Yay pragmatism!

Here's a little quick post just illustrating my own hypocrisy, or I guess you could call it a change in attitude over the course of time.

I wrote this little stub a long while ago (Not quite sure when, blogger software only keeps one date for drafts: the date last viewed.)

"Entrepreneurshit"


This  is what set me off.

Yes. That is what a real education is. How to bullshit people and get away with it. How to take something that has no value, convince people that it has value and to pay you for it. Fuck trying to find out what things in life are truly valuable. All you really need to do is convince people that you are valuable. 

Thanks for telling us all about your wonderful college experiences Scott. That was so cool how you got people to think that you were taking their opinions into account, but really weren't, when you were writing their "constitution." They were dumb enough or didn't care enough to call you out on it, so who cares? At least you're making money on it. You're being efficient. 

Now, here's another more recent stub: 

Smart people go to jobs that will make them money, and improve those companies, which in turn attracts more smart people, feedback loop

that could be broken by putting more money into important industries that need more help, like education, science and the arts

hell, maybe it's our education that's the problem, teaching us to care about stuff that won't be useful in 90% of the jobs we might hold

Notice especially the last bit there. Haha. 

IT DOESN'T MATTER WHAT YOUR POST IS ABOUT!!!!

This is kind of a repost, as I wrote it on facebook, but I'm very proud of it and I got a lot of positive feedback.

My friend from college Drew Gorham was originally a music major, and he changed over to philosophy, and on his wall he posted on of those "photo/caption" chain letter things that are big right now: here.

Here is my response:

"I consider myself spiritual and somewhat religious, and I don't claim to be a very good scientist, but I am sorry to see scientific beliefs twisted and condemned in a story like this. 


I certainly think the story provides comfort, but mostly because of the reasons expressed by Sumair here. I think that the story is bastardizing logic and reason in order to tell a story. As long as you view it as a story and not a proof, I don't think it is very offensive or dangerous, but it is assumed that many people will take it as a scientific proof of the validity of faith, which is a dangerous misconception, and a sorry facsimile of the true power of logic and reason.

The world is a very uncertain place, and people will go through all kinds of effort to find some mental and emotional certainty. I see the crux of science being a devotion to a remembrance of our inherent fallibility, that the most reliable truth is found only through intense scrutiny, through observation and experimentation.


Also, I have found that using Wikiquote and Snopes is a really good idea when dealing with quotes or stories attributed to universally admired figures. A lot of the time, people like to reinforce the perceived clout of their worldviews by projecting them onto those figures, and the emotionally positive association will bleed over from the figure to the worldview."

I am also really stoked about a economic discussion that I started on my timeline by asking people who study economics if lowering federal taxes has been shown to increase economic growth. Unfortunately I didn't understand all of it, but it did reanimate my memories of economics class, which is good. Also it's cool to see two people from totally different parts of my life talk to each other.  

CM Punk "Best in the World" (who is also Straightedge) putting the elbow drop on Mark Henry "The World's Strongest Man" (He actually won the World's Strongest Man competion)

So I don't know if all of you know this, but I've developed a taste for Pro Wrestling, thanks to my roommate and very good friend Odie. Now, in intellectual circles, Wrestling has a bad rap, almost as bad as organized religion. "Don't you know it's fake?" is what Odie often gets asked, and his answer is usually an Irish Whip into a clothesline followed by a moonsault from the top rope. Haha I'm kidding (Odie does like to wrestle, however, and he knows the name of every move...I mean literally every move...) But I have come to enjoy it somewhat and I have some thoughts about it. 

What people usually mean by "fake" is one of two things: that the outcomes of the matches are scripted, or that the combat is staged, both of which are true. Odie tells me that "plots" of the season of wrestling are written sometimes years in advance. The wrestling itself takes great strength and skill, but also involves stage combat techniques that give the impression of a "real" fight. I must point out however, that people who have done intense stage combat can attest that it is not as far removed from actual fighting as one might think. Then again, I've never really been in any real fights so I can't say much to the comparison. But it is dangerous, and people do get hurt, but it looks a lot more dangerous and painful than it is. 

Because what wrestling presents itself as is different from what it "really" is, watching wrestling requires suspension of disbelief, much like you would suspend your disbelief for a play or a television show. The reason I think people feel jilted is that at first glance, pro wrestling most closely resembles a traditional sport, and in traditional sports, a huge part of the appeal is that nobody knows which team will win. In baseball, basketball, fencing, and chess, who will win depends primarily on the skill of the players, and no punches are pulled, so to speak, as the players from opposing teams compete. 

The truth is that pro wrestling is I would say half sport, half entertainment. It is a hybrid, it has aspects of both genres. 

There's a little infographic for you, not in color cause I don't know how to do that easily. Most of the stuff in there is fairly obvious. 

Something I didn't have room to add but I think is worth noting, is that Traditional Sports and Pro Wrestling both have long histories to them. Wikipedia tells me that pro wrestling goes back to the 19th century. Also I'm seeing that Wikipedia has lots more info about pro wrestling than I post here. 

So back to the question, "Don't you know that it's fake?" To that, I offer another question: would you ask someone watching a play if they knew it was fake? The appeal of wrestling comes partly from the fact that it imitates "real" sports, but also largely from the intensified dramatics. Baseball players get to choose what music gets played when they come to the plate, but in Pro Wrestling each "superstar" as they call them has an elaborate, specific entrance involving gestures, pyrotechnics, video graphics on giant screens, catchphrases, etc. that can last up to five minutes. We usually get a very limited glimpse into an athlete's "off-field" life and interactions with other competitors, whereas in wrestling we stop the entire proceedings just to have a backstage interaction played out on the jumbotron. In a way, pro wrestling has more in common with Dragonball Z than it does with "real" wrestling. 

So what's the appeal of wrestling, anyways? I think it really comes down to the phenomenon of a streaker jumping onto the field at a baseball game. He gleefully sprints his way around, dodging the officials, and the crowd cheers. Why does the crowd sometimes cheer for him? Shouldn't they all be annoyed that he's interrupting the game as it's meant to be played? The fact is that sometimes people need to see the rules being broken, as kind of a cathartic, vicarious experience. I think it's healthy sometimes. Pro wrestling does a great job of creating the illusion of breaking rules and going extreme, when in fact they wrote the rules and are allowing them to be broken. 

Both sport and entertainment have been given noble stature over the ages- sport is said to embody the virtues of self-improvement, commitment, and discipline. Entertainment is said to enlighten, to move, to communicate. Pro Wrestling is kind of a bastard child of the two, and as such is viewed as a half-assed version of either: how can the spirit of competition be there if it's scripted, and how can enlightenment and communication be there if characterization and plot are simplified? 

I don't really know what the answer is to that. I'm not a huge fan of wrestling, but after a period of adjustment I'm able to enjoy it to a certain extent. I would say that despite its perceived lack of integrity, it does have value. It does require a high level of skill and discipline, and the superstars have to be excellent entertainers as well as athletes. The stories deal with basic themes such as betrayal, revenge, idealism, narcissism, cruelty, and love, even sometimes touching on harder issues such as alcoholism. It is multicultural, showcasing athletes from all over the world and including cultural aspects of their nations. People from all over the world and all walks of life enjoy it.

Now to bring this full circle, in my facebook post above I mentioned the danger of taking something at face value and believing it wholeheartedly, when in reality it doesn't hold water. I would say that it's really hard for me to enjoy pro wrestling while remembering all the time that it is scripted. Is it dangerous to have such a misleading thing as pro wrestling be "believed" in? Well it certainly doesn't help out the more gullible parts of us, but I don't think it's that dangerous. However, I think it would be true to say that modern American society could use a good booster shot of skepticism. With so much of our culture tied up in television and movies, we need to be able to think for ourselves. With so much money and power being used to convince people of things, and comparatively little being spent to figure out what things are worth convincing people of, we could get into trouble.  

It probably didn't need the analysis. But being out of school, I have to flex my academic brain somehow.