Sons of Anarchy - Enough Already (Season 7: Episode 5)

anyone else tired of watching Jax Teller play the white Messiah? Of getting out of deadly scrapes with his Odysseus-level cunning and brilliant strategies? Of smirking his way through death and betrayal and psychopathic behavior? of always making excuses for his own murderous, black heart?

there, I got that out of my system...

but, seriously, at what point in his wheeling and dealing with every notorious gang leader and Fed in California, yet somehow always mastering them all, just start to seem unrealistic? Sure, i got the first three seasons. Jax is searching -- for answers, for direction, for a father. the club's retribution against corrupt cops and Feds seemed justified. we could buy that the club would be one step ahead, but that's because they had the support of a community, of decent people who just wanted to live their own lives. They had reason on their side; it made for a powerful motivation. Ever since that crazy shit in Ireland and Jax's sinking into the darkest parts of his heritage: gun trading, prostitution and betrayal.

it's interesting in season 7 to watch Jax (disingenuously) beg for his life in front of the Asian gang leaders. they should have their fucking heads examined, even listening to this guy. what interesting about it is the parallel with the scene where his mother begs for her life later in the episode. the two of them are so similar. it's obvious that Jax has not gone the way of his father, questioning himself, doubting and searching. He has become like his mother: doing whatever he needs to do to come out on top. Whether it's betraying long-time friends, hiding the truth from his club brothers or orchestrating any number of murders to feed his own revenge fantasy -- this guy seriously needs a wake up call. take a look in the mirror, brother. you have become what you hated.

maybe it's teh point of Kurt Sutter's epic to watch the young, swaggering and hopeful Jax become such a hardened and duplicitous creature. how can any of his "brothers" trust him at this point? isn't it obvious that he holds no one dear, no one is safe, save maybe his children?

all of this is to build up to the final confrontation with his mother, the dark witch of Charming, CA. the only other player on this stage who is on his level (forget the machinations of gangsters and entire departments of the federal government, they can't even compete). she is the only one who can take him down, or vice versa. It should be interesting.

On Football and Men

This is an interesting time for American Football. The various NFL players who have been accused or indicted on charges of violent crimes seems to have given birth to a national dialogue on such important issues as domestic violence, child abuse and rape. The faces of Ray Rice and Adrian Peterson are everywhere in the media now, and a dialogue has ensued about whether or not they should even be allowed to play football. Underneath that mundane dialogue is another, far more interesting, one about what kind of behavior we as a society are willing to accept from men.

Thanks to my daughter’s tutelage, I started learning how to use Twitter over the weekend. I had never had an account before, or at least one I used. I started by following some of my favorite funny people like Steve Colbert and Seth Meyers. Pretty soon, I got caught up in the two big football controversies currently raging. It was interesting to see people’s reactions and arguments and how they escalated. A lot of folks come from a place of outrage over these issues and I get that: a man knocking out his fiancee with a punch is disgusting. looking at the bloody welts on a 4 year old boy’s legs is certainly no fun, especially knowing they were put there intentionally by his father.

Trying to understand the motivations of Adrian Peterson isn’t really that hard. Looking at pictures of him on the internet, you can see that he’s a disciplined and committed athlete. He’s also, apparently, a religious man, who quotes Bible verses and has even started a charity. It appears he beat his son with a switch (a branch from a young tree for those of you not from the South). While he admits he may have overdone it a bit in a text to the boy’s mother, the reason had to do with the boy being disrespectful to a sibling and maybe stubborn about apologizing. He states in the text that the mother should be proud, because the boy “didn’t cry. He’s tough as nails.”

It’s fairly obvious why being “tough as nails” would be important to an NFL running back, whose game routine is to take hits from 200-300 pound men while attempting a touchdown. It’s obvious that we as a society value that kind of toughness, on and off the field. Is our tendency to react so strongly to such cases because we don’t want to face our own involvement in the cult of the athlete and other “tough guys”?

We want men who are tough as nails, nearly invulnerable on the field and in the boardroom, maybe even in the bedroom. We want gladiators who risk injury or worse for our entertainment. And we want role models who value right and wrong, God and country. We want this, yet we haven't really had the conversation about what effect it might have on our boys. About whether there's a downside to how we view masculinity. As we change the way in which we expect men to relate to women and children, we may have to change some of the other values associated with sports stars. And we may have to look within ourselves as well as at our celebrities. 

While it’s great that we’re talking about these sensitive issues, let’s dig a little deeper than we have. Let’s look at our own history: the way we raise children, our religious traditions of “spare the rod, spoil the child”, of sending young men (boys, really) off to war at the age of 18, of valuing strength over sensitivity when it comes to men. Let’s forgo the backlash and talk about how we can help a man like Adrian Peterson learn how to discipline his children without violence.

What Ever Happened to Common Sense?

Where did it go? Why did it leave? And can it please, please come back?

Simple concepts like working at something to get better at it. the idea that a person is responsible for their own actions. That the adults should be in charge of things, not the children.

Please don't think this is some call to go back to the "good old days". It's no such thing. There never were any good old days. But while society has evolved (at least in America) to be more tolerant, I feel like we have thrown the baby out with the bath water.

The culture I live in is heavily politicized and dissected. Everything is broken down into its parts. Getting from A to B has been replaced by the study of getting from A to B. When confronted with a challenge, people tend to think: am I allowed to do this? what kind of degree is required?

Engaging in the world directly and with a sense of accomplishment has been lost for many of us. And we are hurting for it. We lack that sense of getting things done, of figuring things out for ourselves. Instead we ask permission. We think, shouldn't the government be taking care of this?

But so much of the joy of accomplishment is getting through the tough parts, learning the ropes, as they say.

I see it everyday at work. Teachers in a public school will sit at their computers waiting for me to come and show them how to do a simple task, or fix some "problem" that usually they could have fixed for themselves, had they had the will, or more patience, or greater curiosity. the computer is seen as a machine that does certain things for them, not as an extension of themselves and their own exploration of the world. instead, they see it as a "press this button, get this result" kind of thing. Hence, their frustration when the machine doesn't function the same way every time. I guess this is a product of a consumer culture based on the precepts of the industrial age.

The idea of doing something and getting a certain result unfailingly is a kind of post-industrial dream. Of course, what is needed is people who are not afraid to experiment and fail as they learn. Failing and trying again are essential parts of learning. Anyone who has successfully achieved mastery of a skill will tell you that. You simply can't be afraid all the time, whether it's fixing your brakes or doing your own taxes. You have to be able to dust yourself off and start over again.

The difference between book learning and knowledge based on experience should be obvious, but it isn't always. I work in IT and I deal with network admins all the time. Most of them have information systems degrees and that tends to make them feel they have the answers, but sometimes a problem is simple and a simple mental troubleshooting list will have it cleared up in no time. When you approach a challenge by thinking about how it should look, you often fail to see how it actually looks in real time.

I give these examples to illustrate the problems with the way we are thinking about problems. Here's a breakdown:

1. We tend to ask ourselves if we have permission to be working with this problem instead of having the confidence to face things head on.

2. we dissect and attempt to fit the problem into a preconceived model instead of starting from the problem ( the inside) and then working our way out.

3. we misread the problem based on bias.

more to come...