When I signed on to spend a year teaching in a country that still registers as a blank space on some maps I've seen, I knew I would be doing a lot of "doing without". Pizza, beer, television, (for a time) internet access, my family, my friends, etc...it was a lot to give up at once, but I was pretty sure that the newness of the experience would make those absences seem more like trifles. But as a 22-year-old, red-blooded American male, what I've found to be one of the most frustrating things gone from my life is the thrill of professional and collegiate sports.
Maybe I was spoiled at The Ohio State University, a hotbed for all things athletic with consistently successful sports teams and IMHO the most intimidating home stadium/crowd in college sports. Chief among these sports, as is so often the case, is football. For 3 years I saw an excellent, albeit frustratingly static, football team take the field Saturday after Saturday. I would rather not think too much about my Senior year's football season, a post-Tresselgate fiasco that resulted in OSU's first losing season since before I was born. On top of all of this Saturday glory, my NFL fanhood reached obsessive new heights in my college years, driven principally by a) a hugely competitive/ego-ridden/hilarious fantasy football league, and b) no one telling me that I couldn't spend an entire Sunday on the couch trying to derive some higher meaning in an otherwise meaningless Browns-Raiders 1:05 matchup.
As it turns out, I did derive some meaning from all of those hours of alternately cheering and pounding refresh on Yahoo to see if any of my team's skill position players had eked out another 10 yards of offense to bump me into the lead. I just didn't realize what it was until I left the country, relying on 2-month-old Sports Illustrated issues for my football news. (Minor digression--it was a really strange feeling to get excited about U.S. Olympic victories in the first week of October, only to realize that the Games had ended literally 3 months before I read about them.)
What I think I discovered about football is that it's a great extant way to validate yourself. Watching all those games can bring you emotions that few other things can, for a number of reasons. One, there's something in the human spirit deeply invested in seeing difficult tasks executed to a beautiful perfection. Two, there's something else in the human spirit that derives endless amounts of pleasure from watching people who we expect to perform perfectly screw up on the biggest stages of their lives- call it the car accident mentality. Three, which is perhaps the most important part of this rant, it is a form of complete escapism. The successes of players and teams that you value become your own successes. The failures of those same teams and players, conversely, are not regarded as your failures. There are few other arenas in life where you can point specifically to the exact cause of your unhappiness and delight in the feeling that you've somehow been wronged, let down, by something or someone you care about more deeply than you have any sane reason to. Has anyone else noticed this? That people, beyond all scope of reasoning, actually love to be wronged? Maybe it comes from our inability to accept our own failures, that we revel in being able to define a source of our own unhappiness.
This is why, ultimately, I miss football more than I miss vegetables or waking up when I want to rather than at the hour the family rooster decides is appropriate to start his morning routine outside my window. Out here, successes in the classroom are extremely rewarding, but also come in inches instead of leaps and bounds. Failures in the classroom have several vague cultural causes, but inherent in all of those failures is the feeling that I have personally failed to succeed. I don't mean to make it out as though my life here is infinitely depressing or that teaching has been a disaster; in fact, living here is wonderful and in teaching I have found a real passion. But what my life is missing is that filter, that barrier of competitive football of which I am not a participant but a spectator. There are no HD cameras to capture my fleeting successes, and no distant superhuman athletes to pin my feelings of failure on when they do arise. So, my life here is difficult, almost expressly because I have given up the one thing Americans have found they can't live without-beyond sex, beyond beer, beyond McDonald's--something to hide behind.
Thursday, November 15, 2012
Thursday, March 8, 2012
Social Media, Invisible Children, and 11th Hour Activism
First off, I'd like to apologize for flooding everyone with what will surely be their umpteenth viewing of Kony-related media today. If you've spent any time online in the last 24 hours, I can pretty much guarantee you've at least seen the name "Josephy Kony" or the "KONY 2012" movement starting to spread. There is a positive side to this, and that's the fact that an entire generation of people is now at least acutely aware of some pretty awful atrocities that are occurring halfway across the world. It is admirable and somewhat amazing that so many of my Facebook friends, classmates, etc. have taken the time to watch Invisible Children's video about Kony and his crimes against humanity. Before today, I don't know how many people could even point out Uganda on a map, much less speak intelligently about any kind of issues present there.
This being said, I think it's of vital importance to call a spade a spade when it comes to this type of social movement. We have become, as my girlfriend so aptly put it, a society of 11th hour activists. We ready, fire, aim when it comes to trendy causes that actually stretch back decades. So many people lately seem to take special pride in being part of the "underrepresented masses"--whether it is the various Occupy movements or the Invisible Children, everyone seems determined to join up to feel like their voice, or the voices of the less fortunate, are being heard. As Neil DeGrasse Tyson puts it, "That's really what you want in life...you want to feel connected, you want to feel relevant, you want to feel like a participant in the goings on." There is nothing inherently bad or ignorant about this fact, it's part of the human experience.
But needing a level of connectivity doesn't excuse willful ignorance or uninformed thought. Let me preface this next section by making it absolutely clear that I believe what the members of Invisible Children Inc. are doing is incredibly noble, and what Joseph Kony and the LRA are doing is absolutely abhorrent. However, it disturbs me greatly that people my age can't help themselves when it comes to watered-down activism. Watching KONY 2012 is fantastic, it's a great first step. But where do we go from here? Shouting in protest about your tax bracket and unemployment is certainly within your rights. But does it put bread on your table?
The fact of the matter is, changing your Facebook profile picture is not going to directly remove a cruel warlord from power. Campaigns to create awareness generally do just that--make people aware. They do not change political structures, they do not force leaders to abdicate, and they don't pay your student loans for you. The other downside to all of this is that people watch a video like KONY 2012 and assume it tells the whole story. It neglects to mention the other organizations that are actually working to rebuild the infrastructure of Central Africa, so that the real Invisible Children have something to come home to. It neglects to mention that IC funnels money to the Ugandan government, and that is a major failing, because the government systems in other countries are not held accountable for every cent they take in. Intended or not, any social movement seeking to spread a message inherently creates its own propaganda.
I do not wish to denigrate those who have taken a vested interest in this or any other cause, particularly because some of our most inalienable human rights are at stake for people all over the world. Nor do I claim to be the most educated among my peers about Joseph Kony, Invisible Children, or anything related to this topic. All I really want is for my peers, this broad circle of 11th Hour Activists, to do more than repost, retweet, or re-anything. Take a moment, educate yourself a little more thoroughly, and then decide whether your cause is worth sharing with the world. To quote my Dad's favorite line from his favorite movie, "Fat, drunk, and stupid is no way to go through life". Quite frankly, neither is panicked, uninformed, and lazy.
This being said, I think it's of vital importance to call a spade a spade when it comes to this type of social movement. We have become, as my girlfriend so aptly put it, a society of 11th hour activists. We ready, fire, aim when it comes to trendy causes that actually stretch back decades. So many people lately seem to take special pride in being part of the "underrepresented masses"--whether it is the various Occupy movements or the Invisible Children, everyone seems determined to join up to feel like their voice, or the voices of the less fortunate, are being heard. As Neil DeGrasse Tyson puts it, "That's really what you want in life...you want to feel connected, you want to feel relevant, you want to feel like a participant in the goings on." There is nothing inherently bad or ignorant about this fact, it's part of the human experience.
But needing a level of connectivity doesn't excuse willful ignorance or uninformed thought. Let me preface this next section by making it absolutely clear that I believe what the members of Invisible Children Inc. are doing is incredibly noble, and what Joseph Kony and the LRA are doing is absolutely abhorrent. However, it disturbs me greatly that people my age can't help themselves when it comes to watered-down activism. Watching KONY 2012 is fantastic, it's a great first step. But where do we go from here? Shouting in protest about your tax bracket and unemployment is certainly within your rights. But does it put bread on your table?
The fact of the matter is, changing your Facebook profile picture is not going to directly remove a cruel warlord from power. Campaigns to create awareness generally do just that--make people aware. They do not change political structures, they do not force leaders to abdicate, and they don't pay your student loans for you. The other downside to all of this is that people watch a video like KONY 2012 and assume it tells the whole story. It neglects to mention the other organizations that are actually working to rebuild the infrastructure of Central Africa, so that the real Invisible Children have something to come home to. It neglects to mention that IC funnels money to the Ugandan government, and that is a major failing, because the government systems in other countries are not held accountable for every cent they take in. Intended or not, any social movement seeking to spread a message inherently creates its own propaganda.
I do not wish to denigrate those who have taken a vested interest in this or any other cause, particularly because some of our most inalienable human rights are at stake for people all over the world. Nor do I claim to be the most educated among my peers about Joseph Kony, Invisible Children, or anything related to this topic. All I really want is for my peers, this broad circle of 11th Hour Activists, to do more than repost, retweet, or re-anything. Take a moment, educate yourself a little more thoroughly, and then decide whether your cause is worth sharing with the world. To quote my Dad's favorite line from his favorite movie, "Fat, drunk, and stupid is no way to go through life". Quite frankly, neither is panicked, uninformed, and lazy.
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