The Zidane Principle

I was watching the World Cup finals this year, just like everyone else, and I saw what happened. I know the deal.

With like two minutes left in the whole game Zinedine Zidane head butted a guy on the Italian team and the Italian guy went down and Zidane got thrown out of the game. We all know this, I probably only have to recount this to Americans.

After the viewing audience got a realization of what was going on, the referees were at it and the teams were at it and the commentators were at it. I immediately got very agitated because I knew what was up. I got very pissy because I knew what was going to come next.

It's common in sports, but it's common in our existence as well. The Commentator. Some disembodied voice who talks over the action and frames the movements and helps us to make sense of what is happening on the playing field. We've all become very used to it. Even in life there are these disembodied voices that define what is happening. They provide wisdom and analysis and the like.

But unfortunately this Voice dovetails too strongly into the Pelvis Principle: "The more I learn the dumber I am."

In the midst of all the World Cup hubbub, I knew what was going to happen. The announcers were going to narrow the bandwidth of the incident, take it out of context, offer no context, and turn Zidane into a monster. "Zidane Snaps" "Froggy Soccer Player Assaults Innocent Civilian" "Freedom Fried Midfielder Attacks!"

I knew right away. These voices of reason were going to dumb down the incident and get the whole thing wrong. I saw the whole script ahead of me. Dumb it down, narrow the context, villify, make him one-dimensional, attack attack attack. I don't know why, I just know that it was to be.

For some reason, people love to get it wrong and invariably those same people are in positions of influence, ready to dumb down everyone in their path of influence. Newspaper editors, authors, etc etc. They may or may not do it to themselves, but they definetely love leading everyone else down the wrong road. They seek to cement their opinion in our head before we've had a chance to formulate something on our own.

There was no context to be found, no speculation on what would make a man in his last match do something so dumb, no rewinding of the tape to see what was really going on before he snapped, no understanding of the fact that something really crazy must have been happening prior to make him snap. Instead he was a one-dimensional monster who had to rational reasoning for what he did.

Look around at the public discourse and see it for yourself. Look at the lack of research and the lack of context. It's become a game of Concentration where you only see what's beneath two tiles at a time. No history, only events in their isolated form. We jump from one isolated event to another isolated event and so real understanding is allowed to occur. And we fall for it. We aren't superhuman. If you hear the message enough times you fall for it. Snap shot, snap shot, snap shot. How do these things keep happening, oh my goodness gracious.

That's where the Pelvis Principle kicks in. The more we learn, the dumber we get. If we could just take in the information alone perhaps we could digest it better. But no, someone feels the need to edit and parse and ration and analyze the information before you get to it. And so you're dumber than you were before you tried to get smarter. Watch for it...