“Ah…. the sports analogy”

First let me explain my growing displeasure for explaining the happenings of life and the world via the sports analogy. I loathe it in the work setting and especially from those who clearly have never attempted to actually go any of the whole nine yards. Yet, as I think of how science has become a part of my life as well as the philosophies of human nature we have been discussing of what a “slam dunk” ;) my own personal experience and analytical notion of sports my former life as an athlete. So please bear with me if you share the same displeasure and I will try and never do it again it just seemed relevant this one time. I’ll brag a moment to state that I could run and run fast at an early age. By the age of 10 I was competing in national track meets and in the 7^th grade was invited to run on the varsity track team. My talent was seemingly intertwined with my childhood and adolescents and would come to define me as the fast break girl in basketball, back row specialist in volleyball and base runner extraordinaire in softball. Others defined me through my capabilities. Moreover, it was how I described who I was.

However, during my sophomore year I tore my ACL in my right knee during a basketball game. Without this ligament your knee essentially hyperextends and looses it stability to stabilize your leg when performing extreme movements- like any sort of sport. I was left with a “career ending injury” at the age of 16, or so I thought. Here’s where science swooped in and preserved the life as I knew it in the form of Arthroscopic surgery via a skin graft created from a muscle ligament in my hamstring. This increasing common surgery for athletes was a relatively easy decision after looking at the “proof” of the damage from a MRI the day after my injury indicating definitively which area was to blame for my swollen knee and specialized orthopedic surgeons office a hallway away to add me onto there schedule the next week. Within four months I was back hurdling trying to obtain all the potential that others and I knew I had in me to be a standout track star.

Science and it’s seeing machines and advanced research to correct, rehab and following up on my healing process is one thing but reflecting back on the sheer act of competing in sports addresses more thoroughly the concepts that Pinker argued against in his article. Rosseau’s noble savage can easily describe opponents, the blank slate of my own ability to succeed with seemingly clumsy dorky parents, and the ghosts within machine explaining how many athletes craft their bodies and skill sets as well practiced and enhanced machines of doing things. If I would have been confronted with the Hobbesian critique that life is short nasty and brutish post my injury I might have truly lost my mind. Why should I have to accept that a freak cruel flagrant foul by an opposing team end my life as I new it? Advancement in science allowed for me to not have accept the possibility that Hobbes was right. Science was able to bring be back to a level evolutionary playing field as well according to Pinker’s argument that “fitness and health” are underlying determinants of increasing my possibilities of having my genes succeed. According to this theory the fact that I was able to regain my “healthy” activities and appear to be fit was solely due to sciences ability to fix me mentally and physically. However this theory still my hamper my genealogical success. I mean if this really is a deciding factor then my 4 inch scar is a tell tale genetic scarlet letter of inept fragile fitness. Should I even openly discuss my surgery or just secretly know that I was able to return to normalcy via scientific advancements in imaging and surgery and go about my evolutionary and philosophical rat race to succeed amongst human nature that is seemingly trying to out perform you in either realm.