Golf is Not a Metaphor for Anything!

I don’t play golf. I don’t know anything about the game. If asked, I wouldn’t be able to tell the difference between a birdie, an eagle, two penguins and a duck, or whatever other fowl they use to keep score. (Personally, I think most games where the lowest score wins are suspect, anyway.) However, that’s not to say I am philosophically opposed to golf. I’m not one of those people who wants to dig up all the golf courses and plant potatoes for the poor or anything. I just don’t see the obsessive enjoyment golfers get from the game. At the risk of pissing off many of my relatives and most of my friends, I have no idea why anyone would want to spend a Sunday morning stumbling around a pasture in the first place. Nor do I see the intrinsic excitement involving in whacking a little white ball with what appears to be a medieval weapon best suited for hand-to-hand combat — especially since the purpose is to somehow drive the ball into a tiny hole that’s normally 200, 300 or an inconceivable 400 yards away. Quite frankly, at that distance, I couldn’t clearly identify a Baltimore Ravens linebacker let alone a hole in the ground that’s the size of a teacup. In fact, I think getting your little white ball even close to the hole it’s supposed to go into is a matter of out and out luck. And actually putting it in with any regularity has got to be wizardry at its most occult – Annika Sorenstam notwithstanding.

However, as much as I could badmouth golf all day, the only reason I’m even writing about it is it has one amazing feature which simply doesn’t exist in any other sport – the Mulligan. For the uninitiated, the Mulligan is basically a do-over. It works like this. You’re standing over your ball, rear back and give it a mighty wallop and it goes someplace unfortunate, like into your opponent’s ear or miraculously through the window of a passing car. Rather than just swear for an hour and get three Budgies (or whatever) on your score card, you can simply declare a Mulligan and do it all again. Obviously, when the big boys are playing the Interplanetary Championship, it’s not allowed (otherwise Tiger Woods would still be hauling in the hardware) but in most friendly games it’s perfectly legal. Weird, huh?

Nobody seems to know where this strange scenario came from (It certainly wasn’t invented by the Scots — who are Presbyterian to the bone) but it’s been around since the first part of the last century. It’s always attributed to some guy named Mulligan. However, after that, the only thing we can say with any certainty is he must have been bigger and meaner than the fellows he was playing with; otherwise they wouldn’t have let him cheat like that. It’s no wonder that this kind of chicanery caught on, though; golfers are notorious for bending the rules. Even before Mary, Queen of Scots, took to the links, golfers were kicking sand on each other’s balls and lying about their handicaps (challenges?) The Mulligan is right up their fairway. Fortunately, this Mulligan nonsense never migrated into more important sports. Third and ten, bottom of the ninth, three seconds left on the Shot Clock: none of that would work at all, if every coach could just holler “Mulligan!” and get to do it over again. (It’s a good thing they can’t, either, or there wouldn’t be a respectable bookie left anywhere from here to Vegas.)

They say sports, like art, imitates life. We have highs and lows, triumphs and defeats, and all the other clichés in between. I imagine there are whole battalions of philosophers out there explaining how the game of golf is a metaphor for life and wouldn’t it be nice if we could all just take a Mulligan when we screw up. Who cares? For my money, reading about golf is probably just as boring as the game itself. Besides, does anybody really want a world with every idiot and his half-witted cousin running around going Groundhog Day on life’s well-manicured pasture, forever trying to get it right?

Are We Stupid or What?

Sometimes I think we’re living in the stupidest time period of all history and if we get any stupider we’re going start eating each other. And I’m not talking about ‘tell me the difference between fusion and fission” stupid; I’m talking about “stuck for an answer” stupid. Personally, I don’t care. The optimist in me says, “Saner heads will eventually prevail.” However, I do wish we’d stop running around congratulating each other and finally admit that most of the people who are supposed to know better never quite get their IQ above room temperature. It would make it so much easier for regular people to function and get a few things done.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, I understand every human being has something to contribute to society. However, where’s the law that says every contribution is a positive one? Let me demonstrate. Remember that group project you did in high school. And remember that one jerk who did all the jawing but whose major contribution was wasting tons of time playing catch-up ‘cause mostly he didn’t bother to show up? And didn’t you end up doing most of his work for him ‘cause you knew he wouldn’t get it done? Wasn’t he the one who got the same B plus as you did? Any of this ring a bell? Now, broaden your outlook to the wider world. Remember, that same jerk graduated when you did, and, believe me, his diploma wasn’t a magic talisman that changed his entire personality! Look around you. There are way more of them out there than there are of us. Again, let me demonstrate.

It’s no secret that there’s a war going on in this world against women. Look in any direction but north and women are getting stomped on, beaten up, raped, killed and incinerated. Female teachers are being shot; female students are dodging bats, bullets and bags of acid just to go to school. And whatever you do, stay off the buses. In some parts of the world, women aren’t allowed to drive or even ride a bicycle. Generally, that’s a moot point though, because in many places, they aren’t allowed out of the house without a male escort anyway — and in others they’re not allow out at all. And here’s one for WTF logic: in more than one country, the penalty for rape is public stoning…to death…for the victim!

However, take a look at every “Women’s” magazine (paper or electronic) anywhere in the Western world, and what’s the top story? (You don’t even have to guess.) Right after “Get Organized, You Lazy Lump” and “How to Drive Your Man Crazy in Bed” – it’s Kim Kardashian’s New Year’s pregnancy dress. Yep, Kimmie and Kanye are going to have a baby! Stop the Internet: we’re going viral! Frankly, I don’t see what the big deal is. Did anybody really believe the King and Queen of Obnoxious could control themselves once they saw the Baby Making headlines Kate and William Windsor generated? Besides, what did everybody think she and Kanye were doing — playing Scrabble™ (Words With Friends™ if you’re under 30?)

My point is when the smartest business couple since Brad and Angelina go gunning for revenue at the bottom of the intellectual barrel, there’s got to be something to it. These two have been harvesting coin of the realm out of the proletariat for years. They know what they’re doing. They realized that our society has a limited vision of the world, and they’ve carved their lucrative niche out of it. They’ve marketed smut and anger (with a side order of drama) as if they were lowlife Happy Meals™ and made ga-millions of dollars doing it. I’m certain that Kim and Kanye will skank off into the sunset like Paris and Nicole did before them. However, until they do, their unquestioned celebrity is living proof that our society is on the verge of imploding under the weight of its own ignorance.

But what the hell do you expect from a world whose standard response to every statement from “Good morning.” to “Freddy Krueger just cut off my head with a chainsaw!” is “Awesome!”?

It’s Them and Us – Whether You Like It or Not!

One of the main reasons people have so many problems these days is no matter how contemporary we try to be, we have never given up our tribal, them-and-us, way of thinking. It isn’t a revelation that people think in pairs; we’re built that way. We have two hands, two feet, two eyes etc. etc., so it’s only natural that we organize our world along the same lines. It’s that eternal balance in nature that the Greek philosophers discovered (while their slaves were doing all the work) and scruffy-bearded bores have been droning on about ever since. What started out as primitive left and right simply translated itself into everything else — hot and cold, wet and dry, etc. etc. From there, it wasn’t a major leap to less tangible things like smart and stupid or right and wrong. We might intellectually recognize all kinds of nuances in things like wet and dry (damp, for example) but when it comes down to straight analysis, inside our heads, there are no shades of grey. The best we can do is black, blacker and white, whiter. Of course, we mouth all kinds of platitudes about inclusivity and nonlinear thinking, but that’s merely for public consumption. Unless your name is Leonardo da Vinci, you paint the world with only two brushes.

Here’s how it works. When we think, we can only hold two complete ideas in our head at the same time. It’s the natural pairing of things, – Bert and Ernie, Hansel and Gretel, Bogie and Bacall. Once we step outside this comfort zone, we get confused. It’s something I like to call “The Other Guy Phenomenon.” When we are faced with more than two items, the third one gets a little hazy in our minds. For example, Apollo 11 was America’s first manned space mission to land on the moon. This was one of the major events in all human history. Everybody knows there were three men involved; Neil Armstrong, Edwin “Buzz” Aldrin and … wait a minute… who was that other guy? (FYI it was Michael Collins, but see what I mean.) Likewise, remember The Three Tenors? Placido Domingo, Luciano Pavarotti and – uh — the other guy. (He was Jose Carreras, by the way.) How about the Bronte Sisters? There are Charlotte, who wrote Jane Eyre; Emily, who wrote Wuthering Heights and … and… Her name was Anne and she wrote The Tenant of Wildfell Hall, a novel that not even sophomores study anymore. Or there are always The Three Musketeers? Unless you’re a total Alexandre Dumas fan, you remember them the way everybody else does: Athos, Porthos and D’Artagnan. But, that’s not right; D’Artagnan wasn’t a Musketeer. The third Musketeer was actually Aramis. What happens is our minds hold the natural pair together and kinda hope for the best on whatever’s tagging along. In the case of the Musketeers, we even make a substitution when we can’t quite remember! Yes, I know there are The Three Stooges; Snap, Crackle and Pop; and bacon, lettuce and tomato. But if you think about it, we treat these trios as if they were one item. A BLT is a sandwich; Snap, Crackle and Pop are Rice Krispies; and The Three Stooges weren’t funny the first time.

My point is that we think in terms of pairs, whether they be strikingly similar or diametrically opposed. It’s cultural memory from the dark tips of time. In the beginning, there was us, the cave people we knew, and there was them, the ones we didn’t. We were the good guys because we were us, and they were the bad guys because it pays to be careful with strangers. For several millennia, there was no third choice, so we never adapted to one. Now, in the 21^st century, when we need to make a judgement call, we revert to that natural pairing because anything else is just some cloudy, vague option. Of course, nobody admits to it because, after all, it is Neanderthal thinking. However, like it or not, we live in a world of peanut butter and jelly, Starsky and Hutch and who was the third Bee Gee, anyway?

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