Football in Modern America

Interesting for those keeping track.  When organizations are finally forced to face their truth, the whole thing changes and becomes healthier.  It's no mystery why the default is to deny, obfuscate, and lie.  But when the damage reaches its tipping point, the industries in question can actually start making things right.

Toyota and it's accelerator problem.  Police departments and their racism.  Cigarettes and their cancer.  The financial sector and their myriad fucking games.  Exxon and BP and their oil spills.  The Republicans and their white privilege and anti-intellectual bullshit.  (I am an innovative conservative at heart but because of the Republican leadership and a great majority of their members, I will never be one as long as they support idiocy).  And the NFL and its head injuries.  OK, some of the organizations haven't reached their tipping point yet, but someone who cares needs to keep the pressure on.

Organizations are like adolescents or arrested adults in their behavior.  With some exceptions, of course.  But the teenager who lies to avoid trouble from their parents. . . A fully actualized adult sees it and remembers what it was like.  But has learned that it is always less than.  The real, actual results of engaging in the behavior that induced them to lie, and the ultimate result of the lies sets them back because it leads to inefficiency, damaged reputation, disrespect and dishonor.  Which, in the end, leaves the kid (and organization) years behind in realizing their potential as aware, conscientious members of their community.

Just like people, when people finally face their fatal flaws, they can do amazing things, inspire incredible devotion and respect, and improve their ability to accomplish a well-considered and worthy goal.  Until that day, they are burdens and liabilities.  The world is fraught with risk and there will be errors, mistakes, lapses, and bad-hair days.  But an entity practiced in (not spinning) meeting those missteps head-on with integrity save themselves the additional distraction and time of dealing with their inevitably discovered lies, half-truths, deceptions, and machinations.

So bringing it back to football in America. . .

The glory and remuneration of being a football star in America and the function football can fill in our national schema are worth the reduced health of the players.  There are not that many players.  Compared to the public at large, if there are 1700 players (note 1) at any given time, and an average career between 3.2 to 6 years (depending on whether you believe the Players Association or the NFL).  The attention and prestige these players receive are way beyond their effort relative to other hard-working professionals.  And yes, as a group, they are exceedingly hard working!  But still, there are at least 3200 teachers, nurses, police and firemen... who work as laboriously and make a comparative pittance.  Not fair.  So the fact that they are at much greater risk for injury and health compromise is help to balance the tableau.  They get paid the RIDICULOUSLY big bucks for it.  The thing that would make it completely fair is if the NFL were transparent with what they know about injury rates, the scope and depth of the risk, and a real disclosure of just what the players are (statistically) getting into.  Then, when the players, with their trusted advisers, make the decision to play, they are doing so with eyes wide open and can honestly sign the waivers that absolve the NFL from punitive punishment, and everyone is there with a full understanding and acknowledgement of what the deal is.  Even so, this should in no way be an argument against making the game as safe as possible for the players, but it needs to be a violent and tough sport for it to serve its purpose.

It's fun, it's entertainment, but it serves another purpose, as well.  It allows we regulars to project our violence onto them in the arena, and provides a psychic outlet for some of those tendencies allowing us to lead our lives with a little less violence.  And it has the potential to serve that purpose even more, like the Roman gladiators, sanctioned boxing, horror movies, etc.  We can subjugate some of our macho angst by observing our football players to live it for us.  Now if we could find a way to let more teams win more often . . .  Allowing the 1700 players to be a cathartic outlet for 150 (give or take 50) million may be worth it.  Not to mention the general emotional engagement and entertainment value.  So, yeah, let's keep on having football, but let's get the damn NFL to come all the way clean NOW so the sport can live on with integrity.

Note 1: http://www.besttickets.com/blog/unofficial-2013-nfl-census/

Kevin Spacey versus Billy Collins

Listening to Billy Collins on A Prairie Home Companion last week and tonight on YouTube, I heard the similarity in their voices -- both the timber and tone, and the accent.  They don't have distinctive accents, but they sound like they could be brothers.  So I looked up their bios and found that they both came from the New York City/New Jersey area (White Plains) and both spent some of their formative years in California.

What can I say?

I think at times everything has been said about things in general, or at least more than can or should be digested.  There's the local news and traffic updates that are helpful, and the schedule of events for the upcoming week, of course.  But in books and magazines, I wonder if taking a year off from new production might make us better consolidate or summarize the mountain of new every year and give us all a chance to catch up on the last decade of new.

I think of the several books about creativity or public policy, the authors of which could all just get together to work through their various points of view, cut through the chaff and to the bone to put together a more concise and balanced whole.  Let the bulk of the background reasoning be relegated to online appendices (with the shorter version in the published pages, of course).

When I think of putting my not small bundle of thoughts together for public consumption, this is my thinking.  Where would my voice add something of value to the din and cacophony?

New Career Choice: Recycler

I watched the CNN media-blurb on their 2013 Hero of the Year.  This was a man who devotes his life to any number of recycling initiatives.  I think the world needs an army of these people.  A viable and official career path that falls under the title Recycler would be good for the Earth.  No, we're beyond "saving" but there's prolonging.  There's redefining.  There's helping where we can.  There are unemployed people who could be on the reclaiming side instead of the raping and consuming side.  And it could pay in several ways.

It would be part social justice/social work, part educator, part leader and influencer, etc.  A person could specialize in any particular aspect of Earth nurturing.  I acknowledge there are jobs that do this to some extent, like park ranger.  Like recycling center operator.  But maybe more on the consulting/sub-contracting, proselytizing and lobbying, engineering (although there are already Environmental Engineers, this might be more opinionated and militant, bent toward the Earth side designing super-efficient and elegant design for every single thing from books to electronics to buildings to everything else).

I believe the political side of things is by far the biggest hurdle, so becoming an army of public opinion and capacity in order to sway the political will is going to have to be central to the initiative, but within corporate America -- that's the hardest because their profit-first motivation wants to be wasteful rather than efficient.  When we make it politically dangerous to be wasteful, we are on the right path.

Criticize and poke holes in this argument, then spackle and fix them so it becomes a yes instead of a no.  You armchair quarterbacks, so smug and smart -- turn your cynicism into strategies to make it work instead of throwing your hands up and saying it can't.  Use your 20/20 hindsight to solve this issue.  And then act.

Emotional Stew

This morning riding in to work listening to music, the illuminating analogy came to mind that the emotion state (which was incidentally being induced by John Hartford's Mark Twang) that flavors the feeling was a combination of several memories acting simultaneously.  This particular piece of music (for me) invokes the feeling I might have riding a steamboat on a sultry southern afternoon.  But because I first encountered this album when I was working with a high-performance and dynamic team of people I loved, those real memories are cast in along with the imaginary.  And the imaginary, itself, is fabricated from real memories of my grandpa (who was an Arkansas Ozark denizen who lived in the "Bluegrass Capitol of the World" and close enough to the Mississippi but also matching the quaintness of the lyrics and bluegrass fiddle).  A virtual "feel-good" gumbo.

It's the unique mix of those feelings in that moment, and the moment itself, riding to work at zero dark-thirty, that was the recipe for that feeling.  The unique oleo, unique to me and unique in that moment, made me think very much of how each meal is unique in the combination of ingredients, the relative amounts and strengths of the seasoning, the meat and potatoes (also different from cut to cut and batch to batch . . ).  Lucky thing, I should think, because it keeps things interesting.

The Limits of Life/ Time

So a person has a career or two, and to be really good at it takes a considerable amount of resources.  To be a parent on top of that takes a little bit of time and energy, learning some and doing some.  Then, to be an engaged citizen there's some level of basic background information and understanding a person needs to figure out how it all works, along with an awareness of local issues.  But then choosing something to actually DO in response to that constantly changing knowledge and environment.  Just to be able to make an educated vote on issues that affect the neighborhood, city, and state.  Understanding enough of the national state of affairs (just considering the domestic issues for a minute) takes a regular investment of time and mental resources so that a guy can weigh in on policy when the time comes, probably around election time when politicos and statesmen run for (re-)election.  Trying to get a gist of what is happening globally again takes an additional timeslot on a regular basis.  The economic scene is a big part of reality, technology and the environment (fracking? Is it really good/bad? and how?), what to do about global warming, GMOs, diabetes, etc.

Clearly, there are millions of us so we don't all have to be well aware of every issue.  Each of us could pick one or two issues on every level (personal, familial, professional, local, state, national) and fill in general knowledge about all of them with a few broadly edited magazines, and the principles that guide life as we know it can emerge, but still . . .

With globalization and the continuous march of advancement, building on the historical mountain of previous understandings, we reached a limit a long time ago when a person could know it all.  I just wonder if we can get enough people involved in enough issues to be able to keep this thing going.  One of my (many) ideas of heaven is seeing how this whole big thing unfolds over the next couple hundred years.

PhDs

I've known a few PhDs in my life, and they're often impressive in their field.  I've known a few EdDs, and so far, one is awesome and was before he got his degree, and the other 4 are terrible.  What's up with that.  Simple data point.  I must admit that they all came from SDSU, but still.  Terrible, as in not so smart, not good at their assigned positions, and sort of mean and political.

I don't know if it's a function of intelligence, but it seemed the common thread among the embarrassments was their inability to self-assess.  They either weren't able to see how ineffective and bafoonish they are, or they were just evil.  I'm still waiting for them to be removed from positions of power over others.