Ethan Hirsch: (Mostly) Positivist Musings

Life as a college student isn’t always as easy as it’s cracked up to be. Take today, for example.

Class started at 8am, necessitating a 7:24 wake-up. Class continued until 11am, at which time I proceeded to continue studying for my Business Ethics test over a medium coffee and an everything bagel. The test itself was conveniently scheduled for 1pm, allowing for 2 hours of unadulterated study. Post-test, I had docketed a half-hour between test time and my next class, set for 2:30, for an important phone call.

The test concluded, finishing a half-hour early, and I sought out a quiet spot for my phone call. Although my mind was swimming with the tenets of Friedman(s) and Erber, I attempted to clear my head, placing my ear to the phone’s receiver in preparation for Ethan-centric discourse.

I soon came to the realization that the person on the other end of the line was not going to pick up: an oversized monkey-wrench thrown into my fragile plans. Setting my phone aside, I realized that it was a beautiful day outside. I sought out the New York Times, provided for free to all University students here on campus. I soon deduced that it was Tuesday, and cast Sections A and B of the newspaper aside on a park bench, seeking out the Tuesday Crossword.

***Brief disclaimer: Since my senior year of high school, I have been attempting the Will Shortz-edited New York Times’ Crossword Puzzle almost every Monday and Tuesday. To most Crossword snobs (including myself) the New York Times Crossword Puzzle is the only crossword puzzle worth solving. The Times’ Crossword increases in difficulty each day: starting with the (relatively) innocuous Monday puzzle to the vaunted Sunday puzzle. Of the weekly output, I can consistently complete ~50% of Monday and Tuesday’s offerings. To this date, I’ve fully completed 3 crosswords (1 Monday and 2 Tuesdays, strangely enough.) While one might scoff at this extremely low success percentage (something like .0001), I am extremely proud of my un-abetted puzzle mastery.

Reaching The Arts (Section C) of the Times, two articles on the front pages immediately caught my attention before I could begin to perform the ceremonious “crossword fold.” The first was a review of Malcolm Gladwell’s “newest” book, What the Dog Saw, a compilation of articles written for the New Yorker (a la Consider the Lobster.) I remembered that coincidentally, I was planning on giving a presentation on Gladwell next Monday, as cast the article aside in my memory bank for later reference. The second article was a discussion of the relevancy of Political Science, a field that I just so happen to major in here at college. Again, coincidentally, I was tapped for a meeting with a university Political Science professor just the next day, and made an additional mental note of this article, no doubt planning on referencing it within tomorrow’s conversation.

Finally, I set out to delve into Tuesday’s crossword puzzle. Alas, it was 2:27, and accounting, my next class, was in 3 minutes! Sitting on a bench outside the lecture hall, I found myself hard-pressed to skip a class I was literally sitting outside of. Disappointed, I tucked the Arts section under my arm and headed into class, preparing my already-exhausted mental state for rote accounting-related acumen.

I sat down as the teacher was beginning his lecture, sitting in the same seat I religiously occupy each Tuesday from 2:30 to 3:45. On my lap sat the empty crossword, begging further inspection. I conceded, and decided to dedicate the rest of the class period to the crossword. The result is available below: my fourth completed crossword of my life. Another Tuesday, too.

Normally, I don’t submit to superstition, luck, or any other forces of chance. However, the serendipity stemming from one phone call, or the lack of one, is remarkable.

This is my first post since my MacBook Pro’s startup disk failure, a failure which resulted in the installation of an entirely new hard drive. Roughly 500 dollars later, I am now starting from scratch. All my book-notes, papers, photos, and applications have disappeared, replaced by empty folders and the barren fuchsia galaxy that graces all default Macs’ background.

My computer has long been a harbinger of personal knowledge, communication, and reflection. Without its memory, my laptop has become a become a vestige of its former self, staring back at me with the blankness of an amnesia victim.

A common exercise in humility involves decision-making in the event of a natural disaster: “In the event of a fire/hurricane, what item(s) you bring along with you before you left?” The impending logic behind this hypothetical is the revealing of what is truly important in your life. One who places his memories above all would most likely save family photos, while the knowledge-driven would most likely rush for their most prized pieces of literature.

I’d guess that the most typical answer would involve some form of a personal computer. The current generation of computers has attempted to commodify themselves as “personal media centers.” Apple goes so far as to coin its’ all-in-one media program “iLife,” a testament to the reliance contemporary society has placed upon their computers. Photographs, album, papers, and films, likely fire-saving entities prior to the PC, have been replaced by .jpegs, .docs, .mp3s, and .avis, all easily aggregated and accessible.

Had I been asked this question yesterday, I’d have most likely ceded with the majority. However, upon finding out that my hard drive was past the point of information retrieval, I was largely unaffected. To my surprise, the notion that years of collected media was completely erased was met with indifference, a zen-like calm which I’ve maintained since I picked up my computer.

While I’m certainly not ready to rid myself of material vices entirely, I’ve taken solace in the fact that I truly took everything in stride. While my book-notes and old papers may have gone by the wayside, the digressions, epiphanies, and opinions acquired as a result still reside comfortably in my consciousness. Despite my material losses, I am the still the same freethinking, healthy individual as I was yesterday.

Disclaimer: I certainly don’t want to stress that this experience is for everyone. If the reader gains anything from this post, learn from my misfortune. Backup, backup, backup.

James Toback’s compelling and heartbreaking biopic/documentary Tyson represents a radical divergence from the traditional film. A singular actor and narrator, Mike Tyson, graces the film for its entirety, providing an hour and a half monologue supplemented only with related photographs and video clips. The viewer is taken on a trip of Tyson’s career as he recounts it, face-to-face, as if sitting next to him having a conversation.

Toback’s lens frequently meet eye-level with Tyson, forcing the viewer to stare into the eyes of the notoriously nefarious boxer. One cannot help but feel sympathy for Tyson as he weaves through a tale of his poverty stricken childhood, in which he frequently participated in robbery, larceny, and street fights from the young age of 11. By the age of 13, Tyson had been arrested 38 times. In jail, presumably a place that he would be frequently inhabiting under his trajectory at the time, Tyson took up an interest in Boxing. Under the watchful eye of Cus D’Amato, Tyson began to develop extreme potential, harnessing his rage that had been previously reserved from crime, and bringing it into the Boxing ring. D’Amato adopted Tyson, and Tyson lived with D’Amato in his Upstate New York home along with his children and wife.

Under D’Amato, Tyson became a student of the sport. He recounts spending countless hours in front of D’Amato’s projector, studying in an attempt to emulate the styles and swagger of Boxing greats Jack Dempsey, Joe Louis, and Muhammad Ali. To this day, Tyson credits D’Amato as the driving force behind his Boxing psyche. In my eyes, D’Amato essentially molded Tyson into the undersized yet infinitely talent boxer whom dominated the sport of Boxing between 1986-1990 and provokes serious candidacy amongst the greatest Heavyweights of all time to this day.

Proceeding D’Amato’s death, Tyson’s life was quickly consumed by the women, money, and fame that went along with his dominance. In the film, Tyson concedes that his loss of the heavyweight title to Buster Douglas in 1990 was due to a lack of training: he was too consumed by drugs, women, and alcohol to consider taking Douglas seriously. Tyson quickly spiraled back into the savage and unpredictable child of his youth. Soon thereafter, without D’Amato’s influence, Tyson found himself back in jail. Tyson continued his fall from grace post-jail, disgracing himself through 2 losses to Evandor Holyfield, and finally, an embarrassing defeat to close his career against journeyman Kevin McBride.

The importance of mentorship cannot be understated. Tyson’s example, while extreme, provides a telling example of the fruits of mentorship, and the subsequent perils of the lack of positive influences in one’s life. I am blessed to be surrounding by compassionate and caring mentors who play a significant role in my day-to-day lives. I emulate the redeeming qualities of each of these mentors, and in turn I have contracted empathy, discipline, perseverance, and to this point, a sliver of success. As I progress as an adult, I strive for increased opportunities to take ephebes [1] under my wing and instill the same values my mentors have provided me onto them.

[1] A ancient term modernized by David Foster Wallace (DFW) to mean “teenager”