March 19, 2007
Posted by Jay Livingston
John Tesh was on the Fox news show this morning talking about kids’ sports and the emphasis on winning. Kids themselves, in surveys about why they play sports, put winning far down the list, and the main reason kids drop out of sports is that they weren’t having fun. (I cannot find the original study by the Institute for the Study of Youth Sports at Michigan State University, only references to it online.) Tesh blamed the winning-is-everything approach on parents.
Sure, it’s easy to find anecdotal evidence of overly competitive parents overly involved in their kids’ sports. But the pressure on winning comes as much from the organization of the game as from the people involved. As soon as you set up a formal structure — leagues with teams, uniforms, schedules, rules, won-lost records and other statistics — your focus is no longer on the fun of playing. Instead, the point of the game is to work towards some future measurable goal, a championship. And there lies the contradiction: fun isn’t in the future, it’s in the present. And it can’t be easily measured. Championships are about winning, not about fun.
Pick-up games are much less organized, and they are much more fun. They have no prizes, no championships. They have no permanent teams, no uniforms, no scheduling, no record keeping. The kid’s first objective is to play; winning is secondary. For example, in baseball, what do you do if you have only 13 players instead of the officially requisite eighteen (nine to a side)? In pick-up games, kids think up all kinds of solutions; they think outside the box of official baseball rules. You improvise positions and rules (no right field hitting, batting team supplies the catcher, etc.). As kids leave or arrive, teams change, so it’s not clear which team is winning. Often the game doesn’t really end, it fades out, so you can’t really say what the final score was or who won. And yet, despite the fuzziness over the winner or the score, you’ve managed to play baseball for hours.
What about a league game? If fewer than nine kids from one team show up, it’s a forfeit, and nobody plays. The message here is clear: determining the winner is more important than having a good game. Or any game at all. But that’s because of the organized structure, not the people involved. Put these same people in a pick-up game, and they’d have no such problem.
Yet grown-ups continue to organize kids’ games and to force children’s play within the rigid structures of teams and leagues, coaches and practices, record-keeping and trophies. Of course, the parents (most of them) tell the kids that the important thing is to have fun. But despite what the parents say, everything they do points in the other direction, towards winning.
I’m reminded of a line from the British movie “Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit.” The protagonist, a young schoolgirl, has just done badly in some school competition (not sports), and a grown-up tries to console her: “Winning isn’t the important thing.”
“Then why is that what they give the prizes for?” asks the girl.
Why indeed? It’s not hypocrisy—I’m sure most grown-ups mean what they say about fun and winning —it’s just ignorance about social structures and how they shape our ideas about what’s important.
“300” and Counting
March 18, 2007
Posted by Jay Livingston
I sometimes ask students if Violence is an American value. Their first thought is usually: No, of course not; violence is bad. But then I point out the amount of violence in our popular culture (TV, music, movies) and in our real lives (US rates of violent crime, even after the extraordinary decline in the last 15 years, are still much higher than those of other industrialized nations).
My point in all this is to question the idea — often found in sociology textbooks — that values are primarily guides to action. That definition implies that we can discover a culture’s values by looking at what people do. Looking at Americans do, we see that they produce and
consume a lot of violence. So either Americans value violence, or there’s something wrong with this sociological idea about values.
The answer I usually give is that the guides-to-action definition is at best incomplete. Despite our actions, Americans and American culture do not value violence itself. Violence is not an ultimate good —like success or freedom —that we use to justify some action. It’s just that we don’t mind using violence to get some of the results that we do value. We don’t think violence is inherently good. We just don’t think it’s all that bad.
Brian Gellman, who blogs at Intel Dump, may get me to change my thinking. Intel Dump is a blog run by former military officers, and it has provided excellent military analysis of the current war. But this post, inspired by the recent hit movie “300,” shaded over from purely military matters into the cultural arena.
Unfortunately, in real life, where we cannot fade to black and roll the credits, the results are rarely so simple.
Posted by Jay Livingston
I sometimes ask students if Violence is an American value. Their first thought is usually: No, of course not; violence is bad. But then I point out the amount of violence in our popular culture (TV, music, movies) and in our real lives (US rates of violent crime, even after the extraordinary decline in the last 15 years, are still much higher than those of other industrialized nations).
My point in all this is to question the idea — often found in sociology textbooks — that values are primarily guides to action. That definition implies that we can discover a culture’s values by looking at what people do. Looking at Americans do, we see that they produce and
consume a lot of violence. So either Americans value violence, or there’s something wrong with this sociological idea about values.The answer I usually give is that the guides-to-action definition is at best incomplete. Despite our actions, Americans and American culture do not value violence itself. Violence is not an ultimate good —like success or freedom —that we use to justify some action. It’s just that we don’t mind using violence to get some of the results that we do value. We don’t think violence is inherently good. We just don’t think it’s all that bad.
Brian Gellman, who blogs at Intel Dump, may get me to change my thinking. Intel Dump is a blog run by former military officers, and it has provided excellent military analysis of the current war. But this post, inspired by the recent hit movie “300,” shaded over from purely military matters into the cultural arena.
Critics of 300 fail to understand what many critics of the current administration’s handling of the “Global War on Terror” fail to understand. American culture. . . .Americans today overwhelming see military power as a solution to any number of problems.So maybe we don’t mind violence as a means to an end; maybe it's the means we most prefer, at least in international matters. This preference goes along with another idea that forms the basis for at least three hundred American movies from “HighNoon” to “Top Gun” and “300,” an idea I’ve mentioned before — that all problems (moral, psychological, personal) will be resolved through a final, decisive contest between two adversaries. It works in the movies.
Critics of current US policies in the world who believe things will change when the current administration leaves office are fooling themselves . . . The reality is that until American culture changes, US policies will not change significantly.
Unfortunately, in real life, where we cannot fade to black and roll the credits, the results are rarely so simple.
Spring Break
March 12, 2007
Posted by Jay Livingston
The blog is going to Florida for Spring Break. It will return, tanned and rested and maybe with a few strings of beads.
Don't look for it on the next installment of “Blogs Gone Wild,” though. It's just not that kind of blog, jello shots or no.
Posted by Jay Livingston
The blog is going to Florida for Spring Break. It will return, tanned and rested and maybe with a few strings of beads.
Don't look for it on the next installment of “Blogs Gone Wild,” though. It's just not that kind of blog, jello shots or no.
Dissonance, Hypocrisy, Irony
March 11, 2007
Posted by Jay Livingston
Cognitive dissonance — the phrase echoes from the past when I took courses in social psychology. It’s the idea that people find it uncomfortable to hold two conflicting “cognitions” and usually adjust one of them to make it fit.
The classic experiment asked people to do a very boring task — turning square pegs on a board for no apparent reason and with no apparent effect. Some people were paid a pittance, others were paid well. When they were asked to rate how interesting the task really was, the poorly paid volunteers rated it as more interesting than did the well-paid ones. Their cognition that the task was boring conflicted with the cognition that they’d done it for very little money. So they changed their view of the task and rated it as not so boring. Well-paid volunteers needed no such rethinking to justify their actions; they did it for the money.
Cognitive dissonance is really the close cousin of Hypocrisy — changing your perceptions to make them square with your larger ideas. Cognitive Dissonance went to grad school; Hypocrisy chose religion and politics. Here’s what I mean.
1. One of These Adulterers is Not Like the Other
The Rev. James Dobson, a moral crusader, hates Bill Clinton and his politics. (He also came out strongly against Spongebob — Bob was part of the homosexual agenda — but that's another matter.) Dobson far prefers the conservatism of a Newt Gingrich. When Congressman Newt was rallying the troops to impeach Bill Clinton for lying about his dalliance with Monica Lewinsky, the good reverend
was cheerleading from the pulpit. Now Newt has disclosed that at that very moment back in 1998, he himself was having an extramarital affair.
Rev. Dobson was appalled by Clinton’s behavior: “we can’t overlook his shameful sexual behavior in the Oval Office... Indeed, it is my belief that no man has ever done more to debase the presidency or to undermine our Constitution — and particularly the moral and biblical principles upon which it is based — than has William Jefferson Clinton.”
How did Rev. Dobson react to Newt Gingrich’s infidelity? He invited Gingrich to be on his radio show and praised him as a national leader.
Jerry Falwell thought Clinton’s affair was not just immoral but bad for the morality of the country. “My view as a theologian is that the leadership of a nation reflects the moral condition of the nation itself, and Bill Clinton is a reflection of the moral climate of the nation.” As for Gingrich’s philandering, Falwell has forgiven him and invited him to be commencement speaker at Falwell’s Liberty University (or is it Libertine University?)
Apparently it’s Clinton’s lying, as opposed to Gingrich’s merely keeping his mouth shut, that makes Clinton’s sexual misdeed so malignant, while Gingrich’s adultery is benign
2. See No Evil
And then there’s the Washington sex scandal. The “Beltway Madam,” Susan Palfrey, ran a business which she styled, “high-end adult fantasy firm which offered legal sexual and erotic services across the spectrum of adult sexual behavior.” The prosecutors say she was running a prostitution service. Her defense? The women who worked for her had to sign a contract saying that they wouldn’t engage in illegal behavior.
This fig leaf wasn’t good enough for the prosecutors, who insist that she knew what the women were doing and encouraged them to do it.
But how about torture? Here’s President Bush talking about the administration’s program of “rendition” — sending prisoners to foreign countries to be tortured:
“We seek assurances that nobody will be tortured when we render a person back to
their home country.” The Bush administration knows that those countries use torture, but it gets them to sign a statement, just like Madam Palfrey’s contract, saying that they won’t do anything illegal. These assurances, unlike Ms. Palfrey’s signed contracts, are sufficient for the Justice Department. I’m not sure what the difference is, but I’m sure cognitive dissonance is at work.
3. Patriots, Prostitutes, Privacy
Here's the final irony: This week Ms. Palfrey threatened to sell her phone records of 10,000 numbers dating back to 1993, a client list that probably included several powerful Washington people. No names, of course — Ms. Palfrey respects her clients' privacy — just numbers and preferred scenarios. That same week, the Justice Department announced that the FBI had been abusing the Patriot Act to illegally get phone records and other information on thousands of Americans.
Posted by Jay Livingston
Cognitive dissonance — the phrase echoes from the past when I took courses in social psychology. It’s the idea that people find it uncomfortable to hold two conflicting “cognitions” and usually adjust one of them to make it fit.
The classic experiment asked people to do a very boring task — turning square pegs on a board for no apparent reason and with no apparent effect. Some people were paid a pittance, others were paid well. When they were asked to rate how interesting the task really was, the poorly paid volunteers rated it as more interesting than did the well-paid ones. Their cognition that the task was boring conflicted with the cognition that they’d done it for very little money. So they changed their view of the task and rated it as not so boring. Well-paid volunteers needed no such rethinking to justify their actions; they did it for the money.
Cognitive dissonance is really the close cousin of Hypocrisy — changing your perceptions to make them square with your larger ideas. Cognitive Dissonance went to grad school; Hypocrisy chose religion and politics. Here’s what I mean.
1. One of These Adulterers is Not Like the Other
The Rev. James Dobson, a moral crusader, hates Bill Clinton and his politics. (He also came out strongly against Spongebob — Bob was part of the homosexual agenda — but that's another matter.) Dobson far prefers the conservatism of a Newt Gingrich. When Congressman Newt was rallying the troops to impeach Bill Clinton for lying about his dalliance with Monica Lewinsky, the good reverend
was cheerleading from the pulpit. Now Newt has disclosed that at that very moment back in 1998, he himself was having an extramarital affair.Rev. Dobson was appalled by Clinton’s behavior: “we can’t overlook his shameful sexual behavior in the Oval Office... Indeed, it is my belief that no man has ever done more to debase the presidency or to undermine our Constitution — and particularly the moral and biblical principles upon which it is based — than has William Jefferson Clinton.”
How did Rev. Dobson react to Newt Gingrich’s infidelity? He invited Gingrich to be on his radio show and praised him as a national leader.Jerry Falwell thought Clinton’s affair was not just immoral but bad for the morality of the country. “My view as a theologian is that the leadership of a nation reflects the moral condition of the nation itself, and Bill Clinton is a reflection of the moral climate of the nation.” As for Gingrich’s philandering, Falwell has forgiven him and invited him to be commencement speaker at Falwell’s Liberty University (or is it Libertine University?)
Apparently it’s Clinton’s lying, as opposed to Gingrich’s merely keeping his mouth shut, that makes Clinton’s sexual misdeed so malignant, while Gingrich’s adultery is benign
2. See No Evil
And then there’s the Washington sex scandal. The “Beltway Madam,” Susan Palfrey, ran a business which she styled, “high-end adult fantasy firm which offered legal sexual and erotic services across the spectrum of adult sexual behavior.” The prosecutors say she was running a prostitution service. Her defense? The women who worked for her had to sign a contract saying that they wouldn’t engage in illegal behavior.
This fig leaf wasn’t good enough for the prosecutors, who insist that she knew what the women were doing and encouraged them to do it.
But how about torture? Here’s President Bush talking about the administration’s program of “rendition” — sending prisoners to foreign countries to be tortured:
“We seek assurances that nobody will be tortured when we render a person back to
their home country.” The Bush administration knows that those countries use torture, but it gets them to sign a statement, just like Madam Palfrey’s contract, saying that they won’t do anything illegal. These assurances, unlike Ms. Palfrey’s signed contracts, are sufficient for the Justice Department. I’m not sure what the difference is, but I’m sure cognitive dissonance is at work.3. Patriots, Prostitutes, Privacy
Here's the final irony: This week Ms. Palfrey threatened to sell her phone records of 10,000 numbers dating back to 1993, a client list that probably included several powerful Washington people. No names, of course — Ms. Palfrey respects her clients' privacy — just numbers and preferred scenarios. That same week, the Justice Department announced that the FBI had been abusing the Patriot Act to illegally get phone records and other information on thousands of Americans.
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