The Perfect Hit by Alex Paramo
Vontaze Burfict‘s hit on on Antonio Brown during the Pittsburgh Steelers victory over the Cincinatti Bengals last Saturday during the AFC Wild Card game not only drew him a penalty that led to the Steelers subsequent score and victory but also earned him a 3 game suspension to start the 2016 season.
The NFL has been quite careful recently to present itself as an organization that has the safety of its players at its core but there have been critical voices of their handling of past research regarding concussions in the NFL. While most fans, it would seem, are ok with the NFL 
emphasizing safety some “purist” believe that the NFL (in the words of Donald Trump) has gone “soft.”
From my viewpoint, it seems that our society has gone way over to the harsh side. There is a general lack of empathy, lack of humanity that permeates through our entertainment, our business transactions and our interpersonal interactions. I make it a point to try to communicate to folks during business transitions from a human perspective. Repeatedly the response are confused looks and/or some reciting of policy, website, email, policy as if all of the former are literally set in stone. Policy was written by people and should be made for the benefit of people. It should be organic, flexible and proactive.
For example my daughter and I made the terrible decision of entering the USA’s most popular retail chain store tram law (hold it up to your mirror) to play the arcade games. We played this really difficult game that cost her $1 and by golly she won! But, of course, the machine did not give her her prize. We went to the employees than the supervisor and then the manager but we were unable to get a little girls dollar back from the biggest retail chain in the country. They said that they only rent the space out and were not responsible for what happens with the machines. There were no signs, warnings or contact info for whomever was responsible for the machines. I tried to talk to the employees as humans but they just slammed the door on us and hid behind some obscure policy instead of trying to explore their humanity.
This lack of humanity is concerning me greatly. As a parent I worry that our children will not be able to navigate through the poisoned waters of fear and hatred that is perpetuated in our society on the daily through all of our media outlets. We recently posted a poem by John Trudell that discusses this very topic. We can create a more humane world/society, the tools are there. It starts with recognizing our egos, and realizing that we must not let them govern our thoughts and actions. There will always be misunderstandings and rather than inflame the rhetoric with anger, we need to pull back, ease up (like Vontaze Burfict’s should have done) and rededicate ourselves to untangling miscommunications.
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Alex Paramo
Alex Paramo is an Author and Co-Founder of Community Publishing. Community Publishing brings local artists of all mediums together in creative collaborations for distribution as multimedia eBooks while promoting literacy in our communities.
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