Nov
30
I Love Football, But Football Fans Have An Average IQ of 7
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Add to this the following anecdotes: the amount of bitching about Andy Reid, which assumes that he can control injuries when his team plays in the toughest division in football; the time Notre Dame fired Tyrone Willingham after convening an emergency meeting of the Board of Trustees (or Governors, or something) after having lost a football game - it was like everyone got off their couch and decided they had to act; the booing of Tom Brady at Foxboro earlier this year, because clearly, the man who has brought 3 Super Bowl titles to the franchise isn’t playing hard enough or well-enough; and, of course, this nonsense that Rutgers is some amazing school because it can beat Louisville and other community colleges filled with inmates at football and make a lot of Jerseyites happy for about 3 minutes.
It looks like the vast majority of football fans want every play to be a TD, and every game to be won. If that isn’t the case, they feel they can do a better job.
I’m of the exact opposite attitude. I think there’s an amazing amount of talent in football, esp. at the pro level. The Steelers are losing this year, but Cowher and Dick LeBeau, who invented the Zone Blitz, are gonna go to the Hall of Fame. I hate Billick, but he really is an amazing offensive coordinator, and being a Cunningham fan, I owe him for helping Randall get a great season before Dan Reeves figured out how to exploit the utter lack of defense the 98 Vikings had. Dennis Green is having a horrible year, but there’s sick talent in Arizona on both sides of the ball. Art Shell’s Raiders have an incredible defense, and almost beat the Chargers. And everyone thinks they can out-coach Marty Schottenheimer because he makes a dumb call here and there, or makes mistakes in strategy. I think he’s the best coach in the game - better than Tuna, Shanahan or Belichick (sp?), and the proof of that is MartyBall. Most runs make 2 yards a carry - but if you conceive of the run game as a way of beating the s**t out of a defense, you’ve turned your offense into a weapon just as potent as having a good defense.
Football fans are idiots, and need to grow up. Teams lose. I’ve many a time supported a losing team. I hope Philly beats the crap out of the Panthers Sunday. I don’t like Jeff Garcia, but that doesn’t mean I don’t want him to do well, and that I want to see the defeatism that swallows Philly sports fans consume the team too.
Nov
30
The Temptation to Liberalism
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What knowledge does is give one a comfort zone - one thinks problems can be solved by it, and it alone, and one feels like more knowledge can be had, so if there isn’t a solution now, there will be one later.
Notice that this is a very narrow conception of “knowledge,” one based on the fact some knowledge solves some problems, so (therefore) all problems can be solved, theoretically. Accompanying this conception is a skepticism that shoots down pronouncements that have a finality to them. Aristotle does say that what is correct is not necessarily what is useful, so I guess this narrow conception has a lot going for it, as many useful things have been created that are far from being connected to what is right.
The broader conception of knowledge can’t be so easily used to support optimism. I think our Lefty friends absolutely have bought into the narrow conception, which is why the world will be better off if we leave it alone in their minds. We are a force, they seem to think, and nothing we do can be right, because we are doing. If we left well-enough alone, we could talk to each other in leisure, and that would foster community and peace, and we wouldn’t have to exploit or kill in any way to get humanity what it needs and wants.
But while philosophy is a state of rest where such happiness is possible, the idea that all men can share in it is preposterous. The broader conception of knowledge involves reasoning about why any evil exists at all. It isn’t just merely that people make mistakes - some people could be born rotten. Further, some people can genuinely make mistakes that hurt so deeply that to forgive might be beyond our ken. If the Leftist temptation to “community” and “dialogue” is based on a combination of a degraded Christian sentiment (can’t the world be perfect? It was once, in a primal state) with an incomplete education in the Bible or philosophy, then the response to it has to be the full question, as found in the Old Testament and, ironically enough, Plato and Aristotle - can reason really start with hope alone? Shouldn’t it start by trying to recognize the full set of problems we face, and not just aim high without any means of getting there?
Nov
29
Grappling.
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Note: none of this could be true. But I’m going crazy.
P. told me about how she absolutely wanted to tell a gentleman who confessed his interest in her that she wasn’t interested, despite his calling her numerous times a day without getting a response for weeks.
I told her to lie and say she was taken, or in the middle of something. But she insists she must declare the truth.
And now I know the problem with another, and why she won’t be back.
The issue is feeling imposed on. She sees the issue this way, probably: “If I can’t say X and have it mean anything, that means I’m not free.”
Of course, there’s a mistake in this formulation - what she really means is “If I say X, he must respond Y, and then I know I’m free.” A rather simple confusion many people make - all of us talk about independence, after all, and that’s the freedom to be in control.
Nevermind that such assertions of freedom can turn out to be the ultimate sort of tyranny over others.
I suppose I need to address where 3 years went in her mind. I could say I don’t know, but I actually do know - they’ve become a symbol of the ultimate oppression, that of the fact I gave having any meaning, when they create no feeling. Freedom means being able to receive gifts and do what one likes, with absolutely no obligation. The idea is the same happy feeling we have when we have a crush on someone; they could love us, and if they did, that would be a giving we wanted, and it is the satisfaction of our want that is the key. This, again, is another thing our society teaches, except not through a misunderstanding of “right,” but through a misunderstanding of Christianity. If God gives unconditionally, and some people do, then why can’t all gifts be unconditional in all circumstances? And doesn’t God recognize that we don’t thank Him for all gifts, but only those that make us feel better?
Again, what’s happening in this case, just as the political was interpreted to create a notion of “independence” that empowers one person at the expense of all others, is that the unconditional love of God is being used against those who give, to the point where those who don’t give are those who truly have dominion over all other things. So three years is meaningless because I’m asking that it should count for something more than it has; that’s “unreasonable” against this ideology which, of course, could make Mother Teresa “unreasonable.” After all, she probably wanted to get to heaven, so she was a selfish hag.
The point is that it is very easy for her to have sold herself on a line of thought which makes me the bad guy no matter what, especially given that I’ve made mistakes. I’m still shocked, though, that after 3 years, I wasn’t able to show what freedom and love, the concerns of the political and the pious, truly are.
I knew I was free when I was giving, not receiving, and requesting, not taking.
I knew I was in love not when I was feeling her absence, but when I would wonder how she was, and how her family and friends were.
If your conception of being free is getting others to do what you want, as it involves control, and your conception of loving is dependent on feeling euphoric - like in a crush, but not obligated in any way - then it is very easy to reject me in the most final, absolute way. And I must confess, my attempt to educate generally was a failure, for our world is teaching many people to think like despots. And why not, when people who take control are happy, even if it is at the expense of others?
I wonder if she’ll ever care how much I have hurt, and how much I wanted to be there for her even before the onset of “feelings,” that were most unlike a crush. Crushes don’t develop over three years.
Nov
28
Seriously?
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I remember a professor once upon a time telling me that life was a game, and I started tuning him out.
I’m pretty sure nowadays he didn’t mean it in a trivial way, but when I see people say things like “People who take themselves seriously make me crack up,” I just wonder.
Look, the world is filled with serious things. People are coming back in body bags and with limbs lost just to give another people a chance at democracy, and that other people doesn’t seemingly care for the most part.
I suppose someone not quite in my life anymore would have wished that I didn’t take her seriously in any way whatsoever, so that a cleaner break could have been effected. What she has learned about me, I sometimes think, is that I should not be taken seriously at all, I think. I guess I should be avoided or ridiculed. After all, I’m not losing life or limb, and to love when such feelings are not reciprocated is pathetic. One should only love when given the correct opportunity, many would say. And finally, I do sometimes think that I can change things, or people, or make life better generally - how could I assert such a mission when the only real proof of seriousness, it would seem, is sacrifice, or that which exists via consent?
Aristotle says the life devoted to pleasure is not a serious life whatsoever, and that only the philosophic life (the life of leisure, contrast leisure and pleasure), and the political life (the active and effectual life, compare effectiveness with actions in leisure) are the only two serious alternatives regarding how we should live. It’s a tricky formulation, because the politically oriented life always threatens to collapse into Empire, the desire to acquire more and more to satisfy wants, even if that want is only that of security.
And so I think a certain “faith” - I’m probably using the wrong word - underlies the philosophic life. That “faith” concerns two things: it is a trust that we can survive even if we don’t always preoccupy ourselves with securing material things (Matthew 6: 28-34 echoes the Aristotlean teaching about not trying to control chance completely), and is also the “faith” that life isn’t really a game for anyone, alone or with another. People lose their lives and limbs so we can be free and live well, and the least we can do for our those who sacrifice is treat each other with respect, and show an appreciation for the diverse - and sometimes very serious - uses of freedom. I suspect that what underlies the charge against others taking themselves too seriously, of course, is an inability to account properly for one’s own life or responsibiities, as dissipation occurs many times through a delusional group effort, where everyone has consented, but not thought.
Nov
27
I keep the Index at WritingUp up-to-date with developments here.
I think the other older, major blog, substantial, is an excellent read. I only have 100 entries from a span across years, but I really like everything I wrote there, girly as it can be sometimes.
Oh yeah, speaking of girly.
I have other blogs, but I’m trying to post that older content here when I can or link back to it.
I guess you’re wondering why I’m bringing all this up. I wanted to post on the problem of equality, and how we might want to reconceive it so as to find ways of preserving the middle class and its values.
And then I realized that to dictate solutions isn’t my style, especially not when Aristotle, in speaking of a “middling” regime, says it only comes about by “fortune,” meaning that to try to implement a policy to create something that best comes about through luck is barking up the wrong tree. I don’t need to add my voice to shrill and inane class warfare rhetoric. Maybe when I have a better grasp on the problem I’ll say something, but while I see it clearly now, I know I can’t say anything that wouldn’t make the stupidity of our class warfare (which thank God is marginal) worse.
What I need is for those of us in our generation to watch out for each other, i.e. treat each other as if each of us were as important as the other, and that’s happening already. Equality in the best sense is already being achieved, being achieved through fraternity, and I don’t need to say a damn thing to see my ideals realized.
So I figured this was a good time to just advertise the older writings. This is actually nearing an anniversary; it’s been about a year since I started the WritingUp blog and then this blog, and they’ve been fairly consistent. And I know from people talking to me that people are learning from these blogs, learning tons. I’ve been getting into debates with people recently whose first experience with political philosophy was the Gettysburg Address post, or whose first real experience with poetry analysis was the post on Shakespeare’s Sonnet 73.
And those debates, I think, call for a celebration of sorts. Hence, this post.