[FOREWARD We'll start with this: The author of this piece is a 'deplorable, intolerant, hater' who, as a 'half-crippled, half-drunken, ex-sportswriter', has no business passing judgment on the emotional fragility of anybody else. However, he is also one to point out that because such a note as this is now almost required for anything remotely controversial or unpopular makes the case for this article better than the article itself.
-Thank you.]
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"...T-ball provides kids a fun introduction to the basic elements of baseball, including batting and fielding. Since the score is not usually recorded, it is generally not a very competitive environment and this means that children of various athletic abilities can participate and enjoy themselves, without the pressure of score-keeping."It seems to have started with the best of intentions. As most things do, but now, some thirty years later, it has backfired to comedic, aye, yes, even Burlesque levels.
http://www.tballu.com/ (link below)
"In The Beginning"
From what the Desk can tell after doing a bit of 'time travel' (see links below), the idea began from an earnest desire to make the school, summer camp, and yes, as we just saw, 'sports' environment more open and welcoming to everybody, including young children who had genuine emotional and behavioral issues from a range of causes including the nearly unthinkable but all too common, such as:
The Psychological Consequences of Abuse for the Child Documentation of deficits in the emotional development of abused children has important policy and practice implications for intervention and treatment.
http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1540-4560.1979.tb00803.x/abstract
More: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/7425104 (links below)
It was a noble goal. And, to tell the truth, which is what we try to do here, it was worthwhile. To a degree. But, in the end, the Universe does keep score. Fair or not, not everybody wins.
There was a time within living memory when if something happened in school to upset a student, it was the individual student who was 'talked to' and helped to work through 'getting over it'. Perhaps if the problem involved another student, both would be called into the principal's office. And it wasn't unheard of for a bully to be forced to sit at the lunch table with their former victims until they all got along.
Going back as far as 1970, the emotional well being of students was discussed. That is, it was discussed, and some actions were taken that way. But the 'feelings' of the 'pupils' wasn't the driving force of the school's mandate.
In today's world, schools ranging from pre-K academies through major research universities are instituting 'safe areas' that are free from 'trigger stimuli' that might cause emotional distress in somebody resulting in their need of support. Any idea or image with a minimal potential, no, make that an almost comically minuscule potential (so called 'micro-aggressions') to upset those who are actively seeking to be upset, is banished and those who are in favor of whatever it is are labeled 'intolerant' or 'haters' or some other negative term. And, it should be noted, their feelings are dismissed, as is the double standard implied by said dismissal.
WARNING, trigger terms follow:
Some of those triggers are, you Were warned....
.... no, we're not kidding, they put up signs warning that a term or image may be emotionally upsetting. See links below ...
.... in any case, some of the forbidden topics include anything, well, let's be honest here, they include EVERYTHING that the certified liberals in the school's administration don't like. Usually consisting of topics that trace their linage back to a Judeo-Christian tradition or that teach a definitive sense of Right or Wrong. And again, the idea that whatever is being paraded across campus might upset any Christians is met with "They need to be more Tolerant". Again, the irony of the open hypocrisy of the situation is either totally missed or flatly ignored.
The future looks gloomy.
But what it comes down to is that according to those that post such warnings, you should never be exposed to anything that will 'upset' you, you should never be in any situations that may bring negative emotions to the surface, or have to experience something that you may regret later.
We won't even go into the people that spend a lot of time worrying about the self-esteem of people who don't do anything but worry about their self-esteem. No, discussing that is as pointlesss as not doing anything except worrying about your self-esteem.
TheMediaDesk.com spent several years collecting "Warnings and Disclaimers". There are hundreds of them on the pages linked below, including photos to prove you can't make these up. It was a joke. Something humorous to break up the monotony of doing tech writing and non-fiction articles. But now the Desk can see there was something of an undercurrent there. We have to be warned that ovens make stuff hot, that razor blades are sharp, and walking into a running aircraft engine may ruin our day. It's the other side of the same thing we've been talking about.
Are we really that dumb? Apparently not only are we, we are offended by it being pointed out, but if the retailer doesn't warn us that the coffee is hot, we'll sue them. Hang on, we'll get to Murphy in a moment.....
Which brings us to ask questions like: is there any long term benefit to being a slave to the slightest emotional disturbance?
How does it serve the well being of the larger society to have a significant population of adults who need to be comforted with hot chocolate and teddy bears when the results of an election are announced? And they need their 'comfort item' because if they cried for their mommies the rest of us would think they're even more pathetic than we do now.
Life Is Not Fair. The Universe DOES keep score, and sorry, you are on the losing team, and there is nothing you can do about it. And, the Grim Reaper, or for that matter, Mr. Murphy of "Murphy's Law" fame, doesn't carry around a blankie for you to cuddle when the whole shebang goes to White Man's Hell.
What will these people do when the inevitable personal tragedy strikes and nobody else is there with a coloring book and soft music? Will they be paralyzed with emotion instead of able to take constructive or even necessary action? In which case things will not only continue downhill, it may 'hit a fan' on its way there.
Victim culture.
In the the New Testament, the Apostle Paul was worried that he had upset the people of Corinth with his letter. Except, he says right up front that there was a point to it, and that it wasn't a lasting condition:
"Even if I caused you sorrow by my letter, I do not regret it. Though I did regret it- I see that my letter hurt you, but only for a little while- yet now I am happy, not because you were made sorry, but because your sorrow led you to repentance."And he probably did upset a good many of them. But they got over it. And if they didn't, he was evidently just fine with that.
II Corinthians 7: 8 - 9 (NIV) link to chapter below
But even with that, please don't go jumping to a conclusion until you get through this next section. OK? ok.
There is a significant percentage of the population who now avoid routine medical checkups on themselves or their children precisely because of the perception that "the doctors" will do tests until they "find something wrong". Most people know somebody who took their child in for a physical and came home with an array of medications because it was suddenly discovered that the otherwise healthy child "had asthma". Most likely, the child IS perfectly healthy. A hundred years ago the General Practitioner, or for that matter, the child's grandmother, would say, "they'll grow out of it". And they would. In today's culture, that's unacceptable. There Has to be a pill, a treatment, some sort of therapy for whatever it is.
The same is same for "the baby blues", "Seasonal Affective Disorder", "Post Traumatic Stress", and a host of other diseases. In some case, it is the medical treatment for something like these that is CAUSING another condition such as "Fibromyalgia " and "Erectile Disfunction", and so on.
OK. Let's get this out of the way. YES, PTSD is a real condition. It used to be called "Battle Fatigue" and was seen in soldiers all the way back to... well, all the way back. The same is the case for the others, there is a real disease there. Mental, physical, both, as with 'fibro...'. Yes.
But.
They are all being diagnosed far too often now. Any man over 50 who goes anywhere near an MD today is asked if he is having 'problems in the bedroom'. It wasn't that long ago where the 'doc' would have answered, "It's a normal part of being a bit long in the tooth'. Now, there's a pill for it. Nevermind that that pill can cause a whole list of more interesting side effects including "sudden cardiac death " (see link below).
It is all related. Everything from the Tee Ball idea of not keeping score to people seeking a pill to take in the morning because they're all achy when they get out of bed or in the evening when they go to bed they can't 'shut down'. And, no, 'putting up with it' or a glass of warm milk with brandy is NOT the answer they are looking for.
If you are uncomfortable or uneasy, it has to be somebody or something else's fault.
If you are inconvenienced in any way, there has to be another reason besides you didn't plan ahead.
If you feel you are worthless, it can't be that you really are, it MUST be society!
If your kid isn't on the team, if you burn yourself, if you see a poster of a cave man in an airport- - - oh, hang on, that one was supposed to be funny.
Which is another point. The 'primitive man' in the commercials was depicted as being Male, first, Heterosexual, and, lastly, more or less White. If he had been cast as being anything else, the company that sponsored the commercials would have ended up in front of a Senate committee explaining why they were picking on ethnic gay women. ... Right?
Yes, there are those that seek to offend. They intentionally look to physically harm, or kill, others. They rob, and rape, and pillage, and carry on without regard for the general welfare of anybody else. But other than those assclowns in Congress, those sorts of people are somewhat rare.
And yet, a number of our fellow citizens are looking to claim emotional or physical injury at the slightest turn.
And, unfortunately, at least for now, this writer doesn't see a way out of it.
Maybe we could start keeping score in T-ball.
There, now it's done...
... I need my comfort doggie, and my blankie, and my... ... my... booze.
Time Travel:
2016
University of Illinois Extension, Strategies for Empowering Students, Primary Level
Feelings
Purpose: To help students with self-discovery, To promote students' appreciation of their individuality,To help students understand their feelings, To help students make inferences
"The student who has been selected must begin his or her reaction by saying, "I feel . . " The student can either answer in words or express feelings with facial expressions or body language. If facial expressions or body language are used, the other students are to try and guess or read these expressions and determine how the student feels. Discussion about why some students feel the way they do about certain things and how to help bad feelings turn into good feelings should follow.
To ensure that everyone gets a turn at being a leader and the opportunity to participate in expressing themselves, student leaders should be rotated after two sentences, and selections of students should be done in a clockwise fashion."
http://extension.illinois.edu/ce/strat-index.html
2010
1994
1990
1989
"Experts warn that the psychological effects of the earthquake remained to be felt.... "I think it will take weeks before the full range of reactions have surfaced," (the expert) said. "Students are experiencing sadness, frustration over the disruption, and are still coming to terms with the fact that they have just confronted a real, serious danger and were basically unable to do anything about it.""
http://news.stanford.edu/news/earlier/1980s/quake-archives-emotions-102089.html
1980
1979
"The present study was concerned with emotional stress experienced by women doctoral students as an interactive function of type of department and personal need for support. Subjects were women registered as doctoral students at a large state university in the fall semester of 1975." http://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/BF00287318
1970
"School and college counseling services in the future probably will devote more attention than they have in the past to the prevention of incapacitating tensions among students.
...
In colleges, orientation programs try to ease student distress. Many colleges include personality questions in psychological tests administered to freshmen... Students with abnormal scores on such questions are invited to confer with psychologists at the university health service.
..It is no part of the counselor's job to provide pat answers to basic questions. He does not make the student try to accept the current values of society. Rather, he seeks to help the student find answers for himself. A counselor can serve as a friendly foil for a student who is working out his general beliefs about man and the world, good and evil, the temporal and the eternal. In some cases, religious beliefs are basic to the student's philosophy of life; in others, ultimate questions about eternity and infinity are brushed aside.
For religious and non-religious students alike, a major part of their philosophy of life is their scheme of values—that is, their understanding of what considerations outweigh what others in making judgments and decisions. To young people striving to bring a value structure to birth, a counselor—like Socrates—can serve as a psychological midwife."
(Document APA Citation — See Alternate Citation Style Gerber, W. (1970). Psychological counseling of students. Editorial research reports 1970 (Vol. II). Washington, DC: CQ Press. Retrieved from http://library.cqpress.com/cqresearcher/cqresrre1970112500)http://library.cqpress.com/cqresearcher/document.php?id=cqresrre1970112500
"Micro-Aggressions and triggers":
"Many college campuses have so called trigger warnings about controversial topics. Critics say political correctness is out of control and academic freedom is at risk. Clark University Assistant Professor Eric De Barros and Wheelock College Sociology Professor Gail Dines joined Jim to discuss."
http://news.wgbh.org/2016/09/07/local-news/campus-trigger-warnings-and-microaggressions
"Even if I caused you sorrow by my letter, I do not regret it. Though I did regret it—I see that my letter hurt you, but only for a little while- yet now I am happy, not because you were made sorry, but because your sorrow led you to repentance. For you became sorrowful as God intended and so were not harmed in any way by us. Godly sorrow brings repentance that leads to salvation and leaves no regret, but worldly sorrow brings death."
http://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=2+Corinthians+7
"For Healthcare Professionals
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Uncommon (0.1% to 1%): Heart rate increased, palpitations, tachycardia, hypertension, hypotension
Rare (less than 0.1%): Myocardial infarction, atrial fibrillation, sudden cardiac death, ventricular arrhythmia, unstable angina"
http://www.drugs.com/sfx/viagra-side-effects.html
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