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Violations of conceptual order can dizzy us. I was dizzied by the Olympic Committee's
ruling that let Oscar Pistorius, with his metal feet, compete against normal
people. If you finished ahead of
him would you be proud? Would you
say, "Look at me, I beat a man with artificial legs"? If behind would you be embarrassed
("Oh my, I got beat by a cripple") or would you be indignant
("Not fair, he got a spring from the metal")? In the end you'd be wondering, I think,
if you could call what you had just been in a "race."
Such violations can also amuse us. I laughed when in News of the Weird, under the heading, "Unclear on the
Concept," I read of the priest
who said that though he had committed rape he didn't use a condom because it
was "against church doctrine."
Concerning sin, I presume.
Sin?
And occasionally they outrage us. I was outraged when I read the New York
Supreme Court's justification for its ruling that the former man, Renée
Richards, could play on the women's tennis circuit: he was "now female"
on the "overwhelming medical evidence" that he had the same genitals
as the others. There the court is,
brows knit over Richards' genitals, while his already developed male muscles,
the reason the U. S. Tennis Association (who fought the ruling) had conceived a
separate circuit, are ignored. Men
obviously play tennis with their penises.
"None here, boss."
My outrage deepens as I see Richards taking her
muscles to the Lahoya Women's Tennis Tournament and, as Wikipedia has it,
"crushing the opposition."
And (in my imagination) feeling satisfaction. "Wow, I really blew
Nancy away. The club
champion!"
But that's not the end of the outrage. I go so far as to be outraged by those
who don't regard the New York Supreme Court's ruling as an outrage. To the author of the Wikipedia entry on
Richards it "was a landmark decision in favor of transsexual rights. Through her fight to play tennis as a
woman, she challenged gender roles and became a role model and spokesperson for
the transgender community."
I think I am not the only one who will feel the
ground giving way under him here.
The loss of meaning in our words — "winner,"
"loser," "competition," "race"— sucks us
down. Something in our conceptual
substratum has given way. How do
we get out?
I suggest we start by distinguishing a game from a
party. A party is something you
throw for other people's satisfaction.
You want them to be happy, and have a good time, and feel good about
life. You are expressing your
altruism. That's what Judge
Ascione and the Wikipedia author are expressing. They are welcoming Richards to the party of general
humanity.
A game, on the other hand, is something you play for
your own satisfaction. You want to
win, and be superior, and feel good about your abilities. You are expressing your egoism.
Rules follow from the need for satisfaction of the
ego. A group of young adult men asks,
"What stipulations must we make in order to be able to say, happily, 'I'm
better at this than you are.'"
Whole categories — children, handicapped people, old men, women — are
excluded because it's no fun beating them. They know they are going to lose before they start. These rules parallel rules to exclude
those who are winners before they start.
"Well never be able to
say, 'I'm better at this than you are,' if those types — golfers under 50, male
wrestlers, heavyweight boxers — are allowed to play." Games are necessarily contests between
peers.
So the test is, "Can I happily and legitimately
say, 'I am superior'?"
Activities that don't pass this test must be called something other than
"games." If not
"parties" then "ceremonies" maybe, or
"entertainments," or "exercises," or "promotions,"
or "treatments."
That's logic, that's order, that's the mind coming
to the aid of the emotions. And what
happens to it when it comes to something like the Special Olympics? Satisfaction of the ego is out the
window. This is altruism. Humane feeling takes over here, and
ought to take over. But that
doesn't keep the word "game" from losing its meaning — along with "winner,"
"loser," "competition," and "race."
If you try to maintain those meanings, if you stick
up for conceptual order there, you are properly rebuked. "You are as bad
as the Wikipedia author. You close
your ears to the claims of the heart as he closed his eyes to the claims of the
head." You, found deficient
in humane feeling, are embarrassed.
Yet (and this is what gets me) in that stadium, as
in every stadium where our unthinking hearts go out, you are embarrassed by
demanding what can save the day elsewhere. Say the American people are asked to join a "war on
communism," and attack it "only ninety miles away" in Cuba. You point out that
"communism" is an abstraction and that you can't "war on"
(concretely kill) it. People who
fit words together that way can get you to do dumb things, as in the Bay of
Pigs. Or, with the "war
on terrorism," in the Middle East.
Thank you, thank you, picky English teacher, for pointing that out.
So, argue for conceptual order in the political arena
and you are a hero. Argue for it
in a Special Olympics stadium and you are a monster.
"A monster because you lack what makes us
human. Humane feeling is what
makes us human, right?"
No, reason is what makes us human.
We've gone from quandary to quagmire. We can't let the reason quit putting
our concepts in order. That would
leave beliefs in a pile of their
own, separate from consequences. Inferences in one pile, evidence in another. An ends pile and a means pile. A life viewed as a bunch of piles can't
be lived. On the other hand, a
life without humane feeling is not worth living. Oi.
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