us believe. As Demi Moore says to Sanders’ attorney in Disclosure, “I’m a sexually aggressive woman. I like it. Tom knew it and you can’t handle it.” Parents and schools had better wake up to this reality and start addressing it in the curricula and at home. Second, somebody had better redefine the notion of manhood. At this point I would really like all the proud fathers out there, all the men who are living vicariously through their sons, to sit up and listen. It doesn’t take a man to engage in sexual intercourse. The erection is automatic. It’s a biological certainty that requires almost no effort whatsoever. The same applies to orgasm. If you doubt that, just have a look around. There are more than seven billion people on the planet today. Sex is so easy, so simple that we practically conceive by just bumping into one another at the grocery store. On the contrary, it takes a man to respect the dignity of each person he meets. It takes a man to recognize when to and when not to engage in sexual activity and with whom. It takes a man to have sex in the right context. It takes a man to take full responsibility for his sexuality. And it takes a man to help raise a child and love that child and care for that child each and every day.
When are we ever going to learn this?
Reconsidering the Vivid Example
“It is commonly believed that people use vivid cases because they are more likely to produce arousal, grab attention, and provide memorable images (Zillman and Brosius, 2000).” Franklin D. Gilliam, Jr., Ph.D.
26 Minutes to Midnight…
My great grandmother (we called her Gangy) passed away two-and-a-half months shy of her 100th birthday. When you consider that the human heart begins beating twenty days after conception, that would mean that Gangy’s heart ticked along for well over a century. Since the heart is basically a pump, that was one heck of a great pump.
She told me the story of seeing one of the world’s first automobiles. The town doctor had the only one for miles around. Gangy was alive to see the first generation of flying machines. She lived through The Industrial Revolution, World War I, The Great Depression, World War II, Korea, Vietnam and The Cold War. Then she watched as the Iron Curtain crumbled. She even outlived her husband and both children. Did she have exceptional genes? Did she live healthy? What was her secret?
As we were closing Gangy’s coffin on that hot and sticky August day in old South Miami, my uncle—the same uncle who would only reach 59 before succumbing to lung disease—smiled and quipped, “She did all the wrong things in life. Gangy smoked, she was overweight for a good portion of her years, didn’t exercise a lick and she consumed a steady diet of fatty foods. Go figure.” Quick note to self: smoke, gain weight, refuse to exercise and eat garbage and you, too, can live to a ripe old age.
Something is obviously out of whack here. Of course it is; Gangy is the textbook description of a vivid example. We fall victim to the wiles of this fallacy when we take a freak or exceedingly rare example of something and try to generalize it for everyone. The vivid example is often held up as a model when it should be relegated to its proper place: the shelf of rare and improbable events. What do you suppose would happen if the Surgeon General took Gangy’s case and adopted its parameters as a model for American health? Exactly. We’d drop like flies, many of us at an early age. Let’s face facts: Gangy had amazing genes. She did nothing to earn them. She was simply conceived that way. And though she neglected her health for the vast majority of those years, it didn’t matter.
Morgan Spurlock (Supersize Me, 2004) was the lovable nut who conceived the idea to go on a McDonald’s-only diet for 30 days.1 I used to show the video to my juniors, but I ceded that honor to our freshmen Personal Fitness and Health classes a few years back. I don’t mind, actually. The younger the students see the film, the better. Before his ill-conceived dive into the cesspool of American fast-food, Spurlock obtained a health baseline: blood pressure, triglycerides, cholesterol, hepatic function, body weight, body fat, you name it. Here’s a guy who’s 6’2 and weighs 185 pounds—absolutely ideal for a man his size, or so some of the experts say. To put things in perspective, I’m 6’2 and in pretty good shape. I hit the gym about 5 times a week. I lift weights. I do the elliptical. I even do Spartacus on Wednesdays. But my weight bounces between 205 and 210 pounds. How does Spurlock do it? What the devil is his secret? It might have something to do with his vegan girlfriend, who feeds him a steady dose of exotic dishes. I’m really not sure.
So, as the Golden Arches diet progresses, Spurlock begins to gain weight. He checks back in with his doctors. His liver numbers no longer look so hot. His blood pressure has gone up. So, too, have his triglyceride and cholesterol counts. Lethargy has set in. His libido is suffering from a generalized state of fatigue and apathy. His doctors urge him to quit the diet, but he brushes them off. Along the way, Spurlock runs into a McDonald’s legend: Don Gorske. This guy has been consuming between 2 and 3 Big Macs a day (that’s 1,080 calories) since 1972, and he holds the record for the most Big Macs consumed by anyone on Earth. He even keeps several emergency Big Macs in his freezer in the event he’s ever snowed in.
One look at Gorske and I’m wondering, Heck, this guy’s tall and lanky. What gives? Actually, nothing gives. Like Spurlock, Gorske is 6’2. Unlike Spurlock, however, he still weighs 185 and has for years. That’s great, I think, but just imagine what his cholesterol count must be. Before I get to that, just consider that Gorske consumed his 25,000th Big Mac on May 17, 2011. He claims there have been only 8 days he failed to consume a single Big Mac since 1972—one of those being the day his mother died (she evidently made him swear he wouldn’t eat a Big Mac on the day of her funeral). Gorske, 58, claims to be in excellent health. He rarely, if ever, has to see a doctor. When he finally had to see a doctor in 2011, his first such visit since 1985, he had blood drawn. His cholesterol count came in at 156 mg/dL, well below the average of 208.2 Gorske continues to consume Big Macs at an average of about 750 per year. I’d ask my students and even you to consider a diet like this for a year, but we all know what the cholesterol numbers would say. There’s very little doubt, I’m afraid. Gorske is the vivid example of the Big Mac world.
One day I was lecturing about the effects marijuana has on the brain. I was rambling on and on about how pot is a dimmer switch for our enthusiasms, ambitions and drives, and how it is an idiot drug that routinely robs students of reaching their full potential. A hand shot up in the back. “That’s not true. I have this friend who smokes weed almost every day and he has straight A’s. He’s been accepted to six different colleges.”
Note to my three children: smoke weed and you, too, could be brilliant and in demand.
This is exactly why I teach logic at the beginning of the semester. I want my students to learn how to think before we attempt to tackle any of the heavy issues like relationships, drug use, abortion, business ethics, capital punishment, genetic engineering and so on. I find that, as we delve into these issues later on, I see them commit fewer fallacies. By the way, this reminds me of one of our faculty meetings back in the late 80’s. We had a guest speaker on the subject of drugs, and he told us of a VP who pulled something similar on him at a gathering of business leaders. “I smoke pot. I’m an executive in a company, I drive a BMW and I make six figures.” Our speaker said he took one look at the guy and replied, “Why aren’t you chairman of the board?”
Are there people who can use drugs and maintain high GPA’s? Of course. Does this mean the rest of us can behave this way? Come on, now.
Anyone who has coached a sport knows full-well what a gamer is. This individual usually possesses incredible athletic gifts. He has exceptional muscular development and coordination (Kinesthetic Intelligence, Harvard Psychologist Howard Gardner would say) and seems to have done very little in life to get to where he is. He’s usually not engaged during
