Do You Hear that Howling?

"I travel the roads of nature until the hour when I shall lie down and be at rest; yielding back my last breath into the air from which I have drawn it daily, and sinking down upon the earth from which my father derived the seed, my mother the blood, and my nurse the milk of my being - the earth for which so many years has furnished my daily meat and drink, and, though so grievously abused, still suffers me to tread its surface."
-Marcus Aurelius, Meditations, ( 5.4, trans. by Maxwell Staniforth)

I watched Al Gore's An Inconvenient Truth today, and if true, it sure will be more than inconvenient. In the two hour documentary/ lecture, Gore cites compelling evidence that the planet is doomed. Among his most convincing arguments is the statistic that in almost 1000 scientific, scholarly articles, not one scientist disagreed with the fact that the earth is warming and that warming is causing significant, and in most cases, detrimental change to the planet. In the popular media, fifty-three percent of the newspapers and magazines offering commentary on the subject discount the facts of global warming, placing the debate into the political, and not scientific, arena.

Let's forget Al Gore and politics for a second, and let's employ common sense. Irrefutable is the fact that world population continues to increase exponentially as modern medicine and standards of living help preserve life. Now, think about natural selection and animal populations. As habitats change, so do the animals which inhabit them. If the animals cannot find sustainable living, they die out. If they can migrate, they do so and survive in a new location. Take for example the wily coyote in Washington, DC. Yes, in the great Rock Creek Park, the coyote has found refuge and plenty of deer on which to nibble to the consternation of the urbanites who dwell in the nation's capital. Why have they come there? Because the deer cannot survive the sprawl in the suburbs, so they move at night until they find vegitation. For the coyote, it means no natural competition and ample supply of venison. Mother Nature chuckles as the DC Parks Service scratches heads to find the answer to ridding the park of the carnivores. They'll be there tomorrow and next week and next. Take that to the bank.

Common Sense tells us that more people mean more demands on the planet's resources. More demands mean the strong will survive. Those with water, fossil fuels, and agriculture will be sitting pretty as the human migration to find that sustainable habitat occurs. Human coyotes in the middle of a protected park.

The movie also suggests one solution: government standards for fuel efficiency in cars and trucks. As the recent spike in gas prices has taught us in the past, the oil faucet can be stopped with the flick of the OPEC wrist. Venezuela's Chavez and Iran's Ahmadinejad wring wrists and lick chops to put the U.S. in their economic vise and crank away. However, the movie also points out that the automobile companies that earn the most profit are not the gas-guzzling makers in Detroit but those of Asia. Gore even suggests that Toyota and Honda's success has occurred because of their products' burning fuel more efficiently and cleanly. Why then would we want Uncle Sam to lift the hood and tweak Ford's engine? Let the market decide. Eventually, people won't be able to pay the price of filling up their GM SUV, and they'll wise up.

Marucs Aurelius, the Roman emperor, wrote the words above as he traveled the various regions of the empire with his armies. He reflected often upon the inner working of the soul, and how it relates to the larger, outer world of Nature that surrounds us all. What he understood is that we are on loan to the earth, and Mother Nature will have the last word. If we destroy ourselves, something will replace us. If we want to prevent it, however, the debate has to rage in the public arena with hard science, not with political puffing of someone who wants to re-enter the race or someone who wants to stay on retainer for the Big Oil companies. Otherwise, bet on the coyotes.

Why We Love Sports

"Three times he charged in with the force of the running war god, screaming a terrible cry, and three times he cut down nine men; but as for the fourth time he swept in, like something greater than human, there, Patroklos, the end of your life was shown forth."
- Homer, Iliad, 16.784-7, translated by Lattimore

I have thought long about where athletics fit into the curricula of schools. On one hand, in most cases, modern universities supply the opportunity for advanced education to those who may not otherwise afford it. It makes little logical sense to award money to those athletes to follow academic study when, in reality, the university pays them for their physical gifts. And most of us know of the numerous abuses of this system: cheating, double standards between athletes and non-athletes, countless instances of bad behavior from driving under the influence to rape. On the other hand, the athletic team delivers valuable instruction where the classroom cannot: collaborative effort, loyalty to a common cause, and collective triumph over or shared defeat by a clearly defined adversary. These lessons make successful athletes into successful leaders and citizens.

I have also wondered why athletics captures such a major portion of our time. From water cooler talk about Monday night football to the awe inspired by Tiger Woods from the innumerable sports "talk" shows on TeeVee and radio to the ubiquity of televised satellite packages, we live in a nation voraciously consuming sports. So why, in a nation apparently overworked, stressed-out, obese, and beholden to Total Entertainment with its infinite choices, do we spend so much time watching others perform physical acts? While many Americans engage in physical activity every day, far more prefer to prop up the loafers on the ottoman than tie up the running shoes.

After witnessing the triumph of the Washington Redskins at FedEx stadium in a thrilling overtime game on Sunday, I found part of the answer: the tribe. Despite numerous admonitions from social moralists about the ever increasing introversion of our citizenry (see iPod earphones everywhere and no one talking to each other?), we still live in regionalized tribes. We have some connection to the teams we worship, whether it be because we attended the university or we have lived just miles from home field or a grandparent once rooted for that team, and doggoneit we are going to preserve our memory of Grandma by loving the Fighting Irish with equivalent zeal. The tribe sends its warriors out to battle the neighboring enemy, and when the warriors return, the tribe knows they have done their best to protect those who did not fight. Naturally, Santana Moss's touchdown in overtime doesn't mean that I won't have trouble with those pesky people from Jacksonville, but in a subconscious way, I know he has saved me. He has saved me from defeat, and therefore, I am preserved. He does what I don't have to do: train for hours and compete in the physical arena. I share his victory.

In Iliad Patroklos abuts his own mortality, and we can rejoice in his teetering walk on the cliff of his humanity for he has both courage and aplomb. Sadly, in this moment of horrific dramatic irony, we know more than the warrior. While Patroklos plunges headlong into the chaos, we know he will soon perish. In this moment we celebrate his triumph, his brutality, and his raw aggression, and we celebrate it because we do not need to confront it in ourselves. He dies so we don't have to, and we laud him for his courage. We share his sacrifice.

Reality TeeVee has always humored me with its paradox. How can anything be real on TeeVee, especially when contrived by Hollywood/NYC executives who value only shock value to generate revenue? The popularity of these shows reveal that we crave something spectacular to divorce us from the mundane of life, but in order for it to work, it must be somewhat real. Sports provide just the panacea for our lives confined by cubicles and air-conditioning. It returns us to the tribe; it gives us that moment when we struggle against our enemy and save our kinsmen. And we don't need hours in the weightroom to feel good. Someone else will plunge headlong into the chaos for us.