Welcome to this week’s edition of The Mueller Report!
Snapshot of thoughts from the past week:
Apparently at least one of the physical vaccines for Covid-19 currently being used existed over 9 months ago. Testing and regulatory approval kept it from being distributed until December.
The social divide between “front of the room” kids who are socially mobile and “back of the room kids” who are content to stay put is another way of thinking about the major cultural divides of our time. The fishing village of Newlyn on the Cornish coast is a striking case in point.
Confession is an important part of Christian community, but how do we do it? It should involve more than acknowledging and repenting of sin. Remember, confessionals are about declaring things that are true (consider the Westminster Confession). Paul writes to Timothy about how Jesus “while testifying before Pontius Pilate made the good confession.”
As February ends, I am closing (literally) the books I’ve been reading about cities for the past month and a half and moving to a new topic for March. It’s challenging to do so, though, because the topic is interesting and I haven’t been able to finish all the books in my stack. The discipline will be useful, though, to help me appreciate the limits of how much I can read in life.
Before talking about my reading for March, let me share a couple fascinating quotes from Glaeser’s book The Triumph of the City:
Today, the five zip codes that occupy the mile of Manhattan between Forty-first and Fifty-ninth streets employ six hundred thousand workers (more than New Hampshire or Maine), who earn on average more than $100,000 each, giving that tiny piece of real estate a larger annual payroll than Oregon or Nevada.
Wow! Two square miles of Manhattan compared to about 98,000 square miles in Oregon. Look at the area of Manhattan he is talking about:
It’s not very big….
Unsurprisingly, New York City has strikingly diverse people:
As of 2008, 36 percent of New Yorkers are foreign-born, and 48 percent speak a language other than English at home. The comparable numbers for the United States as a whole are 13 percent and 20 percent.
Remember that those averages for the U. S. include places like New York City - which means that for huge swaths of the country the percentage of people who are foreign-born are well below 13 percent and the percentage of people speaking a different language from English at home is well below 20%.
Last week I mentioned my essay about The Creative Class. Here are a few points I made in a second essay about Cities and the Creative Class:
Work and leisure are increasingly blended in creative work
Cities offer more amenities for people to enjoy (which contribute to creativity)
Creative people value interactive recreation (street life) more than passive entertainment (attending a symphony or watching Netflix) compared to other classes of people
Increasingly companies are moving where they can find talented workers, not vice versa
And here are two selections from my third essay about Opportunities and Challenges of the Creative Class:
While Putnam [
Bowling Alone
] sees the rise of people living alone as a sign of social isolation and disintegration, Florida sees it as the life of choice for many creative people. They prefer this way of living because it gives them more flexibility: where they live, when they work, who they hang out with, etc. And so creative people flock around other creative people to provide community, though usually with less commitment than the ties of marriage and family…
Thinking through the ethical and social norms of the creative class brings in other tensions for Christians. Florida talks about creativity and tolerance going hand in hand. In the book he frequently mentions how an index for measuring the number/tolerance of gay men is strongly correlated with concentration of creative people, which in turn is strongly correlated with high economic growth.
Florida’s point is not that gay men are more creative people per se, but rather that the types of places they live are more tolerant, and therefore more diverse and interesting, than many other places. And even Christians can acknowledge that diversity, tolerance, and respect for our fellow human beings, even for those who live in ways we believe are wrong, is good up to a point. But can Christians really embrace the kind of moral openness Florida thinks is central to the creative process? Our track record does not look particularly good when you survey the art and music world, the ivy halls of elite education institutions, or trendy offices of Silicon Valley and tech startups.
The question Christians need to grapple with, in as much as Florida’s analysis is correct, is how far we can go in participating and even embracing multicultural and diversity values without eroding our ability to live moral lives and adhere to beliefs about good and evil.
Here’s my book stack for March on the topic of Christian views of poverty and economics:
You may notice a couple books by Brian Fikkert in this stack. He also wrote When Helping Hurts, which I have read in the past and highly recommend.
I may add a book by Ron Sider to the list. Are there any other important books in this category you think I should add to my stack?
Before signing off, let me share some brief thoughts/tips about house projects. Something most people don’t realize when they are young is how many home projects they will have to work on at unexpected and often inconvenient times.
Consider exhibit A from the Mueller household this week:
Fortunately, the repair was fairly straightforward (we’ll see if the tiles are still there in a month). Taking the project in small chunks makes it easier to fit around everything else going on in life.
Clean up the initial mess and assess possible solution
Gather tools/materials (tape measure, glue, caulking, saw, straight edge, screws, screwdriver, etc.)
Prep the area (cut wood block and install)
Install tiles with glue and caulk (Kathryn handled this part)
Talk to you next week!