Confidence

Jamie Vardy is a world class football (soccer) player. He holds the records for the most goals scored in the English Premier League for a player over 30 years old. He has won the Premier League in the greatest story in the history of team sport when Leicester were 5000/1 to win the league and did. He has played for England, he has won countless awards but today he had three opportunities he would normally put away in his sleep and he missed all three.

How is this possible? Well, with his team struggling at the moment and without him having scored, his confidence is low. The finishing may be instinctive, however, it still requires confidence. The story of when The Beatles (some British pop band) met Bob Dylan is two ‘people’ at the height of their fame and powers sitting awkwardly around each other until the poet Allen Ginsberg started passing round the marijuana. Why? Because they felt insecure.

So, if people at the heights of their powers feel insecure, then what is confidence?

Confidence can stem from two places, from without and from within. From within is the best place for within you know that you can do anything. You can score 100 goals in the Premier League, you can play music as Dylan did in 1966 to crowds who went there just to boo him for going electric, but, unfortunately, our perception of our abilities usually comes from without. We can do something and think it was great and receive a hostile or indifferent response. This, usually can be shrugged off, but if you are feeling a bit unsure of yourself, then these external factors can create internal doubt.   

The answer to this is not to care (within reason) what others think, but this is more easily said than done. We primarily get our sense of self from without, yet those who get it primarily from within still require external validation to give one the feeling of worth, not only on an internal level but also in a wider level, i.e. in the universe.

This is unrealistic and unhealthy but, ultimately, it is our reality.  However, through experience, through trial and error, we can find the external validation not from others but from the course of our experience. We learn we can do X, we learn we can survive Y, we can excel and become greater than we imagine.  How is this done? I’m not entirely sure, but current circumstances I am facing will prove an excellent case study to look at in a few months.

I’ll leave you for this week with a quote from Bob Dylan

“As great as you are, man,

You’ll never be greater than yourself…”

“I told her; I don’t really care”

‘till next time  

How What we Give our Perception to Shapes our Existence

When I was a child, I had problems with my legs. This then required physiotherapy. After school my mother would take me to appointments and I would sit there as the doctor twisted my legs behind my head whilst I visibly experienced distress. My mother would then give me my book to calm me. The book was a collection of football (soccer) statistics from a season I didn’t recall bought from my library when they were throwing it out because no one read it because it was so out of date (note: I was a cool kid). So, as I sat there engrossed in my book, the doctor would tie my legs in knots and ask if it hurt. I would look up from my book, surprised, and try to understand what he was talking about.

Due to my attention being given to a bunch of asinine statistics that no one really cared about two days after a match, my perception changed. I was no longer a kid being tortured; I was a kid reading a book. The actions were the same and the pain levels were the same but my perception of them was different.

In politics there is a strange phenomenon which can be characterised by the colloquial, turkeys voting for thanksgiving. The notion that a turkey would vote for something which would cause them slight discomfort (death then being eaten, although I suppose that’s preferable to the other way around) is illogical and absurd- who would vote for something which would cause them great detriment? However, if we look at politics, we can see this happening. For example, people from poor white areas in America voted for President Trump even though he took away their support structures and made it even harder for them to find any opportunities. Why? Well, because like a two-year-old they were tricked by the fundamental of magic- look the other way.

Imagine, if you will, you are in a situation where you, nor your parents, nor your children finished high school. You struggle to survive through whichever low skilled, temporary jobs you can get.  You have no aspirations; you have no dreams. For you this is normal and you don’t think about it. Suddenly, a self-professed billionaire (sure, why not) comes along and says ‘look how pathetic you are, but don’t worry, you’re not to blame, it’s those people with different skin colours or religions who are to blame!’. Suddenly you realise that you are living a life that one would never dream of, this hurts, but don’t worry, you also suddenly realise that it is not your fault, it is the fault of those who are different from you! Your anger now has a focus and a plan starts to form- go for a march and engage in casual brutal violence whilst chanting ‘X Group will not replace us’.  If you stepped back for a moment you may ask- am I really so easily replaced? I best make myself indispensable.  If you stepped back for a moment you may ask- hey, you’re a billionaire (allegedly), why not create a system where all can live comfortably and then worry about collecting your billions? But the misdirection confuses this, people are told- this is bad, that is who is to blame, get them before they get you!

How this is then perceived also shapes our response to it. CNN, and the likes, said- these are terrible people, how dare they riot. President Trump says- there are good people on both sides. Both of these responses drew the ire and incredulities of the other side, yet if one was to step back and give one’s attention to the events and not the coverage of the said events one might ask- why is this happening? Are there good people on both sides? Maybe, as F Scott Fitzgerald wrote, ‘before you judge a person, remember they may not have had the advantages that you’ve had’, so try to understand the person and the context and you may think- wait, if I was in this situation, maybe I would be acting in the same manner? This is a fundamental problem with society, there people are just pawns in a, frankly, pointless game- politics. Likewise, one might look at the situation and say, yes, I understand why they wanted to protest, but the violence, the hate speech, were uncalled for. Maybe if we took this in a still aggressive manner but less volatile, things will change? Yet to do this we have to be strong enough to acknowledge the truth of the situation and understand that, sometimes, pain, is an essential part, not only of social change, but also of personal growth.

By the way, did you know Eric Cantona played 21 times for Manchester United in the Premier League during the 1994/95 season, scoring 12 goals, before being suspended for kung fu kicking a Crystal Palace fan? See, stats are fun!

‘till next time      

Unconscious Biases and Equality

The other day England’s ladies’ team, The Lionesses, won their first major international trophy, winning the European Championship. This was seen, by many, as a turning point in the fight for equality in how men’s and women’s sport is perceived. After scoring the winning goal, the England player, as many players do, removed her shirt in the usual baffling celebration (note: this was reported on as- look she has emotions! She’s happy!). She then proceeded to pick up a yellow card for removing her shirt, as is the laws of the game. Suddenly presenters and the media, men and woman, had an iconic moment to cling to- look, they screamed, she wore a sports’ bra! The obvious response to this was, yeah, so? She’s a woman playing sport so a normal bra or no bra would hinder her ability which is why sports’ bras were invented…however, this was seen as a great iconic moment that will change the world forever- a footballer reminded the world that women have breasts.

Whilst this was seen in England as an iconic moment that will never be forgotten, the rest of the world said, uh, it happened also in 1999, don’t you remember?

On the back of the success, the media pointed out, with disgust, how the average wage for a woman playing in the Woman’s Super League (WSL) in England is £45,000 (or twice the wages of most teachers and nurses) compared to the multimillions made by men’s players in the Premier League. And so, the story was highjacked by the superficial and the nonsensical. What should have been a sporting moment to say, look, we won something, what have the men won? Maybe you should watch us more! became- look woman have breasts and unequal pay!

The question is, why did this story so quickly, from the moment it happened, become one devoid of real meaning, focusing on the irrelevant, i.e., clothes? It is because in society we have biases engrained into us. Women are to be judged on a superficial level only- how they look. That a moment of sporting success can be boiled down to ‘look, she wore a bra’, shows an ingrained thinking that women should be judged more on their looks than their content. This is not just in sport, it is in society- women in offices are judged more on looks than their male counterparts. Women’s fashion for formal wear in mind-bogging in kits vastness of possibilities whereas men just wear a suit (note: I personally find this unfair- living in t-shirts as much as I can, I dislike having to wear shirts), society, as a whole has gotten lost in the superficial and suffers because of it. Whilst one might argue some aren’t aware enough to rise to a higher depth (tee hee) this argument cannot hold for public people who shape our discourse, and as language shapes thought, our thinking. That a moment of sporting brilliance and euphoria can quickly be reduced to a woman wearing a bra just goes to show that society, and those shaping the public discourse, have an inherent bias against seeing women for what they really are- human.

‘till next time     

Why Romeo and Juliet is a Tragedy and Hamlet Isn’t

Two of William Shakespeare’s mot famous works are his adaptation of the Ancient Babylonian tale Pyramus and Thisbe and his adaptation of a historical text by Saxo Grammaticus, or as we know them Romeo and Juliet and Hamlet. One tells the tale of two ‘star-crossed lovers’ and the other of a young prince who is instructed to avenge his father’s death at the hands of his uncle. Both plays are considered tragedies, however, this definition could be confusing for are they really tragedies? According to the German philosopher Fredrich Nietzsche, the answer is no.

Nietzsche in his book The Birth of Tragedy splits Greek theatre into two areas- pre and post Euripides. Euripides famously was influenced by/worked with Socrates in crafting one or more of his plays and this, for Nietzsche, means that it cannot be a tragedy. Why? Because it involves cognitive thought. The pre-Euripidian plays (to create an arbitrary line in the sand) were plays from which the action stemmed from emotion- things happened and the actors reacted in an emotional way. Euripides comes along and suddenly the actors are thinking before they react. This, Nietzsche says, means that they are no longer tragedies. From this standpoint Romeo and Juliet which is the story of two children falling in love (or infatuation) and then scheming, in a half-baked manner, to run away together. This ends poorly as a lack of communication means they both commit suicide under the belief that the other is dead (to be fair, one of them was right in this assumption). This story is pure emotion and people reacting to the situation instinctively. Imagine, if you will, someone tells Romeo, ‘she will fake her death, don’t worry, just sit and play with you Nintendo Switch, and she’ll wake and you’ll leave’, and so Juliet wakes, sees him playing games, gets fed up at his lack of high culture and goes home in a strop. The smallest amount of clear thinking would have prevented the outcome of the play.

Hamlet, on the other hand, thinks too much. If he was to react to the emotion in a primitive manner, he would have run back into the castle, after changing his underpants from seeing a ghost, and slashed his uncle with his sword and proclaimed, in the words of John Wilks Booth when shooting US President Lincoln, ‘sic semper tyrannis’ (thus always to tyrants) and its status as a tragedy would have been confirmed. However, by taking the time to say, as the kids say, ‘what the f**k’, and thinking through the implications of what happened and trying to decide the best course of action, Hamlet does not, in Nietzsche’s definition, become a tragedy.

For me, the opposite is true. Tragedy lies in the realisation of the powerlessness of the individual. Romeo and Juliet are two children swept up in the emotion of the situation. They never take a step back to realise the situation, they, and those around them, are swept away like a hurricane never realising the actuality of the situation. I would argue, contra to Nietzsche, that this is not a tragedy for it is people acting without awareness. Is an animal being shot a tragedy? Depends on the context- for the animal, no, because it is probably not aware that it is dead. For the shooter? Depends. Maybe they don’t care, maybe the animal will let them survive a harsh winter. We cannot say, yet when we take a step back away from the immediacy of the situation then it can be shaped as a tragedy- did it have young depending on it? It was alive, now it is dead, etc. In these questionings one thing is true- say it is now dead and has young it needs to tend for who will now die- so what? Can we bring it back to life? Can we restore that which was taken? The answer to these questions is no. we may mitigate the situation by finding the young and taking them to a nature sanctuary but ultimately, we are powerless in the face of this new, great knowledge. And so, as with young Hamlet, we fret, we rent our clothes, we scream into the abyss knowing, in the words of Macbeth it is, ‘a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing’, which is why, in the purest sense Hamlet is the tragedy and not Romeo and Juliet.

‘till next time