Know Thyself?

According to Wikipedia and the Greek writer Pausanias, "The Ancient Greek aphorism 'know thyself,' is one of the Delphic maxims and was the first of three maxims inscribed in the pronaos of the Temple of Apollo at Delphi." It is probably first because most of us will never get to #2 if we spend any serious effort at figuring out how to know ourselves. It’s a disgusting job, but someone has to do it.

Take me, for example. Back in the 80s, I took a required career development course that included the infamous Myers-Briggs “personality inventory” test. The end result was a printout of my personality characteristics that, honestly, stunned me. Back then, a very primitive mini-computer determined that I was an INTP (Introverted, Intuitive, Thinking, Perceiving). I had NEVER thought of myself as introverted and that hyper-important aspect to my personality was worse than neglected, ignored, and abused for 60-some years.In fact, until I read Quiet: The Power of Introverts in a World That Can't Stop Talking last December, a book that was practically forced on my by two very perceptive friends, I had no idea what being introverted means. However, that 1980’s computer printout almost made me breakdown and cry in the middle of a very large class because it was, I felt, the first time in my life anyone actually knew me. And that was scary because I worked very hard for a lot of years not to be “known” by anyone.

More recently, I’ve tested (on the 16Personalities.com website) as an INTJ-T ( Introverted - 95%, Intuitive - 63%, Thinking - 91%, Judging - 75%) with a new quality (Turbulent - 76%). Supposedly, this INTJ personality can be summed up as "the Architect." This last character swap is interesting. A summary of the differences claimed, “The key difference between the INTJ and INTP in this respect is INTJs do accept leadership roles on occasion whereas INTPs do not." Honestly, that tracks. For most of my life, I took on management/leadership roles because I thought “that’s what a man does.” Sort of a version of “if I want this job done right, I have to be the one to do it.” Eventually, that attitude crushed the life almost completely out of me. When I left my electrical and manufacturing engineering career in 1991, I also made the unconscious decision to avoid any management assignments in dysfunctional organizations. For the last 15 years of my career, I began to take that decision more seriously at every turn of my working life: to the point that at one particularly difficult moment in my teaching career I stated that principle out loud in refusing a “promotion.” From then on, it was a conscious decision and a guideline I would not cross.

So, I guess it’s possible that my basic personality was altered by that realization? Something swapped me from Perceiving to Judging and did it in a not subtle way. Back in the 80s, that first Meyers-Briggs test found that I was hard-line on everyone of my four personality values. Many people are borderline on everyone of their personality traits, but not me. If you look at the trait percentages at the beginning of the paragraph above, you might notice that the Intuitive (N) trait, at 63%, is the closest I come to a borderline quality. In the 80s, I was in the 80-90% territory for 3 of my 4 INTP traits. Perception (P) was the exception, being somewhere closer to the line. So, something shifted in me at some point in my life. Honestly, I think it was for the good even if it cost me money, some authority, and promotional opportunities. None of those things mean much to me.

At 72, I am still exploring and learning about the first of my 4 or 5 "personality traits.” The first chapter of Quiet details the outright distain, distrust, dislike, and disgust that introverts produced from the Powers that Were in the 20th Century and I grew up in that atmosphere. It was not good enough to be a competent athlete, student, or worker. You needed to be excited, vocal, and authoritative in your convictions. To be successful, you needed to be a “leader” and to be noisy about it. I wasn’t excited about much of anything but mathematics and music when I was in high school and either I chose that moment or the moment chose me to escape into music. As a long-haired, hippy, musician outcast, the expectations of me were instantly lowered and I could be me to myself and the rest of the world made assumptions based on outward appearances and mostly left me alone. Later, I learned that to survive in the world of work and to provide for my family I would have to disguise myself as someone else and I did that for 40 years. Now, I’m having to study and spend a lot of time alone to remember who I am.

Proving My Point, Again!

I have never believed that semi-pro sports, Division I-XX inter-collegiate anything, belongs in public universities. For-profit, private Schools for Spoiled Children can do whatever they like, but taxpayer money should not be wasted on jocks and stadiums. The recent University of Minnesota scandal proves my point for the n-qillionth time. Ten UofM football players gang raped or banged a co-ed who was either drunk or stupid or both and that obviously violated the university’s bare-minimum “school conduct standards.” The rest of the team went on strike, threatening to stay away from the bowl game that would almost provide the UofM with enough money to justify paying the ridiculous salaries to the coaches and athletic director. This is what passes for taking a moral stand in sports, “Have never been more proud of our kids. I respect their rights & support their effort to make a better world!” said GoldenGopherHFC on Twitter. In the new world of Trumpdumb, this is as good as “a better world” gets.

“According to police records, a woman told officers she was drunk when she was sexually assaulted in running back Carlton Djam’s apartment by several men on Sept. 3, including some of the suspended players. She said her sexual contact with two men may have been consensual, but her contact with four of them was not. Several players told police it was consensual, and an investigator who watched a video Djam took of the incident wrote that ‘she does not appear to be upset by the sexual activity and does not indicate that she wants it to stop … and the sexual contact appears entirely consensual.’” Explain to me how any of that resembles higher education. Please!

The players are concerned for their fellow teammates/gangbangers, the quarterback Mitch Leidner said, “All these kids’ reputations are destroyed. Their names are destroyed. It’s extremely difficult to get back and it’s very unfair for them and that’s why we’re sticking together through this thing.” First, none of these men qualify as “kids.” They are overgrown, privileged young men in a culture that celebrates brawn over brain and violence over decency. If they weren’t playing football, they’d be in the military. They are not kids, children, or boys. They knew what they were doing and one of the nitwits even filmed the gangbang to give himself something to beat off to after the head injuries and age remove whatever attraction he has to women.

So, good for them. Stay on strike guys. “Three senior leaders stood in front of the group and delivered a defiant rebuke of the university’s decision, saying they would not participate in any football activities until the school president and athletic director apologized and revoked the suspensions. If that meant they don’t play in the upcoming Holiday Bowl against Washington State, they appeared poised to stand firm.” Blow both your college and your professional career making a statement that replicates the incoming federal government’s moral values and that of the 62.2 million Trump chumps who did what their Russian brainwashers (didn’t take much washing, either) told them to do and are standing proud as the nation’s security and economy is about to be wreaked by their votes.

Now that I’ve thought this all the way through, maybe sports are the only thing public universities should concern themselves with. These athletics-only college employees are absolutely representing the true moral values of 47% of the voters in the 2016 election. I guess this is the country we are going to be for at least the next four years.

How Did We Get So Dumb?

The recent spate of gladiator arena construction in Minnesota (Gopher's Football stadium, Twin's stadium, Viking's stadium, and, now, a stadium for the minor league Saints and another UofM stadium for the godawful Gopher's baseball team) has made me begin to question the sanity of the traditionally staid, conservative (not neo-pseudo-conservative, but real conservative), rational Minnesotan. Our politicians are claiming these projects are "job creators," but at best those are short term jobs that will cost jobs in the long run as they will run up local taxes and distract our already-unfocused media from important issues.

That last item is a big deal, too. Sports are welfare for the media. Any idiot can babble about football, baseball, or any of the rest of boys-running-around-in-underwear activities. It takes talent, perseverance, insight, and more than a little courage to report on business and government. None of those qualities are required to jabber mindlessly about sports. (My wife's take on sports shows is, "Two drunks at a bar.") If you get everything wrong about the Vikings, it will have no effect whatsoever on anything that matters.

Even worse, we all know this and ignore it. Sports are a useful distraction, as long as we're not dedicating serious money to it. When a state or city's budget has a noticeable portion dedicated to useless distractions, that is a sign of decadence. When a substantial portion of the budget is donated to the 1% who own sports businesses, that is evidence of cultural decay. At the Minnesota level, it looks suspiciously like a complete cultural breakdown of values and we're beyond decay and into stinking sewage. As Lincoln suspected, you can fool some of the people all of the time and, today, some equals most.

In Minnesota, we're banging from one sports arena "investment" to the next while real jobs and investment are filtering out of the state and out of the country. The debt we're piling on to our children and the state's future is enormous and the value is minuscule. The non-sports economic "opportunities" presented by these stadiums are claimed to be concerts, corporate events, and a few local events. How a city the size of St. Paul/Minneapolis can support this many huge concert venues at a time when the music business is shriveling to non-existence is baffling. Obviously, this is bullshit marketing with no more basis in reality than the bond or derivative markets.

If an educated state like Minnesota is sinking itself in the mire of sports distraction, the Walmart states must be wallowing in this stupidity. As the Greek democracy was inbreeding itself into obscurity, the nation's rulers distracted the marching morons with the Olympics and various sports bullshit. When the Romans decided they had been successful for long enough, they gave their idle masses the gladiators entertainment. The Brits created "bowls" for  for bull baiting, cock fighting, amateur athletics, soccer, cricket, hockey, and polo. We are, obviously, the next empire to decay and fall and our sports distractions are every bit as idiotic as were those of our predecessors. In retrospect, professional football, baseball, basketball, golf, and the rest are going to look pretty hilarious to whoever takes our place on the international stage.

The only upside to the United States' decline will be that what's left of us will get to watch the next international superstar fail even quicker than we did. One of the key characteristics of evolution is that as resources become scarce the evolutionary process becomes more efficient. The Greek empire flourished and lasted for 400 to 600 years, depending on how you define those terms. The Roman empire had a 500 year run before being drained by human entropy. The Spanish, Portuguese, Brit, and Dutch empires were all good for about 250-300 years before they sucked the life out of themselves. We're about done at a little more than 200 years and all that's left is how we're going to draw the curtain on ourselves. Pro sports are the fungus all empires need to kick the rot into overdrive.