The F-Word: The E-Mail to my Brother

Obviously the "Steroids Rant" is a personal passion of mine. My brain is coming back though, this is the clearest articulation of it I've written in 4 years.

From: Robert Seidman
Sent: Sunday, June 10, 2007 11:16 AM
To: 'Steven Seidman'
Subject: the f-word

I have been thinking about this more, and I think I can win you over! (ok, probably not, but it’s worth a shot!)

Baseball has a problem with “steroids”. But steroids itself is not the real problem. The problem is the propensity for cheating when the stakes are very high. You can do whatever you want as far as testing for steroids, etc., but if the stakes remain high there will still remain a problem with propensity for cheating. I honestly do not know if this IS a fixable problem. I believe it is math that is unavoidable. The math of human nature. We may not like the math, but..

The F-word to me is the same sort of thing. It’s indicative of a bigger problem. If you squash the symptom, you do not fix the bigger problem (just like fixing steroids would not fix cheating). The problem I have for now with this logic is this: baseball is to steroids as the f-word is to ______.

I’m not exactly sure what the blank is, but what I believe it probably is: “….as the f-word is to “people who don’t behave taking accountability/responsibility for their actions”.

I think lack of personal responsibility/accountability is the real problem and say a much bigger problem than…obesity. In fact, while I obviously have personal biases here, obesity is just another thing like the “f-word” that is – a symptom of a large national problem with regard to personal responsibility. You can’t really fix obesity without fixing the problem of people not taking personal responsibility for their actions.

Like cheating when the stakes are high, I don’t know if this is something that could ever be completely eradicated. However, I am a solutions/results oriented guy and I do not think any real progress can be made until some much bigger percentage of the population can talk about the real issues in these terms without being polarized by the symptoms (the f-word, steroids, etc).