Where are we headed?

I was playing golf this past Thursday with Jim Lemon, a good friend of mine and, as we were preparing to tee off on the second hole at Heritage Hills, a head popped up a couple of hundred yards down our target line and motioned for us to go ahead and hit. We did, and as we drove down to our drives, we found an older guy and a young boy in a cart in the middle of the second fairway. We assumed one or both of them had hit a wayward drive on the par five eighth hole which parallels the second hole, so we continued to play out the hole. As we took the tee box on number three, I glanced over to the second fairway and saw the same twosome hitting towards the second green. I told Jim and, after we hit our tee shots, we got in the cart and drove back to the second green where Jim thanked them for allowing us to play through and also apologized because we didn't know that's what they were doing. The older guy said they were playing slow and his grandson was just learning the game and that's why they waved us through to begin with. Even though he said no apology was needed, he seemed to really appreciate us making the effort to drive back and thank him for letting us play through.

As we were driving back to our tee shots on number three, I mentioned to my good friend that it's a lot better and a lot easier to be kind than it is to be mean and he agreed wholeheartedly. Unfortunately, for a lot of our time we don't live in a world that rewards kindness over meanness. We live in a world of bluster and posturing where it seems far too often that the tougher you act, the more respect you get from men AND women. After centuries of thought and progress that took us from barbarism to the ages of reason and enlightenment, it appears we've turned the corner and are headed back in the direction we came from.

I'm not saying that I've never participated in the bluster and the posturing I'm criticizing because I have. I think a lot of it has to do with the situations we find ourselves in and the choice of friends and activities we participate in. I was an athlete in high school and college and, because of that, I was around run-away testosterone more than I was away from it. Most athletes and especially football players have to demonstrate their toughness every single day because that's part and parcel of being an athlete. We were constantly admonished by our coaches to show them how tough we were and to play through any pain we were experiencing. Even the nomenclature of football reflects this attitude. Phrases like "on the attack", "marching down the field" , "field general", "aerial attack", and "sudden death" suggest war, battle, fighting, surviving and winning. And because athletes also tend to socialize with each other off the field too, this general attitude goes with us to whatever social settings we find ourselves in as well.

Jim was telling me, as we continued our game, how he had a lot of fights when he was younger because he's always been a big guy and it seemed there was always someone out there who wanted to challenge him just because of his size. I wasn't a big guy growing up so I found myself in similar conflicts with other people for just the opposite reason. Because I was smaller, I was always having to prove my "toughness" to guys that were bigger then me.

Last semester I asked a class of 25 students, equally split between men and women, how many of them had been in at least one fight. All the guys except one raised his hand and over half the girls raised theirs. This is a question I wish I had been asking every year for the twenty five plus years I've been teaching because it seems like we're fighting each other more than ever.

I also asked the girls in that class if they were "impressed" by a guy who could put on a good showing in a physical confrontation and more than half of them said they were. I asked if they were more impressed by brains or brawn and all but one said brawn. To see this demonstrated in the real world, all we have to do is look around. Girls regularly hook up with guys who are mean; not only mean in general but mean to the girls as well. Girls hook up with guys who are distant and don't have the ability or the desire to express or display their tender sides. Girls hook up with guys who are indifferent to them, even distant to them. Girls hook up with guys who appear to be more interested in having a maid and a cook than they are in having a wife. And girls hook up with guys who emotionally, psychologically, and physically abuse them.

What causes this is obviously complex but it's as real as the nose on your face and it appears to be happening with more and more regularity.  It makes me wonder if we haven't lost our way.