This morning I heard in an interesting lecture (not currently online) that somewhat famous quote in the title by Bill Parcells, NFL football coach.
It was initially spoken in reference to professional sports. You think you are an excellent football team, but if your record is 3 wins, 7 losses, then that record shows what you are - a subpar or at best a mediocre team. You are not excellent unless your actions show that excellence.
To extend the philosophy to "real life", if you say you are an "environmentalist," you need to do something in that regard rather than just talk that way and feel that way. If you consider yourself a "humanitarian," there needs to be something in your record of activities that confirms that philosophy; otherwise your humanitarianism is a subjective rather than on objective reality.
And... if you look at an election outcome and respond that "this is not who we are," you are on the wrong side of the argument that says your record says who you are.
(this is just a rough draft post. I've requested John-Paul Sartre's Being and Nothingness from the library. Hope to update this post later on.)
"The purpose of a system is what it does." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_purpose_of_a_system_is_what_it_does
ReplyDeleteBeat me to it
DeleteIs this where we insert the 'Thoughts and prayers to .....' ?
ReplyDeleteThoughts and prayers do nothing apart from apply salve to one's own guilt or sorrow.
Get up and DO something about the situation.
(I'm typing this at nigh on 11 am on a cool spring Monday morning in New Zealand, drinking coffee, and procrastinating)
Walk the walk...
ReplyDeletexoxoxoBruce
Some seemingly unrelated points to ponder.
ReplyDelete-Unfortunately, many non idigenous Americans have historically held oxymoronic 'nativist' beliefs.
-We have typically been very partison in our 'winner takes all' system of government, starting about 11 minutes after George Washington advised against this.
-Lack of good education means that many people often don't clearly understand 'cause and effect' of things like macroeconomics, especially inflation. A majority of voters alive today did not experience the massive inflation of the 70s and seem to think that the government can and should somehow reverse this. They {wrongly or rightly) don't look past their own narrow experience. (The gutting of publicly funded education plays in to this to some extent.)
Despite these and other factors, we have still managed to get through a Civil War and many other lesser upheavals, managing to (sometimes just barely) remain a noble experiment in representative democracy. Our record is not perfect, but we are generally leading our division in this regard. This shift towards fascism is alarming, but hopefully we can muddle through and continue as a democracy.
“Democracy is a poor system of government at best; the only thing that can honestly be said in its favor is that it is about eight times as good as any other method the human race has ever tried. Democracy's worst faults is that its leaders are likely to reflect the faults and virtues of their constituents - a depressingly low level, but what else can you expect?”
― Robert A. Heinlein, Stranger in a Strange Land
"A majority of voters alive today did not experience the massive inflation of the 70s and seem to think that the government can and should somehow reverse this."
ReplyDeleteSeems as though the people most worked up about inflation are of the generation who did live through and do remember that.
Google can't come up with exit polls by age group by issue yet, but anecdotally the impression I got from exit poll interviews I saw of people who said they were most concerned about the economy/inflation all seemed to be in their 30s or 40s... so a few may have been children during the 80s inflation, but while that was a pernicious slow burn, they would not have been the ones paying the bills then, and certainly not in the 70s
ReplyDeleteFor comparison's sake, as a 60s-70s child, I saw candy bars go from $0.05 to about $0.75 while I was growing up, roughly a factor of 15x. Since that point they have risen to maybe $2.00, which is less than a factor of 3x. Once prices go up they are not generally every going to go down unless something significant happens to alter supply or demand. The frustration with higher prices is a real and valid concern, and is certainly something worth considering when voting, especially if wages are not growing faster than inflation.
All I meant with the first post is that the people concerned with higher prices seem to think that they can be lowered somehow which, in a capitalist representative democracy, is not likely to happen unless dictatorial price controls are put in place.
Anton Chigurh: "If the rule you followed brought you to this, of what use was the rule?"
ReplyDeleteGreat movie. Thanks for the quote.
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