Patience and Softball

I begin on a random note: when I write, I nearly always listen to music. I usually (always?) end up with something on the "classical" spectrum. I wonder if other bloggers listen to music when they write. I also wonder whether I choose music based on how I feel...or what I want to write.  I suspect that the music I choose is dictated by my mood, and that the manner and topic upon which I write is similarly based.

With that said...you have my apologies for the length of the below blog....

My Daughter (9 y.o.) has two softball coaches, one for her recreational team and one for her "local" travel team. The teams are for ages 10 and under, though because of the cutoff dates, there are more than a few girls who are now over 10 years old. Daughter turned 9 last September, which means that she is more than a year younger than some of the girls. With the physical differences that presents, both coaches have elected to play her in the outfield (with occasional placement at 2nd, catcher, and bench - the latter due to team overpopulation), with concerns for her ability to deflect hard-hit balls.

This, of course, has been frustrating for Daughter, who (naturally) has difficulty discerning negative differences between herself and other players. "Negative" differences, here, meaning those qualities in a player which are as important as the obvious (good hitting, good fielding, good pitching, etc.) but are not as obvious to the less trained eye. I think here of knowledge of the game, situational awareness, and (in this instance) reaction time.

It is this last quality which Daughter may not perceive as easily, and until a recent exchange with one coach, I did not either. I understand it more now, and am thankful for that. While I am a moderate natural athlete, I am not trained or practiced  in baseball or softball, save perhaps some high school phys-ed outings. The only sport to which I can lay claim to any knowledge (note: I do not claim "ability") is golf, and that played rarely enough.

So, this season has been, to some extent, an exercise in mild frustration. Though I would not speak too much for her, I would hazard that my wife (as a former soccer, softball, and basketball player) has been more frustrated than I, as she had hopes for Daughter to get more experience playing infield, particularly catcher (as she has played the last 2 years).

Reflecting on this frustration and considering it in depth has taken time and discussion - both with my wife, with Daughter, and with myself. I am not sure that I am "over" the frustration entirely. And yet...and yet, Daughter has grown in so many ways this season - this season that is her first foray into "adult" softball. She has great joy in her teammates, and they in her. She bats better than ever, throws further and more accurately than ever, and is more focused and thoughtful on the field and off. This from a girl of whom the coaches said even at the start of the season that she has an excellent attitude and is very coachable.

So, this has been a lesson for me in patience. It is a lesson well-learned, and is probably one in which I need work (among others, naturally). The great writer Josef Pieper had this to say of patience (one of the seven classical Christian virtues):

Patience is not the indiscriminate acceptance of any sort of evil: "It is not the one who does not flee from evil who is patient but rather the one who does not let himself thereby be drawn into disordered sadness." To be patient means not to allow the serenity and discernmet of one's soul to be taken away. Patience, then, is not the tear-streaked mirror of a "broken" life (as one might almost think, to judge from what is frequently shown and praised under this term) but rather is the radiant essence of final freedom from harm. Patience is, as Hildegard of Bingen states, "the pillar that is weakened by nothing.”

There are those who say that God sends (meaning, in this sense, "causes") events to happen to "test" one's virtues...to give one opportunity to work on them. I do not think this is the case. However, I do believe that one is presented with numerous opportunities, daily, and over lengthier time, to exercise virtue, and to learn what one should have done with reflection. And so, in this case, I have been hasty, but see, looking back, that patience was called for, and with patience, forgiveness of self, and teaching of Daughter, so that I might model patience for her, in word and in deed.

Facebook and Consumerism

Recently, I saw a post on Facebook by a friend who, on a late evening shopping run, asked help in finding a (what she terms) “frivolous” purchase, and realized that there was a possibility that the person from whom she was seeking help may have been an immigrant refugee from Sudan, displaced by the wars there. She felt shamed and “like a real twit”. She stated this in the context of how people, like her (and myself), could reconcile a knowledge and appreciation of the social justice teachings of the Church, a desire to abide by those teachings, and the fact of consumerism. 

Her question is important….regarding consumerism, we can borrow the words of Trip, from the movie Glory: “Yeah, It stinks bad. And we all covered up in it too. Ain't nobody clean.”

And yet, I think it is critical, even as we separate “science” from “scientism”, to distinguish between “consumer” and “consumerism”. We, as humans, must consume, even in order to follow the teachings of the Church on the problems inherent in consumerism. We must be clothed, we must eat, some must raise children, we must teach, learn, and work; we must play, create, and love. In short, in order to live and be social beings, we must consume. 

This summer, my eldest daughter begins to play the French horn. I do not view our purchase of that horn as consumerism, but as consumption – use of wealth in a valid way to teach another and enable her to learn an art, and if in learning, she becomes a sub-creator (as she must, it seems to me), then she may glorify creation, and thereby God, through such creation. 

“Consumerism”, however, is what results when one makes a god of consumption – like scientism, and in many instances, capitalism (when driven by, for instance, consumerism). “Consumerism” is what happens when consumption is driven by sin – by our lack of holiness, and therefore, either mortal or venial. It is the elevation of goods over need – of desire of goods solely for sake of possession. Ordinate purchase of food due to hunger, (or, as Pieper or Chesterton might note, for true celebration) is a good and even holy thing – stewardship of the things of the earth. Purchase of food due to gluttony or desire simply to have that food, rather than out of hunger, becomes problematic and is symptomatic of consumerism. The same can be said of cars, houses, education, or anything else that could be consumed. 

With that said, it is very difficult from the outside to tell if one’s use of goods is holy or not – is driven by need or desire to fulfill the commandments of God, or by an inordinate desire. This is something that, except in rare cases, is between one and God and must be constantly questioned through prayer and the Sacraments.

Finally, let me complicate the scenario a bit. I noted earlier that this posting occurred on Facebook. I have begun to consider whether those who are truly anti-consumerism (not anti-consumption – that way lies the anti-humanists) can use Facebook. Let me explain. I do not know anyone who pays Facebook for use of it – in fact, I am not sure that an individual can do so. I believe it is completely driven by advertising. And, while some of that advertising is surely neutral or beneficial, much of it must also be for frivolous “stuff” – video games, etc. Facebook derives revenues from these businesses, who advertise to the users of Facebook. This is both consumption and, probably, consumerism. If we are truly concerned with frivolity, can we continue to use Facebook for free? It seems almost like lower-cost public schools driven by lotteries, which are nearly always purchased disproportionately by those who cannot afford to do so….and what does this say of our other favorite mediums, themselves disproportionately funded by advertising – television…magazines…sporting events….?

Illiteracy - The Impossibility of Debate

In addition to my work as a professional, I have taught a number of classes at a local community college. My students in those classes range from just graduated high school all the way up to 40+ second-careerists. I also have a wide variety of friends on Facebook, from many walks of political life.

I have had a number of debates in classes and on Facebook, and seen others conducted online, especially revolving around the gay marriage debates, abortion, and other hot-button issues currently roaming around the countryside. In observing all of these, I have come to several conclusions.

The one which concerns me here is: the majority of people with strong opinions about these subjects are illiterate - in the sense that they have not read or discussed their reading enough to understand basic rhetorical devices, such as analogy.

Let me explain, if you're still here.

A typical example in the debate is a question of status versus action. Typically, thoughtful Christians distinguish between status ("homosexuality") and action ("homosexual acts"). In other words, Christians find nothing sinful in being homosexual - the problem is in the homosexual sexual actions (which Christians find are sinful, as are non-marital heterosexual acts, etc). When this distinction is rejected, one basis being that homosexuals feel deeply that the inclinations are inborn and natural, Christians attempt to analogize, such as by retorting that some people feel deeply attracted to young girls,  but that attraction should not permit those people to act upon that inclination. 

The response to such an analogy is usually swift, furious, and illiterate. Rather than taking the analogy as a broad comparison attempting to question the validity of a direct link between a desire always being natural and the related act being "good", the opponent invariably launches a statement to the effect of "so, you're saying that homosexuals are as bad as child molesters", or "you're saying that having consensual same-sex relations is the same as raping a child".

Charitably, I assume that such responses are borne of illiteracy - the inability to understand a limited analogy in argument. Less charitably, I often wonder whether such vehement response is a deliberate misconstruction of the statement, where the interlocutor is perfectly aware of the analogy, but is using shame or embarrassment in attempt to shut down the discussion.

Reflection - April 16, 2014: Deneen, Smith, and the Founding

I often find myself thoughtful at the outset of the day, before my mind is "distracted and diffused", to borrow from Simon & Garfunkel. This is especially true if I have had a chance to peruse some of the more thoughtful blog posts from the various sites to which I subscribe. Therefore, I have decided to spend 10 - 15 minutes in the morning to set a few thoughts out for consideration - for those who might read, to stimulate my own thoughts and dialogue with others, and to get them out of my head and onto "paper".

This morning brings a review of a recent book by Stephen D. Smith, entitled "The Rise and Decline of American Religious Freedom." In his review, Luis Silva reveals that Smith argues that the American Founding was:

[N]ot a product of the Enlightenment born out of radical distrust for religion, as is widely believed. Rather, the American Constitution expresses continuity with a tradition that originated nearly 2,000 years ago when Christ said “Render unto Caesar what is Caesar’s and to God what is God’s.” In Smith’s words, “American religious freedom was not so much a repudiation of and departure from the Christian past as a retrieval and consolidation of that past.

The appearance of this book (and review) comes at a...timely time...in my opinion. Recently, we have seen Patrick Deneen argue (placing himself in the latter school, below) in the pages of the American Conservative that:

For those in the Murray/Neuhaus/Weigel school, it’s simply a matter of returning us to the better days, and reviving the sound basis on which the nation was founded. For those in the MacIntyre/Schindler school, America was never well-founded, so either needs to be differently re-founded or at least endured, even survived. 

In a different post, bringing replies from bloggers Micah Mattix and Stephen Herreid, Deneen reveals his belief that:

I hope Hobby Lobby wins its case. But we should not deceive ourselves for a minute that what we are seeing is the contestation between a religious corporation and a secular State. We are seeing, rather, the culminating absurdity of what Polanyi called the “utopia” of our modern economic disembedding—the absurdity of a chain store representing the voice of religion in the defense of life amid an economy and polity that values turning people and nature into things.

For those more unfamiliar, Deneen contends (contra, apparently, writers like Smith) that modern liberalism, such as we find at the Founding, has a set of ideological commitments embedded within it that must turn it hostile to religious belief - commitments to be found in the basic ideas of the Enlightenment as espoused by figures such as Locke. Smith, I suspect, argues that there were turns made in American political action that destroyed the Founding belief in a religious separation of Church and State, thus turning commitments to religious equality and freedom to overt hostility to religion.

While I suspect there are truths to be found in both camps, and the practice of the history of ideas fraught with the difficulties of delving into individual and group motivation, the discussion is rather fascinating.

Narcissism, Entertainment, Art

Over at a website (hitherto unkown to me) entited "Minyanville", one of the regular editors and contributors, Michael Comeau has a post up entitled "The Harlem Shake and the Decline of Western Civilization." Therein, Mr. Comeau notes a recent YouTube phenomena (don't blink - there may be a new one tomorrow)  in which people are posting 30 second music videos they have created which use a song (the "Harlem Shake") by an electronic music artist named Baauer. Mr. Comeau is not kidding about the "phenomena" aspect of this - a quick search of the term "Harlem Shake" on YouTube reveals "about" 201,000 results.

So, what's Mr. Comeau's problem with this? Is it that he's a conservative prude? He disclaims any such thing. Is it that he does not find any of the videos amusing? Not at all - he admits that "the part of me that can't help but laugh at the "Harlem Shake" struggles with the part of me that doesn't want to be entertained by all this." So, what's his concern then? Referencing an earlier post of his, "The Bull Market in Narcissism", he expresses his concern that we increasingly live in an age that values attention more than "true creativity and accomplishment." In his earlier work, quoted in the newer, he worries that:

Every generation of youth gets told it's worse than the last, but the rise of social media exhibitionism is a brand-new phenomena. If you wanted to get attention when I was a teenager, you had to go out in the real world and do it in person, which at least required something resembling courage....These days, if you want to get a reaction from the outside world, you can do it without getting out of bed.

I think he is right to express this concern.

Mr. Comeau joins a grand tradition of social commentators who have noticed a steady loss of highbrow culture in favor of the moment, of which social meadia is the very avatar. Others in this grand tradition have include:

Neil Postman, author of "Amusing Ourselves to Death" who stated in its introduction that:

As Huxley remarked in _Brave New World Revisited_, the civil libertarians and rationalists who are ever on the alert to oppose tyranny "failed to take into account man's almost infinite appetite for distractions." In _1984_, Huxley added, people are controlled by inflicting pain. In _Brave New World_, they are controlled by inflicting pleasure. In short, Orwell feared that what we hate will ruin us. Huxley feared that what we love will ruin us. This book is about the possibility that Huxley, not Orwell, was right

Christopher Lasch, who noted in his work "The Culture of Narcissim" (1991) when referencing other cultural critics and sociologists that:

"They fail to explore any of the character traits associated with pathological narcissism, which in less extreme form appear in such profusion in the everyday life of our age:

[1.] dependence on vicarious warmth provided by others combined with fear of dependence
[2.] a sense of inner emptiness
[3.] a boundless repressed rage
[4.] and unsatisfied oral cravings. Nor do they discuss what might be called secondary characteristics of narcissism:
[5.] pseudo self-insight
[6.] calculating seductiveness
[7.] nervous, self-deprecating humor. 

They thus deprive themselves of any basis on which to make connections between the narcissistic personality type and certain characteristic patterns of contemporary culture, such as the
[8.] intense fear of old age and death
[9.] altered sense of time
[10.] fascination with celebrity
[11.] fear of competition
[12.] deteriorating relations between men and women."

Alan Bloom, who painted the following in  "Closing of the American Mind" (1987) that (and his tech references are a bit dated, of course):

Picture a thirteen-year-old boy sitting in the living room of his family home doing his math assignment while wearing his Walkman headphones or watching MTV. He enjoys the liberties hard won over centuries by the alliance of philosophic genius and political heroism, consecrated by the blood of martyrs; he is provided with comfort and leisure by the most productive economy ever known to mankind; science has penetrated the secrets of nature in order to provide him with the marvelous, lifelike electronic sound and image reproduction he is enjoying. And in what does progress culminate? A pubescent child whose body throbs with orgasmic rhythms; whose feelings are made articulate in hymns to the joys of onanism or the killing of parents; whose ambition is to win fame and wealth in imitating the drag-queen who makes the music. In short, life is made into a nonstop, commercially prepackaged masturbational fantasy.

Jean Twenge, author of several books discussing the narcissism of the present generation, setting forth in one of her books:

The cultural focus on self-admiration began with the shift toward focusing on the individual in the 1970s, documented in Tom Wolfe’s article on “The Me Decade” in 1976 and Lasch’s The Culture of Narcissism. In the three decades since, narcissism has grown in ways these authors never could have imagined. The fight for the greater good of the 1960s became looking out for number one by the 1980s. Parenting became more indulgent, celebrity worship grew, and reality TV became a showcase of narcissistic people. The Internet brought useful technology but also the possibility of instant fame and a “look at me!” mentality. Using botulinum toxin to smooth facial wrinkles to perpetuate a youthful fact birthed a huge industry. The easy accessibility of credit allowed people to look better off financially than they actually were.

and in another book:

No parent ever says ‘my goal is to raise a narcissistic kid.’ It’s part of this overall individualistic culture. It comes from the ‘good intentions’ of trying to develop self esteem, from the cultural pressures of uniqueness and standing out.

Emphasizing specialness, uniqueness and standing out so much does tend to create that situation where we’re focusing on that, we’re focusing on being better [than others] and standing out.”

Alan Wolfe, who noted in a brief WSJ post on blogs that:

One by one, Marshall McLuhan's wackiest-seeming predictions come true. Forty years ago, he said that modern communications technology would turn the young into tribal primitives who pay attention not to objective "news" reports but only to what the drums say, i.e., rumors. And there you have blogs. The universe of blogs is a universe of rumors, and the tribe likes it that way.

The last is not so far off your thoughts on "attention", is it, Mr. Comeau?

Contrast your ideas on art and YouTube with this quote from "Art and Scholasticism" by Jacques Maritain:

The work of art has been thought before being made, it has been kneaded and prepared, formed, brooded over, ripened in a mind before passing into matter. And in matter it will always retain the color and savor of the spirit. Its formal element, what constitutes it in its species and makes it what it is, is its being ruled by the intellect. If this formal element diminishes ever so little, to the same extent the reality of art vanishes. The work to be made is only the matter of art, its form is undeviating reason. Recta ratio factibilium: let us say, in order to try to translate this Aristotelian and Scholastic definition, that art is the undeviating determination of works to be made.

YouTube is the narcissist in artistic action. Expressive only of self, not of art, taking no work, little pain, short periods of time, and certainly, little brooding. Try not to be cranky, Mr. Comeau - though, I have been trying for years, and it always seems to catch up with me.

Forward to "Amusing Ourselves to Death" - Neil Postman

Hattip: Constructive Curmudgeon

We were keeping our eye on 1984. When the year came and the prophecy didn't, thoughtful Americans sang softly in praise of themselves. The roots of liberal democracy had held. Wherever else the terror had happened, we, at least, had not been visited by Orwellian nightmares.

But we had forgotten that alongside Orwell's dark vision, there was another -- slightly older, slightly less well known, equally chilling: Aldous Huxley's _Brave New World_. Contrary to common belief even among the educated, Huxley and Orwell did not prophesy the same thing. Orwell warns that we will be overcome by an externally imposed oppression. But in Huxley's vision, no Big Brother is required to deprive people of their autonomy, maturity and history. As he saw it, people will come to love their oppression, to adore the technologies that undo their capacities to think.

What Orwell feared were those who would ban books. What Huxley feared was that there would be no reason to ban a book, for there would be no one who wanted to read one. Orwell feared those who would deprive us of information. Huxley feared those who would give us so much that we would be reduced to passivity and egoism. Orwell feared that the truth would be concealed from us. Huxley feared the truth would be drowned in a sea of irrelevance. Orwell feared we would become a captive culture. Huxley feared we would become a trivial culture, preoccupied with some equivalent of the feelies, the orgy porgy, and the centrifugal bumblepuppy. As Huxley remarked in _Brave New World Revisited_, the civil libertarians and rationalists who are ever on the alert to oppose tyranny "failed to take into account man's almost infinite appetite for distractions." In _1984_, Huxley added, people are controlled by inflicting pain. In _Brave New World_, they are controlled by inflicting pleasure. In short, Orwell feared that what we hate will ruin us. Huxley feared that what we love will ruin us.
This book is about the possibility that Huxley, not Orwell, was right.

-- Neil Postman, Foreword to _Amusing Ourselves to Death_ (1985)

A Pledge...(C**p I will Not Remain Silent About)

Several weeks ago, on the "Popehat" blog, "Clark" had a post called "consistency", in which he opened by saying that:

Here's a fun game to play:

Skewer partisans on the other side of the divide over the fact that during the last administration they had their panties in a knot over the president doing X, Y, and Z, but during this administration (with the appropriate brand of either Coke or Pepsi sitting behind the desk in the Oval Office), they're mysteriously silent.

 He ended the post with:

Here's my challenge to you (and to myself):

1) when the wrong brand of soft drink is behind the desk (whether that's right now or in a few years), make a list of the utterly horrible illegal crap he (or she) is doing, day in and day out. And post it someplace public, like your blog.

Now, here's the tricky bit:

2) title the blog post "crap I will not remain silent about … even when my own guy is doing it 4 or 8 years from now"

And so this is my challenge to myself and to you.

We have reached a point in this country where the President does what he wants with our military power under a thin veneer of justification, makes himself the cheerleader (and major drafter of, and negotiator for) legislation to achieve his goals (these actions a far cry from the Youngstown case's statement that: " In the framework of our Constitution, the President's power to see that the laws are faithfully executed refutes the idea that he is to be a lawmaker. The Constitution limits his functions in the lawmaking process to the recommending of laws he thinks wise and the vetoing of laws he thinks bad") and is never held accountable for any action, not even through the voting booth.

It is enough.

A common complaint among the literati who vent so often in the press, in blogs, on stage, and in classrooms is that being bound by some dead Founders' interpretation of the Constitution is foolhardy or evil, for what could such a person know of our time, now?

What the Founders knew of importance had little to do with how we (for instance) feel about sexual activity among adults, and everything to do with knowledge and experience of human nature. When George Washington warned about "foreign entanglements", he was not only warning against engaging in wars overseas or permanent alliances with questionable allies - rather, his deeper knowledge was of human nature, which was apparent to him and every Founder. They knew that "[i]n framing a government which is to be administered by men over men, the great difficulty lies in this: you must first enable the government to control the governed; and in the next place oblige it to control itself." The Founders knew the imperfectability of human nature, when perfection depends solely on the individual to exercise restraint - the example of Cincinnatus notwithstanding.

Chesterton had an analogy involving a gate, used to illustrate his brand of traditionalism:

In the matter of reforming things, as distinct from deforming them, there is one plain and simple principle; a principle which will probably be called a paradox. There exists in such a case a certain institution or law; let us say, for the sake of simplicity, a fence or gate erected across a road. The more modern type of reformer goes gaily up to it and says, "I don't see the use of this; let us clear it away." To which the more intelligent type of reformer will do well to answer: "If you don't see the use of it, I certainly won't let you clear it away. Go away and think. Then, when you can come back and tell me that you do see the use of it, I may allow you to destroy it." 

Chesterton never mentioned a gatekeeper, for in the common law, the law and tradition are the gatekeepers. Now we have those (compassionate conservativism, blind social justice, progressivism, etc.) who, in the name of shining goals (education, healthcare, solving Libya, Iraq, etc.) are willing to throw down the gates of law and tradition that prevent achievement of those goals. But, the gate thrown, the fence torn, the impediment weakened and discarded, the way is clear - those with different goals and different ideas, upon taking the reins of power, will not, with rare exception, either be able to restrain others or themselves. Most will not even be aware of the former constrictions, or care to find out.

To paraphrase C.S. Lewis, every right or benefit acquired by the people via increased government power is a current or future power acquired over the people as well. How many scrap dealers failed because of Cash for Clunkers, when the price for scrap aluminum plummeted? How many poor could no longer obtain a vehicle because the market for old, but running cars, was crushed with the cars themselves? How many benefited from the failure of capitalism that was the bank bailout? The auto bailout? All abuses of government power - propping the few at the hands of the many for the benefit of the powerful. And who will say that such powers, having been used and approved by silence or applause, will be used benignly at all? We have only the statements of the wielders of the current power, and they neither have nor can enforce a guarantee that the successors to that power will abide.

All of history is against it. All of human nature is against it.

It is enough.