Thursday, October 8, 2009

Inspired ideas that fall outside of my stewardship

Occasionally, I have ideas that I think could change the world and make everything better--or I have ideas that would make a certain specialized thing better.  Unfortunately I usually have ideas that I have no control over nor any influence.  When it comes to some of my religious ideas, we have a nice concept in the church called stewardship.  To the best of my understanding, we use this term in the church to explain the principle that everyone is entitled to personal revelation as well as revelation for those people and things over which they have authority.  It prevents people from having revelations for the whole church unless they are the prophet. 

For example, I have previously discussed my idea that missionaries should be called to their mission when they are a lot younger.  It would be so cool, but I don't think the prophet is taking open suggestions on how to radically change the mission program of the church, because of that pesky stewardship clause.  It makes me wonder, is my inspiration from the devil?  Why did I get it, and not the prophet?  Oh well.

Fear not; I also have many other impractical and hare-brained ideas to reform the church, the NBA, computer games, world hunger, our nation's clogged highways, and the electoral process, to name a few.  Here's a quick fly-by:
  • Why can't men in the church have homemaking or enrichment or book clubs or whatever it is the women do?  Exactly, there's no reason.  Also, I had a lot of great ideas for singles wards, more specifically the singles ward I was in.  Except now I've joined the dark side of being married and feel an irresistible urge to shun all single members and treat them as an awkward disease...
  • I have a cool idea to prevent lottery-bound teams in the NBA from purposefully losing games to try and get a higher pick.  Once a team has been eliminated mathematically from making the playoffs, the teams go into a consolation playoff after the regular season with the seedings based on the records they had in the last 10 games of the regular season. The winner of these playoffs gets first pick with the runner up getting second, etc.  It rewards teams that are still trying while not overly penalizing teams that just are horrible and deserve a good pick.
  • My favorite computer game franchises, Civilization and SimCity, both could be a lot cooler if they had a multiplayer option for collaborative play.  This would allow players to micromanage some aspect of the same civilization or city.  The players would be on the same team, have the same ultimate goals, but have their own duties and responsibilities.  In Civ, one player could be the defense minister, another the science minister, another the foreign advisor, another a provincial governor, etc.  In SimCity, different players could be in charge of Education or Public Safety or Transportation or Zoning.  I can't believe I'm letting this idea out, it could be worth millions.
  • To solve world hunger, we can just make food out of the people who die.  Plus, the state of Indiana could feed the whole world, if the world always wanted corn.
  • We could get rid of the nation's clogged highways if we scrapped our entire car-based paradigm and switched over to rail and bikes!  Cars are unsafe, expensive, ugly, polluting, and most importantly, too self-empowering.
  • It is well established that I champion the idea of an overhaul of the current electoral process in favor of a compulsory Internet voting system that removes middlemen representatives and senators.  The day of true democracy is now within our grasp, people!  Technology has provided a way to bring us back to the glory of our ancient Greek ideals!  We need not disenfranchise ourselves by outsourcing our vote to a politician who has their own selfish aims at heart!  We need not be ashamed that we have no land, the wrong age, the wrong skin color, the wrong gender!  We all can vote on every issue!  What, I say, is holding us back from our destiny?!

2 comments:

  1. You are giving away a lot of great ideas!

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  2. I agree with you about voting. Don't worry that satan is directing you. If someday in the future we have younger missionaries or a men's relief society then you will feel inspired. Blah, Blah, Blah NBA. Touche' about rails and bikes. Especially electric bikes and buses.

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