A Midlife Crisis??

Blogging has been really slow since school started. I seem to be running out of time and feeling more tired than I've ever felt. Those feelings have prompted me to wonder whether I am going through a late mid-life crisis.

The stereotype of someone suffering a midlife crisis is the person overcoming ennui by buying a motorcycle or going off to Tibet to meet the Dali Lama. (The stereotype neatly skirts the fact that the Dali Lama now resides in India.)

I, on the other hand, am experiencing nostalgia for things I can only vaguely remember, using a double-edged razor along with a shaving brush and writing with fountain pens. The brush feels good and the pens write well, but neither is a Harley. I must have spent a lot time living wrong.

Is Consent A Lodestar? A Saturday Morning Musing About Football, Porn, And Responsibility

Big Boy Bloggers Rod Dreher, Alan Jacobs, Noah Millman, and Conor Friedersdorf have been having a long and interesting discussion about this n +1 essay about a reporter embedded with a company that produces BDSM porn. This Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry post has most of the links. The Friedersdorf post is here. 

Before clicking on the article that starts the exchange, be warned; Jacobs writes, "Witt [the author of the n+1 essay] is an acute observer with no moral compass at all, and I find both her inability to orient herself ethically and her rather placid acceptance of that non-orientation disturbing. I read her essay with care but wish I had never seen it."

Many of the posts discuss the moral implications people enduring pain for gratification. Friedersdorf views the crux of the argument as being about consent:

The ethos of consent is regarded as a lodestar because its embrace is widely seen as an incredible improvement over much of human history; and because instances when the culture of consent is rejected are superlatively horrific.

With an introduction that mentions BDSM, morals, consent, and something so "disturbing" that a well-read college professor wishes he "had never seen it," I have no choice but to write about the National Football League.

Yesterday's Washington Post has a Sally Jenkins, Rick Maese and Scott Clement article about a Post survey of National Football League players. The results are rather alarming:

• Nine in 10 former NFL players reported suffering concussions while playing, and nearly six in 10 reported three or more. Two in three who had concussions said they experience continuing symptoms from them.

• More than nine in 10 players reported suffering at least one major injury while in the NFL. More than half reported three or more; one in five reported five or more.

• Forty-four percent of former players said they have either had a joint replacement or have been advised they’ll need one.

The survey reports that most players played to make better life for themselves and their families. Most have no regrets:

The Post’s online survey of more than 500 retired players paints a rare portrait of the toll a career in the NFL has on the long-term health of those who competed in the bruising game. The results also present a striking paradox: Nine in 10 said they’re happy they played the sport. But fewer than half would recommend children play it today

The money doesn't seem to last as long as the pain, however.

A Washington Post survey of retired NFL players found that nearly nine in 10 report suffering from aches and pains on a daily basis, and they overwhelmingly – 91 percent – connect nearly all their pains to football.

The article continues the point about pain:

Few professions leave their work force with such lasting bruises and scars. The NFL and the league’s Player Care Foundation, an independent charitable organization, sponsored a study at the University of Michigan in 2009 that surveyed 1,063 former players. About eight in 10 reported suffering from pain that lasts most of the day. Among younger retirees, aged 30 to 49, one in three said he was unable to work or limited in work. And almost 30 percent of them rated their health as only “fair” or “poor.”

Ten percent of those under 65 in the Michigan survey needed surgery they could not afford, 16 percent needed dental care they couldn’t pay for and 8 percent could not afford prescription medicine.

With one breath these men claim to have consented to endure pain so fans watch them perform; yet in the next breath, many seem to indicate doubts about consent:

Nine in ten players surveyed by The Post reported playing while hurt during their careers, and 56 percent said they did so “frequently.” Nearly seven in 10 (68 percent) said they felt they had no choice in doing so.

“If you didn’t hurt while you were playing, then you weren’t playing,” [former linebacker Darryl] Talley said.

Forty-nine percent of the former players surveyed said they wish they’d played while hurt less often.

Dreher describes the events of the porn shoot as "torture" that the actress admits to having enjoyed. Enduring hits that causes three concussions sounds a bit like torture to me. So do the surgeries that Don Majkowski endured:

Seventeen years removed from his NFL career, ex-quarterback Don Majkowski says he can no longer hold down a job. He can’t stand for long periods, and sitting is also tough. He has undergone nearly 20 surgeries related to football, including 11 on his ankle, three on his shoulder and two on his back. He has a 12-inch scar on his stomach, and he can’t walk very far because his left foot is fused with his ankle by a pair of metal plates and 13 screws. “It’s like walking on a pirate peg leg,” he said.

There's a sexual component to BDSM that most people find far more repulsive than the gladiatorial nature of the NFL. Yet, it all seems to come back to the fact that performers in both venues consent to suffer pain and debilitating injuries to entertain others and earn a living..

I've been working with the high school young'uns a bit too long to put together a cogent philosophical conclusion. If I can get them to see The Odyssey as an illustration that being human is being troubled, I think I've done my job.

In the matter at hand, all I have is troubling questions that I'm not sure the original essay, the Post article, or the bloggers satisfactorily address: How much autonomy does one really have to consent? Further, is there a consequential moraldifference between watching an paid porn performer beaten and bruised for her own gratification and watching a paid NFL player beaten and bruised to win a football game?  More importantly, how much moral responsibility do consumers of pain for pleasure bear for the damage done to the performers?

A Few Random Musings

It has been a hectic couple of weeks.

Musing one: This Ross Douthat column about the workplace is somewhat provocative:

There is a certain air of irresponsibility to giving up on employment altogether, of course. But while pundits who tap on keyboards for a living like to extol the inherent dignity of labor, we aren’t the ones stocking shelves at Walmart or hunting wearily, week after week, for a job that probably pays less than our last one did. One could make the case that the right to not have a boss is actually the hardest won of modern freedoms: should it really trouble us if more people in a rich society end up exercising it?

The answer is yes — but mostly because the decline of work carries social costs as well as an economic price tag. Even a grinding job tends to be an important source of social capital, providing everyday structure for people who live alone, a place to meet friends and kindle romances for people who lack other forms of community, a path away from crime and prison for young men, an example to children and a source of self-respect for parents.

Frankly, I have a pile of books I want to read, and I want to make homemade pastas better than I do now; I also want to learn how to make homemade sausage that tastes like the stuff my grandfather made, so a world without work sounds appealing.

Spending the past week asking for people to help judge public forum at the state debate tournament involved asking a lot of co-workers to ask their friends and family to help out, so Douthat's point about social capital is not without merit even if he too blithely dismisses drudge work that does not provide a living wage.

Musing two:  I heard my favorite response to the school pistolier bill. The bill is an effort to solve any problems in the state retirement system by giving more teachers guns and hoping they will commit suicide. Maybe I have been reading too many Steve Sibson comments on Madville, but it sort of makes sense in a tinfoil hat sort of way.

Musing three: I wish people would use the phrase "bet the question" properly. For example, "With Hagel now confirmed, it begs the question - was the Republicans' anti-Hagel crusade worth it? The Hagel fight prompts the question. Begging the question is a logical fallacy:

The fallacy of petitio principii, or "begging the question", is committed "when a proposition which requires proof is assumed without proof"; in order to charitably entertain the argument, it must be taken as given "in some form of the very proposition to be proved, as a premise from which to deduce it".[5] One must take it upon oneself that the goal, taken as given, is essentially the means to that end.

Some Minor Musings From Indiana

I apologize for formatting errors. I will try to fix later tonight from a computer instead of the phone

(1.)Mitch Daniels wants to increase tech ed and have high school students graduate with a tech certification. Will Daugaard start a STEM über alles program during the next session? He seems to enjoy following the lead of other Republican governors.  Last session it was HB 1234 that seemed close to what Wisconsin's Walker and others proposed.

 (2.)Talking with people here about changing South Dakota schools or the South Dakota debate circuit makes me believe that the no one's asking the eight question:  what would we do if we were creating the school or the circuit from scratch?

 (3.)Finally,  officials in Indiana are worried about dry conditions and the threat of wildfires. That situation reminded me of a song that I forgot to put on my "Traveling to Indiana For Debate Nationals" Playlist.