Category: culture

Why do we compete?

(This piece was originally self-published at LinkedIn.com)

When I was a kid I lived to play baseball.

If our team lost, too bad. I really didn’t care much.

When our high school team lost, while the other kids were cursing and slamming bats, I was laughing and chattering about the exciting moments of the game. This annoyed my coaches and my teammates thought I was a loser.

Why are humans so competitive? Why do we fight to win everything from board games with the family to business deals and meaningless arguments with our friends? As it was with baseball, my attitude has always been you try to win because that’s the point of the game – but it’s just a game. If it’s time well spent and you did your best, good enough. Shrug it off and move on.

Why are people self-centered to the point of defensive bragging? What is it about the ego that frequently overrides our desire to learn from each other by our desperate need to insist we know best, even as we know we’re wrong?

I’ve always wondered about this stuff. Now, social media have brought these questions front and center.

Perfectly nice people in real life become brutal monsters on Twitter. They say things with their keyboards they would never say with their eyes.

Quiet people who “always kept to themselves ” suddenly walk into a grade school armed to the teeth and commit unimaginable atrocities.

As my Dallas radio partner, Amy Chodroff, often wonders aloud, “What’s wrong with people?”

What’s wrong, indeed?

I’m almost 72. I suppose I could go back to school and pursue the psychology degree I considered 55 years ago. Maybe I will but most likely I won’t. For now, I took my search for answers to our new technological Wizard of Oz, ChatGPT.

Why are people ego-centric and competitive?I asked.

Here’s the A.I. Big Brain Answer:

The ego-centric and competitive tendencies observed in people can be attributed to a combination of various factors, including evolutionary biology, socialization, cultural influences, and individual psychology. Here are some key reasons why people may exhibit ego-centric and competitive behaviors:

  1. Evolutionary Biology: From an evolutionary perspective, competition has played a significant role in the survival and reproduction of our species. Throughout history, individuals who were more competitive and focused on their own needs and resources had a higher chance of passing on their genes. This has led to the development of certain ego-centric and competitive tendencies in humans.
  2. Socialization and Upbringing: The way individuals are raised and socialized within their families, communities, and societies can significantly shape their behaviors and attitudes. In many cultures, competition is encouraged and valued as a means of achieving success, recognition, and status. This socialization can foster ego-centric and competitive mindsets.
  3. Cultural Influences: Cultural factors play a significant role in shaping people’s values, beliefs, and behaviors. In some cultures, individualism and self-interest are highly valued, which can contribute to ego-centric tendencies. Similarly, cultures that emphasize competition and achievement may foster a more competitive mindset among individuals.
  4. Psychological Factors: At the individual level, certain psychological factors can contribute to ego-centric and competitive behaviors. For example, some individuals may have a strong need for validation, recognition, or power, leading them to prioritize their own interests over others. Additionally, factors like low self-esteem, fear of failure, or a scarcity mindset can drive individuals to compete intensely for resources or success.
  5. Societal Structures and Incentives: Societal structures, such as economic systems or organizational hierarchies, can create environments that foster competition. When individuals are rewarded based on their individual achievements or when resources are perceived as limited, it can fuel ego-centric and competitive behaviors as people vie for success, promotions, or other rewards.

It’s important to note that while ego-centric and competitive tendencies are common, they are not universal to all individuals. People vary in their levels of competitiveness, and factors like empathy, cooperation, and altruism are also part of the human experience. Additionally, socialization and cultural shifts can influence the prevalence and manifestation of these behaviors over time.

The answer to my lifelong question spewed forth in less than ten seconds and it makes perfect sense. I always figured that an inherent competitive drive is what enabled primordial life to crawl out of the prehistoric swamp goo, grow feet and hands, grab a stick, and then whack its neighbor.

Game on.

What it doesn’t explain is why our egos impel the most driven of us to lie, cheat, steal, and even kill to win.

I suspect something went haywire in our evolutionary process. Morality got short-circuited because it would have just confused our ancestors while they were battling saber-toothed tigers and, later, the Huns for mere survival.

Or, maybe we just haven’t finished figuring it out. Now that we have tigers and Huns out of the way, maybe morality can come off the back burner.

Maybe respect and decency are relatively new ideas and those of us living in our blink-of-a-cosmic-eye lifetime are just starting to integrate them into our nature and the DNA that will eventually confirm our descendants’ progress.

If we can keep from destroying ourselves humanity may have a better, less aggressive, distant future.

But I hope they still play baseball or something like it.

I’ve decided that ageism is okay

March 1, 2024 – Prosper, TX

Now that I’m retired from radio I’ve kept busy writing a weekly online column about radio. I get to sleep four hours longer than I used to and I work at home in my sweats but I’m still focused on radio, just from a different perspective. Nothing wrong with that but I want to expand my world so I’ve been exploring some options.

I have been thinking about going back to school. I never graduated college, maybe I should go back and be the one old fart in every class. Still mulling that over.

Writing fiction is my passion and though I can string words together nicely I don’t know anything about the craft. I wish I had gotten a writing degree when I was young but I didn’t. Now I’m looking into some online classes but they’re expensive. And what I do know from my experience is that in the end you still have to be willing to do the work. I’ve been mulling that over for decades.

The other thing I would love to do is act. I did plays onstage for 20+ years when I was much younger. At the time, when castmates of my age were trying to get professional acting careers started I said, “I’m going to wait until I’m old. You see the same old people in movies and on TV all the time. There aren’t many of them. I’ll wait until the competition is dying. ”

TV character actor Bert Mustin, 1884-1977. We saw him everywhere.

I have arrived. No, not as a professional actor, I have arrived at old.

I signed up for a free subscription to a casting call website for actors. Some of the jobs are unpaid, and some claim to pay very well. They all describe the actors they’re looking for, mostly young people. Over 50 is rare and calls for actors over 70 are nonexistent. That’s fine, I never expected to burst into Hollywood in a leading role at 72. I figured background acting (still referred to as “extras” if we’re honest) and maybe a sentence or two here and there would be great fun.

But here’s what dawned on me this morning as I was looking at the casting notices and writing courses:

Creativity is imagined to be a young person’s ability.  All the websites I’ve looked at for writing courses feature pictures of happy young college types. Casting notices are the same. For some reason, our society assumes brains wither as bodies age.

Years ago in my 40s and 50s, I entered some playwriting competitions and was incensed to find contest entries restricted to “young playwrights”. Some actually specified “under 30”, or words to that effect. It pissed me off, and rightly so. I just lied about my age. It’s none of their business, right? I don’t have an expiration date.

Not incidentally, I won four of the half-dozen playwriting contests I entered.

(Paul McCartney, now 81, was asked ten years ago if he shouldn’t consider getting off the stage and letting younger performers have their place in the spotlight. “Fuck ’em,” he replied. “Let them work their way up like I did.”)

Here’s my point, and I think this may surprise you because I’ve written several ageism rants in this blog over the years. That, in itself, makes the point: I’m still learning and so will you.

I have gotten to an age where I don’t think ageism is a big deal. It’s a state of mind based on the perspective of the observer. It’s normal and natural, and sometimes it is reasonable and warranted.

I can’t portray a man in his 40s no matter how much time I spend in makeup. I’ve talked about this recently on the radio, about radio.  You can’t hire a 60-year-old on-air personality for a Hot AC music station, you just can’t. 30 years is a lifetime. Inevitably the old guy is going to impart some of his life’s lessons into his shtick.  Just as inevitably, the young audience will roll their eyes and say, “Okay, Boomer.”

This is how life works. When we’re young we think old people are stupid because they’re old. Old people think young people are stupid because they’re too young to know what they’re talking about.

They’re both right.

I understand the need for laws banning hiring discrimination of all kinds but you can’t legislate reality. Life experience and perspective can’t be ignored. It’s the result of personal growth through aging. It’s what keeps us fascinated by learning and passionate about life.

I’m a fat old fart looking for a TV or movie walk-on. Hell, I can even deliver lines believably.

But don’t tell me I’m too old to write. I’ll kick your young playwriting ass.

 

We are stardust…

by Dave Williams

Bobbi & Nick return to Woodstock

Bobbi Ercoline died a few days ago. She was 73.  Nick, her husband of 53 years, paid her a simple yet powerful tribute:

“She lived her life well and left this world a much better place. If you knew her, you loved her.“

I never heard their names before this week but suddenly realized I do know Bobbi and Nick,  I’ve known them most of my life. They’re the kids on the cover of the iconic Woodstock soundtrack album published 54 years ago.

The picture of Nick holding Bobbi in a blanket on Max Yasgur’s dairy farm in Bethel, New York, freezes a moment in time that symbolized my generation’s place in history; we were naively idealistic kids who believed we could end war and hatred by simply declaring we’d have nothing to do with them.

They called us the Peace & Love generation.

“We are stardust, we are goldenWe are billion-year-old carbonAnd we got to get ourselvesBack to the garden”
– Woodstock: Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young

Peace is elusive but Bobbi and Nick found lifelong love on a wet hillside in August of 1969.

Our generation is still hanging on to the dream.

Biometrics: killing yourself for fitness

Listen here and/or read below:

My wife wears a FitBit. It’s a device that fits on your wrist like a watch. It can measure your heart rate, how long and deeply you slept last night, how many steps you’ve taken each day and other personal fitness data. Sooner or later I’m sure it well be able to tell you your weight without making you stand on a platform we call a scale. (Now that I mention it that seems pretty archaic, doesn’t it?)

Sometimes CarolAnn comes home from work chirping, “I walked ten thousand steps today!” On sleepy weekend mornings she occasionally moans, “I only slept 6 hours and 17 minutes. No wonder I’m so tired.” My immediate reaction to these proclamations is to chuckle and then roll my eyes in something bordering annoyance. I manage to avoid both.

In a desperate attempt to be healthy we’re stressing ourselves to death.

“Felix, why don’t you leave yourself alone. Don’t tinker.” – Oscar Madison

A couple of days ago I discovered something new and it delights me because I think it may signal the jumping of the shark in the biometric self-worry industry:

It’s a smart fork.

No shit.

HAPILABS 105 Bluetooth-Enabled Smart Fork (Pink)

For 60 to 100 bucks you can buy a fork that lights up and buzzes when you’re eating too fast. It connects via Bluetooth to iOS and Android apps to watch your eating stats in real time. It will tell you how long it took to eat your meal, the number of “fork servings” (each time food is brought to the mouth) per minute and you can upload your eating data for analysis and coaching to help improve your eating behavior.

Coaching!

This is not a joke. Amazon and eBay are both sold out. People who bought it are leaving loving reviews. Here’s my favorite:

I personally loved it! Never used it to eat, but did use it with my bow to shoot and stop some bad guys during my stay in Vegas this past summer. It saved my ass! – Vilma Valdez

I seriously doubt that Vilma really bought a smart fork. She’s seems smarter than that. But I also think  P.T. Barnum is laughing his ass off in the hereafter.

That’s entertainment?

by Dave Williams

Today I somehow wound up Internet surfing upcoming concerts and live theater events in Dallas-Ft. Worth. Here’s a short list of shows I would enjoy seeing but will not:

Elton is retiring from touring, not being canonized.

1. ELTON JOHN’S FAREWELL TOUR – Cheap seats, $282 each. (In a basketball arena that seats 21,000.)

2. PAUL MCCARTNEY – Cheap seats, $82 each. (Third deck of a 50,000 seat MLB stadium.)

3, The Broadway tour of HAMILTON – Cheap seats, $345 each. (For that price CarolAnn and I can fly round-trip to California and spend a week with our kids.)

As a self-conscious old fart I figured that I’m just way out of touch with the cost of living these days. So, I did some quick Google work on cost of living comparisons and here’s what I found:

Presumably $2.50 to see The Stones and 25 cents for the Homecoming Queen Contest

— When I was a teenager in the late 1960s the Rolling Stones played the Sacramento Memorial Auditorium. Ticket prices were $2.75 (including a Homecoming Queen Contest). In today’s dollars that’s just shy of $16.00, not the $282 and up for nosebleed seats to see Elton John.

— In 1966 The Beatles played their last-ever live concert at Candlestick Park in San Francisco. Tickets were $4.50 – $6.50. Paying $82 next year to see McCartney in a baseball stadium is a price increase of 551.77% and that’s just for one Beatle, not all four.

— Broadway tickets prices for Orchestra seats were $15 in 1970. That would be roughly $94 now, not the $345 they want for a seat that would require me to carry a telescope to see Hamilton.

A founding “father” at age 19, Hamilton was a lousy shot, killed in a duel by Aaron Burr who still has no musical to honor him.

Look, I believe in capitalism. If people are willing to pay these prices for two or three hours of big show entertainment who am I to protest?

I’m just kicking myself for skipping that Stones show.

The common cold

 

by Dave Williams

I have a lousy cold. It’s a terrible cold.

You ever notice that people who have a cold almost always beef it up a bit with paralyzing adjectives that make it sound like an exceptionally bad cold, not just a “common” cold?

This cold of mine is the worst cold in the history of colds!

Thirty years ago when I was still young, eternal and bullet proof I just ignored any illness that didn’t force me into a hospital. A cold? Flu? Please. It will go away no matter what I do or don’t do. That was my attitude then and it was proven correct time and again.

I spent a lot of my 1980s evenings in a Northern California honky tonk wearing boots and hat and sucking on beer bottles, smoking Marlboros, chatting up the ladies and laughing with my friends.

Don’t go getting all judgmental on me, it was a different time and socially acceptable. To say nothing of hella fun.

In those days I learned that if I caught a wicked cold I could stay home, get plenty of rest, drink lots of fluids and I would gradually recover within a week or two. On the other hand, if I went out and smoked, drank, danced and laughed as usual it would take seven to 14 days for me to regain normal health, such as it was.

I don’t live like that anymore, I’m too old, and I don’t recommend it because it’s not socially acceptable these days. But I’ll tell you one thing for sure:

Dancing and drinking and smoking cigarettes with a cold made the time pass much more quickly than shivering on the couch alone and feeling sorry for myself.

We didn’t have Facebook or Snap Chat or Twitter in those days. Whining about a cold had to be done in person and your real life friends helped you get over yourself.

God bless you, Tom Hanks

By Dave Williams

My youngest grandson called last evening. He was so excited and so am I.

Tyler Williams has achieved a thrill that eluded me when I was his age; his hero has made amends for mine.

Here’s the story:

Tom & Tyler

A few nights ago my son and daughter-in-law took their son, Tyler, to see a production of Shakespeare’s Henry IV starring Tom Hanks. Though he’s only 13 Tyler loves Tom Hanks. He told me he’s been a big fan of Tom Hanks his entire life!

Well… since he was three.

While looking around before the show a stagehand apparently asked him if he was a Shakespeare fan, or words to that effect, and Tyler said yes, but mostly he’s a Tom Hanks fan.

The guy said maybe he could arrange for Tyler to meet Tom Hanks after the show.  You can’t imagine how excited my grandson was.

And you also can’t imagine how disappointed he was when the show ended and they couldn’t find that stagehand. Tyler and his parents headed toward the parking lot but then the miracle happened:

A large, black SUV pulled up alongside my family. The driver rolled down the window and said, “Hey, Kid! Did you like the show?”

Tom Hanks had found him.

Tyler was over the moon!

They talked for a few minutes. Tyler told his superstar hero that he, too, was an actor. Tom told him to keep practicing and offered some funny suggestions about how to enunciate properly.

A personal autograph followed and then, a big hug.

Tyler will be walking on that cloud his entire life. And how much time did it take Tom Hanks to give a kid a thrill and maybe some lifelong inspiration?

Hanks hug

Five minutes, maybe.

When I was about Tyler’s age I had a chance to talk to my hero, too. I was the only kid there when Willie Mays left the San Francisco Giants clubhouse following a game.

“Mr. Mays,” I stammered breathlessly, “will you sign my glove?”

I looked at him as if he was a god. But he didn’t look at me, not even a glance. He ignored me as if I didn’t exist. Without breaking stride he walked straight to his car.

It took me a lot of years to forgive Willie for my crushing disappointment. As I got older I did forgive him but I never forgot the pain of thinking my hero was not a nice man. It shattered my feelings for him.

But now, more than 50 years later Tom Hanks has made up for it.

I guess you could argue that I learned a valuable lesson that day so many years ago. Maybe. All I know is it hurt real bad and some of that stayed with me for decades.

Tyler will never feel that way.

God bless you, Tom Hanks.

 

Above is the program that Tom Hanks autographed for Tyler. Kinda hard to read here. It says, “Tyler, speak the speech. – T. Hanks” It’s a line from Hamlet in which Shakespeare tells actors to speak as real people do, not with florid exagerration as actors frequently do, especially while reciting his works. That’s my interpretation, at least. It is an amazing gift from a wonderful actor to a greatful young fan.

Read any good movies lately?

Do you ever watch foreign films or TV with subtitles?

Until a little more than a year ago I always said I don’t want to read a movie. I want to watch the scenery and the faces of the actors. And, I’ve always wondered what I was missing when a long piece of dialogue spoken in a foreign language is boiled down to just a short sentence or a few words. A character in the show may rattle off a three minute soliloquy but the caption at the bottom of the screen simply reads, “I agree” or “Right on, dude!”

Actual screenshot of my TV with captioning on. This character in a story set 300 years ago is calling someone “a dork”.

Sometimes the translators who write the captions don’t really have a handle on American English, especially slang and cultural references that don’t suit the time period of the movie.

These things always bugged me until last year when my wife, the lovely and feisty CarolAnn Williams, turned me on to Korean TV.

I don’t remember how she came across the TV channel, Dramafever. She’s not Korean. She doesn’t have any Korean relatives or friends and has never been to that part of the world but Korean TV shows have no sex, violence or bad language. The comedies are whimsical to the point of innocent absurdity and the dramas are skillfully produced with quirky plot twists. CarolAnn loves them. It’s practically all she watches. And now I watch them with her.

Together we enjoy the many Korean historical dramas of the Joseon dynasty which dates back to 1392. These are tales based upon real kings and queens who lived three or four hundred years ago, of battling royal consorts and political factions plotting to grab power. Wars are waged with swords and arrows; fights involve a lot of shouting and flashy martial arts, our heroes flipping high in the air for no apparent reason before they kick three guys at once.

(In Korean historical dramas once you’ve been kicked to the ground you’re out of the fight, the same as dead.)

I looked them up: “Comminate” – To threaten with vengeance. “Scapegrace” – A mischievous rascal. (These days we’d probably say, “asshole”.)

The plots are engaging, the acting is generally excellent and the costumes are colorful and fun.

Best of all, those subtitles are sometimes hilarious. And sometimes they actually expand our English vocabulary.

And along the way we’ve learned a Korean word or two. For example:

“Pyeha, paliga yeollyeo issseubnida!”

Which means, “Your majesty, your fly is open!”

Those beautiful Swedes

I have a friend who does consulting work around the world; he has clients in the U.S., all through Europe, New Zealand, Central and South America. Occasionally he passes through Dallas and we catch up over a meal.

He told me one thing that he’s noticed in his travels is that the Swedes are the most physically and facially beautiful people in the world. He said when he first started doing business in Sweden he caught himself staring at people because they were just unnaturally attractive.

Swedish actors Peter Johansson, Anna Sahlin and Måns Zelmerlöw. Photo: Maja Suslin/TT

One evening while out to dinner with a group of his clients in Sweden he had drank just enough wine to ask the question that had been nagging at him for awhile.

“Do you people realize how beautiful you are?” he asked. “There are no ugly people in your country.”

They laughed and told him immodestly yes, they do know that. Whenever they travel outside their national borders, they said, they find other people in the world a little unsettling.
Isn’t that hilarious?

Daylight Saving Time

I don’t really care. I’m the least busy person I know.
 
Everybody still says we’ll all lose an hour’s sleep Saturday night. Not me. I go to bed when I’m tired on Saturday and wake up Sunday morning when I’m finished sleeping. The clock says whatever it says, I don’t care.
 
If you do have to awaken at a particular time on Sunday and you’re afraid losing an hour’s sleep will kick your butt I have two suggestions: go to bed earlier or change your plans.
 
Seriously, why is this a big deal?
 
It’s exactly the same as when you fly into a different time zone that’s one hour ahead. Does that wreak havoc in your life for as much as five days as they keep telling us in the news? I don’t think so.
 
Lately we’ve been treated to sensationalized news stories telling us how changing the clocks one hour leads to more highway deaths for sleepy drivers and more heart attacks and strokes for people who have trouble adjusting their bodies to the arbitrary numbers we call time.
 
Oh, puh-leeze!
 
I don’t mean to be a jerk but if you have a heart attack because of Daylight Saving Time I’m guessing that your heart was in critical distress before you changed the clock.
 
But here’s the good news: if we insist on maintaining this silly tradition we’re darned close to living in a world where all clocks change themselves. Your computers, tablets and phones already do this. Watches, clocks on stoves and in cars can’t be far behind.
 
And you know what that means?  Nothing. Blessedly, nothing.
 
We’ll never notice anything except that it suddenly stays light an hour longer.
 
“Hmm. I guess the time changed last night.”
 
That’s all we’ll say.
 
If TV and radio stop beating us over the head with stuff to worry about we’ll all be fine.