Baltimore and Football's Morality Problem

Thinking about Baltimore 

My wife and I were watching Real Time with Bill Maher and DL Hughely was talking about why people would set fire to their own community. His answer was in essence, hopelessness. One of my go-to questions is: what is the proximate cause of x? And what is the ultimate cause of x? Now you may think I am going to ask what is the ultimate cause of people committing violent acts or destroying property but I think the more interesting question is what is the ultimate cause for hopelessness? In talking with my big-brained wife, who is a psychologist and hears the woes of people for a living, she opined that hopelessness may stem from a failure to control one’s environment. 

So much of one’s environment is out of control when living in poverty it must seem like the sun could rise in the west and when supposed caretakers of the people in the environment turn out to harm, the sun does in fact rise in the west. And fires are lit. The fires may not prove beneficial except for what must be immense sense of control. There are no jobs, my physical well-being is at-risk, my options for the future are nil, much of what I see and hear is dysfunctional but right now I can light this fire and watch it burn, I can control that and I will.

The Rules of the NFL and how it relates to Morality

Are you a fan of football, more precisely NFL football? Were you born circa 1970? Do you remember when quarterbacks could be hit, more precisely, when quarterbacks could be maimed, clotheslined and in all ways crushed during the course of a game? Now you can’t so much as look at a quarterback’s cleats and they throw a flag. The rules changed. Did you hear me, the rules changed! What have we learned: NFL rules are arbitrary or relative if you like: it depends on the era, depends on the money coming in and that relates to positional importance, etc etc…it DEPENDS.

Morality, by definition, is about rules that cannot change. Did you hear me? Cannot change! Now of course the NFL is not in the morality business but the ire that is sent flying up every fall Sunday in living rooms and man caves across the country does lead us to ask, why are there rules in the first place if they can be changed? 

And so you’ll say I have a rule that can’t be changed. 

And I will say show it to me. 

And then I will say: what is the use of a timeless rule that has timelessly been broken?