Friday, December 17, 2010

Sunyata

Thoughts on Sunyata
In the third century CE, the philosopher Nagarjuna brought forth ideas which would not only have profound effects on the acceptance of folk Buddhist practices but which would suggest that the world is much more interdependent than we commonly perceive it to be. Nagarjuna proposed the idea of sunyata, or emptiness. Sunyata rejects the idea that anything can have svabhava, or independent existence, rendering absurd any divisions of the world into discrete units. This provides a powerful philosophical tool for examining several of the central tenets of Buddhism: the concepts of anatman, nirvana, and impermanence are all fundamentally changed by the introduction of sunyata. Moreover, sunyata’s central insights are echoed in several other fields, from physics to economics to linguistics and philosophy, making it a concept of powerful interest even beyond theology.
Delving further into sunyata’s relationship with Buddhist cosmology, the Madhyamaka realized that if everything was interdependent then the dualities which color our perception of the world are illusory. The structural schema by which we navigate the world is actually constructed. Any difference perceived between the table and the chair is in the mind of the observer, rather than the table or the chair itself. There is no thing that exists “in and of” itself; things do not have essences, and do not have an a priori Platonic ideal. There is, furthermore, no essential self, in that no individual can arise or exist independently of others. Persons are so interdependent as to render the boundaries of selfhood misleading. This tendency to categorize is the theodicy of the Madhyamaka School.
Not only is the duality between self and other false, but the entire physical and spiritual realms of samsara and nirvana are actually concomitant. Any understanding of incongruence between samsara and the unconditional quality of nirvana is due to human fallibility and is a negation of life. Practically speaking, this philosophical development opened the door to many new practices in Buddhism, from anthropomorphic Buddha worship to adoption of yogic bodily exercises, all of which shared in conceiving of the world as permeated by the power of nirvana. This was an incredible change in the Buddhist orientation towards living in the world, transforming it “from an atheistic movement for the highly disciplined to a movement in which Buddhahood could be seen and venerated virtually anywhere.” (Clothey 58)
The lens of sunyata lends of also lends new perspective to the Buddhist doctrine of impermanence: if things are interdependent, incapable of existing except in relation to one another, then a change in one thing will always affect all others and so ensues a permanent state of flux for all things. Clutching at one thing, trying not only to separate it from all other existence but also from the natural flux of the universe, is to repudiate the world; and living in denial of the world, of the impermanence of things, is the source of dukka. One will always fail and sink into despair until one realizes this. Interestingly, however, interdependence offers the promise of an enduring legacy: karma echoes across the eons, permanence of a different kind, as the world I have shaped will continue to shape individuals in the next generation, and so on ad infinitum.
Intellectually, Nagarjuna’s proposition has very profound consequences. One is reminded of the complexities of chaos theory and the famous claim that a butterfly flapping its wings in Africa could cause a hurricane in Florida—such an unlikely chain of events becomes expected. Existence is understood as dialogue: I speak to the world, the world speaks to me, and trying to pick out one independent word or phrase from that dialogue becomes futile. Language is fertile ground for interrogating the concept of sunyata: any time I speak, I am using a word whose meaning is dependent upon fluidly established conventions without an intrinsic base. The existentialists of the twentieth century are prefigured by Nagarjuna’s Madhyamaka School in understanding existence as preceding essence. In both philosophical systems, the lack of a defining, preexisting essence is liberating rather than nihilistic; there is “no libretto” and ergo there exists the freedom to be in the world, without being defined by the world. The twentieth century revolution in physics, which moved from an absolute to a relative frame of reference, produced as its mantra a line Nagarjuna might have found to be of interest: everything is relative. Finally, economists in the past few decades have made a project of isolating factors to examine them as independent variables, modeling the economy as a one-way street, and have consistently found these models inadequate. Instead they have found that the most accurate models are founded on endogenous rather than exogenous variables, meaning that factor feels the feedback of its effect on others, which is more accurate each factor has a determinant within the economy—just as all beings’ existences are predicated on the existence of others.
The law of universal gravitation states that the force of gravitation one body exerts on another body is inversely proportional to the square of the distance between the two. A central implication of this is that, however miniscule or distant, any on body is constantly exerting a force on all other bodies; inversely, that same one body is acted on by all the other bodies’ gravitational pulls. All matter is eternally and simultaneously both subject and object, affecting everything and affected by everything. The analogy to Nagarjuna’s concept is clear: just as gravity makes mass have effects all across the universe, so too does interdependence mean that our actions have effects all across the universe. The implications of sunyata are vast. In the past it revolutionized Buddhism; today its echo cuts across disciplines to teach valuable lessons about the interconnectedness of things. Sunyata is as powerful and pervasive as gravity itself. Contrary to its name, “emptiness” actually leads to an incredibly rich perspective on life, one in which each individual has the ability to shape all existence and vice versa.

Politics in Postcolonial Cricket: A Primer

aPolitics in Postcolonial Cricket: A Primer
It is a scene far removed from the pristinely manicured lawns at Marylebone Cricket Club in London. The “pavilion” here drops sharply off into a cliff that overlooks suburban Chennai, in Tamil Nadu, India. It is populated by boys from the local neighbourhood, all in their early teens, who seem oblivious to the fact that cricket is not meant to be played with half the pitch missing, such that any ball batted to the right side will be not only unplayable but also lost forever. Cricket, though, exists in this and other versions throughout India, providing one of the strongest forces for unity in an incredibly diverse nation, with the common thread of incredible enthusiasm for this classic stick-and-ball game.
The existence of cricket (and, in fact, most team sports as we know them) throughout the world is due to the influence of the British Empire. Indeed, the highest series of cricket, known as Test cricket, is played by ten teams (England, Australia, South Africa, West Indies, New Zealand, India, Pakistan, Sri Lanka, Zimbabwe, and Bangladesh), all of which were part of the British Empire. Sport was always tied up with empire, as English moralists saw the export of “muscular Christianity” through cricket and rugby as a way to civilize the wayward nations of the empire. At a Maori school in 19th century Australia, “the children were said to be ‘quite English in their love of cricket’” (Mangan, Imperial Mentalities 176). “The provision of sports...became a significant part of the whole educational process” (ibid 54) which was directed at producing individuals in the colonies faithful to Christianity and to the Empire. However, cricket has undergone a sociological transformation since those times, becoming not a tool of the imperialists but rather a symbol of a common India.
The Empire today is faded, but as part of its residue Indians love cricket with a fierce passion. It is commonly said today in India that “cricket is an Indian game accidentally discovered by Englishmen.” In a very divided nation, cricket now cuts across class lines, and satellite dishes are found even in the most remote villages so that villagers can watch cricket. Corporations sponsor clubs all around the country. After the NBA the highest average salaries in the world are paid to players in the Indian Premier League, which was introduced in 2008 and features a faster, more commercial version of the game, complete with cheerleaders, team mascots, and advertisements on the players’ once lily-white uniforms. The best players come from all over the world to play in the IPL, moving the centre of the sport from London to Delhi. Anthropologist Arjun Appadurai has written about the appropriation of cricket as a means of recapturing an identity lost in the whirlwind of decolonization and Partition, which still haunt India.
When I asked several Indians about when they felt most Indian, their answer was that they never considered themselves Indian in their day to day lives, instead identifying themselves by religion, region, language, ethnicity, and caste. When I enquired further, however, they replied that it is when they are confronted with the foreign that they feel Indian. I asked if that would include a Test match, and they jumped to answer in the affirmative. The political histories of the Test countries are jumbled together in a way that elicits extreme emotions when matches finally come; India has contentious histories with Sri Lanka, Bangladesh, Pakistan, and England at least. These proxy wars, fought with bats and balls instead of guns and grenades may act as a pressure release valve most of the time. A recent match-fixing scandal has thrown the sport into a tizzy, with fingers constantly being pointed by the Indians at the Pakistanis and by the Pakistanis at the English. The reality of world terrorism has also spilled over into the world of Test cricket, as Pakistan must play its home matches elsewhere, without the support of a home crowd, for fear of international cricketers being targeted.
All in all cricket provides a rich language for discourse between nations, embodying the complexities of relations in the postcolonial era. India has proven adept at taking the legacy of the invader and making it her own, adding Indian flourishes to the game’s foreign structure. Tracing the history of globalization through cricket, one finds its nefarious beginning in the imperial endeavour, but also its redemption in the joy cricket brings to millions of fans across the world.

Works Cited
Appadurai, Arjun. Modernity at Large Cultural Dimensions of Globalization. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota, 2005. Print.
Gibson, Owen, and David Hopps. "Three Pakistan Players Suspended by ICC and Charged under Anti-corruption Code | Sport | The Guardian." Latest News, Comment and Reviews from the Guardian | Guardian.co.uk. Web. 14 Oct. 2010. .
Mangan, J. A. Making Imperial Mentalities: Socialisation and British Imperialism. Manchester England: Manchester UP, 1990. Print.

Saturday, November 13, 2010

On Anthropology in the 21st Century

The technological innovations of the past two centuries have given humans more power with more scope than some could have ever imagined. The world, as a result (and as many have noted), is getting smaller: smaller in that one no longer needs the vagaries of chaos theory to explain how a very tiny change on one side of the globe can produce enormous effects on the very other side. One needs only follow the supply chain of bluefin tuna, from the marketplaces of Tokyo to the sushi bars of New York to the fishing boats on the Adriatic, to know that globalization has the immediate impact of making the networks that connect us denser with fewer nodes in between. The Greek philosopher Empedocles believed the world started as one, fractured, and would return into one. It’s a belief that some physicists see as likely, but more to the point it could describe the human experience. Evolutionary theory shows us that all the scattered tribes of humankind arose from a common ancestor. Today, the forces of globalization will thrust us back together, perhaps genetically as well as economically as races mix and possibly disappear.
The point is that we cannot afford, in so many ways, to misunderstand one another at this crucial juncture—for just as our power to do good has increased, so has our capacity to harm one another. One of the most centrally joyous things about studying anthropology is reconciling the incredible diversity of the human experience with the unity that is also found in that variety. Both of these conditions—our differences as well as our similarities—must be understood and taken advantage of, if humanity is to capitalize on its enormous promise. Anthropologists are incredibly well poised to communicate effectively the gravity of our differences and similarities, and to demonstrate to others the incredible value that lies in each.
We are incredibly similar. By virtue of its scope, anthropologists will inevitably come to strong conclusions about the things that bind us all. Cultural universals have been objects of interests to anthropologists from Claude Levi-Strauss to Donald Brown. Many of our faults are common: male rape as intimidation is universal. So are some of our virtues: rape is also proscribed by all cultures. Everyone tells stories and jokes, everyone has a name, and, yes, everyone poops. Our biological affinities extend so far beyond the scientific requirement for sharing a species—the ability to produce fertile offspring. The newly emerging field of evolutionary literary criticism looks at the stories from all over the world and finds similar themes and morals more often than not (Gottschall), borrowing comparative techniques from anthropology. These common strands in the human experience must be studied and emphasized, in order to combat those ills caused by the very evils that plague people from all cultures, from violence to greed to ignorance. The highest barrier to peace is ignorance, and the thing people are most ignorant about is how much they share with their neighbours across the borders of class, race, and state.
We are incredibly different. Anthropologists have catalogued our differences in size, shape, color, kinship structure, religion, worldview, and so much more. What they have found is a treasure trove of diversity which requires incredible agility of mind to comprehend as coexisting. This treasure trove is both metaphorical and literal. The benefits brought to humans from learning about ways of life different from their own are both abstract and concrete. Identity originates from difference, and with the incredible diversity anthropologists have catalogued, from the Trobriand Islands to the Amazon Rainforest, they have also expanded the realm of choice available to humanity, in the mind and the market. Structurally, the same argument Mill uses in On Liberty to defend free speech can be applied to argue that civilizations can only benefit from the anthropological project of studying persons different from oneself and conveying their way of life to others: negative innovations will be rejected or learned from and positive ones embraced. This process shows a remarkable resemblance to natural selection, substituting lessons from other cultures for the process of random mutation. We can only benefit.
The new century will undoubtedly bring exciting new developments in all the four fields of anthropology: the explosion of our technological abilities will surely lead to advances in the understanding of gene-culture evolution, novel documentations of foreign cultures, new discoveries in archaeology, and powerful analyses of the relationship between linguistics and neural structures. But the call of anthropology in the twenty-first century will be in its fifth field, in its role as steward of the idea of a common but differentiated “human” experience. This call is so loud because the challenges of this new century will be unlike any previous; the spectres of climate change, ocean acidification, and environmental degradation weigh especially heavily on my mind. These challenges and others will require us to think not in terms of country versus country or religion versus religion but as a species. The world wars of this century will not be between physical alliances and armies but a test of our ability to work together—humanity versus itself. On the one hand we must be cognizant of the things we share, in order to better communicate and recognize common challenges. On the other hand we must undoubtedly protect and draw upon the ingenuity of human diversity to protect ourselves from the slew of challenges sure to confront us.
The very enterprise, heady as it is, of anthropology is to study the human experience, and in doing so subject oneself to all the kinds of mental acrobatics required of a participant observer. But as Bertrand Russell said, “To learn to conceive the universe according to each system is an imaginative delight and an antidote to dogmatism... there is genuine knowledge in the discovery of what is involved in making each of them consistent with itself and with known facts.” The most rewarding thing occurs in this experience; standing somewhere between oneself and the other, one possesses a perspective rather than an identity, absent of personality but retaining humanity. From this vantage the mission is clear and of the present. As the world gets smaller it is the blessed responsibility of anthropology to guide the confluence of cultures towards cooperation rather than conflict, towards understanding rather than revulsion, towards a human future.

Saturday, October 9, 2010

Passages from India

Room's afire, room's aflame
This wild beast shan't be tamed
In a place without light
There my heart is burning bright
In a place that is unlit
On those walls our love is writ
Room's aflame, room's afire
Two souls sounding one desire

___

You the one who offer respite
Are the same t'keep me up at night
You may ask if I am at peace
But you trouble me without cease
I cannot my injurer name
Without causing her that same pain
Which I now bear nobly, gently
Going on I'll suffer silently
Knowing these caresses are false
Knowing of another in this waltz

____

Circumstance has taken this evening's dance
The sun is down, it may yet rise again
I will wake once more from life's weary trance
I shall leave the unnavigable fen
This waltz is without a choreograph
The hall is dark, the script and parts unknown
Love's a play without director or staff
All in all we all speak a role unknown
True my future's way is as of yet unlit
Though I be now stumbling through hap'ning dark
Where once was none this rhyme has now been writ
By heaven's troth, this is my steeled mark
Where chance has yet looked upon us poor
It shan't be so when I meet thee once more

_______

Things of pain, things of weight
Why must this always be my fate?
I know I'll always
Feel this heat
Come closer you know it's
Getting late
And I've got to catch a train

_____

Stepping off the train in Chennai
We suffer the earthquakes
Of the beggar's shaking parched palm
Our fates run deep along
Its cracks; empty life line
Signing to the world
"I am here"             and "I am not"
The hand shoots into view and quavers
I don't know if people do that when they're hungry
If I cover the fissures with a rupee,
Are they erased?
Our pale flesh dissolves into
The beggar's pink palm
We are casteless both.
The train recedes into the river
And they are one too.

_______


I'm never sure if I miss you
Last fall, more than a year ago
You'd introduced me to myself
Now we're still getting reacquainted
             After all that.
I lay in a hotel cot
How many times I've thought
I had reinvented myself;
             (Only) variations on a theme.
The still cool at dusk after
It all came down at once
The mosquitoes will be multiplying;
              This country affords no quarter.
Who have I been since then?
Last night you wore a black dress
To a big party in my dream.
               I'm not sure if the fuss was for you or me.

____________

All of these things I feel I was born to
My class, my caste, my whole identity
Of these things I don't which are to me true
If but one of these things were different...
I only ask by whom they're set or sent
All of these things I feel I was born to
I question even what I clearly see
If my name were changed would I still be me?
Of these things I don't know which are to me true
All of these things I feel I was born to
My face, my fate, even my family
Of all these things I don't know which are to me true
My class, my caste, my whole identity
My face, my fate, or my family
Change but one and I don't know who I'd be

_________

It's been awhile since we kept our bodies warm
With twisting promises of suns not near
I thought that I would be the less forlorn
But I guess that was before all these years
They've gone past since that wanton lonely morn
And I guess that was before all these tears
So what can I do with a heart so worn?
What I have been doin' since we were torn,
I'll write myself a sad, sad song, dear
I'll play it on my harp, dear, and I'll play it on my horn,
Maybe the people'll hear and gather
And maybe they'll be the ones
                                               to keep me warm.

Friday, August 20, 2010

Rugby & Sport


Hayden Higgins
The British & Their Sports
Drs. Allison & Tomlinson
9 August 2010
           
1.     Assess the impact of Rugby School on the development and diffusion of British sports.

            The boys line up along the baselines and doff their caps for the national anthem. Some of them pay no attention but most sport a look of brave resolution, and when the song is over they make a circle, the ones in the white mixing with the ones in the grey. They hold hands and recite the Little League Baseball Pledge: “I trust in God, I love my country, and will respect its laws. I will play fair, and strive to win, but win or lose, I will always do my best.”
            This scene might happen in America but it is the legacy of England. The orderly white boundaries, the mixing of sport and nationality, the construction of formal sporting organizations, and the impression of sport with moral codes of conduct all bear witness to the pervasive influence of English public-school games on the way sports are played today. Rugby School is responsible for a disproportionate amount of this influence, and crystallizes the argument that the sporting revolution in 19th-century England was due to the conditions at the public schools: at Rugby, pervasive moral standard, mixed with surplus time, land, and money, strongly influenced the sequence of events that led to the contemporary state of British sports.
            In order to understand how Rugby might have influenced British sports, it is necessary to begin with a brief exposition of the state of sports before and after the proposed date of the “Rugby Revolution” around the time of Thomas Arnold as headmaster at Rugby, from 1828 to 1842. That there was change is indisputable: “there is no doubt that the period between the mid-nineteenth century and the outbreak of the First World War was characterized by a notable transformation in the scale and nature of Britain’s sporting culture” (Tranter 13). Sports before this period are often depicted as little more than riots, but this may be the result of surviving accounts being largely from segments of society that had reason to be upset at the scale and ferocity of these holiday games: “our appreciation of the content of popular recreation is regrettably partial” (Delves 95).
            Some things can be known. Griffin reports that “[Football] was undoubtedly one of the most widely played outdoor sports, but it was usually played in a form much closer to the modern game than standard accounts allow” (45) because the accounts that survive generally detail games at big holidays, which were the exception in terms of their scale and rowdiness. Though the game would be hard to identify in any of its local permutations as today’s ‘beautiful game,’ it was true that “Football matches in all parts of England in the early nineteenth century…[were] not only widespread at this time but that it was also played by locally determined, formal rules” (Griffin 47). Football, the most prominent (if not the most British) of sports, is often located as a pre-Victorian source of class struggle (Delves), and sport was even more divided along class lines than it is today.
            Sports are today both more widely practiced and essentially different. Most pre-Victorian popular recreation centered around baiting animals and local variants of football, whereas today even foxhunting is illegal and football is a codified game with a governing body with 208 member associations across the habitable continents. What happened to make the games of animal baiting disappear is also in part the story of why ball sports flourish today, and this process happened perhaps nowhere more explicitly than at Rugby School under Thomas Arnold. Delves identifies rational recreationalists and evangelicals as two cultural forces battling over the future of sport (110). The developments at Rugby, and then at other public schools, resolved the dialectical tension between these in the new synthesis—morally inflected organized games, reflecting the Enlightenment fascination with order and progress as well as the middle class’ obsession with morality.
            Arnold himself is often cited as the talisman that makes Rugby so specially located at the center of the sporting revolution, but other conditions are likely more important to the public school sporting revolution as a whole. Firstly, many of the games at the center of British sports require lots of land (rugby, cricket), which Rugby had in the form of the Close. Secondly, games required specialized equipment (especially games like Rugby fives), which were paid for by the boys out of pocket—only possible for the sons of the upper crust. Thirdly, and this applies to public schools broadly, “masters atoned [for the strictness with which they conducted their actual teaching] with an almost total indifference to the way in which a boy employed his leisure” (Mangan 18). Fourthly, the link between the public schools and the universities, particularly Oxbridge, allowed organized games to continue their development and diffusion in a privileged socioeconomic context.
            Thomas Arnold is not the architect of British sport; his direct influence on sport is at best limited to benign neglect. Any direct link between Arnold and sports “does not accord with the evidence and should be firmly rejected” (Mangan 16). If public schools broadly were responsible for the revitalization of sports, then he is only transitively due credit for this achievement, because “it was his success in projecting a personal moral image that was of considerable importance to the successful growth of the public school system” (Mangan 15). Arnold’s concern was not sport but moral reinvigoration, and his fame is due to the fact that this is exactly what was needed and wanted at that time and place. A restless middle class clamored for an outlet for their meritocratic inclinations: morality and then sport provided it.
            Arnold and therefore Rugby in particular are therefore rightly associated with the growing tendency to view sports as an arena of morality. Arnold’s Rugby boy was supposed to exemplify ‘First religious and moral principle, second gentlemanly conduct, third academic ability’ (Rugby School) throughout his life. The phrase ‘gentlemanly conduct’ echoes today explicitly in the FIFA Code of Conduct and implicitly in the public shaming of sportsmen found to have transgressed that code, with all its chivalric connotations. If at Rugby conduct preceded ability, this thread continued on in the sporting world (with particular strength in England) in the form of amateurism. The amateur was expected not only to play without monetary compensation but also to play fairly, without taking pride in a victorious result, the same way that the moral reformers of the Victorian era valued reservation as a virtue. Through the spread of the amateur, ‘Corinthian’ spirit, sport was transformed into an activity that was not only suitable for Christians but a desirable expression of that ‘muscular’ Christianity. Sports became a medium of evangelization, as “Muscular Christians… pursued their policy of a healthy mind in a healthy body, resulting in 25 of the 112 soccer teams in Liverpool in 1885 having religious affiliations” (Mangan, Imperial Mentalities 12). Perhaps the best-known delivery of this message is found in Thomas Hughes’ account of a Rugby education in Tom Brown’s School Days, which through Pierre de Coubertin had an immense impact not only on British sports but on sports across the world.
            De Coubertin found Hughes’ novel revelatory and concluded that “from a moral point of view, no system could stand higher than the English athletic sports system” (Mangan 16). De Coubertin would go on to build this framework into the Olympic Games, which are for most sports the pinnacle of international competition. The Olympics for decades jealously guarded the amateur spirit handed down from Arnoldian ‘gentlemanly conduct.’ Moreover, the Olympics tie together nation and sport with moral fabric—one needs only remember cases as varied as that of Kazuhiro Kakubo, the snowboarder shamed in Japan for bad fashion sense, and Ben Johnson, the Canadian sprinter blacklisted after being caught using steroids. They are moral battles not only on the individual but also on the cultural level, from Jesse Owens’ triumph in the ‘Nazi’ Olympics to the ‘Miracle’ hockey game at the height of the Cold War, an attitude reproduced in the Vitaï Lampada, fusing the battlefield and the pitch. Rugby’s involvement in this attitude is directly exemplified by Hughes’ writing that the Rugby pupil should be “the true sort of captain, too, for a boy’s army” (107). The pitch, along with the chapel and the classroom, was seen as the forge for the muscular Christian who would be the bedrock of British empire.
            Though de Coubertin only wished he had been a Rugbeian, many Rugbeians did have a direct impact on the development of British sports. Many of them were like Coubertin in that they contributed to the spread and institutionalization of sport. Writing down rules to a game, as the boys at Rugby did, was not new; disseminating them was. The public-school network extended naturally into the boys’ hometowns and into Oxbridge, and while it is debatable exactly how diffuse the ‘revolution’ really was, there is no doubting the definite contributions of public-schoolers and Old Rugbeians in particular: “It was, after all, ex-public schoolboys and university men who instigated the formation of the English Football Assocation, devised the first common set of rules for sports like rugby and soccer, set up the athletics clubs and the Amateur Athletic Association and dominated Scottish rugby union” (Tranter 26).
            The public schools in this time were tied up with colonialism: “It is no coincidence that many of the sports-promoting headmasters were great enthusiasts for the Empire” (Mangan xxv). To that end, Rugbeians and others spread and innovated across the empire. The public school boy was considered uniquely equipped for colonial administration, having been prepared on the pitch with British organized games; Rugby in particular provided the third-most of all schools to the Sudan Political Service (Mangan, Games Ethic 51). Implicitly (in the language of sportsmen as ‘heroes’ and derbies as ‘battles’) and explicitly (Vitae Lampada, etc.), the “spirit of organized games” was promoted as integral to British imperial success. Games were as important to the enculturation of indigenous peoples as it was to the colonizers: at a Maori school in Australia (in mid-nineteenth-century Australia) “the children were said to be ‘quite English in their love of cricket’” (Mangan, Imperial Mentalities 176). As far abroad as Malaysia, “the provision of sports…became a significant part of the whole educational process” (Mangan, Imperial Mentalities 54). The Rugby approach became the standard.
            Organized games are especially good at mediating relations in the colonies for several reasons. The sports field is a liminoid space which, as an “autonomous form of expression,” has egalitarian implications and can serve as a stage for social drama (Rowe 134). In the end, organized games can end up providing a common language where there previously was none, whether between a father and son (Fever Pitch) or Methodist missionaries and Maori tribes (Allison, lecture). In India, cricket was the site of negotiations about postcolonial identity, articulated through the medium of a new kind of cricket, “far from…Rugby” (Appadurai 107). Trobriand Islanders, as shown in the documentary film Trobriand Cricket, melds the game of the colonizers in syncretic fashion to fit the local culture in fascinating ways (the home team always wins!). The Rugby style of games made this possible through a concomitant appreciation for the value of standardized rules and the spirit of innovation.
            Tom Wills’ contributions to Australian sport encapsulate the primary facets of the Rugbeian influence: regularization of rules, moralization of play through the amateur ethos, and missionary spreading of these changes. Wills was an Australian who was sent to England for public school, arriving at Rugby in 1850. When he returned to the colony, he carried with him a zeal for organized games learned at Rugby. His words in a letter legendary to fans of Australian rules football carry several important messages (Blainey 19).
            Firstly, the basis of his request is that the Australians should have a sport to play in the winter to keep cricketers in shape. Implicit in this analysis is that Wills’ vision of the athlete crosses sporting boundaries. An important part of the vision of the amateur, even into the twentieth century, was that he was a generalist (Allison); C.B. Fry is a perfect example. Secondly, he requests a code of laws drawn up by a club. This follows the Rugbeian formula, in which boys kept rulebooks on them at all times for consultation. Thirdly, he matrixes together morality, spirituality, patriotism, and physicality as being uniquely realized in organized sports. “A firm heart and a steady hand and a quick eye are all that is requisite,” he writes, of a sporting rifleman—even though, of course, it is easily plausible that a robot without ‘heart’ could be a much more proficient rifleman than a human with heart but no ability.
            The Rugbeian mixture of morality and physicality contains the Platonic notion that the ‘higher’ (i.e., spiritual) can be reflected in the ‘lower’ (i.e., material) and persists to this day. In Major League Baseball, the Players’ Association gives an annual award called the ‘Heart & Hustle Award’. This award captures many influences, of which the amateur attitude promoted by Rugbeians like Wills is only one—but the fact that that influence was strong enough to survive into the 21st century, across an ocean, in a sport that rejects any ideas of European heritage, is incredible. The award was given to Craig Biggio in two consecutive years, in 2006 and 2007. This is not particularly remarkable—Biggio is in contention for the Hall of Fame—but upon closer examination Biggio’s embodiment of aspects of the amateur attitude yields interesting conclusions.
            Biggio played for the same team, the Houston Astros, for his entire career, harking back to the days before the especially commercial practice of free agency (in which players often play for many teams in a career) and alumnus’ fierce loyalty to ‘Old Rugby’. Secondly, Biggio was a generalist, beginning his career as a catcher, then becoming an excellent second baseman and finally ending his career in the outfield—not quite C.B. Fry, but within the highly specialized arena of Major League Baseball, impressive enough. Perhaps the most interesting thing is how clearly disconnected ‘heart’ is from performance when one looks up Biggio’s statistics during his award-winning years (which occurred at the end of his career). He was, quite simply, atrocious (Posnanski). A world in which players are rewarded despite playing far below average is possible because of the particular attitude toward sport cultivated at British public schools like Rugby. This paradigm, which values ‘heart’[1]—a certain manner of conduct unrelated to one’s physical ability—persists to this day, perpetuating the legacy of Wills, the Rugbeians, and the amateur hegemony. A survey of major sports reveals that most if not all award players or teams for ‘sportsmanship’ or ‘fair play’, demonstrating the extent to which the Rugbeian project of moralizing sport has succeeded.
            If Tom Brown’s Schooldays is an accurate portrait of life at Rugby, it may contain a seed of an explanation for one of sports’ more seedy problems. Since the seventies, increasing numbers of sports have suffered from problems with performance-enhancing drugs (PEDs), starting with amphetamines, then steroids, and now human-growth hormone. It is one of the greatest problems in sports. When stories are broken about use of PEDs, they are never broken by athletes themselves; witness the stony-faced denials of knowledge about use by others by baseball players Mark McGwire (“I’m not here to talk about the past), Sammy Sosa (who suddenly lost his ability to speak coherent English), and Rafael Palmeiro (“I have never used steroids. Period.”) and the ostracism of those who do break the ‘code of silence’ (like trainer Brian McNamee and cyclist Floyd Landis). The ‘code of silence’ dominates Tom Brown’s Rugby as well: Tom, when thinking of going to the Doctor, is reminded of the school levy against ‘blabbing,’ as it is “against public morality and school tradition” (127). Though this ‘code of silence’ certainly has roots much deeper than Rugby, the public-school environment encouraged this kind of dark camaraderie and contributed to its presence in sport.
            It has been shown that “from 1830 the sports scenario began to change significantly” (Mangan, PPP 11). Of course, sport was not the only thing to be changing “significantly” in Britain during this period: the Industrial Revolution was charging fiercely forward, changing the way Britons conducted themselves at work and in leisure. In some instances, the changes already set in motion by the public school boys were distorted or enhanced by sociological forces springing which had themselves sprung from the Industrial Revolution. As capitalism entered its fitful growth spurt, “sport and other leisure activities became industries in their own right,” changing not only the marketing of games but also the “character and structure…in the interests of Mammon” (ibid, 14). The codification of rules and organization of clubs into organization made profitable cross-geographical matches possible. Industrialists bought into the idea that sport could have a positive moral effect by sponsoring work teams—better the boys be staying healthy playing football than drinking and fighting in the pub, went the logic. The eventual increase in per capita production, as a result of the Industrial Revolution, led to “increased real incomes and leisure time which, in turn, stimulated a demand for commercialized spectator sport” (ibid, 17).
        By identifying the influence of other processes on the development and diffusion of organized sport, one can systematically deduce which effects are specifically Rugbeian and which are not. The Industrial Revolution produced countervailing pressures on sport as presented by the public school model. The modern synthesis in sport is largely a compromise between the influences of the amateur hegemony, derived from Rugby and similar institutions, and the capitalist-industrial complex which turned organized games into industry. Using Raymond Williams’ framework of dominant, emergent, and residual cultures (Williams 121), it is clear that today’s organized games are dominated by the professional influence. However, the residual effect of Rugby is especially apparent in those phenomena in sport which have no explanatory basis in capitalism. One interesting example was provided recently when Dustin Johnson quietly accepted a penalty based on an abstruse rule at golf’s PGA Championship, costing him a chance at the substantial monetary reward. Golf, the ‘royal game’, retains a strong code of conduct that governs not only how loud spectators are expected to clap but also how players are expected to behave off the course: witness the recent ostracism of Tiger Woods as evidence.
            Beyond the codification of rugby itself, Rugby School leaves an indelible mark upon British sports through its influence on their practice and audience. The loci of its effects are in moralization, internationalization, and institutionalization of British sports. In each process Rugbeian efforts combined with unique circumstances to propel change in sports from peripheral to prominent. In reforming the moral conditions of Rugby School, Thomas Arnold at once reversed its squalidness and set the table for the gentlemanly amateur to become not only the paragon of athleticism but also a moral hero. The admirer of this Rugbeian code of conduct, Pierre de Coubertin, joined with British imperialism to spread this sporting ideal across the world. The trend of centralization of rules, first found at Rugby in the production of rugby rule books, continued to include the founding of governing bodies and prominent clubs in the major British sports. If William Webb Ellis hadn’t picked up the ball in 1823, someone else surely would have; similar logic seems to apply to the accomplishments of Arnold and de Coubertin. That Rugby—its students, administrators, and admirers—was able to impart, in the form of institutionalized, amateur athletics, such a vital force to British social life should count considerably towards its notoriety, even if such developments were often the result of circumstance and happenstance. Rugby provided the proper environment, the soil for the seed of the revolution in sports; the seed itself was planted by the motivation of the boys, and the seed watered by a moralizing middle class and industrialists keen on harnessing the power of sport to attract the attention of the masses.
           
 












Works Cited

Allison, Lincoln. "The British & Their Sports Lecture 8." Cambridge. 12 Aug. 2010.             Lecture.

Appadurai, Arjun. "Playing With Modernity: The Decolonization of Indian Cricket."             Modernity at Large: Cultural Dimensions of Globalization. Minneapolis:             University of Minnesota, 2005. 89-113. Print.

Blainey, Geoffrey. A Game of Our Own: The Origins of Australian Rules Football.             Melbourne: Information Australia, 1990. Print.

Griffin, Emma. England's Revelry: a History of Popular Sports and Pastimes : 1660 -             1830. Oxford [u.a.: Oxford Univ., 2005. Print.

"History and Traditions." Rugby School, Warwickshire. 2009. Web. 08 Aug. 2010.             .

Holt, Richard. Sport and the British: a Modern History. Oxford [England: Clarendon, 1989. Print.

Kerby, Trey. "Unsuitable — Japanese Snowboarder Busted for Bad Fashion - Fourth-            Place Medal - Olympics  - Yahoo! Sports." Yahoo! Sports - Sports News, Scores,             Rumors, Fantasy Games, and More. 12 Feb. 2010. Web. 08 Aug. 2010.

Mangan, J. A. Athleticism in the Victorian and Edwardian Public School: the Emergence and Consolidation of an Educational Ideology. Cambridge [Eng.: Cambridge UP, 1981.             Print.

Mangan, J. A., ed. The Games Ethic and Imperialism: Aspects of the Diffusion of an Ideal. Harmondsworth, Middlesex, England: Viking, 1986. Print.

Mangan, J. A., ed. Making Imperial Mentalities: Socialisation and British Imperialism. Manchester [England: Manchester UP, 1990. Print.

Mangan, J. A., ed. Pleasure, Profit, Proselytism: British Culture and Sport at Home and Abroad, 1700-1914. London: F. Cass, 1988. Print.

Posnanski, Joe. "You’ve Gotta Have Heart." Sports Illustrated. 14 Aug. 2010. Web. 17             Aug. 2010. .

Rowe, Sharon. "Victor Turner and Contemporary Cultural Performance" Google Books. Web. 18 Aug. 2010.

Tranter, Neil. Sport, Economy and Society in Britain: 1750 - 1914. Cambridge [u.a.:             Cambridge Univ., 1998. Print.

Trobriand Cricket an Ingenious Response to Colonialism. University of Calif. Extension             Media Center, 1973. Videocassette.

Williams, Raymond. "Marxism and Literature." Questia Online Library. Web. 19 Aug.             2010.



[1] Of course, the award is called the ‘Heart and Hustle’ Award, and as much as it bears the mark of the amateur attitude, it is also meant to reward several values explicitly associated with the professional, mostly related to a willingness to win at all costs. The point, however, is that in the current synthesis of values surrounding the sportsman, the amateur attitude has persisted in important and unexpected ways.

Wednesday, July 14, 2010

Myers-Briggs

According to the Myers-Briggs psychological testing profile, I am an INFP. What does this mean? Well, that's the topic of this post.

On the face of it, it means I answered a list of questions in such a way as to cause my score to fall to one side of the four axes, qualifying me as Introversion, iNtuition, Feeling, and Perception. Expanding from this basis psychologists make all sorts of suppositions, which are easily accessed online, but a cluster definition of an INFP can be found out pretty quickly:

  • Their internal lives are supposedly especially "tempest-tossed" (Shakespeare is a commonly cited INFP).
  •  They are good at bridging divides between people and seeing others' perspectives
  • They have difficulty, however, working together, and if not forced to will often do projects alone
  • They belong to a group of profiles known as "Idealists" (INFP is usually called the "healer" variant)
  • They can be prone to put feeling before fact
  • Extremely romantic and idealistic
  • They can go through perfectly healthy periods of intense independence and intimacy
  • They tend to put off details in favor of creating new ideas and seeing things in the big picture
  • Once something does capture their imagination, however, they are perfectionists
  • They are usually especially adaptable and flexible to new situations until one of their core principles is violated, which does not go by without a reaction
  • They are about 1% of the population
  • They avoid conflict
Up until that last one, I think most apply to me. But anyone at any time should be wary of these sorts of tests, while simultaneously embracing them for their value in inducing self-reflection. It is important to think about what our defining characteristics are, if only because that simultaneously forces us to think about what our weaknesses are. Moreover, doing so can help us adjust to emphasize our strengths. Nonetheless, we should never commit the naturalistic fallacy of assuming that because this is the way things are, this is the way things should be. Should I work by myself on all projects, as is my tendency (assuming this profile is correct)? Absolutely not. This reminds me of Social Darwinism in that the same logical process would lead one to think that because a crippled child would die, he should die.

These tests are also useful because they show us how other people may see us. I had an experience this past semester where some friends had a personality test they applied to others involving assigning Greek gods and goddesses in accordance with one's personality. I think I was a third Hephaestus, a third Apollo, and a third Hermes. Hephaestus--the gregarious loner. Apollo--the favorite son. Hermes--the trickster. This was helpful because it reminded me that I exist not only in my own mind but as an image in others' minds. It sounds silly to say, but solipsism is the natural state of the human mind, and anytime we venture beyond it we are really trusting more than just our senses.

As for the INFP designation, I think it is fascinating. To say, "I am an INFP" is a valid statement. To say, "INFP is me" would be disturbing because it excludes the possibility of growth. Doing so is fatal; in all parts of life, I generally prefer a nonzero derivative. Life is dynamic, but don't ever confuse moving about for living. The one is momentary; the other unites the past and present in the moment.

Thursday, July 8, 2010

Look ma! No arms!

http://forum.davidson.edu/summerstories

Monday, May 24, 2010


            Reason to Believe

            The aroma of barbecue pork wafts through the glass double doors. At this eatery, every dish comes with a side of coleslaw and the real locals drink RC Cola rather than Coke or Pepsi. The walls are adorned in quintessential Piedmont fashion: occasional steer-heads, license plates from adjoining states displayed like hard-earned prizes, and tokens of bygone years—black and white photos of state-championship high school football teams, veteran’s caps—all hang quaintly from the warm oak wall. The only thing in the restaurant that indicates the year as closer to 2000 than 1950 is a large widescreen television which envelopes nearly the whole back wall; indeed, the set stands out not only for its size but for its modern garishness. It seems to be intruding on the sanctity of the cozy little place; when I scan the scene, my eyes skim over the dirty dishes stacked in the sink, the John Deere salesman making a pitch over a plate of grits, and the wizened old black men at their daily spots on the bar stools, and swivel back to the out-of-place television.
* * * * *
            His teammates are anything but a portrait of composure in the face of difficulty. In the locker room minutes before tip, one is retching in the bathroom. Another hides from the suspicious glares of thousands of fans, his hip-hop shielding him from their jeers. Still another is arguing with an assistant coach, pleading for a different defensive assignment. Yet the coach does not waver; it is his job not to waver. One player sits on the bench, removed from the hype of today’s game only by the degree of his mental capacity. That is not to say he is not concentrating on the game--he is concentrating very hard, harder than any of his teammates. Not on anything in particular; yet his is the most solemn silence. Before lacing up his sneakers for the final time, he says a silent prayer. Not for victory but for effort—to do his best.
* * * * *
            A shortish brunette waitress accompanies my smoldering pulled-pork sandwich on its journey to my table. But really, the television is the centerpiece of today‘s meal, not the food, and is the reason such a congregation has gathered. The seasonal pilgrimage to watch the conference basketball tournament is underway. A Wake Forest man, strangely familiar and dressed in a black windbreaker a size too small for his overflowing body, its gold trim matching his impish blonde beard, turns to me in despair.
            “We never get a break. Really, truly, can a Wake fan get a break in this world? Chris Paul could have won it all by his lonesome-- all his talent for naught. Golden Boy. We haven’t a chance without him. Abandoned. Like Caesar--wasn’t that Caesar? Stabbed by his own men, you know. Famous play, Shakespeare or something. Only here, Chris Paul is our Brutus. Fulfills only half his commitment, leaves as a sophomore, after handing us our most disappointing season in memory. Eric Williams, now there was a fighter. He stayed through trial and tribulation, and he always got the job done. We’ve got some gritty guys even now. They just can’t get a break.”
* * * * *
            As of halftime, the number fifty-two jersey hasn’t left the bench all game. A fifth-year senior, his typical assignment consists of guarding the opponent’s best shooter or ball handler. Yet today’s game is too important to allow his offensive ineptitude onto the court; the liability of allowing fifty-two to handle the ball is too great. On defense he is graceful but fierce, product of twenty years of dedication. Announcers call him a shadow, a blanket, a stopper. But when the ball reverses and his team commences to attack, fifty-two can’t catch a pass, or throw a proper one, for that matter. His shooting has become merely mediocre, an improvement over horrendous past years. Despite his perseverance, the offensive situation has never improved, from AAU up to his job as a role-player under Skip Prosser at Wake. He has always been thankful to a fault: Prosser had been the only major coach willing to offer a scholarship to a player whose natural skills were so suspect. He chose Wake on Commitment Day over Georgia Southern and Eastern Carolina, where he had been guaranteed a starter’s spot. Wake had the best educational reputation. He was studying as a double major, Communications and English, and studying hard. Figured if he couldn’t play basketball he might be able to report on it as a job, if he was lucky, for ESPN or something..
* * * * *
            I turned away from the Wake man as his homily ran out of gas. I hadn’t a clue what had happened in the semis before his rant, but I could certainly guess now that it hadn’t been pretty for the Deacons. The man was disappointed, sure, but he had never been disillusioned about the nature of the game. I recalled now meeting him the past November, his attitude effervescent and enthusiastic. He’d told me with childlike glee how his father had walked on at Wake Forest in the Thirties, and how he had followed his father to his alma mater. That night he had proceeded down the nostalgic path all the way to present day, and promised an improvement for the struggling Deacons. At that time he had been willing to forgive young star Chris Paul for leaving after his sophomore year for the bright lights of the NBA—dismissed his treason as youthful ignorance.
* * * * *
            Number fifty-two walks to the foul line with admirable poise. The play had not been called for him; in the chaos of last-second bedlam the leathern sphere chanced upon his hands, and he had taken the moment by the throat—attacked the rim and was fouled, with scarcely a second to spare. His team was down by two; two free-throws were awarded per regulation. Fifty-two receives the ball from the referee, sweat dripping from his days-old goatee. He gives the ball two bounces and a spin, one bounce each for his dead brother and one for his girlfriend. The spin has no significance. His mind simultaneously, paradoxically, devoid and swirling, he cocks his wrist and extends his elbow. The first attempt is good as gold and he proceeds to the second, a blue-collar everyman in his workmanship, oblivious to the pressure and expectation and emotion and tension and strain and burden that permeate the moment.
* * * * *
            My attention swung back towards the television. The broadcast of the NC State- Georgia Tech game for which I had come to see was interrupted. A recap of the day’s events was in order. CBS sports anchor Greg Gumbel introduced us to the Wake man’s plight. Wake had turned things around midway through the second half, begun approximately when the starting small forward came out with four fouls in favor of a defensive specialist. The specialist enjoyed an unexpected offensive outburst late in the game, and held up a stifling defense to keep the game close. In the closing moments fate had called upon the senior player, a number fifty-two, as he was inexplicably fouled, Gumbel narrated. His first shot fell neatly through the nylon—his second try not nearly so, as I had correctly guessed from the Wake man’s tone. It was too bad. Yet I knew I would meet the Wake man again the next fall, or someone very much like him, whose outlook would shift to optimism with the onset of fall just as surely as the oak tree would bear its autumnal gold. The amazing thing is how in this game, at the end of every hard-fought season, people find some reason to believe.

Eponymous



The Confines of My Mind
           
            Here I am alone, excepting perchance Orion and Cassiopeia in the sky above. I am an island in the tempestuous sea of the wild. I am nearly a mile from another human, a speck of intelligence alien to the vast and rocky Sierran topography. Tonight I prove something; and though it may be of some notice to others, it is an internal battle I face tonight[1].
            Why I set myself against the forces of the wilderness is a larger question, whose answer lies in my very nature. In brief, I felt I could not know myself without the
challenge-- like Oedipus exploring the mystery of his birth, 'twas a test perhaps alluring for its very existence. Could I withstand the torrents of nature? This was a query I could not allow to rest.
            I huddle around my humble fire. A solemnity I cannot laugh at sets in; 'whistling past the graveyard' is out of the question. This overwhelming blanket of graveness envelops me more tangibly than the approaching darkness, and I realize: this is Nature.
            Around me as well is the cold. It is so cold that I actually bury the embers of my fire and attempt to sleep on top of them. I have no sleeping bag, except the bundles of heather and pine needles I have prepared. Though the potential warmth of my tent beckons, I do not waver. My fortitude surprises me; though I have before braved such nights as these, I have always previously done so surrounded by encouraging comrades.
            My connate curiosity tells me introspection is requisite for growth, and my thoughts turn inward as I attempt to insulate myself from the external punishments I try to endure. In the wilderness it seems almost that I exist only in the confines of my mind as the impersonal breeze howls.
            No one is here to acknowledge my presence.
            Therein, however, lies a certain ironical comfort; I am alone, but I exist all the same. In the wilderness I am a self-defined entity amidst swirling disorder. Though the night roars on, I am still here. Under the stars so numerous, I am only one so small and my existence may be absurd but some solace comes from this. There is no order to this world except what I can set to it, and therefore, whatever I can possibly come up with is better than what I started off with.

* * * * *

            I survive the night. Though I cannot point specifically to one precise moment of epiphany or revelation, I do know that night was significant in ways difficult to explain. What I found that night was that there is beauty all around-- not only in the sky above or the animals around but also in the everyday wilderness and the basic, fundamental, impossibly quotidian process of survival. I am reminded of the weakness of one human and the incomparable strength of many united. The experience is a simple reminder of the natural and intrinsic beauty of life, existence, and survival. I will forever appreciate life in both its humbling complexity and lucid simplicity-- and finally, finally, I have fulfilled Emerson's mandate: self-reliance.
            Of a greater pertinence, I realize that I was misguided in my approach to that night; steeling myself for a confrontation with some hostile idea of Nature was not the answer. I learned that attempting to master Nature as if it were some untamed beast is preposterous, for I am as much a part of Nature as any rock, lake, or wolf. To reach a peace with Nature one must first reach a peace with oneself. Whether I could withstand 'the torrents of nature' was irrelevant--what ultimately mattered was whether I could master not Nature, but myself.








[1] I underwent this ordeal in hopes of attaining the John Muir badge of the Boy Scouts, which signifies a stronger understanding of Man's place within nature. The primary requirement is this night alone, without modern conveniences, absent of company from sundown to sunup, in which the Scout must write a poem, climb a tree, eat a loaf of bread (all of it), and brew tea from an indigenous plant (white fir, in my case).