One of my favourite Advent passages comes from Luke chapter 3. It actually might be one of my favourite passages regardless of the season. It's about the work of John the Baptizer in the lead up (advent) to Jesus. He is telling the crowds who are following him about the coming salvation and judgement of God. The people ask him—and this is where the advent of it all comes in—what should we do while we wait and prepare for this?

What then should we do while we wait?

I really think that this is the perfect question for Advent. If Christmas is about the arrival of the Kingdom, Advent is about taking a beat and getting ready. I've heard it described as active waiting. Rather than jumping straight into celebration, there's this season of preparation. It's like having guests over for a big holiday party; there's so many things you need to do before they arrive. Advent is the church's season of house cleaning and meal prep.

But back to the main question: what are we supposed to do to get ready? John's answer—and, quite frankly, I love this—is socio-economic.

In reply he said to them, "Whoever has two coats must share with anyone who has none; and whoever has food must do likewise." He said to [the tax collectors], "Collect no more than the amount prescribed for you." He said [to the soldiers], "Do not extort money from anyone by threats or false accusation, and be satisfied with your wages."

What I appreciate here is that there really is no way to 'spiritualize' this away from its very real economic implications. It's also a vision for a society that would have radically upended the Roman Empire. If you have extra, share it with someone in need. If you are part of the machine itself that extracts wealth from its citizens, do so in a way that is fair, nonviolent, and non exploitative. Imagine such a thing.

Christmas has, in so many ways, become a celebration of indulgence and excess. [cue a Charlie Brown Christmas] I'm not trying to be all curmudgeonly here, I enjoy giving gifts and having elaborate meals during this time as much as anyone; but I think the value of Advent is that it calls us back to this idea that there is still much work to be done in order to get ready. And that work is not accomplished by going to more church services, having the biggest nativity scene on your lawn, or fighting about corporations saying happy holidays. It's found in a vision of upending an unjust and oppressive socio-economic system that dehumanizes its labourers and worships capital. It's in recognizing that the extra that we have we are not entitled to, but that it should be shared with those who have far less. It's in gratitude and generosity and solidarity with the poor.

Advent is ultimately a reminder that the world isn't as it should be and we shouldn't be okay with how it is.

Colder weather has officially hit here in Southern Ontario and it's a good reminder that my commitment to walk as much as I can is really made possible by good winter clothing. Can't stress enough the value of a quality parka.

Been a bit of a quiet season for deeper reading so I haven't added much here.

• I'm currently powering through the final stretch of the Wheel of Time books (in the last half of the last one). For those that don't know, this is a 14 volume fantasy series. I've attempted it twice before and lost momentum. I started the series from the beginning again in April and have been pushing to accomplish it by the end of the year.

• I've also been spending more time in the mornings doing some reflective work on my life. I'm working on building out a 5-10 year vision and it's got a lot of my headspace. So less time for reading.

• Also, I turned 40 today.

“Small things were important. Seconds were small things, and if you heaped enough of those on top of one another, they became a man’s life.” (from Towers of Midnight, book 13 in the Wheel of Time)

"I do believe in the possibility of creating a new social model. The only thing is that we now have to begin afresh. The unions, the labour halls, decentralization, the federative system—are all gone. The perverse use that has been made of them has destroyed them. The matter is all the more urgent because all our political forms are exhausted and practically nonexistent. Our parliamentary and electoral system and our political parties are just as futile as dictatorships are intolerable. Nothing is left. And this nothing is increasingly aggressive, totalitarian, and omnipresent. Our experience today is the strange one of empty political institutions in which no one has any confidence any more, of a system of government which functions only in the interests of a political class, and at the same time of the almost infinite growth of power, authority, and social control which makes any one of our democracies a more authoritarian mechanism than the Napoleonic state."

From Anarchy and Christianity, Jacques Ellul.

I've been reading Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion by Robert Cialdini (1984) recently out of an interest to dig a bit more into UX and to better understand why people make decisions. It's a borderline classic at this point—a year older than me—but the concepts in it are fairly timeless.

Like obligation.

This is the first "weapon of influence" that Cialdini explores (he refers to it as 'reciprocation'). Obligation is the social web of indebtedness, giving and expecting an equal measure of return in some way. He notes that human society is somewhat built on this assurance. It is designed (and exploited) to shame people into keeping the balance in socially acceptable ways.

Take, for example, the mutually binding experience of helping someone move. There is an unspoken agreement that helping someone move locks you into a form of social debt, only escapable by returning the favour. Until the debt is repaid, the relationship is imbalanced—even if only subtly. The obliged might feel compelled to try and repay their gratitude in other ways: dinner, beer, a thank you gift; but the scale is only truly made right again with a favour of equal size.

These sorts of social transactions are common, even if we don't like to think of them that way. Watering a friend's plants while they're out of town, donating to a coworker's charity run, taking the cheque at a family dinner. It can even exist in things like potlucks or gift exchanges. When we give of our time or resources, there is an underlying assumption that the recipient should be willing to 'repay' if and when the opportunity presents itself.

Now, what interests me the most here is what this might say about human selflessness. This is something I like to spend my time thinking about: how and when someone acts against their self-interest for the sake of someone or something else. If we take this concept of obligation seriously, we might consider that nobody ever truly acts in a selfless way. We all give with some sort of expectation that the recipient, the community, or even the universe will pay us back in equal measure at some point in the future. Even if we want to be charitable and say that these future returns are merely an incentive to give, I still find it an interesting thought experiment to consider how people would act without them. Would wealthy people be as philanthropic without tax benefits? Would religious people engage in charity without a promise of eternal reward? Would you be willing to help a friend move if you knew that when it was your time to move, your friend would be out of town?

Maybe for some the answer would still be yes, and I like to hope that that is true. But I can't help but feel that if we lost the web of obligation, a lot of "selfless" behaviour would stop. And I wonder what the cumulative impact of that would be. Cialdini notes,

"The obligation to reciprocate a concession encourages the creation of socially desirable arrangements by ensuring that anyone seeking to start such an arrangement will not be exploited. After all, if there were no social obligation to reciprocate a concession, who would want to make the first sacrifice? To do so would be to risk giving up something and getting nothing back."

My observation is that society is becoming increasingly more self-centred. I believe this is because empathy is in decline (for a number of reasons that I'm not going to explore here) but as I read this section of Cialdini's book, I am wondering whether obligation isn't also disappearing. Or at least evolving into something else. This isn't to say that the intricate balance of equal repayment for services given is gone, but I think what has happened is that many of the things we once did for one another as community favours are increasingly becoming normalized as paid services. Dog walking, moving help, tool rental, snow shovelling, even providing for the elderly—all of these can now be purchased. An easy and instant transaction with no promise of future repayment.

This feels like a loss.

I guess what I'm concerned about is that we are falling out of habit of asking for and giving favours, of helping those around us with our extra time and skills. We're setting a new standard where asking for something that can be paid for is considered a bit of a faux pas, an inconvenience upon those who are asked. That's to say nothing of simply stepping up and helping out without being asked, just because you are able. Just because you see a need. As Cialdini put it, who wants to risk giving something up and getting nothing back in return?

The problem is that human society was built upon this sort of mutual exchange. If not selflessness, at least a fundamental trust in the community around us. If I help you, you'll be there to help me when I need it. Obligation is not a bad thing. It's not a debt to be rid of. It's a sense of moral duty and concern for the world we live in. It's a contract that binds us into living together, as a diverse group of people sharing space and resources. It's a necessary foundation for cooperation.

Something I personally think we could use a lot more of these days.