How to Make Your Mind Unhackable

Gideon YutzyLeave a comment

Park benches are like messengers from another world. Day by day, they noiselessly preside over the wharf, or over a church yard somewhere off to the side of a windstrewn hodgepodge of grave markers. At the church we attend, there is a bench with a message emblazoned on it. Having always assumed it said something like, Rest in Peace, Laura, I never stopped to take note of its message. At least 90 percent of park benches are inscribed to someone who’s deceased, which makes them all the more ghostlike.

Then the other day I took the time to read it. It has that old line, ‘Use your hands for service, your heart for love, your mind for truth, etc.’ It seems an entirely appropriate blurb for a church that claims John Wesley as its spiritual ancestor. So wholistic. John Wesley sought to be a Christian who is both pious and concerned about helping others. I can sign on to that. That said, it does seem like Methodism, in an effort to be wholistic, has become almost too unoffensive, if that’s possible. Someone called it the Canada of the Christian church. (By the way, wholistic and holistic are both valid spellings. I’m just trying to be a good Methodist and acknowledge both spellings.)

Back to park benches, what do you think of the quote? I know it has the ring of a cliche, and that it is almost trite enough to write inside a fortune cookie. But that bit about using the mind for truth is quite salient for anything it may lack in originality. Especially so, given the unprecedented amount of bad and deleterious information out there. Truth, my friends, that’s where it’s at. Just hold onto truth and you’ll be okay.

Of course, I say this tongue in cheek, because who could ever purport to know truth. Jesus said you shall know the truth, and the truth shall set you free. Here’s a mini-syllogism for you: I know very few people who are really free all the time, so that must mean most of us haven’t really found the truth yet. Most times when we find a ‘truth’ that sets us free in one area, it brings with it a fresh bondage. For instance, if you become a billionaire, it will free you up to travel and enjoy all sorts of nice things, but you’re no longer free to be happy-go-lucky about your wealth. You’ll have to manage and invest it. Most billionaires also have to hire security detail, which is a phrase that, to this day, doesn’t intuitively make sense to me. Why the hell do we say security detail? The phrase sounds almost as de-humanising as the concept.

I’m probably being self-indulgent to pick on the rich, but I reckon Elon Musk is an example of someone who doesn’t use his mind for truth. He likes to put forth the image of being a modern day Nikola Tesla, but do we realise we cannot attribute a single invention to him even if we wanted to? But why would anyone want to? Fawn over a person who creates such vast economic injustice. He didn’t personally invent the electric car, internet payments, or any kind of underground tunnels, nor did he personally make any advances in rockets. At least with Grubhub, some dudes named Matt Maloney and Mike Evans invented something: online takeaway websites. But they did it quietly and regally, like park benches. They didn’t launch campaigns to convince the world they’re epochal geniuses. Also, they didn’t con governments into subsidising their failing businesses.

It’s also true that Elon Musk has mused repeatedly that the world could be a simulation video game that he’s playing. It’s not overly comforting: he is the person in charge of more of the world’s resources than any other individual in history, and he sees the millions of people deprived of life’s basic necessities as mere pawns and not even real pawns at that. And yet these same pawns in his game will happily put out for him in marches. How easily we are bamboozled into trusting the very people who have our worst in mind.

The current American president is the quintessential con artist. How was a billionaire huckster whose companies filed for bankruptcy six times able to get half the country to vote for him not once, but 3 times? His personal wealth has doubled since taking office the second time in 2024. How could he be for the working class? He also facilitated the most expensive U.S. House race in history at 35 million dollars to unseat one of the last principled, citizen-centred legislators in America.

It can feel like like a losing battle, but it is important to name and shame people like Trump and Elon, if for no other reason to maintain our own grounding in a reality that still assumes right and wrong. Clearly, these two snake oil salesmen extraordinaire are not operating from reality, at least not the reality that seeks to create justice and flourishing for all people on earth.

We must, however, exert significantly more energy into righting that which is wrong in our immediate sphere of influence. Whatever the best way is to think of the devil, the Christian faith teaches that he is the father of lies. How has he messed up our own minds and made so that we aren’t, as the park bench advises, using them for truth? I find that if I can harness my mind as an ally, the quality of my life improves by orders of magnitude. I desperately need a mind attuned to truth. Every time I turn around, some new lie awaits me. A vast chasm still separates what I want from what I need, from what nourishes me. Wasting two hours on the internet feels like the right thing at the time, but one feels truly horrible afterward. Running 20 kilometres feels unpleasant during the run, but you feel amazing the rest of the day.

My current top 5 hacks for making my mind unhackable:

  1. Do things that are more body-centric. I’ve been acquiring simple physical exercises I can do in my living room, such as glute bridges, planks and sit-ups. None of the activities in my repertoire are terribly fun at first, but I have found some that are habit-forming and not too strenuous. Other activities, push-ups, for example, I find even less fun, so I mostly avoid them.
  2. Breath and breath prayers. Scrunch up the muscles in a given area of the body on the one breath, and luxuriously release them on the out breath. Pray, ‘Jesus, Son of David,’ on the in breath, and, ‘Have mercy on me a sinner,’ on the out breath.
  3. Positive distractions. I try to keep an assortment of interesting podcasts and audiobooks, so that when there’s a lull, I have something I can turn to. I find it good to keep a to-do list of manageable, bite-sized activities around the house.
  4. I like to log on and allow myself one game of Scrabble online against the computer, then note down new words the computer plays. My goal is still to reach a 1700 WESPA rating by 2030. Woogle.io is ad-free, and the best site I’ve found so far.
  5. It’s worth it to pause and get into another person’s orbit. Make eye contact with them and empathise with their problems. Musk is wrong, life is not a simulation. Having a solipsistic outlook makes me miserable. I will schedule a walk or a jog with a friend when I start feeling disregulated.

The Seller of Secrets – You Should Buy This Book

Gideon YutzyLeave a comment

It’s happened – we have a published author in our family. Sheri, the wife of my next younger brother, Daniel, has done the hard work needed to accomplish that feat. So this is me promoting The Seller of Secrets to my (tens of) readers. If you are based in the US, you can buy it here, and if you live in Europe, try this link. In the following post, you can read Sheri’s response to a few questions I put to her. Again, fair play to her on the publication of her debut novel, and may there be more to come.

Wow, what a tale. Your finished story can seem like it dropped out of the sky, but I’m sure a lot of work went on behind the scenes. How much did you plot everything out before you began writing, and how much did characters take on a life of their own?

My process changes and clarifies with each book I write. The Seller of Secrets shifted quite a bit over the years as I worked on it, hired an editor, and then edited with my agent. I didn’t outline very well to begin with, especially regarding character interaction and growth, and the magic system. I paid for that later when my (very sharp-eyed) agent was picking through it. Thankfully, she saw the potential and had the skills to help me fix inconsistencies and relational issues, and create a finished product that caught the eye of a publisher!

With my next novels I’m plotting more ahead of time, and during the plotting is when I hold my characters loosely and let them change if they need to. 

You’ve written The Seller of Secrets at a time when reading books is on the decline. How much did you take that into consideration? Did your imaginary reader have a smart phone nearby?

Not at all, haha. I know people say that, but I and most of my writing friends are reading more than ever. It may be affecting how many books get super popular with teenagers, but it’s not making us slow down as writers at all. It does make me grateful my publisher is launching all formats (e-book, paperback, and hardcover) at once so the reader who needs those options can choose. An audiobook is in the plans, but I’m not sure when that will happen. 

I’m in a writing class at the moment and the teacher says to approach all writing in a spirit of play. Does that resonate with you?

Hmm, I wouldn’t say it quite like that, but perhaps. I think I want to approach my writing in a spirit of joy, as in, remembering why I love stories. Perhaps play fits into that, but to me, joy fits better with everything I’m writing. Sad or painful scenes don’t feel like play, ever. 

For me, listening to good music (Gregory Alan Isakov, right now) is helpful to get me in a creative mood. It’s always something I’ve listened to over and over though, so it’s not distracting. Although, with lyrics like his, sometimes a phrase catches my attention anew and I stop and sit with it. I sense joy in his music as well, and it feeds mine while writing. 

Some of your characters are very vivid, especially Bell’s dialogue and thought processes. To what degree are they composites of people from real life?

The main characters are probably always going to be a little bit of me. The Seller of Secrets was my way of thinking through what it means to have power and accept the responsibilty to use it well, so some of Bell’s thought processes there are similar to mine. But I craft the finished character from various elements that I know the whole cast needs. As the side characters grow and develop in my mind, the main character might shift a bit to meet them to the best effect. 

Your description of potions and scents is believable. How much time and energy did you have to spend researching it?

I’m glad to hear that! It’s hard to calculate how much I spent on those descriptions. I usually start out with spare descriptions, then add a little more with each pass through. My agent and then all the different editors that get the book read often asked for clarification of one detail or another. It’s such an arduous process that I’m not even sure when some of the details were added. 

The book will be a success/failure if…

A tough question. I like to dream big, but my main dream is to reach readers that need this story. It’s hard to know where a debut novel is going to go, but I will view it as a success if I can build a loyal reader base for my next novels. 

I think I’m beyond failure being possible, by those standards. 🙂 I’m really proud of the story and the work I and others put into it, and I’ve already heard enough good things from readers to feel like it was a success. 

Is Free Will an Argument Against Universal Salvation?

Gideon Yutzy3 Comments

On several occasions, I’ve met people who recognize the elegance of a Gospel that saves all, but they stop short of embracing it because they think it turns us into robots. To them, a soteriology of universal restoration smacks of God saving people whether they like it or not.

Fair enough, and it’s not the worst argument. They don’t want anything shoved down their throats. I get that.

But part of me also wonders whether they are more affected by a rugged Western individualism than they might realize. If I see myself primarily as an individual, then yes, my salvation comes down to my choices and decisions. However, if I see my identity as woven in and through community (nobody is an island), then it starts to make sense that salvation is a project aimed at the human race rather than individual people.

What, after all, is the essence of a human? Is it our physical body? Hardly. The cells in our bodies change completely every seven years. That’s not to mention the speedy decay and ultimate decomposition of our bodies after we die.

Is it our achievements? Is it our memories? Our experiences? That might be getting closer. In truth, most of us probably attach our identity to non-physical markers such as these.

And that’s where it gets interesting: these markers are all intertwined with other people. Take memories and experiences. If we remove even one person involved with our memories and experiences and consign them to eternal damnation, our identity falls apart.

In other words, we can go ahead and remove people from the picture because they failed to make the heroic act of free will and assent to God’s offer of salvation. But our own identity will be fundamentally altered because of it.

Would we rather enter eternal bliss as robots, or as truncated, lobotomized versions of ourselves?

“That at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, of things in heaven, and things in earth, and things under the earth” (Philippians 2:10). “For as in Adam all die, even so in Christ shall all be made alive” (1 Corinthians 15:22). Adam and Eve’s race is saved–or doomed–as one.

Yes, we have free will. Yes, we should make good decisions. Yes, our actions here have a profound impact on our trajectory. But there is a danger of overemphasizing these truths. We also desperately need God’s grace. As much as we want to will what is good, we find that our will is impoverished. Sick. Broken. Our very will is in need of divine intervention, in need of healing.

“Batter my heart, three-person’d God… Take me to you, imprison me.” That’s not New Age fluff, that’s John Donne writing four centuries ago.

Donne understood that if he was to be saved, it had to be the work of God, not the result of his heroic free will. And upon even a moment of cursory reflection, surely we must reach the same conclusion: the entire human race is saved by grace. (Unless, of course, we’re to go full Calvinist and say God will batter the hearts of some but not others, although poor Calvin probably said it with much more sophistication than we give him credit for.)

This Easter, it is good and right to celebrate God’s resurrection power in my life. Salvation is personal. Jesus loves me, this I know.

But it is far more glorious to consider Easter as a harbinger of salvation for all, as extending far beyond the vaguely-defined contours of my puny self to an entire human race and indeed the cosmos.

Sometimes It Really Is Me

Gideon YutzyLeave a comment

There is a saying that struck me when I first heard it, and I’ve never forgotten it. The WASP part of me shrinks from reducing a person to a body part, let alone the anal sphincter, but I am going to quote it anyway, because I don’t know how to change the wording without lessening its impact. It goes like this:

“If you meet an asshole once a month, you’ve met an asshole; if you meet an asshole every day, you are the asshole.”

You’re welcome. Something to chew on.

Now, as the quote indicates, it is a sign of emotional maturity to adjust to people’s perception of us. But it gets tricky. Putting too much stock in the opinion of any one person is a sign of emotional immaturity. Often, that person is our parent or our spouse. It could also be our boss, but it usually isn’t the postman.

And yet responding to what large swathes of people think about us is the opposite of emotional immaturity, it is emotional intelligence. It is no bad thing to take into consideration what the general populace thinks about how we show up in their world. So keep that ear to the ground, young Bernard. Or maybe people are screaming. They’re screaming harsh truths about us, at us, and we’re blocking them out.

Whether the feedback is subtle or blaring, might we not owe it to our beloved species to make the necessary calibrations so that we do not come across as total jerks? (Inner WASP so relieved that I chose a safer word.) After all, we are social beings. Nobody is an island. Therefore, it is our duty to learn how to harmonise with our society. I hope that hasn’t been too much of a logical leap.

And preferably we make our adjustments of our own doing, rather than having people bludgeon us with the truth of our asininity. As Janan Ganesh says, “There is a world of difference between knowing you are wrong and being told you are wrong.”

Adjusting ourselves to societal feedback is like dancing the flamenco. On one hand, to be among people is to receive feedback, and interpreting it is paramount. Sometimes we really are the a**hole. I think about this as a person, but also as a teacher. It’s amazing what people around you, especially students, are dying to tell you about yourself if you give them the right opportunity. Sometimes (though perhaps not every day) it’s good to follow Jesus’s example and ask the fearless question, “Who do people say that I am?” And then to take note and act accordingly.

It is equally important, however, not to freak out over the opinions and expectations of just one person, or even one group, and to remember that sometimes we meet people who don’t have our best interests in mind. Sometimes we meet a**holes. I think of the Rudyard Kipling line, “If all men count with you but none too much…”

Honing that dance is hard work, but it is important work. Getting it right could be the difference between being a so-and-so and meeting one.

The 200 Hardest 3-Letter Words

Gideon YutzyLeave a comment

My goal is to get a 1700 WESPA rating in Scrabble by 2030. Currently, I am at 1619, so that will require some hard work. I have limited time and energy, but I know mastering those pesky 3s is fundamental.

The 2024 Collins Scrabble Dictionary has 1351 valid three-letter words, around 200 of which still haven’t migrated to my long-term memory. In my experience, you need to play a 3 up to three times for it to stick. Thankfully, creating mnemonics helps, not only to remember 3-letter words, but to shore up memory in general. My memory has dropped off precipitously in the last two years. At first, I was going to schedule a brain scan to see if I have glioblastoma, but then I remembered I’m turning 40. All joking aside, 40 is a widely accepted marker of memory decline, though I forgot where I read that, ha.

I’ve stolen a number of memory aids devised by others, but I have better luck using the ones I come up with on my own. Here’s one of mine, if you can follow it. All the consonants in SWIM, BIG DAFT VINY KNIGHTS are front hooks for -ae (thus: sae, wae, mae, etc.) For me, that vivid phrase is much more memorable than remembering each of those 3s discretely. Likewise, the consonants in HANK’S PEWTER BOWL front-hook onto -ye (hye, nye…). The first letters of the words, BIG HUNGRY WALRUSES SNAG FISHDAILY, front-hook onto -ey (bey, hey, …). And so on. Grouping words is also effective. In my mind, ONY and OXY go together, as do GAU and GAW, WAB and BAW, NYM and NIM. Learning just one 3-letter word by itself is much harder than learning multiple ones in some sort of schematic. In any case, here are my most troublesome 3-letter words, all of which I hope will have migrated to my long-term memory by the end of 2028. Enjoy your Monday! (Not that I expect such cognitive overload as this list to help much.)

ALB
ANS
ARY
ATS
ATT
AVI
BAS
BAW
BOK
BYS
CAF
CAG
CAL
CID
CIG
CIT
COL
DAG
DAH
DAL
DAP
DEG
DEL
DEV
DIT
DOB
DOD
DOL
DOP
DUM
DUN
DUR
ECH
ECU
EHS
EIK
ELD
ELT
ERF
ERG
ERK
ERM
ERN
FID
FIL
FIZ
FRA
FUD
GAK
GAN
GIB
GJU
GON
GOR
GOS
GOX
GUB
GUE
GUL
GUP
GUR
HAN
HIC
HOX
HUI
HYP
JOW
KEA
KEB
KED
KEF
KEP
KEX
KHI
KUE
LAH
LEI
LEK
LEP
LEU
LEV
LOS
LUD
LUM
LUN
LYM
MAC
MAK
MEE
MES
MEU
MHO
MIG
MIR
MOG
MOI
MOL
MON
MOT
MUT
NEB
NEG
NEK
NEP
NID
NIE
NIS
NOH
NOO
NUG
OHM
OIK
OKA
OLM
OMS
ONS
OOM
OOT
ORF
ORS
ORT
OUD
PAC
PAK
PLU
POA
PUD
PUH
PUL
PUR
PUY
PWN
PYX
RAI
RAS
RAV
RAX
REH
REM
REO
REW
RHY
RIN
RIT
ROC
RUC
SAB
SAL
SAN
SAR
SAU
SAV
SEG
SEI
SEL
SER
SEV
SIB
SIG
SIK
SOH
SUK
SUR
SUS
TEC
TEG
TEL
TET
TID
TIG
TIK
TOD
TUN
TUP
TWA
TYG
UDS
ULE
URB
URD
UVA
VOG
VOL
WAB
WAP
WOF
WOP
WUD
WUS
XIS
YAD
YAG
YAR
YEX
YEZ
YOB
YUG
ZEK
ZHO
ZIZ