The Useless Tree

Friday Yi Jing Blogging: Predicting a Williams College Football Victory

It's been a long time since my last Friday Yi Jing blogging.  I return to it today with a local focus.  In my tutorial on ancient Chinese philosophy today I was referring to the Yi Jing and decided to consult it to demonstrate to the students how we might apprend a particular moment in Way.  To make it more relevant to the assembled students I asked the Yi if our college team, the Ephs, would win their first regular season game.  The response was generally positive.  

A bit of background: Williams College is a football powerhouse in the world of Division III athletics in the US.  Last year the team went undefeated.   Thus, there is every expectation that Williams should defeat Bowdoin in the opening game of the 2011 season.  The Yi concurs, with some reservations.

The oracle returned Hexagram 30, "Fire," with a moving line in the third position, thus tending in the direction of Hexagram 21, "Biting Through."

"Fire" or "The Clinging" (as fire clings to wood) is a doubled trigram, suggeting a certain significance in this reading:

The Judgment points to a positive outcome and offers an apt analogy:

The Clinging.  Perseverance furthers. It brings success.  Care of the cow brings good fortune.

In the context of a football team, perseverance would suggest that focused training and practice will bring victory.  But "care of the cow" tells us even more, especially when you know that the mascot of the Williams team is the Purple Cow:

Clearly, then, it would seem that "caring for the cow," in this regard, is a reminder to the players to focus on the team: if each member does his duty to the team and carries through conscientiously, a win will be secured.  The commentary on the Judgment makes this point more starkly:

Human life on earth is conditioned and unfree, and when man recognizes this limitation and makes himself dependent upon the harmonious and beneficent forces of the cosmos, he achieves success.

Not quite a stirring half-time pep talk, but the point is pretty much what football coaches have been saying from time immemorial: the whole is greater than any one part; the team must come before the individual; and when the individuals understand this and subordinate themselves to the needs and purposes of the team, victory can be achieved.

So, it looks good for th Ephs.  But wait... that moving line in the third place sounds a cautionary note:

In the light of the setting sun, men either beat the pot and sing or loudly bewail the approach of old age.  Misfortune.

The commentary explains that the "setting sun" implies mortality and people, as they contemplate death, can lose their focus and fall into excessive recklessness (live wildly until death comes) or depression.  

For our football players the "light of the setting sun" captures an image of their practices, down on Cole Field, ending in the evenings.  The warning not to "beat the pot and sing" warns against overconfidence.  They have defeated Bowdoin in nine out of the last ten meetings.  This should be an easy one.  And that is precisely the kind of attitude that can bring "misfortune."

The Yi is telling the team to take care of business.  Do the hard work of practice. Don't underestimate the adversary.  And then things will likely turn out for the better.

That message is echoed in Hexagram 21, "Biting Through:"

The description of the Hexagram reads:

This hexagram represents an open mouth with an obstruction (in the fourth place) between the teeth.  As a result the lips cannot meet.  To bring them together one must bite energetically through the obstacle.  Since the hexagram is made up of the trigrams for thunder and lightening, it indicates how obstacles are forcibly removed in nature.  Energetic biting through overcomes the obstacle that prevents joining of the lips; the storm with its thunder and lightening overcomes the disturbing tension in nature.

Sometimes, under certain circumstances, to prevail requires energetic activity, biting through.  If sufficient effort is expended in the proper manner, success will follow - the Judgment reads: "Biting Through has success."  So, if the football players do the hard work required of the task ahead of them, a Williams victory can be secured.

Go Ephs!

Confucius and Zhuangzi on the Georgetown-Bayi Basketball Fight

It was pretty ugly.  

One of the things that struck me was that this was a professional Chinese team.  And they were being schooled by a US college team.  You would think their professional pride would have led them to simply play better, but I guess not...   Could you imagine the US analogue: an NBA team playing Georgetown?  Clearly, the NBA is quite literally in another league and the Hoyas would be at a serious disadvantage.  But if the going go rough, what would, say, the Timberwolves do?  Raise their game, because, mostly likely, they could raise their game.  Bayi, lagging behind, even with the advantage of friendly referees, had nowhere to go.  They couldn't play their way out, so they rumbled.  Yes, I am laying it at the feet of Bayi - and I may not be alone in that opinon.  

But let me add something from the classics.  They kind of aggressive competitiveness on display on Thursday night runs counter to the sensibilities of Confucianism and Daoism.  Confucius, in particular, understood sports, such as archery, as simply another means through which a civilized person expressed his or her humanity:

The Master said: "The noble-minded never contend.  It's true that archery is a kind of contention.  But even then, they bow and yield to each other when stepping up to the range.  And when they step down, they toast each other.  Even in contention, they retain their nobility." (3.7)

Indeed, the Chinese embrace of competitive athletics, symbolized most aptly by the 2008 Olympics, could be taken as a sign of the concomitant lack or weakness of Confucian cultural practice.  "The noble-minded never contend"....  somehow I think the Bayi players are not regular readers of The Analets.

Zhuangzi, in a somewhat similar vein, sees competitiveness as an expression of something problematic in human nature:

Games of skill and cleverness begin in a light mood, but they always end up dark and serious.  And if things go far enough, it's nothing but guile.  Drinking at ceremonies begins orderly enough, but it always ends up wild and chaotic.  And if things go far enough, it's nothing but debauchery.  All our human affairs seem to work like this.  However, sincerely they begin, they grow enormously complex before they're over. (55)

He would not be surprised at the fight.  That's what people tend to do when put in such circumstances.  It is, however, the circumstances that he would question: does such aggressive competitiveness distract us from Way?  Is it a vain and self-absorbed folly that keeps us from seeing and respecting the natural unfolding of things in Way?  Yeah, it probably is.  Zhuangzi would not play the game; he would not even be in the arena or watching on TV.  He would likely be watching the stars and moon....

Thoughts on the Yankees' Loss

The New York Yankees lost the Americal League Championship series to the Texas Rangers last night.  An old high school friend (Hi Richard!) facebooked me and asked for any solace that might be gained from ancient Chinese philosophy.  As a Taoist Yankee fan, I turn immediately to Zhaungzi and the Daodejing.

Consider this passage from Zhuangzi:

This life we're given comes in its own season, and then follows its vanishing away.  If you're at ease in your own season, if you can dwell in its vanishing, joy and sorrow never touch you.  This is what the ancients called getting free. If you can't get free, you're tangled in things.  And things never overcome heaven...

He's discussing death, but his words can apply to the end of a baseball season as well.  We know that the Yankees cannot win the World Series every year, and this year, this season, they came up two games short of going to the big game.  But that outcome is not shameful.  It turns out the Yanks this season are the second best team in the American League.  It may hurt some to lose, but look at what was accomplished.  It was a good season, ultimately, but now follows its vanishing away.  Personally, I am at ease with that, especially since a certain other team in the American League East from a Northeastern city has been relegated to obscurity for weeks now.  It was a good season.  We have much to look forward to next year.

The Daodejing helps, too.  Here is passage 40:

Return is the movement of Way, and yielding the method of Way.

All beneath heaven, the ten thousand things: it's all born of being, and being is born of nonbeing.

 If we yield to the outcome of this season we can then look forward to "return."  And for the Yankees this means that in the future we will return to the World Series.  It is as natural as the passing of the seasons.  Will it be next year?  Hard to say.  But it is inevitable that the Yankees will return, and likely sooner than any other team.  That is simply how Way unfolds.

Derek Jeter is a Sunzi Warrior, not a Confucian Gentleman

Captain of the New York Yankees, shortstop Derek Jeter, last week feigned that he had been hit by a pitch and was awarded first base.  He hammed it up a bit but, as replays clearly demonstrated, he had not been hit.  Thus he successfully deceived the umpires and gained a momentary advantage for his team (the Yankees went on to ultimately lose the game).

So what?  Well, it seems that some people (I suspect many of them disheartened Red Sox fans...) are calling Jeter a cheater.  His actions, they seem to suggest, fall outside the usual and traditional practices of the game.  But this is not true.  Listen to what life-long baseball people say:

“I cannot understand what the commotion is,” said the Fox baseball broadcaster Tim McCarver, a former major league catcher, as he took stock of the uproar.

“Why question that?” he said of Jeter’s actions. “I can’t believe anyone would say that’s cheating.”

Minnesota Twin's Manager Ron Gardenhire, whose team has lost repeatedly to Jeter’s Yankee's in the post season, agreed.

“You have to be an actor in this game, you have to be,” he said. “It’s unfortunate, but it’s part of the game. Jeter, you could see him staring over there in the video, sly as a cat. It’s just the way it is. Call it what you want to call it, it happens. It’s happened forever.”

As some commentators, along with Gardenhire, have rightly pointed out, deception is a part of virtually all sports (save, perhaps, golf):

Now, about the morality of sport generally and baseball particularly. To begin with, deception is inherent to competition and it is fundamental to games of all types, including hide and seek and chess. (One thing that has gotten buried in the seriousness of the Jeter hoopla is that fooling people can be fun.)

Second, that one player or one team might be interested in putting one over on an opponent is one reason, a big reason, that organized sports have officials — who have no expectation, by the way, that the players are guided by the honor system.

Yes, there is such a thing as good sportsmanship.  But occasional deception does not explode the boundaries of sportsmanship.

Thus, baseball, and professional sports more generally, is something close to the strategic conflict that Sunzi presumes, as opposed to the ideal human-ethical contexts that Confucius theorizes.

It is Sunzi who tells us that "all warfare is based on deception" (I.17).  Winning the battle, and ultimately the war, matter; and in a ruthlessly instrumental manner, actions are judged in terms of how well they help gain that outcome. 

Confucius understands this.  He wards us away from engaging in warfare precisely because he knows that it is a context that corrodes ethical standards.  In a similar vein he also tells us not to get caught up in competitive sports:

The Master said: "The noble-minded never contend.  It's true that archery is a kind of contention.  But even then, they bow and yield to each other when stepping up to the range.  And when they step down, they toast each other.  Even in contention, they retain their nobility. (3.7)

The key here is that gentlemen never contend.  They do not get caught up in the winning or losing.  For Confucius it is all about maintaining proper behavior in all circumstances.  And competitive sports, which by definition require contention, are simply out of bounds.

Confucius shares this dim view of competition with Zhuangzi:

Games of skill and chance begin in a light mood, but they always end up dark and serious.  And if things go far enough, it's nothing but guile.  Drinking at ceremonies begins orderly enough, but it always ends up wild and chaotic.  And if things go far enough, it's nothing but debauchery.  All of our human affairs seem to work like this.  However sincerely they begin, they end up in vile deceit.  And however simply they begin, they grow enormously complex before they're over. (55)

Both Confucius and Zhuangzi (though each in a rather different way) tell us that if we seek to live a good live, we should avoid unnecessary competitive situations.  And they would see competitive sports as unnecessary. 

To bring this back to Jeter (I have written of some of his Confucian qualities here), if we want to condemn him of some sort of significant moral transgression, then we might want to ask ourselves if competitive sports, which are a breeding ground for deception, ought to be outlawed.  Alternatively, if the pleasures of sports are seen as important, and its transgressions relatively inconsequential, then we should not be complaining about a bit of acting by Derek Jeter.

Oh, and by the way: Go Yankees!

Daoist Advice for the New York Yankees

It's been an eventful week for Daoist Yankee fans. Lost two out of three to the lowly Orioles, swept by the Rangers, and dropped another two out of three to Tampa Bay.  We've slipped to a half game out in the American League East.  The Red Sox are far enough back that our chances for the playoffs are still very good.  But the team has to win more in the waning days of the season. Trouble could be in the offing

What to do?  Where does one go, if you are Derek Jeter or Robbie Cano, to find the focus and fortitude to pull it out?  The Daodejing (33) knows:

To know people wisdom, but to know yourself is enlightenment.

To master people takes force, but to master yourself takes strength.

To  know contentment is wealth, and to live with strength resolve.

To never leave whatever you are is to abide, and to die without getting lost - that is to live on and on.

They must look inside themselves to find the strength to master their play.  Or, in the more common sports idiom, they must play within themselves.  Which is eminently possible. 

Go Yankees!

Sun Tzu and the World Cup

I've watched a couple of World Cup matches (US/England; Brazil/NK; some of Spain/Switzerland) and Sun Tzu has come to mind....

On first thought, it is a bit difficult to apply Sun Tzu to soccer (football...).  The battle situations that he anticipates are more fluid than a sporting competition.  In soccer there is a very specific, unchanging objective: to score goals (or, conversely, to keep the adversary from scoring goals).  Everyone always knows that the prime objective is.  Thus, it is hard to see how this Sun Tzu idea can translate into soccer strategy:

To be certain to take what you attack is to attack a place the enemy does not protect.  To be certain to hold what you defend is to defend a place the enemy does not attack.

Therefore, against those skilled in attack, an enemy does not know where to defend; against experts in defense, the enemy does not know where to defend. VI.7,8.

Everyone knows, ultimately, where the attack will come in soccer: it is aimed quite intently on the goal.  And everyone knows where the defense will be concentrated - at least in those instances where one team is emphasizing the defense.  The field is too restricted, the rules too determinative, to allow for too much in the way of uncertainty about what will be attacked and what will be defended.

But there are Sun Tzu ideas that are more applicable.  This passage, for instance:

Anciently, the skillful warriors first made themselves invincible and awaited the enemy's moment of vulnerability.

Invincibility depends on one's self; the enemy's vulnerability on him.

It follows that those skilled in war can make themselves invincible but cannot cause an enemy to be certainly vulnerable.

Therefore, it is said that one may know how to win, but cannot necessarily do so.

Invincibility lies in the defense; the possibility of victory in the attack.

One defends when his strength is inadequate; he attacks when it is abundant. IV.1-7.

I think this very well captures the Brazil/NK game and the Spain/Switzerland game.  The North Koreans and the Swiss clearly understood themselves to be the weaker team in their respective competitions.  Their strength was inadequate, so they emphasized defense. In doing so, they were, at the outset, basically conceding an outright victory and were playing for a tie because they had to give up their attack - and, as Sun Tzu notes, the possibility of victory lies in the attack; if you hunker down in search of invincibility you give up the attack, and thus the chance for victory.  In such circumstances, not losing takes precedence over winning.

Sun Tzu would thus approve of the NK and Swiss strategies.

Things turned out better for the Swiss because the Spanish made themselves vulnerable.  Their relentless and fluid -and, yes, beautiful - attack eventually yielded an opening for the Swiss counter.  It was a bit ugly, but it worked.  Not so much for the North Koreans.  The Brazilians - with their signature beautiful play - maintained sufficient defensive presence (this, after all, has been Dunga's mantra).  Personally, i think all of the strum und drang about Brazil losing its panache is overblown.  Their interior passing and creativity are still better than any other (and that includes Spain...).  Robinho was marvelous.  In any event, it was a breakdown in the NK defense, a momentary hesitation by the goalkeeper, that opened the door for the first Brazilian score.  NK turned out not to be as invincible as they had hoped.

Here's one last thought.  For all of the talk about Brazilian defense, they maintained a relentless attack against NK.  Granted, they were the clearly superior team in all facets of the game, so, as Sun Tzu would say, an attacking posture was certainly appropriate.  But let's see what happens as we get further into the tournament and Brazil faces tougher teams, such as  Portugal.  It could be that Dunga is trying to get into the head of the adversary; make them think that Brazil will be hanging back, emphasizing defense.  This could encourage the Portuguese to come forward, creating certain vulnerabilities, that can be quickly exploited by the powerful Brazilian attack.  Perhaps Dunga is following on of the most famous of Sun Tzu's ideas:

All warfare is based on deception. I.17

Perhaps he is trying to make the adversary believe that Brazil will be concentrating on making itself invincible as a means of inducing the other side into making themselves vulnerable....

Joga Bonito!

Reflections on an English Goalkeeper

Wow.  A day after I post about the World Cup, the vagaries of Tao are revealed to the fullest.  The English clearly outplayed the US on Saturday but Robert Green the English goalkeeper let through an improbable score that allowed the US to escape with a tie, sparking much consternation across Albion.  For me it brought to mind these lines from Zhuangzi:

Joy and anger, sorrow and delight, hope and regret, doubt and ardor, diffidence and abandon, candor and reserve: it’s all music rising out of emptiness, mushrooms appearing out of mist. Day and night come and go, but who knows where it all begins? It is! It just is! If you understand this day in and day out, you inhabit the very source of it all.

Green seemed to instinctively embrace these sentiments in his own comments after the game:

"It's about being steady and taking the rough with the smooth but that's life as a goalkeeper..."

Might be a bit hard to do with millions of people calling for his scalp back home....

Oh well... Way is vast...

World Cup Tao

I haven't blogged on sports lately but the just-begun World Cup has brought athletic competition to mind...

As I have noted in the past, I am a Taoist NY Yankees fan.  Some might find that paradoxical (how could a Taoist be a Yankee fan?) to which I would respond, as I think Zhuangzi would: since life is generally paradoxical than any particular paradox is rather normal...

I have less strong affiliations when it comes to soccer (football).  In high school I played a bit, mostly to keep in shape for track.  The Brazilians have always attracted my attention with their "joga bonito".  And some might find that fitting: the Yankee fan pulling for the Brazilians (and I must say I was sorry to hear that the current coach was setting a more defense-oriented strategy, one that might dilute the traditional beauty).

But as a Taoist (or, at least, as someone drawn to Taoist sensibilities) I know that attachments of all sorts, sports teams included, are transient.  They merely distract us from the natural unfolding of Way (Tao).  What matters is the flow of the game, the players expressing their inherent talents and capacities, the microcosm of Way in the competition: the ups and downs, the brilliant moves and the shocking mistakes, the the unexpected turn of events.

So, I will follow it.  I will root for the US over England (which has as much to do with my atavistic Irish identity as anything else).  And I will look for those flashes of Brazilian brilliance.  

Regression toward the Tao

I find Taoist hints in all sorts of places.  This morning, during my usual perusal of the Sunday NYT, I hit upon this story in the Sports section: "To hang In, a World Series winner Must Learn to Let Go."  Ah-ha, I thought, what is it that they need to let go of?  Their expectations and desires?  Was this another reminder for players like A-rod to stop thinking too much?

But the story wasn't really about that sort of letting go.  Rather, it discussed the likelihood that the Yankees will let go of some of their key veteran players, even though they contributed so significantly this year.  Indeed, the point of the story was that the Yankees should get rid of some players because they are unlikely to repeat the kind of performances they had this year.  They will probably regress toward the mean:

All World Series-winning teams face the prospect of regression to the mean, meaning one-year great performances inevitably, eventually, pull back to career norms. Spitting in the face of player- and team-related regression fears, the 2002 Angels replaced just two players from their championship team. In 2003, they lost 22 more games, finishing below .500 in third place in the American League West.

The Yankees face another regression-related situation. They had an old roster in 2009. Two of the top three starters, five of the nine starting batters as well as the Hall of Fame closer were 33 or older.

Regression toward the mean is a fancy statistics term but it has a simple meaning:

...a phenomenon that is similar to several everyday expressions such as "law of averages", "things will even out" or "we are due for a good day after a string of bad ones". And one that I would like to add is "it can't possibly get worse (or better) than this!" Basically what all these phrases are saying is that "extreme experiences tend to be balanced by less extreme experiences"

And when you think about it, that has a certain resonance with passage 40 of the Tao Te Ching:

Return is the movement of Way,
and yielding the method of Way

All beneath heaven, the ten thousand things: it's all born of being,
and being is born of nonbeing.

反者道之動；弱者道之用。天下萬物生於有，有生於無。

Way does not unfold in a straight line.  To the extent to which the movement of the seasons reveals something about Way, the experience of return - the transition from summer life to winter death and back again - is a quality (though not the only quality) of Way.  That is not exactly the same as a regression toward the mean, which technically suggests a "normal distribution" that will define general tendencies.  Nothing quite so precise is possible in apprehending Way (it is beyond our rational faculties).  But the more diffuse sense of things "evening out" over time - that extreme experiences will be balances by less extreme experiences - is a Taoist sensibility.

Thus, the article did have a Taoist hint.  It was advising Yankee fans not to expect an exact reply next year of this year's triumph.  Change will come.  Players will come and go.  That is the movement of Way, and we must yield to its inevitability - even if that means Matsui may not be re-signed (which would sadden me for a time, since he was such a clutch player this year).

Letting go is best.  Remember this line from passage 22 of the Tao Te Ching:

In yielding is completion.

If we let go now, another World Series could be possible...

Taoist Thoughts on the Yankees 27th World Series Title

Passage 2 of the Daodejing:

All beneath heaven knows beauty is beauty only because there's ugliness, and knows good is good, only because there's evil.

Being and nonbeing give birth to one another, difficult and easy complete one another, long and short measure one another, high and low fill one another, music and noise harmonize one another, before and after follow one another:

that's why a sage abides in the realm of nothing's own doing, living out that wordless teaching.  The ten thousand things arise without beginnings there, abide without waiting there, come to perfection without dwelling there.

Without dwelling there: that's the one way you'll never lose it

The great cyclical complementarity of Way is captured by this moment:

They [the Yankees] did it [won this year's World Series] on the eighth anniversary of Rivera’s lowest moment, when he blew Game 7 of the 2001 World Series in Arizona.