Volleyball Coaching Life-Altruism

Coaches emphasizes the value of teamwork. Indeed, a large part of what coaches do in team sports is to instill how being a great teammate is important to the success of that team.  We ask the players to put the interest of the whole, the team, ahead of their self-interest. This is especially difficult if the players are  at the ages where self-involvement and what-is-in-it-for-me attitudes are a dominant part of their maturation. I understand that selfishness is a natural part of human development but knowing and acknowledging that fact certainly does not make teaching player how to be a great teammate any easier.

I also believe that being a good teammate directly teaches the players to be altruistic in their future lives, the lessons from playing on a team and learning, to think in terms of us rather than me has direct implications on the future behavior of the player. Indeed, this is a valuable lesson that team sports impart on the players.

According to the Merriam Webster Dictionary, the formal definition for altruism is:

1 : unselfish regard for or devotion to the welfare of others.

2 : behavior by an animal that is not beneficial to or may be harmful to itself but that benefits others of its species

The first definition is generally the definition of altruism that most will recognize: having regard for and devotion to the welfare of others. This definition refers to the expected societal behavior of all cultures: a devotion to this definition leads to the giving of ourselves —money if we have it, time if we have it. This thought manifests itself externally, things that we do — mostly giving materially — to demonstrate to others that we are altruistic. The definition does not commit the person to anything drastic, just to have concern for others.

The second definition is different, it calls for us to search internally to find the motivation to do  things that could potentially harm ourselves for the greater good.

The first definition is more general, it invokes selflessness without specifically asking for personal sacrifices, this is the altruism that does not ask us to put skin in the game; whereas the second definition not only ask for skin in the game, but it also calls for us to act with a greater purpose as we make decisions that will likely hurt us. In fact, it is asking for more than just putting skin in the game, it asks for us to give our all.

I have told the story about the difference between involved and being committed to my players every year. It can all be explained by our breakfast: bacon and eggs. In this breakfast dish, the chicken is involved but the pig is committed. The chicken had to make a painful decision, but it is the pig that had skin in the game. The chicken is following the first definition of altruism, the pig is following the second definition.

Good teammates will cheer for their teammates and team,  they will carry water for the teammates and team, they will shag balls for their teammates and team, they will volunteer to officiate for their teammates and  team, they will hug a teammate when they need it and kick some butt when the teammate needs it. In short, they are observing the tenets of the first definition of altruism: unselfish regard for or devotion to the welfare of others.

The real question is:  are the players willing to be a great teammate? Are they willing to subjugate their egos by sacrificing their own turn under the spotlight? Are they willing to sacrifice personal recognition for the sake of the team? Are they willing to give up their starting role because a teammate is having a better day? Are they willing come in as a substitute rather than as a starter? Are they willing to take the bench role even if it means harming their own self-interests? Are they willing to make that sacrifice by giving up the opportunities to be seen and recruited? Are they willing to work hard in practice to make the team more successful and make the starting team better? Are they willing to work hard only in practice and not play one second of a match?

Great teammates are willing to do all that if that is what it takes: behavior that is not beneficial to or may be harmful to itself but that benefits others.

Many players excel at being a good teammate, not many are willing to do what it takes to be a great teammate. Age plays a role in this discussion, it is difficult to convince young people to sacrifice themselves for the team, yet it is also rare to see adults sacrifice themselves for the good of the team.

I believe that altruism is a human trait that is the greatest lesson that we can bestow on our students and players when we teach how to be a great teammate so that a great team can emerge.

What precipitated this line of thinking is the reality of our present society, I thought about the lack of apparent or even latent signs of altruism around me. In the cold reality of today’s ethos, I was lamenting the disappearance of altruism; but then I found this article from Vox: https://www.vox.com/coronavirus-covid19/2022/2/17/22938873/covid-19-vaccines-skeptics-messaging which restored my faith in humans and it gave me some hope.

The article describes the results from a study conducted by Vincent Pons at the Harvard Business School and Vincenzo Galasso and Paola Profeta at Bocconi University in Milan. It tracks the evolving thoughts of  people with anti-vaccine sentiments and their opinions as the pandemic progressed; they found that people can in fact be persuaded by the right message.

The researchers surveyed more than 6,000 people in the United States, United Kingdom, European Union, Australia, and New Zealand,  first in December 2020, to assess them before the vaccines were widely available, and asked them to pick a number between 0 and 10 to represent their likelihood of getting vaccinated; then they returned to them in the  Summer of 2021 to find out what they did.

Four messages were presented to the test subjects in December to see how they would move people’s intentions then and their actual behavior six months later:

1. Self-Protection (If you get vaccinated, you could avoid getting infected)
2. Protecting Others (If you get vaccinated, you could avoid passing the virus to others)
3. Protecting Health (If you get vaccinated, it can help protect the health of all the people in your country)
4. Protecting the Economy (If you get vaccinated, it can help a return to economic activity and reduce unemployment)

A control group heard no messaging at all.

Interestingly, the most ardent vaccine refusers, one-third of the people who had rated themselves 0 in December, had gotten vaccinated in the six months between visits by the researchers.

What was amazing is that the information presented to the sample population in the first wave affected not only vaccination intentions expressed in the survey but also the actual vaccination rates six months later. It even increased vaccination among those who had expressed anti-vax attitudes in the first survey. Interestingly, altruistic messages had the largest effect. Indeed message 2 and 3: protecting others and protecting the health of the nation were the most effective messages.

We see this same altruism in the world’s reaction to the Russian invasion of Ukraine. We were altruistic in our response, in all the senses of the word. The economic sanctions have and will damage the world economy, but the world sacrificed our own self-interest, we were altruistic in our intentions when responding to the Ukrainian people.

It is these acts of self-sacrifice on a global scale that let in the light through the crack of the dark façade of my perspective on our society. Therefore, I feel that we must reinforce the ideas of being great teammates to our future. It may not matter much on a local scale in the short term, but it means a great deal on the global scale in the long term. It will make us all better.

One last note. Ubuntu is Archbishop Desmond Tutu’s favorite word; it is also a phrase that is oft cited by Nelson Mandela. Ubuntu is a complicated philosophy of life which encompasses many aspects of being connected as people and as a society; a connectedness that should exist between people. My own favorite definition of Ubuntu is: I am Because We are.

Ruminations-Armistice Day 2021

Today is November 11. Armistice Day to many countries around the world.

Armistice Day is so named to celebrate the armistice signed between the Allies of World War I and Germany at Compiègne, France, for the cessation of hostilities on the Western Front of World War I, which took effect at eleven in the morning—the "eleventh hour of the eleventh day of the eleventh month" of 1918. Many Western countries have changed the name of the holiday from Armistice Day, with member states of the Commonwealth of Nations adopting Remembrance Day, and Veterans Day in the US. Changing the name of the day subtly changes the intended meaning of the day. Armistice Day is about remembering the end of the war to end all wars — an optimistic mis-foreshadowing if there ever was one. Remembrance Day evokes those who lost their lives in defense of their beliefs. In putting the names of the days in context, the first great war dealt an extensive blow to the psyche of the European continent. A hundred plus years later, the effect of the war is still affecting the way Europeans think, react, and feel whenever large human conflicts are the subject of discussion. It affects the way they memorialize the day, with the subtle pinning of the red poppy flower on the lapels of the general populace and remembrances of the war dead in the battlefields.

In the US, the turning of the day into Veteran’s Day changes the focus of the day to the living veterans, even though the remembrance of those who died are never far from the surface: such activities as the many ceremonies placing flags on the graves of those who died fighting the war and the remembrances at the war memorials and tombs of unknown soldiers — the focus is clearly on honoring the living veterans; a chance to give thanks to those who had survived.

This is a clear illustration of the pragmatic bent of the American culture. My thought is that by culture, we Americans as a people are not so inclined to be elegiac. We are a culture of action, doing what is practical and immediate. Hence the turn towards honoring the living is a far more practical thing to do on this day of remembrance than contemplating the past. This is not an indictment; indeed, it is very natural for our cultural personality. Afterall, pragmatism is an American philosophy.

As I think about this, I think about the inadvertent omissions in our thoughts when we changed the name of the day. By changing the name of the day, we unintentionally change our internal conversations with ourselves about the meaning of sacrifice, or the altruistic nature of responsibility and commitment. We miss the necessary discussions about the meaning of  altruism and the psychic demands placed on those who willingly sacrifice their most precious possession, their lives, in the service of a greater good, fully knowing and understanding the role that they will play in the future of civilization. Sometimes I think about those who have passed as they are observing our present in which we are living and wondering whether they think if it was worth their altruism.

On a greater stage, I think about the role of the armed conflict in our society. Of the role that our organized fighting forces play in our own geopolitical chess match. We make noble the cause by waxing poetic about those who willingly give their all, sacrificing their individual good for the benefit of our greater good — fully knowing that their lives may be the price they pay. What very few contemplate in times of geopolitical conflict is the role and responsibility of the leaders; their need to critically self-question, to contemplate the need  to minimize the call upon those who are willing because every life is valuable, every loss of life is too costly. I would hazard to guess that the best of our leaders, both military and civilian, are kept awake at night, contemplating the intricate calculus of making their decisions in the widest and narrowest contexts possible. Yet, I also know that there are blackhearts who does not even think of the sacrifices of the altruistic and haphazardously commit the lives of other humans in the service of their own vainglorious self-serving purposes.

Another thought that crops up is the formalism that we place on the day and on our responses on the day. All around the world, we honor the war dead on November 11, which leads to many other questions. Why don’t we honor the war dead on the other 364 days of the year? Who are we memorializing? Unless the person who had passed is a relative or a friend, there is actually very little or no remembrances of their person or their deeds. Are we going through these exercises to assuage our own guilt for living rather than give remembrance to the dead? What if we took that emotion and exercise in remembrance and turned the attention to the lessons that we ought to have learned and propagated to the future regarding the meaning of the self-sacrifice that the headstones concretely exemplify? Are we deriving the lessons that we should be deriving from the lessons of altruism we are observing?

One thing that has bothered me throughout the years is the obligation that we have imbued our interactions with living veterans. Many are sincere when they say” “Thank you for your service.” While I have no arguments with the sentiment, I wonder if we are commoditizing that sentiment by making it an obligation to say the phrase to anyone that has been identified as a veteran. Once again, are we parroting the phrase for our own benefit because we feel it is our obligation? No doubt there is ample sincerity in the spoken gesture, but how much of it is due to the obligation that we feel?

In my mind, parroting the phrase reactively is a conversation stopper. It pre-emptively arrests any further discussions into the war experience, the horrors and negativity associated with armed conflicts are stopped cold in their tracks because the speaker has met their obligation to laud the veteran for their service. Indeed, it stops all kinds of conversations, conversations about how many veterans with PTSD are living in the streets because we —the people who make up the government — are unwilling to face the realities of the aftermath of war, we would rather sweep it under the national rug. Conversations about the suicide rates of veterans. Conversations about how we are taking care of the veterans for the rest of their lives.

It is worth saying that the idea of the volunteer army is that those who are willing are depending on those who are unwilling or unable, to meet needs of the willing after the war. Needs that are a result of the decision to commit the willing to the conflict; the after-effect imposed upon those who are willing. This is not a partisan issue, both sides of the wide political divide have failed abysmally in this regard. Those on both sides of the political chasm have taken every chance to make a cape of the flag and performing in their own self-directed political drama while running away from the responsibilities of their positions.

To conclude, I am not saying that calling November 11 Remembrance Day assures that the general populace will naturally conform to contemplating the greater meanings of personal altruism that motivates the willing to give up their lives. I am also not saying that everyone who says: “Thank You for Your Service” are disingenuous in their intent. I am not a veteran, so I can not speak for their emotions as they hear that phrase. I am speaking to my own skepticism of the intent of some when I sense that they are parroting the phrase as an obligation. 

I am, however, serious about using the day as a day of reflection on the meaning of altruism, service to the greater good of society rather than to the self as a regular habit on this day, once a year. I don’t think it is too much to ask.