LanceWillett.com

I posted a short entry about God’s Debris in mid-December. My intention was to read the book and then share my impressions here. The reason it’s be such a long delay is that I decided to read the book again. I felt it was necessary to pay better attention to the various themes in the book in order to explain my reactions and thoughts.

The book is interesting in that it has different levels within the story. The gist of the story is a conversation between a very old man and a young man that arrives at his door. Their conversation makes up most of the book and creates situations that the author intended to make us think about ourselves and our world.

The superficial level in the book is the main characters’ experience as they interact. It is fantastical, yet believable, and weaves the other two levels together. The book wouldn’t quite work without the story line; but it would also be worthless without the thought experiment held within.

The second level involves practical advice for living. The young man gets solid counseling from the old man regarding love, relationships, friendships, luck, and success in life. This level is interesting, engaging, and useful for anyone that reads it. It is still not the main focus of the dialog, however.

Finally, the deepest of the three levels or themes is driven by the old man’s teaching of how the world works. Throughout the book the story line jumps between levels one and two but often gets injected with number three. This third and most important theme is a philosophical commentary about faulty, human-centric world views. The old man covers science, religion, culture, and many other issues within this commentary.

After the second reading of the book, I started to separate these streams into their own sub-books and ideas. This helped me to take away the good ideas and leave behind what I thought wasn’t as valuable.

The best part of the book, in my opinion, is that third and most profound level. It’s an analysis into our cultural framework that mirrors the thinking and reading that have guided my spiritual, mental, and emotional journey in the last four to five years. This thought experiment really caught me off-guard with how much it related to my own development.

For that reason alone I would recommend this book to anyone. Be prepared to see through the story and the practical advice, though, in order to seize the grains of cultural analysis that lie below. Adams’ purpose in writing the book is to cause the reader to think, and it did just that for me.

Read God’s Debris (free PDF download).

“TROUBLEMAKERS” by Malcolm Gladwell is an interesting read. If you’ve enjoyed Blink or The Tipping Point, then go read this New Yorker article. It delves into human psychology much like those two best-sellers do.

The tagline for Gladwell’s piece is “What pit bulls can teach us about profiling.” Dogs, pit bulls in this case, often get a very bad reputation through no fault of their own. In most cases it’s the negligence or purposeful intent of the owners that causes the dogs’ bad behavior.

The article explores the reasons behind aggressive dog behavior and why it has led to large-scale generalization and profiling of certain dog breeds. This in turn provides a great example of how we come to profile any manner of object, person, or animal.

Like I said, it’s a good read; it will make you think. I’ve already started to look at dogs in a different way.

Visit site.

[Tip: if you go to the Printable version of the article, it really helps with its readability.]

Never heard classic English Literature quite like this!

Howard Shepherd, one of the Word Nerds, recently made my day by doing a rap version of the famous literary work, Beowulf. Howard did the piece as a demonstration of rhythm and meaning in English as part of one of the Word Nerds’ podcasts.

As a high school English teacher, he one day had the realization that Beowulf and modern American gangster rap (hip-hop) music had the same rhythm. The meter of both the poem and the music were trochaic tetrameter—go figure!

Listen to the podcast, and in minute 25 or so you’ll hear for yourself.

This topic first came up about two years ago, while I was working at an outdoor shop in Tucson, Arizona. One of my colleagues was living with a sports addict. Her boyfriend was a classic case, watching ESPN all day. If no major sports were on, such as hockey, football, baseball, basketball, or soccer – he would simply watch whatever happened to be showing: cricket, billiards, ping-pong, and such.

My colleague complained that her boyfriend would also listen non-stop to sports radio. Many times these activities would interrupt their conversations and time spent together. She wasn’t able to watch anything on TV that wasn’t sports! I listened to her stories, and decided to share my own experience with sports addiction. I explained that her boyfriend wasn’t a lone case.

Everything Sports

It was fresh in my mind since I had just started my “recovery” from sports addiction a few months earlier. Luckily, ESPN’s cable TV programming wasn’t part of my routine, but everything else sports-related was fair game. I listened to ESPN radio religiously; I don’t say this jokingly – it was obsessive worship. Any time sports were on local TV, I was glued. I followed sports web sites to see scores, highlights, pictures, and read commentary.

Fantasy leagues were common in my life also – I did football, baseball, and basketball every year. Last but not least, I would open up any newspaper, skip the front couple sections, and go right for the sports page. Often that was the only part of the paper I consumed.

During spring and summer I listened to every Major League Baseball game that was broadcast from our local radio station. Exasperated, my wife asked me how I could possibly plan my day and week around a game on TV or radio, and I didn’t know how to explain it. It was then I realized she was living with a sports addict.

Stop the Bleeding

My decision to stop the bleeding came during one of the goal sessions that I share with my wife. We sit down at least once a year to discuss the year past and the year ahead. We share our thoughts, goals, and dreams. I mentioned that I wanted to make a change. About the same time, I purchased a new computer and considered starting a web design business. It worked out well since the web design learning and projects took lots of time – time I could no longer commit to sports.

Why did I do it? My relationship with my wife, job, and other hobbies were suffering. That’s it, plain and simple. Like some things in life, however, I couldn’t just quit sports by weaning myself slowly off. It had to be a clean break.

I deleted my fantasy sports league subscriptions and declined further invitations to join. I stopped watching and listening to sports and related programming. If I saw a newspaper, I would read the Business and Culture sections instead. It worked well! These days I do occasionally catch a game or two – but I certainly am not as involved emotionally, mentally, and financially as before.

Sports as Religion

There are many correlations between sports and religion, especially in terms of adoration of stars and spending a full Saturday or Sunday worshiping. Spending the day enthralled in worship and adoration could be said of both fervent parishioners and sports fans. The ardor involved in passionately following a team or sport fulfills one’s need for something bigger to root for – a larger cause. For many it has ties to religion, patriotism, family, and geographic identity. The feeling of involvement in something larger than life is a very strong motivation.

There is also the reflection of a “warlike” mentality. In this mentality there is always a clear winner and loser, which reminds me of good versus evil; you are either for us or against us. If you are on the winning side, you are justified in your fanaticism and belief. This reinforces the adoration and worship all over again.

For myself it was all these things and more. Sports involved a strong geographic identity: I had bonds to the Buffalo Bills, Arizona Diamondbacks, University of Arizona college athletics, and soccer teams from France and Mexico. It was a means of connecting with friends, family, and millions of other souls across the world. As in religion, the more I invested in it, the more I got out of it.

Interested But Not Addicted

Don’t get me wrong, I think that it is fine to be interested in sports, even to be a dedicated fan… but it was very consuming for me in particular. It ate up a lot of time, energy, and a good amount of money too. As with wine, good food, and outdoor adventure, a balanced diet of sports is the key to not letting it get the best of you.