The fingerprints of having grown up in a post-modern world are all over me. I’ll explain what I mean by that in a minute but first I want to make an admission if it isn’t totally clear already.
I’m a huge nerd. I love reading and debating. When you’re an intellectually curious person, but not necessarily exceptionally smart, the ideas in your head are often so complex that it can become difficult to present them in a clear and lucid manner. What follows is another one of my obscure theories I pulled from the ether.
The usual discourse surrounding sports teams and sports in general, as you may or may not already know, is incredibly frustrating to me. Not because I disagree with the tone of the conversation, which, incidentally I often do, but because professional sports scribes and orators almost always refuse to address anything except for the conventional questions and topics. I’m more than willing to immerse myself in philosophical or ideological conversations with people whose ideals fail to align with my own. I’m more than capable of enjoying another person’s contrasting perspective if it’s presented thoughtfully. At the end of the day I just want to learn. When it comes to sports though, it’s a pretty unilateral world and that’s what really gets me frustrated.
Why don’t more people talk like I do? I’m a Sabres fan just like everyone else but clearly I’m different. I don’t obsess over reason or the cause and effect of players, teams and events like the majority of sports critics and observers do. I think it must have to do with my age and the fact that I’ve been educated in a post-modern world. Hopefully there are other fans who can relate and hopefully I can do a good enough job explaining myself.
Lets start with a metaphor.
Imagine you’re sitting in the back of a taxi and looking out the window at all the cars parked street-side. Once in awhile you see one that’s different from the rest, maybe it’s particularly luxurious or maybe it’s old and dilapidated, but for the most part they’re all fairly ordinary. What you’re actually doing subconsciously is comparing and differentiating each vehicle from the others you’ve seen while sitting in the back of the taxi and then stacking them up against what you understand to be the shape and appearance of appreciable cars. You’re sort of daydreaming though, just staring out the window looking at all the different cars.
Other people daydream differently. Imagine now from the back of a taxi staring out of the window you look at the world with no specificity. You look at the buildings, the shrubs, the doors, the cars, the street lights, the street signs, the people, the fences, everything. There is differentiation that takes place when you consciously notice something like a particularly striking house, a shady cat, or a cool graffiti tag, but it’s not quite the same. It’s loosely based on comparison although that’s ancillary. Looking out the window at the world in this way, what you recognize is mostly a reflection of your personality. I hate cats and that black one looks up to no good. Oh, that house is cool, I’ve always liked old Victorian houses.
What really separates these two perspectives is the pursuit of truth, on the one hand, and the emphasis of preference, on the other. What is more important — truth or preference? There’s no wrong answer here. If you’re the type of person to focus on the cars, it doesn’t necessarily mean you’re narrow minded just that the pursuit of truth through reason and measurement is probably of greater importance to you. The signs that one car is exceptional in its beauty or that another car belongs in a junkyard are fairly clear. If you’re the type of person to survey the entire scene, lose a little depth, and then decide the level of appeal yourself, the insistence on preference might better describe you.
There’s this idea that aligns with the car-watchers. It’s called structuralism. It’s started as a way to understand language, a discipline we now refer to as linguistics, but has grown into an analytical approach that attempts to explain a specific field with a collection of constant, supplementary standards. So for instance if you want to know the quality and value of a car, examine the make, model, year, and condition. And if you want to know a person’s psychological motives within the margins of Freudism, examine his or her id, ego, superego, that type of stuff. And if you want to know the quality of a hockey team, particularly the difference between a team that wins or loses, examine the talent, leadership, and coaching.
I certainly identify more with the general scenery-watchers. I’m guilty of sacrificing logic and following my heart in sports. One of the fore-most questions that the post-modern movement asks pertains to the validity of truth. Post-modern thinkers assert that we incorrectly determine truth by assigning indicators and listening to the words of authorities and for that reason, and many others, we really can’t be certain about the truth of most things.
Jacques Derrida was really the first person to respond academically to structuralism. He was famous for examining philosophical essays written to be understood as truth with prose written to be understood as fiction and then studying the essence of these works to see how exactly readers recognize fact from fiction. He used authors like Shakespeare and Kant and what he found was that it was nearly impossible to tell the difference between the two without some authority actually telling us or encountering some indicator like Lady Macbeth rubbing an apparition of a blood spot on her hand.
I approach sports criticism in a similar manner with which Derrida approached general literature. This isn’t to say that basic truth does not exist. It does but the problem with truth in the context of sports is that it’s supported by qualitative observations and weak empirical statistics. Most of the time I prefer to just keep my attention elsewhere.
It seems pretty clear to me at least that there are no real experts in sports except for the people actually making the decisions. These are the only people with all the information readily at hand like, say, the condition of Craig Rivet’s shoulder. All the assertions by critics and observers are just guesses. Still, a large number of people remain so obsessed with finding answers — finding truth. It’s impossible to explain the chemistry that forms between a collection of players with reason and logic. How can what has happened in the Eastern Conference this post-season be explained with conventional sports dialog?
I absorb all the knowledge I can but there’s a difference between knowledge and opinion. If you want to present opinions and tell me something like Team-X needs more toughness and they need to get rid of Player-Y, then fine. It’s my personal opinion though that you just don’t know what you’re talking about. It’s not your fault. You can’t know what you’re talking about and neither can I. Opinions only matter in the way that they’re presented. Give me something to chew on why you think Player-Y needs to go. Chances are I’ll agree with your reasons if they’re poignant.
I form my opinions by looking at the solar system of dots in the sports world and connecting the ones I want. Does that make me foolish? At the time of creating these asterisms, which admittedly reflect the belief I have in this organization, they’re irrefutable.
Mathematically, the year is almost always going to finish in disappointment. That’s the only real truth anyone can be sure of. Ironically, that’s the one most often ignored. As consequence, I think there are a lot of people who end up resenting the league or worse the team for something that’s really at the essence of what makes sports great: the fact that the prize is so special.
It’s impossible to explain the chemistry that forms between a collection of players with reason and logic.
I came to this same conclusion the other night. Joe blogged about how the Flyers succeeding proves that big free agent signings can work and while I thought it was a good point (and agree that the Sabres backed themselves into a corner by publicly dismissing the free agent market), all it really proves is that that particular group of players is working in this particular post-season. That’s not necessarily going to be the case next season or the season after that. Every year only one team wins and in the end, nobody knows anything.
On a side note, I ADORE that cartoon.
This is an interesting post, and one that’ll I need to chew on a bit more.
I definitely agree that no one has any idea what they are talking about. I’m a scenery watcher too.
Heather:
When you consider the mystery that kind of surrounded the ’09-’10 Sabres season for so many fans, this aligns nicely, right? No one could really explain it but the win-loss record caused them to feel the thrill a bit. People had trouble getting over the fact that the usual characters of failed seasons past + an 18 year old rookie were putting together a big season. It didn’t make sense because so many Hecht cars were ordinary and the difference between “the Connolly cars” was extreme (either shiny and new or old and busted) and that of course was based on his scoring production. We never noticed Hecht for what he contributed and we vilified Connolly when he had a couple of noticeable, rusted clunkers in a row.
Kate:
I thought about you when I was writing this because you’ve been a fan for a couple of years now, and this was the first real disappointment you’ve had while also being a very knowledgeable fan. So you didn’t really know how to react. You’re at a point where you can recognize hot cars from the lousy ones and I’m sure the temptation is great to use what you know about hockey to roast some players. You have this knowledge and you want to use it but you don’t want to be a curmudgeon.
It’s interesting to think of because when you didn’t know as much about hockey a few years ago, you just ended up finding the rainbows or marshmallows in a thunderstorm or bowl of cheerios. That’s how it starts for everyone. The new fans always find something to enjoy about the season and the team and it’s because they just don’t have the knowledge of the sport beyond winning is good and losing is bad.
You’ve got to just find a balance somehow.
Paul, you are dead on about my reaction. I literally have no idea how to react. My most honest reaction is just kind of, “Meh. Life goes on. I’ll think about the Sabres again in September,” but that doesn’t really mesh with blogging. For better or for worse, I really love the rhythm of blogging (I think it appeals to the side of me that has been “practicing” since age 7), so I’m loathe to simply ignore the blog for the summer. And you’re right, when I think about the Sabres with the intention of blogging, I really do have to resist the temptation to throw all manner of unattractive hissy-fits. I DON’T want to be a curmudgeon.
This post, and your response to my comment, have really given me a lot to think about. Thanks.
This approach to sports is quite refreshing. The last paragraph is great. At the beginning of a season hope springs eternal, but the odds of being that final team arent very good. But like you said thats why we keep coming back, “there’s always next year.”
If you haven’t already, and this is the kind of thing you are interested in, read:
1) “Objectivity, Value Judgment, and Theory Choice,” By Thomas Kuhn.
It is available through Google. 20 pages or so.
Kuhn expands on your metaphor of ‘truth or preference,’ in the context of philosophy of science. However, Kuhn asserts the real crux of the issue is that what appears to be an adherence to different ‘objective criteria’ held by scientific realists, is in fact an adherence to subjective ‘values.’ It makes a lot of sense, it ignores the preference argument (which many abhor), and it explains paradigm shift. I think you would really appreciate his argument. The best part is it isn’t necessarily a bad thing. In fact, Kuhn claims subjectivity it is essentially for rational debate and therefore change.
2) “The Content of the Form,” By Hayden White. Book, must be purchased, 300 pages or so. If you are familiar with Derrida there is a chance you have already looked at it.
White looks at some different topics in a number of essays, but I think the first chapter may be the most interesting. He deconstructs the discourse of historical writing. As a historian, let me say his take is extremely disconcerting. He describes how history must fit into a narrative to be intelligible, how this narrative is inherently moralistic, and how these structures cannot possible mimic the complexity of the real world (our narratives are always imagined fiction compared to the real world). It is a really interesting take, and its hard to get around. To still believe in historical truth after reading this you really have to start thinking hard about context and deconstructing your biases.
3) “Occidentalism,” by Edward Said. Very influential book, not to pricy (1970s copyright i believe).
Said makes the bold claim that basically the entirety of western knowledge is part of an imperial understanding of other cultures. He claims all of our knowledge is built on other knowledge, and since this is the case, and that knowledge has always been imperialistic, mercantile, etc, when dealing with the east, it cannot comprehend the east properly. You can really get most of the argument in the first 30 pages or so. Anyway, he writes about the dichotomous view of the west vs. east. You’ll see this everywhere once you start to think about it. The media portrays the east in a certain way, because that is how we think about them, because this is how our knowledge is built. They are essentially the ‘other,’ and everything they do is counter to our western capitalistic, individualistic, scientific society. Well of course this is untrue, it is parroted by the media. In war, the ‘other’ is usually portrayed as being ready to sacrifice the individual for the community, foreign news correspondence often focuses on group demonstration, obscure ‘traditional’ rituals, etc. Very interesting book for considering how we conceptualize the world and ‘the other.’
4) “Discipline and Punish,” by Foucault. Another one you could be familiar with.
In this book Foucault really is trying to make claims about the relationship of knowledge and power. He makes a bold claim that the American Carceration System (the courts, prisons, parol boards, etc.) really are not concerned with rehabilitation. The primary goal of the system is in fact to create power. He goes into a lengthy history of punishment and the prison system to prove this point. The focus is on how the prison system can control not only your body, but your mind. It comes from a study of Attica prison, which is actually right near the town where i grew up, that Foucault did while he was a visiting professor at UB. The most disturbing part of the book is the claim that this system of control extends to basically any institution which can claim some kind of authority, education, medical, etc.
Okay, I have to go each lunch, so quickly.
Any metaphysics, but especially causation and natural kinds (sets).
Any philosophy of science, but especially Van Fraassen’s empirical adequacy, explanation, evidence, and theory choice.
Nietzsche, “On the advantage and disadvantage of history” – okay, be careful with nietzsche, he is insane, but he makes some interesting claims, you have to read it carefully and sometimes ignore the obvious racism.
“The Objectivity Question,” Novick. 632 page tome of ideas about objectivity in American History.
And that’s all I can think of right now.
Kyle:
Good stuff. I’ll look into some of those titles for sure. I’m very familiar with Foucault in fact I was planning on referencing him and Baudrillard in this post but I thought it would make it just too academic and dry (as if it weren’t already). Derrida just fit smoothly into what I was trying to do. Thanks for the input.