Or damned if you do or damned if you don't, or too many dang pickleballs in play. Whatever the choice, they are equally discouraging and equally clear. They are descriptive of the reality of the world today. It is a harsh reality, a cruel one, and inevitable harsh consequences, meant or not. In such a world where conditions change in a minute or two, there is great difficulty to correctly assess decisions and reactions, and too late to recall. Tough times in a tough world.
There are too many balls in play, so many that attentions are distracted, and when that is the case, most often it proves to be an ominous lapse. At that moment, the world, rather than offering aid, sympathy, understanding or reassurance, turns instead towards its usual trash reactions - hysterical, hypocritical rants aiding no one other than serving as food for a voracious media.
The world is engaged in a cutthroat game of pickleball on a rough and uneven playing surface. No repair in sight or even deemed possible. Perhaps those repairs are unwanted. and prevented. Moreover, the danger increases as more and more players demand entry and shove their way onto the court, into the heart of the ever-intensifying fray. Racquets wildly flail the air as a multitude of balls fly through that same airspace. Targets are plentiful.
The game becomes less a game and more and more warlike. Competition becomes enmity. The end of the game is missing in action. The players are increasingly violent and the result inevitable. In such a 'game' There are no winners only losers, with perhaps one the lesser loser. Certainly, the bottom lines of both sides of the game are in a deep red situation.
Yet the bloody deadly game continues, Adding or subtracting participants. Changing the venue and amending the supposed causes. It actually matters not as time goes on for this deadly 'game' has gained a life of its own. Within this life, the competitors become incidental, and their deaths incidental, of no real concern or importance. It generates a bloodthirst so deep, overpowering, and it consumes all it touches. A most horrid game of pickleball and on it goes besmirching even those who enter with honor and virtue.
To walk between the flailing racquets and the missiles of those smacked balls is to walk a dangerous path. In fact, there is no safe path, because one is between that perennial rock and hard place. Even should one seek an end to this eternal abomination there is no one around. All have been consumed either by this vicious game or by serious concerns within their own neighborhood, precluding all thought of all other matters. They are beset and surrounded, are amid, their own rocks and hard places.
Why do we never seem to be capable to solve our problems via discussion, open debate, civil debate. Once we had them but now - lost, through disuse and misuse. It is a serious loss and called for is further delving into the how and why, the purpose perhaps of its withering away. I believe it is caused partially by modern life with its lack of face-to-face communication even as the decibels of noise become overpowering and certainly highly uncomfortable, along with or aided by the instantaneous gratification need of the younger generations. They have been raised in a world ever more infused by computers and their faster and faster speeds, providing instantaneous gratification and results. Time to debate and pause - wasteful, discarded, the butt of jokes. Neither time nor skill to wait and think, only rush and hit that keyboard.
Some clever distorted minds saw a clear way to use these realities to enhance and grow their own agendas. Infiltrating the halls of debate, the universities, they discourage debate and civility. Pushed instead were the far more liberating, less demanding shouts and threats, of physicality rather than mentality. Perverted actions became the norm and people flocked to the 'fun' without any understanding of the. issues involved. Why bother?!
Thankfully more and more people are apparently recognizing the ominous danger posed by such a society. One of the universities, The University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, has thought this through and accepted its responsibility, the traditional one of the higher levels of learning - to grow the future generations of leaders -wise, civil, patient and skilled in debate. They have established. The School of Civic Life and Leadership with three introductory courses this fall and nineteen professors. These courses will present the philosophy behind debating, its uses, its importance, the value of and need for civility, along with its integral importance and relevance to American political history and tradition.
Students within this program will be allowed and encouraged to speak freely, to speak properly, to debate views, to be flexible, to understand how to hear the words, the hopes, the dreams of others rather than discount them. To pay attention is better than to totally ignore and create a tense situation where it was not meant to be. That is how a civil society progresses. That is how it functions well and fulfills the responsibilities and duties owed by a government to its populace and vice versa as well. The entire landscape can be rehabbed and along with the dead remnants of flora poisonous and noxious, we can add to that heap the pieces of a broken and destroyed pickleball court.
Perhaps. Maybe. Hopefully.
More tomorrow.
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