.. and including any and all interesting game language & stories ..
In all of these instances, one can always say, “Well, this person didn’t follow the rules,” and on an individual basis that may seem sufficient to justify the consequences. What gets lost, however, is that rules are rarely applied regularly, consistently or fairly..
You’ll have to read the whole article to get many of the details, but the analogy between a sport and the judicial and penal systems is clear.
How does this relate to the WaPo piece on consent in potential sexual aggression situations?
The question there is whether, in the pithy words of a feminist writer quoted by WaPo:
consent is just a hurdle you have to clear in order to Get The Sex
Consent is the rulebook, and the missing ingredient when consent is the only consideration, is the human context, in the words of the same writer, the need to see our sexual partners:
not simply as instrumental to our own pleasure but as co-equal collaborators, equally human and important, equally harmable, equally free and equally sovereign.
I’m not sure that even that doesn’t smack a bit of the “rules” camp, but it’s certainly a strong step beyond the bare=bones “consent” rule towards an understanding of human circumstances. But the parallelism between that and the Serena Williams piece wouldn’t have struck me so forcefully without this exchange:
“Yeah,” one, a junior, agreed. “The logic is sort of Cartesian.” (Oh, college!) “Do this, not that. Don’t break the rules ..
That really nails it — as Lao Tzu would say:
The rules can be codified in a rulebook aren’t the subtle rules of wisdom.
That’s my Tao Te Ching translation #207 I know, but I think it’s apt for this occasion.
Comments?
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Charles Cameron:
September 19th, 2018 at 5:05 pm
Here’s another sports and politics page worth mention — but the use here is non-metaphoricl, a straight comparison:
Charles Cameron:
September 21st, 2018 at 3:29 pm
Fascinating, frm a history of tennis in Tracing Tennis to Its RootsFrom Victorian Britain to the Battle of the Sexes, the sport’s first hundred years, by Herbert Warren Wind:
Finely researched and beautufully written, as you can see — there’s much more, but that’s your extended taste for the day.