Sport.

Months and months of incessant whinging have gone by and no mention of sport. Sport has played a major part in my life. I cannot remember not being able to kick a ball well enough to play soccerball. I have played soccerball, the rugby football, the tennis, basketball, cricket, ice hockey, ping pong (probably the best one, honestly), golf (a good tantrum ruined by peaceful scenery in my experience), even softball. There is just something I have liked about a competitive effort that is directly physical, a visceral intensity of attention and effort that truly makes you feel alive.

However, what I have spent more time doing is watching sport. I have watched enough sport to have a favorite aussie rules football team, to hate all teams wearing orange (except the netherlands soccerball team and the Cleveland Browns), and to have an opinion on which is more boring between baseball and cricket (both are very boring, but cricket lasts for days). I spend several hours a day watching grown men desperately try to get inflated sheep bladders from one place to another within the confines of arbitrary rules. I am fully aware that this is rather an odd activity.

Why do people watch sport? For those that don't watch sport this is a real question, because it is a really strange activity, no matter how popular. I watch sport because it is the essence of myth, improvised before our eyes. In myth there is good and evil in direct conflict, winner take all. Myth explains who we are, what group we are a part of and which group we are against. In almost all cases myth climaxes with a battle, a struggle on the field of battle between the two forces. This battle is the point of the basic stories of our cultures. The shining heroes of our hope line-up to do their utmost against the dark, evil horde, their colours proudly displayed, pennants fluttering in the wind.

Sport is this exact scenario. A battle, a struggle beween us and them. Once you have picked a side (a vital component of watching sport for me, not caring about the outcome means you don't care about the activity) then the emotions run riot. It is family, clan, tribe under assault from the enemy. Then there is the emotion of becoming part of the mob, with your colours displayed, yelling, chanting, screaming. It is a basic part of humanity to feel part of something. It ennervates the entire psyche, grabbing all of your attention to hope for your side to be triumphant, to give you the release of pure joy.

I want to get across the point that sport is a replacement for bloody war and violence, rather than an encouragement towards it. I have thoroughly enjoyed smashing my body into another (enough that my shoulders will never be the same) within the framework of a set of rules. The opponent voluntarily agrees to take part in this smashing, also enjoys it, and will stop upon the sound of a whistle. You will not find a more immediate human connection than between those who have competed against each other to the point of pain, and who join together afterwards in a soothing beverage and to laugh about the smashing.

Like a great play can get you to feel love, anguish, joy, and sadness, a great sporting event can get you to feel all of the same feelings, but every game is different, you know that the storyline has not been fixed for the audience, and the entire event is improvised. That's why I enjoy watching sport so much.

If this doesn't stir something in you then I've just been spouting nonsense: http://http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=BCn-8MB-v5U

The Ultimate Indignity

As a person with a liberal arts degree I have suffered the ultimate indignity. I have had my writing critiqued by an engineer. To further define my level of degradation the explanation for my failure to write properly is based on a psychological evaluation of my hemispheres. Here it is.

"Dan, you're overly logical left hemisphere has betrayed the right and made a binary decision. A lot more white space instead of some more white space. Instead of bullet points, perhaps artistic layout would help the reader. I presume your intent is to impart the content of what you write. Making your musing easy to read facilitates the transfer.

May I suggest you write as you always have. When your done, consider its layout. Perhaps a single space between paragraphs, on long posts perhaps grouping paragraphs with subtitles. Inserting an occasional enhancing graphic, etc.

Thinks of it as complementary parts of exposition. Verbal and visual. Distinct skill sets. The cleaver thing would be to integrate the pair.

...jgk"

Calumny!
Now, I feel I must defend myself against this vile calumny. For a start, the accusation that my left hemisphere is overly rational is quite hurtful. I mean, that's what that hemisphere is for. However, the notion that it has overidden my right hemisphere in making this a binary decision is actually the opposite of the truth. As laid out in my post the reason for my opposition to the advice (and therefore the sabotage of it through excess white space) is from my irrational hemisphere, a position based on emotional autonomy rather than ease of reading.

The second error on the part of my vicious attacker is in saying "Instead of bullet points," when my point is that restricting the size of paragraphs and spacing them out on the page creates bullet points. Smaller paragraphs reduces the amount you can say on a subject. Creating space between paragraphs distances the point of each paragraph from another. Increased white space automatically leads to an effect closer to bullet points, this is inescapable.

The next point is my intent. It is interesting to note that those in favor of a different layout have been a technical writer and an engineer. Those in favor of my normal wordiness have degrees in psychology, art and history. In engineering and techncal writing the intent is to as simply as possible convey information. In art the point of writing is very different. It is to be beautiful in and of itself. It is to convey a depth of multiple meanings. It is to create an emotional environment. A good technical manual has simple sentences, short paragraphs, spaces between those paagraphs. Anna Karenina has long, complex sentences. It has long, dense paragraphs filled with equivical meaning, the point of Anna Karenina only becomes apparent after tens of thousands of words. My intent is somewere between these two extremes.

Shocked!
The thing that has really shocked me about all this is the connection made between spaces between paragraphs and reading comprehension. Are people serious? Is it really true that people cannot understand the exact same information, with the same words, in the same order, without having headings or spaces between paragraphs? Have people become unable to read novels? I read a 600 page novel over the last couple of weeks that had white space only between chapters as per convention. Would people have had trouble understanding this novel as a result?

The Painful Truth
What I think has happened is a combination of two things. First, the internet now dominates daily reading. White space on the internet is free. In print is costs money. The denser the writing on paper the cheaper is the cost of providing it, with the internet it makes no difference. However, in print there is not really an immediate alternative for a reader who becomes bored with what they are reading, while on the internet any moment of boredom can result in the reader goin elsewhere. So people have become accustomed to small paragraphs, in a bullet point style, packing as much emotional content into as few words as possible, exactly in the manner of cable news.
Second, there is a convention that has sprung up as to how blogs should be written. There is literally no reason why different blogs should all look the same. Rather, it seems to me that blogs should represent the views, character, personality and interest of the person writing them.

Summary
If I change the way I write this blog, then it won't be me writing it. Do you really want me to be a different person? Am I not good enough for you, Jim?


Epilogue
If you couldn't tell, this entire post should be read with you tongue shoved firmly into your cheek.

Advice

This last weekend I received my first piece of advice on this blog, in person at a party. Coincidentally I received the first piece of advice in a comment section from someone named Mark, his first comment since April. Welcome back Mark.


The piece of advice at the party was from a good friend of mine, Dade, a highly intelligent man with excellent writing skills who has his own blog. Here's his post on the party in question, http://dadecariaga.blogspot.com/2008/10/jene-verrckte-deutsch.html


Clearly Dade Cariaga is an excellent writer, with a well presented blog which I take great pleasure in reading. His piece of advice was to use more "White space," to not have such long paragraphs and to have space between them for ease of viewing. Dade was clear that he thought this would be better even if none of the words were changed.


My initial reaction was what everyone who knows me might expect, I simply said I wouldn't. As I have said before in this blog (http://hopefulmuser.blogspot.com/2008/04/few-words-on-religion-and-childhood.html) "I think my natural personality abhors not having autonomy, being under the power of others, and that was present from a very early age." Even something as simple as changing a format of a blog on the advice of a fine writer feels like giving up autonomy, as if someone else has decided something for me.


Coincidentally (perhaps) the last time Mark commented on my blog was in that April post. "More white space" and "Incessant windbag" having more than a little in common, I have used this blog to try out this more-white-space approach.


My initial reaction is that I detest it. It fragments my thinking, grinding it down to the simplest possible statement, removing associative thoughts, paring down the subject matter to bullet points or a power-point presentation.