Tuesday, November 07, 2006

On harses and toortles.

Lately i've been thinnin' aboot tyrannies. i don't know why i've been a'thinnin' aboot them in a Scot's burrdrdr. Must have sometin' te do with Braveheardrt.

Alas, tyrannies. Not in their usual, over-the-top, poorly dressed despotic guise but subtle tyrannies. Ones we, gentle readers, may encounter every day. Little pockets of absolutism that on this election day in the People's Republic of Amerika, may go unnoticed.

i'm not sure when it happened but we as Americans seem to have lost our natural ire, our innate fury, our tobaccy spittin' in the eye of social injustice, our breed defining rebel spirit when confronted by any person, place or thing that tries to dictate to us the terms and conditions of our lives. The fire has gone out to be replaced with, at best, a sort of whiny urge to sue anyone that offends the smoldering cinders of our former glory.

Now we blithely accept tyrannies of all sorts. Our example today is the tyranny of the underdog. An insidious and i would venture, dangerous philosophy that holds the majority back for the sake and precious self esteem of the one. No one may excel at their natural pace because someone may be left behind. We can't teach kids sports in gym because Lefty Gorsewich is uncoordinated and will feel left out. Yes, it'll make Lefty feel so much better when all forty kids spend the entire class tossing a soft, light tennis ball (we mustn't risk injuring anyone in the tyranny of safety!) up in the air to themselves over and over and over again. This will teach them hand eye coordination and keeps them moving and most of all won't make anyone feel singled out and inferior. So basically we are telling Lefty that he is so dumb he won't realize that horses are being chained and hobbled so that the turtle can keep up. I'm sure he'll be the most popular boy at the ball.

Wouldn't it make more sense to take the time to find out what Lefty's good at and aid him in it while letting him play games with other turtles? Everyone's a horse at something. Wouldn't it be nice if we just loved our horses and turtles enough that they would learn to love as well. Who knows what craziness we might see then...horses carrying turtles, their little, laughing eyes tearing in the wind.

SEAL's in training, i am told, are chained, whether figuratively or literally to a telephone pole as a team. Wherever they go, whatever they do for days on end, they take the pole with them and all must bear it's weight as they compete against other teams and their poles. Now i'll guarantee you that not everyone in that team is as fast as the fastest guy nor as strong as the strongest guy but if one loses, they all lose, so they learn to work together, they learn to use each other's strengths AND weaknesses for the good of the team. Along the way they learn to trust each other and a form of brotherhood emerges, some say the strongest form known to men. Could we teach this form of competition to our youth? A form of competition where even the teams that lost still won something valuable.

Instead of say, Survivor?

Now i'm not a political person, i think the ills of the world are not cured in congress but in churches and relationships. i'm all for no child being left behind but what does it benefit us if we just put up fences to keep any child from moving ahead?

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