Family
“alpha towns”, Depression at Colleges, NBA violence, and the Presidential
Election
The title reminds me of Johnny Carson’s “Carnac” routine where he gave three seemingly unrelated answers and then he would come up with a question that tied them together in a humorous manner. Except these items are not very humorous, any way you look at them. The thread running across this list is one of a stressed out society that seems to have lost its sense of important human values. I am especially distressed as I write this article because a fine young man whom I only knew by reputation apparently committed suicide this past week during his freshman year at college. During the same week two early teen deaths were reported in neighboring towns and the obituaries read “died suddenly” which is often a euphemism for suicide.
What’s happening out there? Why is the fastest-growing mental health specialty crisis intervention for the all-too-frequent need to go in to schools to counsel students and staff on coping with a personal and/or community tragedy? Why does a recent book on mental health problems at colleges report that at some point during college years, 45% of all students will suffer from a depression that impedes their ability to function?
Part of the answer lies in reflecting on our recent presidential election. It exaggerated a trend of campaigning via slander, trying to convince voters that if you elect the opponent you are going to hell in a hand basket. The proof of this will be any questionable act either party ever committed, no matter how minor or irrelevant some may be. Absent is the presentation of intelligent ideas about solving the complex solutions our society faces. Yes dirty politics has been around for many centuries and at least there aren’t the royal family assassinations that often determined who took over the throne. But as I read the letters to the local papers before and after the election, the degree of intolerance and vindictiveness seemed exceptional and discouraging. As a society we seem to be becoming more judgmental and less tolerant, more divided and less connected.
Meanwhile we are bombarded daily by a media bent on character assassination. Anyone in the public eye must be dissected and we must be told what foibles they hide, what defects they carry. Are we demanding, expecting that people at all levels of society be perfect? Haven’t we become psychologically sophisticated enough to know that we are all imperfect beings with skeletons in our closets and behaviors that at times are unacceptable? Which brings me to “alpha towns.” I had not heard this term until I read an article in the Boston Globe using it as an identifier for those upscale communities where parents are highly driven, attempting to have it all for themselves, and expecting the same from their children. These are highly competitive worlds where children are being enrolled in tutorial programs before they even begin school, where three year olds are playing organized sports and if your child doesn’t make the traveling team in soccer at 8 it is seen as a predictor of not make the high school varsity soccer team and reducing the chance of getting into an ivy-league level college.
These hard-driving towns are unfortunately increasingly characterized by higher teenage suicide rates, more drinking and drunk-driving accidents, and increased sexual activity as these children are forced to find unhealthy ways of coping with the stress of trying to live up to unrealistic standards and their lost childhoods. In these seemingly wonderful towns that ring Boston, children are increasingly expected to be adult-like at the earliest of ages. So is it a surprise when oral sex is rampant among pre-teens? Or that elementary school children begin experimenting with sex and drugs? Or that 10 year olds are getting addicted to chat rooms, porno sites, and violent video games?
The article in the Globe about “alpha towns” reported that some communities are recognizing how unhealthy all these unrealistic expectations are and that a few are trying to organize efforts to step back and allow children to be children and to even consider the importance of parents, not tutors or coaches, spending more time with their children. But many are quoted expressing the fear that if they do ease up on the pressure to achieve while other parents don’t, their children will suffer by falling behind! What a trap. It will take courage on the part of parents who can commit to a healthier set of values to teach their children, to stop viewing life as some kind of sum zero game where, if you don’t win, you lose.
Can you be one of those parents? Can you allow your children to play, to run around with friends in the back yard instead of trying to be on the traveling team? Can you commit to getting home a little earlier and spending more time playing with your children and less time correcting their homework? Can you believe in your child and not try to shape him into the winner you want him to be as if he were some lump of clay that you can simply sculpt into your fantasized image of being a success? Can you accept that most lives take circuitous paths and we cannot predict outcomes at early ages? I just went to a wedding of a friend’s son to a terrific young woman. This young man struggled through school, struggled to find himself in the adult world, but slowly, with loving support of family and friends, began to find himself and has now apparently arrived at a very special place in his life, one not predicted by his earlier travails. This is a common story. It’s the story about many of our lives. Yet we keep thinking there is a better way, a more perfect way to do this. A more guaranteed-to-be successful way. But there isn’t. Please believe me, there isn’t.
So what does this have to do with the recent debacle at the Pistons-Pacers basketball game where players went into the stands and began punching out fans? Of course, it should be pointed out that this is pretty minor compared to the violence at many soccer games around the world or to the violence at youth sports when parents attack each other or referees and umpires. Nevertheless, going to a professional sporting event has become less and less a pleasant experience. Athletes are pampered, overpaid “heroes” who seem to increasingly lack any sense of perspective about what really matters. Football players prance about after making routine plays as if they have done something truly spectacular or special. Basketball players can’t shoot or pass – they only want to dunk or shoot 3-pointers. Baseball players point to the sky after every “important” hit or strikeout, as if God is their personal fan. We create these monsters and then we resent them.
So fans feel especially entitled to play dirty politics, to become verbally abusive and vulgar, to throw anything handy at players and umpires, to run onto courts and fields and try to attack players and umpires. It’s our right they say, feeling especially entitled because they have paid hundreds of dollars to attend even meaningless regular season games. It is a system spiraling out of control. Younger, more immature players being paid obscene amounts of money without ever proving they are worth a penny of it. They play in front of an audience of stressed out fans, many from those “alpha towns” who need an outlet and find it in the combination of alcohol and screaming obscenities at their “favorite players” who fail to live up to their expectations.
I know every generation thinks that their children are in trouble, that these are “the worst of times.”, that our morals are crumbling and our society is in trouble. Of course, it appears as if each generation proves their parents wrong and goes on to advance our society to a better place. But history shows that at some point every great society becomes too full of itself and loses its way. I can’t tell if we are at such a place in our history. I just know I’m not happy with what I see happening in our families, our communities, our colleges, and at the sporting events I used to enjoy much more than I do now.
I believe we need to replace “alpha towns” with “beta towns”,
better towns, where there is less focus on achievement and more focus on relationships
and community, where organized sports don’t exist until children are at
least eight, where schools actually teach the whole child, where parents believe
in their children and let them play, where we are able to rediscover a more
caring and giving set of values. Wouldn’t you like to live in such a town?
I know your children would.
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