Did I ever mention that I have a small collection of kaleidoscopes? I used to have more of them, but currently have three, I think. Along the path of my life, others have been lost or discarded, I guess. I have never put much value in stuff and each time I have moved, some of it has gone away.
I also have different lenses through which I view life. I’ve not discarded any of those, even if I may forget some of them from time to time.
For the past week, I’ve remembered a lens from the past which intersects with my critical thinking lens. It’s all about fair play, about having a level playing field. I don’t expect that many people will view the world through those same lenses.
So I may be speaking to the wind. That seems to be happening more often lately. But I don’t believe it is pointless. I believe the wind sometimes listens.
In the deep dark past of another life I played sports. I played baseball (third base, shortstop, and pitcher), football (end and quarterback), basketball (forward/center), and later, when I gave up football because it was too violent, I ran cross-country. In college, I rowed crew on the Schuylkill for a time and Dick Harter asked me to play on his basketball team. I turned him down.
I was a fair athlete with good skills…and I had my moments of excellence. But I had a problem keeping me from being better than fair. That problem was that I never could adopt a “win at all costs” mentality. It was always more important to me that the game be played fairly and in accordance with the rules. I mean, who would want to win if you have to cheat to do it? How can you feel good about doing so?
To many people I suppose that makes me appear to be a fool. If that’s how you see it, so be it. I still believe it is more important that a good game played fairly is more important than who wins or loses. I revel in Tiger Woods and Ernie Els going stroke for stroke in the President’s Cup until it is too dark to play anymore…and then calling it a draw. To me, the view of life as an exercise in trying to be a winner rather than a loser is nearly the very definition I have for labeling someone a loser.
I refuse to consider life a game…unless it is a cooperative game we can all win. I detest using sports as a metaphor for life. But if I am forced to do so, I believe in a level playing field for human endeavor.
That last thing is apparently difficult for some folks to envision. Some people refuse to see the tilt in the field. Some people think one makes the field level by refusing to put more thumbs on one corner or side than are already there. But refusing to tilt it further is not going to result in making it level. One has to remove the thumbs that are already there…and probably put a thumb on another corner or side for awhile. That last thing is a problem, because the folks who refuse to acknowledge the tilt in the field seem to think trying to level it is somehow cheating them. It is a conundrum.
How does this translate to politics (as if it had to be)?
Being willing to believe only the worst about one candidate and only the best about another does not exemplify a level playing field. Proof-texting every word each of our wonderful candidates utters…as well as anyone who has anything to say concerning them will always overlook the good in favor of finding the bad.
Whatever happened to truth, justice, and fair play?
I’m a teacher. I believe in the concept of the level playing field for my students. As far as I know, there is no other way. I do not tolerate cheating. Neither do I believe in holding any of my students to different standards than others.
And I believe that it is my duty to teach my students how to think critically. To think critically requires fair consideration be given to alternative points of view. To think critically requires the fair consideration of the consequences of conclusions drawn and actions which are proposed to be taken in order to solve our problems. The important word in there is fair.
Has our society come to such a state that fairness has been erased as a principle? I’ve always thought that what made us different than “the other side” is that we believed in fair play. I always thought that our principles were sacrosanct.
I have always had faith that the good guys would win in the end. I didn’t ever believe that they had to morph into the bad guys in order to do it. I refuse to believe that.
Art Link Landscape of the Mind
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…the poems being submitted include the one above, along with We Are Normal, Bleeding the Colors, An Ocean of Blood, On the Borderlands and Friends Along the Way.
Meanwhile, this past week has been a huge disappointment. But I shall continue to hold up a lantern and peer into the darkness.
Robyn
PS: The pic of me playing basketball is of sufficient low quality that I have chosen to share it. I was 17 at the time. For stats geeks, my high game was 23, I believe, possibly against Newberg, OR. They were one of the few teams we played with a center shorter than I. Usually the other team had a center who was 2 to 6 inches taller than me and outweighed me by over 50 pounds (I was 6′ 3″ and weighted less than 160). But I like to believe I was the best defensive center in the league, almost always holding my opponent to less than his average.
But life is so not fair in so many ways. It never has been. Even individual characteristics you are born with mean that the playing field is not level. I have let loose of the idea of perfect fairness, and I am happier most of the time just doing as well as I can under the circumstances. I stopped competing with the men in my company, as I hate competition, and I am happier for it. I can ignore their jabs. Meanwhile, though life is not fair, I can treat other people fairly.
Lenses are funny.
Down, bad fire!
It was already dying…but the Repubs under Gingrich kiled it…very visibly, in public. Then Fox news burned the corpse and scattered the ashes.
Though I hate sounding like merely a rabid partisan by saying that….but I truly believe it is true. By shattering the last vestiges of pretense, these guys boosted the insidious influence of “I, me , mine…..fuck fairness,” fairness has been vanquished from our society. Now it is about calculating what you can get away with.
Gordon Gecko helped too.
But as I said it WAS already dying, as well.
Nature is not fair in human terms. Some animals live for awhile. Some die early. Some are healthy, some are sick. Suns live for billions of years. Some suns get devoured by black-hole twins.
We humans define fairness for ourselves.
When we stop doing so, it’s every man (woman) for himself (herself).
as in level playing field.
I don’t have answers to these questions but…
You have certain talents. You were good at sports. I know you’ve said you were tall. Clearly you must be pretty coordinated.
I suck at sports. I’m blind in one eye, uncoordinated, have bad feet and bad knees, can’t run at all.
What then, is a ‘level playing field’?
Should we handicap the talented? a la the story Harrison Bergeron by Kurt Vonnegut?
No, clearly not.
But, then, some of us are born rich, others born poor, others so desperately poor that they starve to death, or succumb to a disease that would have been prevented had they been lucky enough to be born to richer parents, or in a different country?
That seems unfair (although that is a hard word to define, precisely).
Now, we might start on this by saying “everyone should be equally able to express his/her/yos talents (I throw in the ‘yo’ because I saw an article saying that it was becoming the ‘in’ pronoun for referring to people of unknown sex, or who are gender variant). How could we work that?
I, a child of privilege, was much more free to express my talent than, say, the child of a single mom on welfare. That’s not fair.
OTOH, I, a learning disabled child, was less free to express my talent than a child with similar talents who was not LD.
That’s not fair, either.
In my own personal case, the privilege I was born into allowed my mom to start a school for me. That school still exists. It has served, over the years, for about 300 kids – many of them privileged, but others not; and all LD. The school couldn’t exist if it did not serve some of the privileged, because it is the privileged who are able (and, in some cases, willing) to donate large sums of money to keep the school going.
So, where is ‘fair’?
What is equitable?
If we could simply remove disability from all people, without cost (financial or otherwise) that would be nice, but we can’t.
If we could somehow make everyone equally talented, would that be good? I don’t think so; it would certainly be boring! If we could make everyone highly intelligent, would that be good? I don’t even know the answer to that question! Since we cannot do either of those things, perhaps we needn’t worry.
Like I said, I don’t have any answers.
I don’t even know if I have the right questions.
But if we are trying to create a level playing field, we need to ask how we would recognize one if we saw it; and how we can tell if we are getting closer.
I really like your post.
I was born with a tremor, hypothyroidism, high blood pressure, not the best looks, and so on.
Do I deserve a handicap?
Of course not.
Life is mine to find. Best to everyone else, including those who are perfect.
Author
…in Orange.
to be fair, and also level out the field in different ways through life, but then I got a phone call, and all my words went out of my head. Poof!
So I reread comments here, and over at the big orange, and noticed what a difference in here and there. Here we talked about fairness, etc. Over there, so far, it all seems to be about kindness in candidate diaries. I guess thats because we follow the “Be excellent to each other” here? 🙂
I understand exactly what you’re saying Robyn… or at least I think I do-lol!
fair….
I often told kids in my class- no, i’m Not gonna tell you the answer, that’s cheating & lying! i didn’t make any friends by saying this, but my dad was in the AF & we moved all.the.time. so i didn’t have many friends anyway… & it was more important to me to Not lie or cheat than to have cheaters for friends.
when raising my kids – fair – was always there. my kids are 18 mo. apart so i prolly did fair more than most. both got the same amount of cookies, the same sized strawberry or slice of cake; when they were old enough i introduced ‘i cut, you choose’ (wonderously fair principle) for dividing things… on birthdays each child would have to find a toy or book of his/hers to give away to each guest at the party… or sometimes each guest would bring a present & we’d do a swap & each guest left with a present. at my house we might not have had a lot… but you were always treated fairly.
level fields….
some comments here seem to see this differently than i do…to me this is just an extension of fair…
when my daughter was in second grade they got rid of reading groups because it ‘pigeonholed children & encouraged them to be picked on’ I went and fought with the admin over this because it tilted the field… children who had once made ‘B or very good’ would now be making ‘D-needs improvement’ when compared with someone reading two levels above. i had to attend several meetings & put on ‘costume'(heels, hose, skirt & make-up) but in the end my logic prevaled…reading groups stayed, children were disciplined for making fun of others.
to me, the above parag is the exact same principle as ‘fair-trade’ rather than ‘free-trade’…
having a level field does Not mean there is Only One field… each field should be level for the group growing there. there are many, many fields and you may find yourself in different ones throughout your life… or your day!
Level fields prevent erosion.
I sometimes wonder if I did wrong by my children by insisting on fair…. this world seems not to care about the concept.
sorry bout the delay in getting here… connection still sux… i’m having to connect, bring up essay, disconnect, read, type comment, reconnect, paste comment, disconnect, read, etc… very aggravating!