{ Saturday, October 24, 2009 }
In one way or another, plenty of organizations select for gameness. The Marine Corps does so, and so does medicine, when it puts young doctors through the exhausting rigors of residency. But those who select for gameness have a responsibility to not abuse that trust: if you have men in your charge who would jump off a cliff for you, you cannot march tem to the edge of the cliff -- and dogfighting fails this test. Gameness, Carl Semencic argues, in "The World of Fighting Dogs" (1984) is no more than a dog's "desire to please an owner at any expense to itself".
From Malcolm Gladwell's most recent article in the New Yorker, "Offensive Play"
Or, as Mark Twain said, "It's not the size of the dog in the fight, but the size of the fight in the dog."
The article compares dog fighting with the traumas and injuries suffered by football players and boxers, and the long term brain damage that ensues from the constant battering they take in the game. This is part of the same Valhalla myth and Dulce et decorum est pro patria mori impulse, that the greatest honor is to die on the battlefield for a cause greater than yourself. Cultures of heroics and honor breed this kind of violence, as Fox Butterfield outlined in his (great!) book All God's Children: The Bosket family and the American Tradition of Violence
LINK | 9:49 AM | TB
u r becoming the oracle that turn to caterina. thanks.
Marcus | October 24, 2009 11:30 AMAtanas, thanks for writing about your experiences.
In the example of football in the Gladwell article, there is certainly no small measure of individual glory that accrues to the player who is making those sacrifices. Yes, he is doing it for "the team", but he is also earning millions of dollars, and having his image and name publicized to great acclaim.
The individual and anonymous sacrifices that people in Bulgaria (in your example) are being asked to make are quite different, as there is no celebration of the actual individuals making those sacrifices. I am thinking now of all those statues celebrating the anonymous "Worker" -- symbolizing thousands, even millions of unknown individuals.
Caterina | October 25, 2009 8:52 AM
The culture of heroics is a feature of thousands of years of patriarchy. The Greek concept of kleos included the idea of death as noble and preferable to ignominy. Needless to say, patriarchy is all about dominance, control, an power over...so a male, a dog, a dog's owner shamed.... egad...how the ego suffers. Testosterone may be arcing out, however, thanks to worldwide diminishing sperm counts...
This is not about patriarchy or testosterone-driven myths.
The notion of heroic sacrifice that serves the greater whole is not only found in violent acts. Life selects for 'gameness', at least in social species like homo sapiens.
Parents sacrifice for their children, religions have martyrs, explorers disappear, research scientists have some of the highest suicide/depression rates in the world. There is no culture that is free of it. Why? Because selfish cultures curl up and die.
This is coming from a self-professed 'bleeding heart liberal'.
These football players need to be protected. They deserve to be protected. But there will always be segments of society that take risks, that sacrifice, that push boundaries, and we will always admire them and sadly, discard them. What drives them is an essential part of what got us here. To lose it or legislate it away is to lose ourselves.
{ Post a comment }
I was born and grew up in communist Bulgaria. From a very early age, we were conditioned to believe that an individual's interests are secondary to a cause greater than any individual's -- building the best society of all, communism, at all costs, including personal sacrifice. We were bombarded with propaganda in the form of literature, film and visual arts, all to the same effect. In Gladwell's terms, we were dogs being conditioned to please our "owner" at any expense to ourselves.
As my generation matured, many of us began to see the West's (symbolized by the US's) individualistic values as much more humane. Many of us migrated to the West (I settled in New Jersey in 1991). Surprisingly (or maybe not), in the US today, you will find that recent immigrants from Eastern Europe place a much higher value in individual liberty than their US-born-and-bred brethren do.
atanas entchev | October 24, 2009 11:05 AM