Elusive Dreams and T.O.
The evolutionary process is brilliant---billions of years can attest to that. Yet it is never a level playing field. Diversity is the driving force for change, and while the individual life forms kind of do their thing---each in their own way---evolutionary laws sort it all out, and progress results---with more complex species evolving over time. Where is it all heading? Beats me. Does evolution have a terminal point? Actually,I haven't yet figured out how it could have a starting point.
For me, I see the inequalities and suffering which abound across our planet and it leaves me saddened. Of course all this 'survival of the fittest' gets the job done in the long run, but the individual tragedies are impossible for any of us to not perceive. Nothing has any permanence. Ok, some things last longer than others, but that is about it. Recently, a friend got on my case for constantly defending Terrell Owens, commenting that "I can understand (although disagree) why you admire him. Although, there certainly are many other individuals who have come out of similar type situations and don't act in such a way that there behavior has to be constantly explained and defended."
I disagree. One of the Universities at which I taught was located in the heart of a Drug War ravaged black ghetto. The majority of students were blk and some came from the worst of these Drug War ravaged neighborhoods. Their neighborhoods were dangerous, their schools often the worst in the whole city. The University itself was poorly run and trapped into the politics and racial tensions of the 60's. I have been retired for over 12 years so maybe some things have changed a bit. When I first taught there in the early 70's the school was a physical dump mired in grime accumulated over years of neglect. Shortly after I arrived on the scene a new campus was built. This was the reason I accepted the position. When completed it didn't look anything like a campus that a state would have built in a more affluent neighborhood. If one was blindfolded and the blindfold removed when standing in the center of the campus you would have thought it was a large prison complex with the various buildings being prison cell blocks. I was there for around 25 years and little changed. The classrooms I taught in were the same when I left as when I first started. If you were really lucky you might get an old fashioned overhead projector which worked most of the time. Broken seats in a lecture hall were to be expected. There were no modern classroom visual-aid gadgets to enhance illustrations.
For someone like a young me, naive about ethnic struggles and the economically disadvantaged, it took some time to get my bearings and understand this picture from life's other side. I grew up in a town with maybe 20% blk but for all practical purposes they didn't exist. I don't recall any animosity by myself or my neighborhood friends toward blks except the occasional racial jokes. The blacks all lived in the seedier part of town and there were no confrontations with them by myself or anyone else in my neighborhood. We were all Republicans through and through. We kind of all assumed everyone should get ahead the old fashioned way----earn it. I went through the first half of the sixties pretty much oblivious to all the social issues that were out in the streets. If these people marching and protesting in the streets didn't like it here they could leave. I didn't have any ingrained prejudices for two reasons: no one or group was bothering me, and my parents never said negative things about hardly anyone or any group. Participating in sports in the latter years of high school and in college brought me, for the first time, into contact with human and ethnic diversity.
Ending up with my first university teaching job at a predominantly blk university in the middle of an urban ghetto was essentially an accident. I was heading to a major University on the West Coast when the state budget there was frozen with a hiring freeze put in place. So at the last minute I took this other job. It didn't take long for me to understand just how different life was for this population. The public racial and economic anger was there and pervasive, but the truth was, if anyone would listen and be supportive of their individual efforts and situations, they embraced such individuals regardless of ethnicity. Still, the atmosphere was seeped in racism. Almost all the faculty were white, most of the students were blk. For the first time the University had a blk President but that was deceptive. The Board which selected the President was mostly white and any blks on the Board were appointed to the Board by whites. There were two blk University Presidents in the State. One at this blk university and the other at a predominantly white University. The one at the white University had applied to be President at the Black University but his name was summarily rejected at the onset and his application never permitted to go forward. He was perfectly qualified to be a University President, a strong creative person. The blk University got instead a Clown, an Uncle Tom who went around making ridiculous statements, harmless enough, but just ridiculous. At that point in history, whites were not about to appoint a blk to a position of authority who whites could not firmly control. So the black University got the clown. The conventional wisdom was that a predominantly black University needed more blk Professors---role models for blk students. BUT, there were few blk PH.D. candidates for positions and those few available would naturally take positions at prestigious universities via affirmative action. Of course there are lousy blk candidates as well as lousy white candidates for teaching positions. The only blk candidates available to an urban blk university were the poor blk candidates. Solomon himself could not have solved this problem to everyone's satisfaction. At any rate poor blk candidates would be accepted over good white candidates and this just compounded the problem of good education.
One of the first things I learned was that affirmative action was primarily a great deal for those blks who needed no affirmative action. Affirmative action was a bad idea as long as it had race attached to it. Why middle class blks attending good public schools and living in decent neighborhoods need special assistance or consideration is beyond me. And it was this middle class population which primarily benefitted from affirmative action.
Be all this as it may, a person like myself, thrown into that situation, saw it as an opportunity to help those with real needs. Over time, the realities of the problem, the depth of the problem, became more and more evident. Essentially, most of these young people had little of what more affluent young from better neighborhoods think they have earned. No one earns their looks, their place of birth, their parents, the grammar and high schools they go to, their physical or mental capabilities, etc. We all, as young people, are given our genetics and our environment. A good portion of these young people were eager to succeed. Most were the first generation to even go to college. If the eagerness was there, the obstacles were huge. Little had prepared them for legitimate college work---not the neighborhood, not the culture, not the schools they attended, and often not the family environment. On the other hand some of the students had amazingly dedicated parents or more likely A parent who did all they could to raise them right. I can't document this, but the ethics of most of these students exceeded those from more affluent backgrounds. Religion often played a bigger role for these students than those from more affluent neighborhoods. It was a rigid faith based religion. In some sense religion is the opiate of the poor. Because of their neighborhood culture and poor schools from which they graduated their academic skills were poor. It is hard to take someone in their late teens and make any swift improvement in basic academic skills. The window of opportunity was rapidly closing. When I say poor schools I am talking about the quality of the teachers. Good teachers naturally gravitate to the better schools in better neighborhoods with better pay. A lot of losers teach in urban or rural ghetto schools.
Added to all these other disadvantages was their economic plight. Most of these students worked full-time, had kids to raise (theirs or siblings), and had little time to study. They couldn't go slower, take fewer courses because they would lose their Pell Grant and yng people are always in a hurry. A good student from the best of environments and high schools would have a hard time performing well under such time constraints. With all the pressures and what not they often miss a deadline, or an important class, or made poor choices of the moment. Many rules exist for good reason and with good intentions, but rules should never be used to destroy good people trying their best under the most trying of circumstances. But most authority figures are of a bent that a "rule is a rule is a rule' and that is that. Fortunately, there will be those Professors who will intercede on their behalf, get them through one crisis or another, and enable their innate talent and determination succeed FOR THE MOMENT. When you do this, you feel good, like you have kept someone afloat and they will recover and swim away to success. Yet often, you see students, who had so much potential, years later working at the most bland of jobs, like the Post Office etc. It makes their efforts and efforts of others seem wasted. You wonder, what happened, why did they not have greater success in life? My guess now is that when your youth is filled with little or no unearned advantages, and your struggles are never ending and seemingly futile, at some point you just accept something, which is better than the nothing with which you grew up. It irritates me to see affluent people who had all these unearned advantages in their youth, act as adults like they earned everything they achieved. And this attitude is expressed in their politics: "I got's mine and if others want the same let them do like I did---earn it." It sounds so neat and obvious, but it is bullshit.
As I have learned to see it over the years, success is based on 3 variables. First are all the unearned blessings we are given which others may not be given---particular parents, a country of birth, a neighborhood in which we spend our formative years, schools which may be good or bad, our physical characteristics and physical talents, our mental quirks (personality), mental capabilities, our health, etc. Second are fortuitous opportunities which may come our way through no design of our own. And third are our conscious choices for which we can claim we earned. There are a lot of variables and most of them are not ones which we can remotely claim to have earned.
Finally, with all this lead-up, I am ready to tackle my friend's statement: "I can understand (although disagree) why you admire him (Terrell Owens). Although, there certainly are many other individuals who have come out of similar type situations and don't act in such a way that there behavior has to be constantly explained and defended."
There are two factors which separate Owens from the young people I have just written about. First, he was kept separated from other young people in his early ghetto environment by his grandmother. He was not allowed to leave the yard except to go to school or sport practice once in high school. His protestations were met with the explanation that she did not want him to become like the other kids---going no where in life.
Second, Terrell had little natural athletic ability. The other individuals my friend refers to in his quote, by far, are identified early on as having athletic talent and as a consequence are spoiled, pampered, and given all kinds of mentoring, support, attention etc. more so than other kids. Their athletic talent was a given, and it was a natural athletic talent which enabled them to stand out from the rest.I met many of these 'students' in my teaching career also. None of their good fortune was earned. They were going to be excellent athletes unless they messed up. Of course, as many spoiled but good natured young people often do---some do mess up. They are not independent, self focused, or, for the most part, self made in any way regarding their career. What they have is unearned natural athletic ability which, in certain sports attracts an army of people to help them develop their obvious talents. If these fortunate pampered athletes are in your class you will get phone calls and visits from tutors, advisors, and concerned coaches. These naturally gifted athletes are often fun to have in class; they can be funny, good natured, and personable in a polished way. Many of them are P.E. majors and P.E. Departments like to require a course in physiology for them to graduate. Of course that is a joke. They are in with pre-meds, pre-dents, physical therapists, nurses, occupational therapists and other assorted medical programs. Like most any other instructor I am not going to have the star basketball player made academically ineligible because I gave him an F in a physiology course. Like who cares how much a P.E. major knows about physiology? At best you give them a separate course for P.E. majors titled the Physiology of Exercise. Of course administrators don't like that, they prefer it look like they are taking high powered classes. It is certainly true that guys like Allen Iverson, Michael Vick, etc. did, as my friend states, come from similar urban or rural ghettoes, but had an army of people to guide and support their development. They by no means are self made. Spoiled yes, self made, no.
Terrell is unique. People who were on the same team with him in high school or his early college years hardly remember him. He was not a first stringer or envisioned to have all that much athletic talent. He was skinny and not exceptionally coordinated. He was shy, socially inert. All he had was assurance from his grandmother that he was 'special' and that he could be successful BUT, and this his grandma repeated over and over---others will try to stop you and can never be trusted to help you. From his grandmother's window he vowed he was going to be someone and not the nobody he was. He would, he promised himself, run through any hurdles anyone put in front of him. He then developed his own training program, trained by himself, listened to everything coaches told their star athletes, and made being a wide receiver the sole focus of his life. Terrell was drafted 89th in the third round of the draft by the San Francisco 49ers. By now he had bulked up, listened to what coaches told others, and had the good fortune to be teamed up with Jerry Rice. He studied Jerry Rice and amongst other things he learned that he was going to have to be vocal to make things go his way. The rest is history, and he is among the top five wide receivers in football history stats. His history intrigued me because what he did, by himself, almost exclusively, is rare. Granted, if everyone had the same self focus and strength to persist against anyone or anything that gets in the way, this would be a more difficult world. But then again, if you don't get the kind of unearned blessings that many of us have gotten, and the fortuitous opportunities many of us get, you are not likely to power yourself to the top. Terrell did, is an excellent citizen, has a strong sense of right and wrong, and is content to be walled off from the social circuit of others.The dislike of Terrell Owens seems to be his self focus (selfishness) and his love of attention. The first got him to the top of his profession and the second is personal, can be annoying, but is no sin. The attention, in his mind, is his reward for his extraordinary effort. Other athletes from the same background---pampered from junior high on with a small army of support----get their reward from a wide circle of friends and people who have been mentors of some sort for years. Terrell, a one man band, the ultimate little engine who could, walled off from others, celebrates as a one man band and HUGS HIMSELF. Isolated from others in any intimate way Terrell can be honest about his success. While others can stand before a mic and thank all those others who made their personal success possible over the years Terrell thanks himself and his grandmother. To do otherwise would be disingenuous and Terrell is bluntly honest. It is difficult to find other successful athletes, raised in a similar environment, who did it on their own the Terrell Owens way. For young people trapped in similar formative years environments, who are not natural born athletes, the Owens way may be the most likely way to succeed. I think if I were teaching such students over again I would tend to instill more of the kind of advice Terrell's grandmother gave him: don't wait for others or the government or anyone to help you. Help yourself, set clear focused goals, and whenever necessary run through any hurdles in your way. There are many 'nice' guys/gals growing up in difficult environments with few unearned blessings, and precious few unearned fortuitous opportunities likely to come their way. In these situations it really is true that nice guys/gals often finish back in the pack. If these students can find something they can be good at and focus on it with an 'Owens' intensity that exceeds the intensity of others, and then have the strength to force their way ahead, they have a better chance of succeeding. Young people with little, generally are extremely appreciative of those who help them along the way, but the reality is that this kind of help often comes their way too little too seldom to carry them to success, and they will end up settling for little. Terrell was smart like a fox: 'get out of the way, here I come---in your face--- ready or not.' Hey, it worked. And it is my opinion he is entitled to thank himself, to be a one man band. If one admires those individuals who manage to pull themselves up by their own bootstraps, then Terrell is the pent-ultimate guru of this art.
Of course, for Terrell, like any of the rest of us, success at anything never lasts. At 37 he has pushed it further than most. The next hurdle for Owens will be one of a totally different nature. He is not going to win any battle against age and time. This is one hurdle he can't run through via sheer effort, determination or self focus. Can Owens accept the race is over, the battle won, and go gently down the stream? Which Owens can accept a hurdle insurmoutable? Owens the Fox? No way. Owens the emotional volcano? No way. Owens the Philosopher? If the latter doesn't win out age will not be kind to him.
We understand a lot about the evolutionary process in it's progression from simple to more complex physical forms. But we pay not enough attention to the evolution of the mind. With the passage of time humans have grown more civilized and ethics has grown. Humans are not as universally barbaric as in early ages. Oh, we still torture and disrespect but, for the most part, it is of a lesser degree. It is this evolvement which holds the hope for future youth who have little of the unearned gifts others have, who find few fortuitous opportunities to escape rough formative years. There is no justification, in any truly just society, for any young people not to have decent schools, good health care, and adequate adult support---whether it be genetic in nature or just support from non genetic contributors. There is no excuse for irresponsible reproduction and there should never be a situation where a child needs to be locked up to protect that child from going nowhere in his/her life. There is no reason why any child should have to have the innate qualities to be the 'little engine who could' or fail. I have more trouble visualizing future physical changes as a result of evolution than I do advancement in mental function, including ethics. Human survival in the evolutionary process requires responsible family planning. If this evolves, one way or another---and it will---then all the rest follows. For evolution to advance a lot of individuals within every species suffer badly, but at least not in vain. This egocentric notion that any of us are able to use God to manipulate good fortunes for ourselves I have trouble accepting. It is the wonder of God's created evolutionary process, controlled by the laws of evolution, which creates a more advanced world. Chance and luck are not bit players in life and those of us who benefit from both have an ethical duty to be on the side of those with less unearned blessings and few unearned fortuitous opportunities. To do otherwise can never bring real contentment and or any real justice.
