Survivor...and Ultrarunning

[image credit CBS]

This week Dana was sicker than a dog (gastrointestinal distress), but was cleared by the show's medical staff to remain in the game if she wanted to.

She opted to drop out, and thus became a prime topic for my noontime running buds.  I was not there to run with them in person, but contributed my $.02 via email.

We here in the Ultrarunning world know a thing or two about extreme physical and mental challenges, and what it takes to find the resources deep within yourself to go on when dropping would be the easiest thing.

I'm guessing--based upon personal experience--that Dana, approximately 2 hours after leaving the island, was undoubtedly kicking herself for not trying to stay another 12 hours. 

In the Ultra world, where feeling like hell and feeling like you could run forever are frequently very close together in time and space, there's a saying: "It doesn’t always keep getting worse."  That is, when things are objectively bad or even very bad, they don’t always continue downhill; often there's a turnaround coming. 

You don't know, so you just keep on with the relentless forward progress. And maybe, just maybe, you'll be rewarded with the change in fortune.  Maybe it'll come at an aid station where you get the right food or drink that sits good in your belly; maybe a nice downhill where you get your running groove back; perhaps a nice uphill where the long walk serves as a recovery period.

You get the idea.  I was advised once that you should decide in advance what circumstances would be grounds to drop.  Basically it boils down to this: if continuing would not endanger you or your long-term running, then you keep going. 

Your stomach hurts?  Keep going.

Your knee or ankle hurts but there's no obvious sign of trauma, just overuse.  Keep going.

Your mind is baked and going on seems futile.  Keep going.

I don't want to come off as an unsympathetic a**hole, it's just when the stakes are high you raise your game.

 

Amazing Race and Survivor

Well, both Amazing Race and Survivor are history now.  The bride and I are avid followers of the genre, dating back to the days of the original outdoor adventure show, the Eco-Challenge.

Spoilers follow if you didn’t catch Sunday night’s Survivor yet.

Anyway, our consensus was that this season’s crop of contestants was uninspiring.  Over at the Amazing Race, of the final four couples, all teams contained at least one a**hole and some teams had two.  The team that won—Rachel and Dave—was indeed the strongest and most deserving based upon their performance in the game.  But we just didn’t warm up to them and never wanted to actively root for them.

In Survivor, Kim took the honors, and in retrospect she did play a masterful game and was the most deserving.  But again, we never felt “That Kim is awesome—she should win.”  I guess what struck me most about this season’s Survivor was the herd mentality. I mean, why on earth did Colton have any acolytes at all, ever?  Why would somebody be swayed by anything he would say?  Yet he was a kingpin until felled by a medical evac.  But it think he’ll be back for another season. 

And as for Kim, it never seemed to occur to any of the other players to challenge her.  It was like she wore the crown the whole time and the worshipful subjects just did her bidding.

Of course, all this is easy to speculate about now.  I’ve never been hungry in the jungle for a month.

 

The Pixilated Side-Boob....

...Morality Politics, and Ultrarunning

Well, the 23^rd season of Survivor is history.  One might quibble with Sophie winning the $1M rather than Coach, but hey, it’s just an entertaining game (that many contestants and fans take far too seriously).

The bride and I quite enjoy the show and faithfully watch every episode.  Two of my noontime running buds also are fans, and we have many a spirited discussion while we run the perimeter of our military base.

Anyway…back to the title of this post.  Last week’s Survivor episode was interesting in that there were multiple camera shots in which one of Sophie's breasts was somewhat visible in profile through the armhole of her tank top.  The Survivor producers pixilated that part of the image, but it happened across multiple shots and so the pixilation became a technological distraction.

I get it—CBS needed those scenes of some key interplay in the game, and to make the shots usable for a prime time show they had to blur the image out.  No problem, they did the right thing for a family show.  But the pixilated side-boob got me thinking about morality politics, and that can be dangerous.

I thought again of just how the Republicans as a group to me seem abnormally fixated on morality issues, and not just of a sexual nature.  Witness the near fetish they have for trying to endow fertilized eggs with personhood as a way of torpedoing Roe v. Wade and abortion rights; fervent support for public displays of the Ten Commandments; pushing for (Christian) prayer in schools; promoting school vouchers as a way of keeping kids from being tainted by the public school environment; reflexive inclusion of the Pledge of Allegiance--to include of course, “Under God”--at as many public venues as possible.

All of this comes under the symbology of the pixilated side-boob.  It’s a proxy for the moral failings of the unwashed Democratic masses.  All the while the righteous right ignores the fact that the economy is in the toilet, poverty is at an all-time high, millions of people still are without jobs or health care, and saber-rattling in the direction of Iran is becoming a steady drumbeat.  But watch out for those pixilated side-boobs.

Never mind, too, that the Congress has utterly forgotten the absolute truism that “you can’t legislate morality.” Incoming freshmen and freshwomen should have that slogan tattooed on the back of their writing hand so they will see it hundreds of times every single day.  You. Can’t. Legislate. Morality. [see note 1 below]

So give it up, dear leaders. Forget about the various pixilated side-boob issues that fall under the umbrella of trying to prescribe morality. Just focus on people’s basic welfare and needs. Sorta like that new testament dude talked about.

Oh, and the link to Ultrarunning? I’ve been in many trail races, where both male and female competitors are out there for dozens of miles and hours. We eat, burp, pee, fart and poop and guess what? We’re all athletes using our working bodies and so it’s not a big deal. The pixilated side-boob would be such a non-issue on the trail.

[Note 1].  I was curious who first said this, that you can't legislate morality.  The quote used the word "precribe" instead of "legislate", and appears to be attributed to R.M. MacIver (1882–1970), Scottish sociologist, educator. The Modern State, ch. 5, Oxford University Press (1926).

 

What then is the relation of law to morality? Law cannot prescribe morality, it can prescribe only external actions and therefore it should prescribe only those actions whose mere fulfillment, from whatever motive, the state adjudges to be conducive to welfare. What actions are these? Obviously such actions as promote the physical and social conditions requisite for the expression and development of free—or moral—personality.... Law does not and cannot cover all the ground of morality. To turn all moral obligations into legal obligations would be to destroy morality.

   

Tales from the Perimeter: Survivor

Perimeter meaning the 6 mile patrol road inside the fence of the military installation on which I work, where some half a dozen of us comprise a pool of running “talent” and strive to show up for a noontime run a couple times a week if we can escape our desks. We share a lot and these guys are one of the core pillars of my sanity.

During yesterday's run we had a full quorum of our group, save for KK,  who is still rehabbing a surgically repaired knee (a non-running injury).  The majority of our group avidly follows both The Amazing Race and Survivor, and the conversation as we navigated the perimeter turned to Survivor.

In this week's episode, Coach's team prayed as a group prior to the day's challenge--which they won--and immediately afterwards, Coach bade them to get down on their knees...to thank God for the positive result. 

Oh, and Ozzy committed to a poorly-thought-out scheme whereby he volunteered to be voted out so he could go to Redemption Island so he could defeat the unlikeable incumbent castaway Christine so he could reemerge into the game triumphant after the merge so he could sail on towards the $1M so he could have pulled of the boldest stroke EVEH in the game so he could have immortalized himself forever in Survivor lore.

I was appalled. Nope, not the Ozzy strategy stuff, interesting as that will be as it plays out. Rather, what shocked and astonished me was the shameless invoking of God to favor a particular team...and thanking him afterwards for the positive results, as though God gave a sh*t about it.

Talk about peer pressure.  If one of the team were, say, an atheist or a Buddhist, and wouldn't go along with the prayer circle stuff ("I'll just stand over here while you guys pray", and said so...methinks that player would be voted out ASAP to retain the purity of the team.  Inquisition, anyone?

PH, our non-Survivor-watcher, but who is our most religious member, commented that they were engaging in transactional prayer.  That is, praying for a specific result for which there would be a reciprocation from the supplicant should the wish be granted.  Example: "Dear God, please let our team win 'cause if we win I will become a better Christian, I swear I will."

Transactional prayer, in theology, is thought to be pretty much a juvenile approach, analogous to treating God as though he were Santa Claus. PH believes that the goal of prayer should be to achieve understanding and to create a close relationship with God, NOT to ask for specific favors.

So it'll be all the sweeter when Coach and his band of religious thugs go down hard.  Then it'll be interesting to see how they explain why God changed his mind.