Merlin

When you're looking for extraordinary depth of character, the NFL doesn't immediately come to mind as a producer of such.  From the Los Angeles Rams, though, there have been some exceptional men.

Merlin Olsen was an impressive fellow.  A Pro Football Hall of Fame member, he had a reputation for being a good hearted fellow on and off the field.  Rosey Grier spoke well of him, having become close friends during their years together, and he wept when Olsen died.  "I loved that man," he said. "I really loved him."

Olsen, along with Rosey Grier, Deacon Jones, and Lamar Lundy were the Los Angeles Rams "Fearsome Foursome" who dominated the league for fifteen years.  Olsen was elected to play in 14 consecutive pro-bowls beginning with his rookie season in 1982.  The foursome were close friends for life.

After retiring from football, Olsen was a football commentator for NBC and became an actor as well.  He starred with Michael Landon in Little House on the Prairie and later as Father Murphy, both of which were quite popular.  And wholesome.

"Merlin was always doing good work to help other people have a meaningful life," said Grier, who was told of Olsen's death by Elizabeth Jones, Deacon's wife. "He was always there for you, no matter what."  He was known to be intimately involved in charitable works, and hosted telethons for the benefit of those in need.  

He lived deliberately and even had a written mission statement which was made public by his family after he passed away.

*The focus of my life begins at home with family, loved ones and friends. I want to use my resources to create a secure environment that fosters love, learning, laughter and mutual success.

... on the wall at Olsen's alma mater.

*I will protect and value integrity.

*I will admit and quickly correct my mistakes.

*I will be a self-starter.

*I will be a caring person.

*I will be a good listener with an open mind.

*I will continue to grow and learn.

*I will facilitate and celebrate the success of others.

All in all, an extraordinary gentleman who lived his convictions; perhaps an encouraging example for us all.

The world has changed since Olsen's generation.  I wonder how he might have formed his personal mission now that the world is so interconnected.  What we do here, good or bad, affects them all.  Would he have enlarged his view a bit, expanded his goal to include the larger community of humanity?  I expect so, he was a good guy; we could use more like him.

To be! Or not ...

To be, or not to be, that is the question.  Whether 'tis nobler to suffer the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune, or to take arms against a sea of troubles, and by opposing, end them.  'Tis an end devoutly to be wish'd, yet the weight of heart for such an endeavor is sufficient to devour the strength of one who walks alone, and that which accompanies a father with his son in battle is more than can be borne unless heaven wars on their behalf.

To be, or instead perhaps, to have, and to pursue the having; 'tis the satisfaction of every dream, of every desire; and by having, we say we end the heartache, and the thousand natural shocks a day might bring.  Having heals it all.  To have, perchance to have continually more; aye, there's the rub, for we know not what the pursuit itself may bring.  'Tis known, though, that when we have shuffled off this mortal coil, having much will be our grand advancement.  Because Wall Street and Madison Avenue say so, and they wouldn't lie to us.

Having or being, ... as divergent as these ways might be, the two are each religions of a sort. Eric Fromm in his discussion of the divergence understood religion to be“any group-shared system of thought and action that offers the individual a frame of orientation and an object of devotion”, and he says that modern society is characterized by this new religion – of 'having'. In this new religion people serve the economy, and the objects of worship are work, property, and power. To Fromm, this state of things is fundamentally wrong.

“Modern man has transformed himself into a commodity; he experiences his life energy as an investment with which he should make the highest profit, considering his position and the situation on the personality market. He is alienated from himself, from his fellow men and from nature. His main aim is profitable exchange of his skills, knowledge, and of himself, his "personality package" with others who are equally intent on a fair and profitable exchange. Life has no goal except the one to move, no principle except the one of fair exchange, no satisfaction except the one to consume.  p97.” 
― Erich Fromm, The Art of Loving

He suggests this unhealthy shaping can be reversed, but much of life must change. Women have long been a "property" of men.  The rich have long enslaved the poor.  This race has long subjugated that race.  The powerful have long abused the disenfranchised.

Acknowledging the complexity of such a task as finding a “cure” for the world, Fromm is sure that the chances for success are small. However, he still hopes that the new “City of Being” will come to be the next global vision (Fromm 202).

Global vision?  Or perhaps
a personal path ...

Was Fromm overly pessimistic about the destiny of the world?  He didn't live long enough to see the fearful expectation of WW III evaporate when the Soviet Union collapsed.  The world is much different, the scale of wars is decreasing, and globalization is changing everything.  Of course, resources all over the world are now in decline, economic troubles afflict most people in the world, and the social gap is widening at an accelerating pace. Fromm may or may not have considered globalization a good step forward. It's what we've got to work with, however.  A cure for the world; or perhaps an individual path.

You must choose wisely ...

The bad guy, he chose poorly ...

Our culture shapes us and our children, powerfully and emphatically.

Unless we wisely choose a better way; no?    

The Law of Averages

It doesn't work well in real life, primarily because there's no such law.

Were it not for smart people in my life, I'd not have known that you have to have a very large sample set before it begins to get close to helpful.  In the real world, stuff happens.

Playing roulette, for example; I tried it as a young sailor overseas. Bet this and that color, here and there, double if, etc. It perhaps would have almost worked if there had been enough samples. Bad math cost me two weeks pay.  A valuable lesson.

Everything can get skewed.  An extra day of spring rain, an unexpected crowd at the market, traffic on the beltway; we adapt.

This year's maize crop; a small hand-managed
field in coastal Kenya.

It's harder for some than for others, sometimes. Like in Kenya where our friends live in the coastal region. This year's rainy season has been good so far, so the corn is growing nicely.  They hope for a much better harvest than in previous years. They've endured about ten consecutive years of drought.  As with many challenges in life, averages don't help when the rain doesn't fall.  They and we also are thankful for the year's rain.

Large-eared People

Above, the discovered diversity of Asia's people, from Nordisk familjebok (1904) (A Swedish Encyclopedia)

For two centuries, western culture referred to Asia as though
 it were one place, one culture, one race.

 Africa is often viewed in a similar fashion as if it were
just a place and not larger and more diverse than the USA, China,
 India, Japan, and all of Europe, combined.

'Race' was the way we differentiated between 'us and them' when I was a kid. That colonial era perspective is now obsolete.^[a]  Science has disproved racial explanations for physical and behavioral traits.^{[b][c][d][e][f]}

"By the 1970s, it had become clear that (1) most human differences are cultural; (2) what is not cultural is principally polymorphic – that is to say, found in diverse groups of people at different frequencies; (3) what is not cultural or polymorphic is principally clinal – that is to say, gradually variable over geography; and (4) what's left – the component of human diversity that is not cultural, polymorphic, or clinal – is inconsequential. Genetics has undermined the fundamental assumptions of racial taxonomy."   `Marks

The consensus among anthropologists and geneticists is that race – as largely discrete, geographically distinct gene pools – does not exist.

Asiatiska folk

1. Tsjuktsjer. (Chukchi people)

2. Kamtsjadal. (Itelmens or Kamchadal)

3. Aino. (Ainu people)

4. Giljakiska. (Nivkh people or Gilyak)

5. Samojed. (Samoyedic peoples)

6. Ostjak. (Ostyak peoples)

7. Tatar. (Tatars)

8. Kirgis. (Kyrgyz people)

9. Burjät. (Buryats)

10. Kalmuckiska. (Kalmyk people)

11. Tungus. (Tungusic peoples)

12. Golder. (Nanai people, formerly known as Golds or Samagir)

13, 14. Japan och japanska. (Japanese people or Yamato people)

15. Korean. (Koreans)

16. Lao. (Lao people)

17. Kines. (Chinese people)

18. Negrito. (Negrito peoples)

19. Bataviska. (Betawi people, named after Batavia, Dutch East Indies)

20. Javan. (Javanese people)

21. Sundanska. (Sundanese people)

22. Bata (Sumatra). (Batak people)

23. Dajak (Borneo). (Dayak people)

24. Inföding på Celebes. (Indigenous people of Sulawesi or Celebes)

25. Georgiska. (Georgian people)

26. Tsjerkess. (Adyghe people or Circassians)

27. Kabardin. (Kabarday or Kabardin people)

28. Arab. (Arab people)

29. Jude. (Jews)

30. Vedda (på Ceylon). (Vedda people)

31. Singales. (Sinhalese people)

32. Indier. (Indian people)

33. Perser. (Persian people)

34. Belutsjer. (Baloch people)

35. Kosack. (Cossacks)

One perhaps humorously revealing analysis from 1904 (picture, above) shows the variations among those who had previously been lumped into the single racial category of Asian.  From personal opinion to foreign policy, that was the context.

Race?
Presumed in early thought to have defined 'different origins' than 'us', race marked a valuative dividing line between populations, much of which persists today despite a lack of supporting evidence.  Modern anthropologists acknowledge that all of humanity is descended from a single genetic origin.

If we still need to somehow visually categorize ourselves for the purpose of personal elevation and valuation, I think we should note the extraordinary coolness of large-eared people. Like myself, for example.

May 35th

Students in Beijing were recently shown this iconic picture and asked if they recognized it.  Most did not.  The event isn't mentioned in their schools or discussed in the media.  A few did know what the picture was about and were uneasy at being asked where others might hear.

Twenty-five years ago on June 4th, the protest in Tiananmen Square became a massacre.

If you search the popular Weibo search engine, China's google-equivalent with 500 million subscribers, you get the following, "According to relevant laws, statutes and policies," the results of the search "cannot be shown."

The now-infamous square, named after the Tiananmen Gate (Gate of Heavenly Peace, ironically), saw a pro-democracy demonstration in 1989 that ended in martial law with civilians being shot by soldiers.  Hundreds at least, perhaps a thousand or more died.  Some escaped to tell the story, for which we're thankful.

Chinese authorities have for years been suppressing discussion and remembrance of the event.

Google has been suspended in China for the occasion, CNN tells us this morning.

For those in China who do remember, veiled references to the June 4th event are used to speak surreptitiously about the issue.  'May 35th' was one such reference.

As annoying as it might be to hear others speak on political issues, left and right, informed and not, I treasure the freedom I have to hold an opinion and talk about government from time to time.  We're fortunate in our freedom.

What about pornography?

Why would this be the choice for a book

cover?  It is designed to catch your

attention, of course.  Sex sells.  It's

the centerpiece in much of the

advertising and  programming

we see every day.  Our kids

are fed the same diet.

Pornography is not a starting point.  Porn is the far end of a media spectrum that commonly sexualizes images, storylines, and advertising.

These are all advertisements for ... fast food.
Why would that be acceptable?

For men, it is one more of many choices along the pathway of character, and it is a long, long way down the road from nobility and virtue. 

It's perhaps helpful to consider the people involved.

In non-religious terms, porn affects the way the viewer thinks.  A guy with a porn-exposure lifestyle, for example:

• may find it difficult to relate to a pretty girl as just a person.  True?
• may struggle trying to relate to his wife as a person to the same degree as before.  True?
• may have difficulty coaching his kids through the difficult years of sexual maturation.  True?
• may find difficulty relating to young people in his life; family, church, community.  True?
• may, in later years, perhaps regretfully understand the self-imposed shaping of his mind in regards to life, love, family, and people.  True?
• The portrayal is diametrically opposed to healthy family, obviously.

Brain Shaping:

As men fall deeper into the mental habit of fixating on [pornographic images], the exposure to them creates neural pathways. Like a path is created in the woods with each successive hiker, so do the neural paths set the course for the next time an erotic image is viewed. Over time these neural paths become wider as they are repeatedly traveled with each exposure to pornography. They become the automatic pathway through which interactions with women are routed.  They have unknowingly created a neurological circuit that imprisons their ability to see women rightly.  (Wired For Intimacy, 85).

Behavior Shaping:

Pornography works in the most basic of ways on the brain.  It is Pavlovian. An orgasm is one of the biggest reinforcers imaginable. If you associate orgasm with your wife, a kiss, a scent, a body, that is what will turn you on; if you open your focus to a stream of cybersex images, that is what it will take to turn you on. The ubiquity of sexual images does not free eros but dilutes it.

Softcore Manhood:

As a business, pornography is the same
as the sale of illicit drugs.
There is no altruistic motive, no exercise
of free speech, no artistic expression,
just business and exploitation of
the participants.

Sexual representations in advertising as well as in pornography affect men and their clarity regarding their role. Softcore pornography enables and teaches men to view women as objects for pleasure rather than as individuals. Pornography gives men a false impression that sex and pleasure are divorced from relationship. Pornography is inherently self-centered – something a man does by for himself – by using an available girl as the means to pleasure, another product to consume.

Pleasure Killer:

Pornography leaves men desensitized to both outrage and to excitement, leading to an overall diminishment of feeling and eventually to dissatisfaction with the emotional tugs of everyday life…Eventually they are left with a confusing mix of supersized expectations about sex and numbed emotions about women…  The real world often gets really boring…” (Pornified, 90, 91).

Woman Shaper:

Porn affects the way the viewed subject thinks.  Porn gives girls a place to sell their bodies, and in return requires of them their mind.  A woman who spent time in the porn industry or the do-it-yourself equivalent has shaped her own thinking about herself, her worth as a person, and her value in any relationship.  She's likely to be changed for life.  That's decades of regret and awareness of loss.

The Narrowed Life:
Dines records how porn tells a false story about men and women. In the story of porn, women are “one-dimensional”–they never say no, never get pregnant, and can’t wait to have sex with any man and please them in whatever way imaginable (or even unimaginable). On the other hand, the story porn tells about men is that they are “soulless, unfeeling, amoral life-support systems for erect penises who are entitled to use women in any way they want. These men demonstrated zero empathy, respect, or love for the women they have sex with…(Pornland, xxiv).”

The expected bad news (since millions of viewers and billions of dollars are involved) is that there's no good result from either the production or consumption of pornography.  It has a long-term impact on the lives of folks involved, all of which is detrimental, much of which is life-limiting and individually crippling.

Freedom of speech being considered, perhaps by some overreach of reasoning there's a right to say and do pornography.  That doesn't mean that the saying and doing isn't knowingly harmful. No surprise there.

Pornography, as was said, is not a starting point.  Porn is the far end of a media spectrum that commonly sexualizes images, storylines, and advertising.  When someone steps over the boundary into porn, it's not their first step in that direction.

Note:  Pornography is part of a broad business approach that is visible in many venues. Sexualized imagery is used to attract and extract wealth for a few at the expense of individuals and the culture as a whole.  

For us as individuals, just avoiding porn is not the goal.  Rising up to the freedom of clear thinking, unencumbered by shallow selfishness, living with the long view of great good for ourself and others -- that's the goal.

(This post was occasioned by a radio discussion.  A young man insisted fervently that there was nothing wrong with porn, and a broken-hearted wife recounted the damage it was doing to her relationship with her husband.)

From the forward to Stephen Arterburn's book, Every Man's Battle.