I suspect this is perhaps the 27 installment of this particular discourse, but hey, sometimes you just want to rant. As usual, my train of thought isn't even remotely complete - we'll just see where this leads.
A discussion at work today regarding 'performance enhancing drugs' found me, as usual, playing the devil's advocate and of course sent me off on several tangents:
Steroids are bad for you, almost universally, but they do potentially allow you to hit 70 home runs a year, something you could argue is part of your job description. You are an adult, and as a professional athlete who most likely has eliminated all semblances of a balanced life in pursuit of a rarefied level of ability, many of your choices would likely be seen as both physically and emotionally unhealthy if not for the fact of your 7 figure salary. Only as a matter of degree (and as I see it, a small one) are steroids different than the laundry list of choices you've made to achieve your status. We're long past the era of 'natural' athletes. No, virtually all of our professional athletes take a natural ability and dedicate a portion of their lives to augmenting that ability, often at great cost to other aspects of their lives.
Society believes that steroids cross a line. I agree that steroids should not be allowed in amateur sports, and absolutely no tolerance should exist for violations of this, but once you are an adult, and especially once your livelihood depends on your performance, why shouldn't it be allowed? It seems like the only real reason is that somehow it seems wrong, and ultimately that steroids are 'icky'.
The argument I like to put forth as the contradiction to society's views on steroids is the total acceptance of athletes who have their vision improved to greater than 20/20 (Tiger Woods being the most well known, though not the only example). Sure, the long term health effects are clearly insignificant relative to steroid use, but this is still an enormous artificial advantage. No amount of exercising will ever improve your vision to that achievable by surgery, while a relentless devotion to weight lifting and specialized diet can get you very close to the effects of steroids. It takes a crazy amount of work, but it is something your body is capable of on its own. Super vision is not. If medical science figures out how to graft additional muscle onto your existing muscles, or replace them with synthetic materials better than natural muscle, would that be acceptable for an athlete to undergo?
And the argument that everyone can have their eyes adjusted is useless, since everyone could choose to use steroids too, and in many sports have and do. Just because everyone isn't willing to suffer the effects of steroids does not mean that the option is not there, other than it being against the rules.
So that sent me into thinking about the other odd lines that society has drawn:
Extreme graphic violence -ok versus naked breasts - bad
Destructive behaviors like steroid use - bad versus riding a motorcycle without a helmet (in many states) - ok
In-vitro fertilization -ok (despite extreme embryo destruction) versus abortion bad (this obviously only applies to a certain portion of society)
Alcohol - ok versus marijuana - bad
War - ok versus embryonic stem cell research - bad
On this last one, Mike Pence R-IN, stated Thursday that people that morally oppose embryonic stem cell research should not have their tax dollars used to fund it. My counter argument was that my tax money shouldn't be used for wars to which I am morally opposed - namely almost all of them. War is failure. It means everything else has failed. To use a phrase likely issued by Mike Pence - that dog don't hunt.
On the nudity - movies (or video games) with ridiculous amounts of gore and violence achieve PG13 ratings while pretty much anything with nudity, no matter how 'tasteful', is rated R. It seems a totally distorted view, and all the while ridiculous amounts of sexual innuendo is featured prominently on network tv every single night.
Most of the above relates to the Puritan part of my post title, though the alcohol versus marijuana relates directly to the Dirty Hippy part.
Our society disdains the 'dirty hippy'. All that free love, peace and drug use from the 60's, the 'reefer madness' of the 50's, and anyone associated with it is seen as a useless part of society, while manly men that gets drunk every night after work are lauded in beer commercials every day. I can only assume that the negative impact on society of excessive alcohol use is vastly greater than a similar use of marijuana - and this is from someone who doesn't use marijuana, but who drinks fairly regularly.
And beyond that, what the dirty hippie symbolizes to many is the failure of the Vietnam War and a sort of liberal defeatism. Even if almost universally right in their view that Vietnam was a horrible misguided adventure that lead to the deaths of 58,000 Americans, the dirty hippy is bad for America and should not be taken seriously. They're dirty. And their hippies. And they make critical statements about America.
And all tied into the Myth of America, wherein tough, dumb guys are seen as better than smart people of any lesser level of toughness.
6 comments:
You say some interesting things. I agree with most of what you say. You are a brilliant man.
p.s Having a hoot at Dan's.
I agree with almost everything you say, and could have been quotes as saying at one time or another, pretty much what you said regarding breasts, TV violence, stem cell research, "real men," marijuana, and war. Not entirely decided on the steroid thing. I do think it receives an incredibly unwarranted amount of the country's attention and discourse time. Imagine if Joe Sports Radio spent half the amount of time paying attention to their elected officials' voting records that they do discussing this silly topic.
Not sure if the abortion bad vs. in-vitro fertilization is a totally valid comparison. One involves blastocysts, and one involves a little creature that future parents ogle over in ultrasounds. To put it another way (the McCoy way, not the Spock way): If I had been told a number of Sharon's pregnancies ended after 3-5 days, I wouldn't have lost too much sleep. But if we had lost a fetus at 6 months, I would have suffered over that for the rest of my life.
I guess it comes down to the percentage of pregnancies terminated before viability - to use horrible technical terminology for a very visceral subject.
The fact remains that most of the vocal critics of SCR believe life begins at conception and the distinction between blastocysts and fetuses is irrelevant.
But for me, the distinction is everything. It is by by a matter of degrees that grows day by day from conception.
I am, in fact, proud if I am arguing from a totally different perspective than a majority of the "most vocal" opponents of abortion. That would seem to almost certainly indicate that mine is a position of some logic.
I don't disagree.
I see what you are saying about the steroids, but if it were legal and acceptable, I would wonder what the landscape might be. Super athletes, the product of secret drug research funded by god knows who vs. weaker slower athletes who decided on some grounds NOT to alter their bodies. I guess there would have to be the Super League of Baseball as well as MLB, SBA and NBA SFL and NFL.
The breast thing and Janet Jackson compared to the violence it was celebrating. Crazy!! Good Post.
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