A genre of supposed sports which has been growing in recent years involves, basically, guys beating the devil out of each other inside cages. It goes by several names, such as the UFC (Ultimate Fighting Championship) and under the umbrella of mixed martial arts. But however your view them, we can be sure of two things: that they are not true sports, and that they are immoral.
I will go a step further and add prize fight boxing into the mix. We cannot call any athletic effort in which the primary aim is to hurt a human being a sport. Intending to harm someone, as fighting until someone can continue no further is surely meant to do nothing save cause injury, is always wrong. Calling it a sport in an attempt at legitimacy is nothing less than an insult to our intelligence. We must see these things for what they are: gory rituals of false bravado.
There's no point defending them on the grounds that no one forces these guys to fight. People at one time regularly agreed to duels and we put a stop to that inane practice for the very reason that it was wrong. Agreement between two or more folks on a plan of action cannot make that action moral. What we do must be moral in and of itself to have any decent bearing at all.
If we are not careful we will devolve into a nation which likes blood and harm for its own sake. We must remember that sports are intended for recreation, for fans and players alike. If all we want is blood, we may as well live in a slaughterhouse. Yet that will be thought insane.
Events which intend to inflict real physical harm are not sports. We need to rise above our animal lusts and see athletics in their best light: ultimately meaningless contests which allow us a respite from the daily grind. Anything more than that and we simply go beyond their scope.
Monday, August 31, 2009
Sunday, August 30, 2009
So Much Straw
Panis angelicus, fit panis hominum
-St. Thomas Aquinas
If you are Catholic, perhaps at this moment the tune of that great hymn from the Angelic Doctor is wafting gently through your mind right now. I rather hope that it is; it is one of the most beautiful tunes I know, one of the few with that genuine ethereal standing which makes many of us fall victim to what C. S. Lewis calls that 'inconsolable longing'. It is like, for myself anyway, Beethoven's Ode to Joy or Schubert's Ave Maria.
And yet it is only so much straw.
How can that be? How can such wondrous and glorious tunes be nothing more than cattle feed? Yet we have it on the word of St. Thomas himself that that is precisely the case. For he said, after a Beatific vision, a view of Christ and Heaven which he was granted about six months before he died, "All my works seem like straw after what I have seen". The greatest mind in all of human history, the man, the philosopher, the theologian beyond measure, and what he did is meaningless compared to what is really real.
Only so much straw.
Can we feel anything but humility at such a fantastic attitude? Can we even actually grasp the meaning of what Aquinas says? Nothing here, not the most important things we can say, things we can see, things we might touch and hear and smell, is worth the time of day when set next to the greatest things.
Only so much straw.
There is a lesson in that.
-St. Thomas Aquinas
If you are Catholic, perhaps at this moment the tune of that great hymn from the Angelic Doctor is wafting gently through your mind right now. I rather hope that it is; it is one of the most beautiful tunes I know, one of the few with that genuine ethereal standing which makes many of us fall victim to what C. S. Lewis calls that 'inconsolable longing'. It is like, for myself anyway, Beethoven's Ode to Joy or Schubert's Ave Maria.
And yet it is only so much straw.
How can that be? How can such wondrous and glorious tunes be nothing more than cattle feed? Yet we have it on the word of St. Thomas himself that that is precisely the case. For he said, after a Beatific vision, a view of Christ and Heaven which he was granted about six months before he died, "All my works seem like straw after what I have seen". The greatest mind in all of human history, the man, the philosopher, the theologian beyond measure, and what he did is meaningless compared to what is really real.
Only so much straw.
Can we feel anything but humility at such a fantastic attitude? Can we even actually grasp the meaning of what Aquinas says? Nothing here, not the most important things we can say, things we can see, things we might touch and hear and smell, is worth the time of day when set next to the greatest things.
Only so much straw.
There is a lesson in that.
Saturday, August 29, 2009
Must Things Always Balance?
My wife and I were fortunate enough to score free tickets to last night's Tiger game. Then our car wouldn't start when we left the stadium to go home.
Why do things always seem to happen that way? You get a break, and it gets taken from you in a different manner.
Or maybe not...our daughter was going to take the car on about a 105 mile round trip today, and may not be able to if we can't get it fixed. So I'm left to wonder if I've actually been done a favor.
I would rather deal with a broken down car two miles from home than 52 and a half. It may just be for the best after all.
Why do things always seem to happen that way? You get a break, and it gets taken from you in a different manner.
Or maybe not...our daughter was going to take the car on about a 105 mile round trip today, and may not be able to if we can't get it fixed. So I'm left to wonder if I've actually been done a favor.
I would rather deal with a broken down car two miles from home than 52 and a half. It may just be for the best after all.
Friday, August 28, 2009
The Real Problem with Katrina
As many of you know by this time, the movie industry is making in a film in my neighborhood. The story is set in post-Katrina New Orleans, and watching the gyrations of Hollywood has been fascinating and fun.
Yet as much of an exciting personal event as this has become, it is difficult to avoid thinking about the real thing. Especially as, among the debris currently strewn up and down my block, there sits a refrigerator emblazoned with the sarcastic graffiti, 'Thank you W'.
Seeing as the tragic result of the storm was a lack of foresight on the part of state and local officials, the snide remark, though perhaps historically significant in light of actual events, seems greatly out of place. To be sure, I hold no grudge against the movie people for this, although I would not be shocked to discover that it reflects the general feeling of filmmakers towards our recent President. Just the same, the comments reflect nothing short of a knee jerk and indeed ungrounded attitude towards the federal establishment.
George W. Bush called a state of emergency a full two days before the hurricane made landfall. Why did the local officials, led by the almost comically inept Mayor of New Orleans, Ray Nagin, not begin evacuation preparations then? Why did the State of Louisiana and the City of New Orleans not fire up their emergency plans at that point? Washington was ready; why weren't they?
Further, the local officials had not for years allowed the Army Corps of Engineers to install flood gates at the mouth of the New Orleans levees, gates wanted precisely to allow overflow waters to be released into Lake Ponchartrain and thereby spare the city.
To blame W for the disaster is thus nothing less than hubris. It is interesting to note that soon enough after Hurricane Katrina the city of Denver faced a like crisis with an approaching blizzard, and acted accordingly right down to individual citizens. No one was harmed or displaced.
What Hurricane Katrina teaches us is that we need to look to as local of a level of government as possible, and right down to ourselves, for help when there is danger. We avoid our very duty to our family and our neighbors when we look beyond ourselves when threats are presented. Because, in the end, we will not be asked what others did for us. We will be asked what we did for ourselves.
Yet as much of an exciting personal event as this has become, it is difficult to avoid thinking about the real thing. Especially as, among the debris currently strewn up and down my block, there sits a refrigerator emblazoned with the sarcastic graffiti, 'Thank you W'.
Seeing as the tragic result of the storm was a lack of foresight on the part of state and local officials, the snide remark, though perhaps historically significant in light of actual events, seems greatly out of place. To be sure, I hold no grudge against the movie people for this, although I would not be shocked to discover that it reflects the general feeling of filmmakers towards our recent President. Just the same, the comments reflect nothing short of a knee jerk and indeed ungrounded attitude towards the federal establishment.
George W. Bush called a state of emergency a full two days before the hurricane made landfall. Why did the local officials, led by the almost comically inept Mayor of New Orleans, Ray Nagin, not begin evacuation preparations then? Why did the State of Louisiana and the City of New Orleans not fire up their emergency plans at that point? Washington was ready; why weren't they?
Further, the local officials had not for years allowed the Army Corps of Engineers to install flood gates at the mouth of the New Orleans levees, gates wanted precisely to allow overflow waters to be released into Lake Ponchartrain and thereby spare the city.
To blame W for the disaster is thus nothing less than hubris. It is interesting to note that soon enough after Hurricane Katrina the city of Denver faced a like crisis with an approaching blizzard, and acted accordingly right down to individual citizens. No one was harmed or displaced.
What Hurricane Katrina teaches us is that we need to look to as local of a level of government as possible, and right down to ourselves, for help when there is danger. We avoid our very duty to our family and our neighbors when we look beyond ourselves when threats are presented. Because, in the end, we will not be asked what others did for us. We will be asked what we did for ourselves.
Thursday, August 27, 2009
Buy My Books
As part of the reason (okay, perhaps the reason) for my blogging is nothing more than sheer self promotion, I'm going to take the opportunity again today to ask everyone to buy my books. Why hide from shameless hawking when that's what put me here in the first place?
A Subtle Armageddon: an intense little novel about the last man on Earth, inspired by The Abolition of Man by C. S. Lewis. Lewis' book is perhaps the best nonfiction book out there, and I took the liberty of fictionalizing it (is fictionalizing a word? Call that artistic license).
Michael's Story: a prequel ASA, where I experiment with actual dialogue. The point was to make ASA more directly related to individual human experience.
David Gideon: a populist libertarian conservative from Michigan becomes President. Call him the anti-Obama, perhaps: a President who respects the rights of the people.
Triumph of the Ignorant: Why Our Schools Can't Teach, is about my experience with Education classes in a major university. You want to why we can't teach? It's all in the philosophy behind modern education.
Order them from Amazon or at you favorite bookstore. Hopefully you'll enjoy them but if I've provoked you somehow, well, that can't happen until you've read them, and think of the great discussions which will follow.
A Subtle Armageddon: an intense little novel about the last man on Earth, inspired by The Abolition of Man by C. S. Lewis. Lewis' book is perhaps the best nonfiction book out there, and I took the liberty of fictionalizing it (is fictionalizing a word? Call that artistic license).
Michael's Story: a prequel ASA, where I experiment with actual dialogue. The point was to make ASA more directly related to individual human experience.
David Gideon: a populist libertarian conservative from Michigan becomes President. Call him the anti-Obama, perhaps: a President who respects the rights of the people.
Triumph of the Ignorant: Why Our Schools Can't Teach, is about my experience with Education classes in a major university. You want to why we can't teach? It's all in the philosophy behind modern education.
Order them from Amazon or at you favorite bookstore. Hopefully you'll enjoy them but if I've provoked you somehow, well, that can't happen until you've read them, and think of the great discussions which will follow.
Wednesday, August 26, 2009
Ted Kennedy
Massachusetts Senator Ted Kennedy, the last of the political dynasty from Boston, has died at 77 after a year long battle with cancer. It is right and fitting that we should pray for him and his family at this time, that his soul be saved and that God's comfort be upon those he left behind.
It would be easy to be critical of the man, something I am fighting to avoid as I write this note. He certainly was not without his flaws, the human failings with which we are all afflicted. But death does not seem the time for concern with such things. The critical issue now is the state of his soul, and for that we must pray. We are called to do that when one of our brethren falls. We must do that for Senator Kennedy.
History shall tend to his legacy and we may in time say our piece about that. Yet today that is not important. We do our creed a disservice to make that judgment at this hour. We do the late public official no good to lament errors he may have made at this point. This morning our obligation to him is born of a much higher source, a much more significant calling: the proper concern for his eternal fate.
Ted Kennedy, rest in peace, and may God be with you.
It would be easy to be critical of the man, something I am fighting to avoid as I write this note. He certainly was not without his flaws, the human failings with which we are all afflicted. But death does not seem the time for concern with such things. The critical issue now is the state of his soul, and for that we must pray. We are called to do that when one of our brethren falls. We must do that for Senator Kennedy.
History shall tend to his legacy and we may in time say our piece about that. Yet today that is not important. We do our creed a disservice to make that judgment at this hour. We do the late public official no good to lament errors he may have made at this point. This morning our obligation to him is born of a much higher source, a much more significant calling: the proper concern for his eternal fate.
Ted Kennedy, rest in peace, and may God be with you.
Tuesday, August 25, 2009
Watching People Make Movies
Talk about the best seat in the house: as they are filming the movie Little Murder in my neighborhood and as yesterday's shoot was around and in my next door neighbor's house, my wife and I got to sit on our front porch and take it all in. The crew had taken over our lawn anyway, but as we lived there and so long as we stayed quiet when quiet was called for, we saw everything up close and in person.
The quiet was amazing, eerie, and nearly comical all at once. Someone would shout, 'quiet', then 'rolling', then, 'action'. Then then entire crew would go almost totally silent; you could nearly, somewhat ironically, hear the crickets. The shooting would go on for six or eight minutes before several voices would shout 'cut', and the reaction was like air letting out of a tire. One huge collective breath of relief, everyone thankful that their burp or sigh didn't cause a problem.
We saw them shoot one scene about ten times, generally from different angles, focusing on one actor rather than another, or employing close-ups, for whatever effect they sought. I imagine they do it that way and mix it all up as they edit. Any film buffs out there who know the answer?
Filming lasted until after 3AM. Especially as I watched the action (action? There was an awful lot of hurry up and wait) until about midnight then listened to it in fits and spurts until they called it a night, I had trouble sleeping. I'm pleased and shocked that I'm awake in time to post this before I go to work. Still, it was fascinating to watch, and I'm looking forward to the next two days filming.
I can catch up on my rest Thursday anyway.
The quiet was amazing, eerie, and nearly comical all at once. Someone would shout, 'quiet', then 'rolling', then, 'action'. Then then entire crew would go almost totally silent; you could nearly, somewhat ironically, hear the crickets. The shooting would go on for six or eight minutes before several voices would shout 'cut', and the reaction was like air letting out of a tire. One huge collective breath of relief, everyone thankful that their burp or sigh didn't cause a problem.
We saw them shoot one scene about ten times, generally from different angles, focusing on one actor rather than another, or employing close-ups, for whatever effect they sought. I imagine they do it that way and mix it all up as they edit. Any film buffs out there who know the answer?
Filming lasted until after 3AM. Especially as I watched the action (action? There was an awful lot of hurry up and wait) until about midnight then listened to it in fits and spurts until they called it a night, I had trouble sleeping. I'm pleased and shocked that I'm awake in time to post this before I go to work. Still, it was fascinating to watch, and I'm looking forward to the next two days filming.
I can catch up on my rest Thursday anyway.
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