interests and make something together?

LIFE
If none of the above is striking a chord, then talk to me about how you’re afraid your new job is about to let you go. Or how your marriage is on the rocks. Or how you felt so proud of your son yesterday. Or how you’d like to go to therapy but don’t want to be labelled as having a problem. Or how you wish the world saw your autistic brother the same way that you do. Fact is, I’m a darn good listener, and I would be privileged to do just that.

CONTACT ME

And like I said, don’t feel like the ideas I threw out were the only one’s you can take me up on. Thought of something totally different that could be helpful for you? Great. I’d love to hear it.

To make things simple, you can just email me directly at abe.austin@gmail.com

If you don’t get a response, assume that it went to my spam. I promise I won’t ignore any reach-out that I receive. So if I don’t respond to your email within a day, then either send another or try using the Contact page of this site.

Okay, I think that about covers it.

If I’m being honest…I don’t actually expect anyone to reach out.

So prove me wrong.

I really would like to get to know you.