Nasty, brutish, and short-tempered
by Michael Maiello

Two bits of commentary in our local Albuquerque Journal have convinced me that I live amongst a bunch of loons. The first was an editorial put out by the paper, and the second was a letter to the editor. The thing is, I heard both stories being commented on in the days before and thought to myself, "now who could reasonably have a problem with that?"

The first was the college basketball player who was about to break her school scoring record and fell to an Achilles tendon injury. On her next game, the opposing team let her take one unguarded lay up in order to break the record. If she was two points away from breaking the record, she probably would have broken it by twenty points if not for her injury. So, her opponents decided honor was more important than the game and they let her take the shot. To me, it's a great expression of respect, but it just doesn't wash in American culture.

Because we're largely insane. We invest so much meaning in this local school record that it becomes almost sacred. So a devotion to the record and what it means (The Journal called her breaking the record "tainted") actually outweighs our compassion for a woman who devoted her life to a sport and was loved by her teammates and opponents. If you think about it, the record is an arbitrary way of measuring achievement, and we should give it the weight due such an arbitrary prize. We should be happy about this situation because it made her happy, and it made her opponents happy, and her teammates happy. Why exactly do we watch sports if they don't at least have the potential for causing happiness?

So, rather than take the Journal's vapid line, I prefer to be happy whenever a group of people choose to honor one another. See, compassion is lacking in this country of ours, and we should support it wherever it shows itself. But, this is a problem with the way we think -- Americans tend to think compassion has no place where competition is involved.

Of course, the people most into talking about competition are either starting so far ahead of everyone else that they can't lose, or starting so far behind that they can't win. It cracks me up. Of course, our major corporations and politicians supported by those corporations like to talk about the virtues of competition. Those people have nothing to lose. They also have the ability to talk about it so much that the information trickles down into society, and you start hearing it from people in the least positions to compete with anyone. Why are there so many poor Republicans? They know they don't have money and they don't own much, but have somehow been convinced that they might get ahead through the fair spirit of competition, and then they won't want some intrusive government taking their stuff. Never mind that the people who have stuff will never let a bunch of hicks have it.

The other story was about a woman who dropped out of society. She saved her money, left her job, and found a fairly ascetic way of life which satisfied her. An angry letter writer complained that she doesn't have health insurance, and is not living up to the responsibilities of adult life. Because she doesn't have health insurance. Her not having insurance, he says, drives his premiums up and it's just not fair.

I was stunned by this one. He's chosen to have insurance and live a certain lifestyle. His decision to buy the insurance is as much a choice as hers to ignore the cost. But he wants this ascetic to play the game his way, so his life will be easier. Just because everyone plays the insurance game, he expects her to play.

This shouldn't even be an issue. In a compassionate society, health care would be a right, and we would all pay into it like we pay into common education. Are we so into the art of selling that we'd rather sell the right to breathe than give it away? We are. But we're really warped people, so it's to be expected.

It's amazing to me how many values we place over compassion -- especially in a country full of people who claim to be Christians, it makes no sense at all. It's time to rethink why we formed a society in the first place. It wasn't about private property and freedom to advertise, we did it because life was "nasty, brutish, and short" in the state of nature.

Michael Maiello never came close to the scoring record at his high school.

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