I heard that a cable channel was playing the entire baseball World Series from 1969 (since all current sporting events have been suppressed by those who think they know best). One of the points raised in the ensuing discussion was how different a televised baseball game looks today as opposed to how things were televised in 1969. Part of it had to do with the technology available then, but part of it also had to do with the way people thought as well.
Back then, the TV screen was uncluttered with unnecessary graphics and statistics. When a batter went to the plate, all that was briefly shown were the batter's hits, home runs, and runs batted in (RBI's). If a new pitcher entered the game (which was much less common than it is today) one might see simply his won-loss record and earned run average (ERA) displayed ever so briefly. There was no channel logo, no constant barrage of meaningless or marginally useful statistics, not even a constant display of the score and certainly not a word much less a graphic about "pitch counts." In those days, a pitcher's job was to pitch, and he made far less than today's pitchers make. Today, we don't talk about "pitches per dollar" but "thousands of dollars per pitch." Still, in those days, I suspect that people may have enjoyed the game more because one could just sit back, relax, and root for the home team without overanalyzing everything.
Today, with all the distracting statistics, one would think baseball is a science instead of a kid's game. (My brother-in-law often laments that professional athletes get paid absurd amounts of money to play a kid's game.) This over-emphasis on science and statistics-- when the thing being analyzed is, in essence, "a kid's game," sheds much light on why as a society we have lost our way. Instead of looking at professional sports from the perspective of it being a kid's game that we can sit back and enjoy even as adults, we sit down with our calculators and spreadsheets and try to turn it into an accounting exercise that even a CPA would probably find more boring than watching the trucks unload at the A&P. This is what happens when the heart is torn out of what is supposed to be fun and it is reduced to nothing more than a mathematical equation. The only thing left is to build robots to watch the games and cheer when a mathematical formula allows them to cheer.
This obsession with science even to the point of applying reductionism to a kid's game is what is driving much of the anti-social lockdowns that are being imposed on the population. What we have are heartless, cruel governors and mayors who, in conjunction with equally cruel, heartless doctors and lawyers and news media, are focused like CPA's gone berserk on spreadsheets, charts, and statistics, pretending to care about lives on the one hand, but really doing nothing more than playing a vile, twisted game with real people as the pawns. They stop not even for a moment to consider the social implications of their sadism, and they are no less than the Josef Mengeles of our time, wearing a veneer of science to conceal an empty soul and a black hole where their hearts ought to be.
This is the result of decades of what I will call "anti-liberal arts" education. Once, a man was considered well-educated if he had a well-rounded background; even someone who was going to become a scientist would be expected to take courses in philosophy and logic, perhaps economics, a good dose of foreign language, and so on. Today, the modern university is no more than a glorified trade school, and that's why we have dangerous, narrow-minded scientists who know nothing more of any other discipline than perhaps that it exists. That's why we have the governor of New Jersey, a typical tyrant, saying that the Bill of Rights is "above his pay grade." Wouldn't that be covered in Political Science 101? These are the people who are cramming lockdowns down our throats: those who are so immersed in their spreadsheets and graphs, have such a pathetic education, or are so drunken with their power and ego trips that they have not a clue about the real, live people who those charts and graphs and numbers represent. That's where another obnoxious phrase originates: "flatten the curve." You see-- it isn't about people or saving lives at all. It's just about making a pretty curve on a graph on a computer screen somewhere, and who cares what the consequences are? These sorts are no more mature than a teenager absorbed in his own world playing a video game.
It's time that we stopped wasting hundreds of thousands of dollars on narrow educations and started promoting a true, well-rounded education for everyone. I wonder how many of today's doctors and scientists would even know what Arrowsmith is (hint: it isn't a rock band), much less actually picked up the novel and read it? How many of these denizens of the sciences have considered for a moment the morality or ethics of what they are doing in any sort of balanced view? How many doctors and scientists have taken even one course in philosophy, logic, or theology, and would a one of them admit to having attended a church service in the last ten years? Well, no, why do they need to do that-- after all, they are (drum-roll and hushed tones followed by Dr. Kildare theme, please) doctors. They don't have to waste time with reading novels or nurturing a moral life-- they are the experts, after all, and how dare anyone question them or ask them to produce a logical, rational argument in support of what they advocate?