In Which We Talk Golf?
Listen to Episode
Please note, this is an A.I. transcript of the podcast Thinking Out Loud Together. As such, it will lack the polished quality of an actual blog post. It’s provided for those who prefer reading to listening. Special thanks to Mark for volunteering to humanize the process by shaping the wording into a more readable format.
Nathan:
Hello and welcome to Thinking Out Loud. I'm your cohost, Nathan Rittenhouse.
Cameron:
and I'm your co-host Cameron McAllister.
Nathan:
Today we are going to talk about golf, but I want to confess right off the bat, I've never played golf Cameron. Have you played golf? Are you a golfer?
Cameron:
Never.
Nathan:
Okay, great.
Cameron:
I'll aim to keep it that way, by the way. I know some of you listening will take that as a challenge.
Nathan:
When I was a kid, we used to take golf balls and put them on fence post and then shoot the golf balls off with our .22 rifles. So that that's the extent of my shooting golf experience and I know you know multiple people are shaking their heads and rolling their eyes there. But we want to talk about golf.
You've seen the headlines, the whole PGA / LIV thing. I've seen some reference to it on just about every news source. And I think because this has to do with perceptions of international policy, of hypocrisy, of morals and money, that we can discuss philosophically the situation surrounding this, even though we haven't played golf. (We want to be totally upfront about what we don't know. Which, for those of you who have listened to the show for years now it should be very clear to you, that category is huge)
First of all, everybody pronounces it, “live” golf. L-I-V is the Roman number 54. So, I guess that's a new thing where you can sound out Roman numerals. But anyway, Saudi Arabia funds this alternative. or slightly competitive association to the PGA, which is the professional golfer’s association. I think even if you don't golf, you've heard of the PGA tours; you've seen it on TV, you've heard references to it, you see advertisements for things sponsored by PGA golfers. It kind of was the big deal. And then Saudi Arabia comes along with $600 billion and was like, "Hey, we'd like to start something like this" and start LIV golf. And, because they have a lot of money, they can offer massive salaries to professional golfers and say, you can come play for us and play less, have a less demanding schedule, and make more money. There were golfers who said, "let's do that" and when they did, the PGA came out and said "These guys are banned forever from playing PGA. They're total sellouts. Look at the moral insanity of Saudi Arabia". So, this PGA was really focusing on saying "the majority of the terrorists from 9/11 were backed by Saudi dollars" or "Saudi Arabia has been executing journalists". So, they really painted anybody who joined LIV golf as total moral sellouts and they weren't allowed to play PGA golf. So, they made really strong public moral statements of condemnation.
Then you had some PGA golfers who didn't go and turned down LIV. Tiger Woods could have made between $700 million to $800 million by making that switch. And others were in the $400 million range. I mean, $700 million is a lot of money. And some of these guys said, "no, we're sticking with the American traditional value. This is classic golf; this is what golf is all about. And their style of the game is different and they have some different types of tournaments and stuff with LIV golf. We're not going to do it." Well, fast forward a year and you come back around and now LIV golf has essentially bought out/merged with PGA golf. As you can imagine, when you have hundreds of millions of dollars at stake and you've made extremely clear public moral indictments and statements, then to suddenly flip around; people are... Yeah, ticked. I don't know what the golfing term is there, but that's the situation at play. And I think people will be talking about this for a long time to come. This will be a reference point in history. This is like when we talked about woke capitalism and the movements Nike was sponsoring in the United States while clearly turning a blind eye to the NBA in China. We've seen this before. And there's a larger geopolitical guise here. Saudi Arabia is throwing money around in order to raise its international standings. Biden said he was going to make Saudi Arabia a pariah in the international community and here's the way that they could just throw millions and billions of dollars at stuff without doing any diplomacy and raise their international standings. You see Qatar doing this same thing with the World Cup last year. So, this isn't totally new.
Cameron:
We talked about that one, yeah.
Nathan:
We talked about how Saudi Arabia has paid some ridiculous sums of money to buy soccer teams and to buy professional soccer players to play for it. It really sees sports as a way of raising its international profile by just having a ridiculous amount of money. And so, some people are like, "Well, I don't see what the business model is here". Wrong question. Saudi Arabia is not trying to make money with a business model around golf. They don't need to. They can just straight up buy it. And you either dance to the dollar or you don't. But at this point, I don't really see what the alternatives are for anybody who's a professional golfer. Outlining that whole great big kerfuffle, what strikes you as interesting in this story, Cameron?
LIV – PGA Discussion
Cameron:
Yeah, I think of two terms that are helpful here as well. First, "sports washing" has been used to describe this as a massive PR campaign. It's not a business deal, it's a political move. It's a PR move to boost the credibility and the stakes of the nation, as you've said. And second is the term "blood money". That this money is blood money. That term has been used by leaders of the PGA who have now changed their tune. And as you mentioned Nathan, we've seen this before when we talked with other companies who will give you the impression that they're standing on principle, but when there's a financial advantage, suddenly the principles change and the tune changes.
Let me just use some controversial language for a second and then we can unpack it. What strikes me is interesting here, Nathan, is Free market capitalism doesn't have the resources to deal with this kind of moral dilemma. In other words, if you have a situation like this involving a deal that could be massively lucrative, it would seem to be good sense. Well, you go with the deal. This is financially advantageous. Everybody wins. We're back to one of the questions that we've talked about throughout this podcast, questions that arise when you have some kind of a victory, it might be financial, it might be military, but you've got that victory and also you've got a moral defeat simultaneously. So, I'm saying right now, if you have in your head a kind of a vision of "might makes right" or "the bottom line is the main controlling item here", then you're not gonna be able to marshal too many arguments against this. Because the only way to really prevail in a situation like this is to take a loss in some way. It will come with a cost. I think we've got a way of understanding rational behavior and thinking that is very influenced by economics. I think most of us, without meaning to and without even thinking about it, when we think of "rational behavior", we translate that into "self-interest".
If that's your default setting then you could look at a Tiger Woods and other players and you could say, "wow, that's very noble". But the cynical side of you could also say, "yeah, but nobody's going to hold out on that kind of offer indefinitely". Here we are. I'll leave it there for right now.
Nathan:
Yeah, okay, so let me throw in another term here. Let's talk about "conscientious capitalism", because I would say that if you surveyed the last several decades, or even a century or so, of American evangelical economics, that it would probably be leaning heavily in the free-market enterprise direction (With the caveat of saying that Jesus spoke about money a lot). And that does seem to mathematically make the most sense on a whole lot of things, you have this sense that this free market capitalistic thing is definitely good for the country economically. However, what do you do when you have moral limits to that? Or where does the conscientiousness come in? This is where we get into the difficulty of the word "good", right? Consider the Chesterton quote saying, "a man who can shoot his mother at 300 yards is a good shot, but that doesn't necessarily mean he's a good man". Or you would say, "You know what, I bet sex trafficking is good business. There are people making a lot of money, selling other humans for sex and smuggling drugs. Its good business". So, if you're looking at "good" just in economic terms how do you then draw the line of "I'm not going to be part of this". I say this just to say the conscientiousness of the capitalistic nature of how we envision ourselves culturally right now will start to fray as we lose a definition of conscientiousness and morality. It'll be "well, who cares? $700 million. I can take some hits on Twitter for $700 million". So, I guess my question is, will we see just a whole lot more of this? Because we don't really have the principles to push back as much as we once did.
Cameron:
Yes, and that's what I'm pointing to when I say that basically our systems as they now stand don't have those resources. The cultural mores have shifted so dramatically that it's increasingly difficult to resist this kind of push. This is what Wendell Berry in The Need to Be Whole talks about, he's helped me to pay a whole lot more attention to words like inevitable, necessity, or "well this is just the way things are progressing and it can't be otherwise" or realistic. The word realistic, we have to be realistic here.
America’s Loss of Principles
Nathan:
Well, let me be realistic here for a second and tell you what I'm thinking about this. Because you would say that we don't have the moral resources to put a boundary on behavior in terms of money. However, you know who does? Saudi Arabia? Qatar? I mean, look at the whole controversy around the sale of alcohol in Qatar. And Saudi Arabia is slightly loosening their standards. I mean, women can drive now, that's nice. And they're playing some music at some of these things. But I would say that the US doesn't have a national concept of a moral oughtness that we're working toward, whereas Saudi Arabia still very much does and is using money. So, I guess the point I'm saying is that you can say "okay, here we come, PGA golf, we're coming at this as totally market driven decision." and there's also lawsuits and other reasons that they wanted to get around this. But we're coming to this from a pragmatic reason. But now we have people from Saudi Arabia leading and sitting on the board of some of these organizations. And that is not a morally equivalent pairing. Because one of these institutions is coming in with a very rigid moral foundation and worldview and way of seeing reality. And one isn't. And I would submit to you that if one has more money and a deeper religious and cultural ethos of oughtness, we can all guess which one's gonna eat the other one's lunch.
Cameron:
Right. And we think that there's a parallel in how other people are going to deal with money and be driven by that kind of ambition and that kind of interest. But of course, this is where one of those classic misunderstandings comes in over and over again. And we really do face this in America as a nation when we're dealing with Muslim countries. When you have a nation devoutly Muslim and you have in effect a theocratic society, then you do have a powerful moral motivation and code that underwrites everything that's done. Nathan, you were mentioning to me not only the sale of alcohol, but also the destruction Opium fields that's come about as well. Putting a price tag on that, that's a massive amount of money.
Nathan:
Yeah, so let me catch people up on that. Now that the Taliban is back in control of Afghanistan, they've destroyed 99% of opium production. That was a super lucrative part of the economy for Afghanistan, specifically rural Afghanistan. So bad news, all you heroin users, the price is probably going to go up. Well, actually that's not true, but if you're a heroin user in Europe, you're probably going to get less pure heroin. So, I'm hoping that we don't have a whole lot of listeners to this podcast that this is going to impact financially. But all jokes aside, basically what you see is the Taliban having a moral aversion to something and wanting to raise its international profile as well and saying "We're going to take a massive financial hit in order to do what we think is the right thing. Even if it leads to significant economic turmoil within our country".
Cameron:
But that's behavior that from a spiritual standpoint is comprehensible.
Nathan:
Well, and it's a little bit, it's weird to say that about the Taliban.
Cameron:
It is.
Nathan:
Like, I find myself, "oh, the Taliban has principles". Well, yeah, we might not agree with the principles, so, if you're listening to this, we're not agreeing with the Taliban.
Cameron:
We do not agree with the Taliban.
Nathan:
We're bringing clarity to the concept of what it means to act as if you have principles.
Cameron:
We don't agree with the Taliban. Do they have principles? Yes, very powerful principles. So, I'm gonna give you some analysis from a gentleman whose name now escapes me. I will try to hunt this report down. This was years ago. I read this report from an anthropologist at the University of Michigan. It's a lengthy report, 20,000 words. So, this is a robust essay, but this was written at the height of news coverage of ISIS. The Reign of Terror is pretty close, right? So, this anthropologist was very shrewd in his observations. First of all, he pointed out how clever ISIS were with their media and the way that they made their public image, this terrifying public image. They have been able to give the impression that they're much more powerful than they actually are. Don't get me wrong, because of the ruthlessness of their tactics, they were quite powerful. But he just meant, for the most part, they were outmanned, outgunned in every conceivable way. They weren't as powerful, but it didn't matter from a publicity standpoint. They were really good at conveying this terrifying image because they were doing horrendous things. But he pointed something else out that I thought was really very insightful. This guy's an atheist, and he was trying to answer a little bit of the question of how some of these radical groups were recruiting lots of upper middle class Western kids. And he basically said that "because when you have a group like ISIS and they have this really powerful moral vision", that's the word he used, moral vision, "animating their efforts, you are going to see an outsized power that's incommensurate with their small numbers that manifest itself because of the level of commitment". So, in other words, you have people here who are willing to die for this cause. And the behavior of martyrdom is not comprehensible to your average American.
It just doesn't translate to us. This is not original thinking from Cameron, I'm drawing my thinking from a guy named Craig M. Gay who wrote a book called The Way of the Modern World. And he's the one who talks about the default understanding of rational behavior as self-interest. So, the logic of martyrdom runs entirely counter to that. Now, it is a logic. It's a very powerful way of thinking, but it is largely incomprehensible to those of us who basically think you want to live in a way that caters to your self-interest and live in a way to accumulate as much of an advantage as you can.
Nathan:
Hang on a second. Can I interrupt here? Because I think if you look at America in World Wars and even up through Iraq, Afghanistan, I think there was a moral vision of America and something that was worth dying for. So, because people still sign up to go do that, I don't want to say that it has never been there. So, when he says "it's incomprehensible to Americans" I would put that to recently modern Americans. We're using very broad terms here, culturally speaking.
Cameron:
Oh, today. Yeah, not, and not all Americans by any means, but broad terms, default setting. Meaning if you're not conscientious of the way you're living, you kind of slide into this mindset these days and it's a relatively recent one. And obviously, he's, he's a secular anthropologist. He's able to think in these terms and understand a little bit. And Nathan, this is all getting very serious very quickly. You mentioned the sex trafficking industry as hugely financially lucrative. Well, that's obviously a massive illegal operation. Let's think about the porn industry, which is a massive economic player. A very uncomfortable exercise, which some of you have done before, is to do a little research on which major companies are in some ways in partnership with the porn industry. It's a lot of them.
Hypocritical Use of Moral Principles
Nathan:
Okay, let's make this worse. Bud Light has a dude in bubble bath and everybody loses their mind. What would it take for people to get fired up and boycott porn? We can look at LIV golf and PGA and be like, "look at the hypocrisy, people would sell out for money". You're like, "okay, let's turn that around a little bit and look at what we are, as a culture, willing to sell out for all the time".
Cameron:
Now, on that note, it's also worth pointing out that the problem of moral hypocrisy, of course, is a human problem. So, I do want to be an equal opportunity offender here and point out that in Saudi Arabia and in Islamic nations, it's continually found out, by the way, that porn is a huge problem. Granted, the penalties associated with porn consumption are way more grave.
Nathan:
Well, you could just look at what was found with Osama bin Laden.
Cameron:
Exactly. Yeah, some of you will remember that hypocrisy with Osama bin Laden. So, when you hear me saying these people are operating with very definitive principles, don't hear me saying that they occupy some kind of moral high ground here. That's not what I'm saying. I'm just saying that they're animated by a religious, theocratic in this case, vision that for the most part curbs those appetites. But human beings are human beings.
Nathan:
Okay, so we can look at levels of hypocrisy there. And whether you're giving up $700 million or $7, hypocrisy is hypocrisy. However, what happens to the golfer who says, "look, my life is about making money, and this is where I can make the most money? Next question". Do we have a culture that would actually condemn that? I mean, you'd hear some screaming on some more conservative channels, but are we at a place where you don't need to be a hypocrite anymore?
Cameron:
Yeah, that's part of what I'm getting at when I'm saying we no longer have the cultural resources to respond to somebody who says that.
Nathan:
And this is why this one is uniquely weird, because all the people who morally condemned LIV golf now just joined it within a year.
Cameron:
Right.
Nathan:
So, usually, our hypocrisy comes from condemning one thing in one category and then turning around and participating in another version of it in a different category. That's hypocrisy. LIV and PGA is a little more in your face because it's the people who condemned it who joined it within two years. This one is much more of a "it's right there, everybody can see it" but it's a type of a thing, not a unique instance.
Cameron:
It also raises the question of how sincere their initial refusal actually was, whether this was more of a publicity stunt possibly. Now, that sounds very cynical, but the very quick turnaround seems to point you in that direction. Speaking more broadly, the moral failure is being exposed right now in our culture. Consider a rock star when several women come out with terrible allegations against them or something like that. Let's say this person had a publishing deal. Now suddenly the publishers have to come out with a statement saying, "our trust has been fundamentally violated".
So, I have in mind a specific example here that I'm going to give to you because Cameron's a metalhead and Cameron knows these metal worlds, but there's a German industrial metal band called Rammstein. Their message has been consistently throughout all of the years, unbelievably perverse, vile, and sickening in every possible sense of those words. So
Nathan:
I like just the calm tone in which you hammered in those adjectives.
Cameron:
Just an unabashedly vile vision from the visuals of their music videos to their lyrics to their antics on stage at a concert. Allegations have come against their singer. And it's very interesting to watch. He had a publishing deal and the publishers are dropping him. "We are just so horrified to hear about this behavior" and you know, "trust has been fundamentally violated". So, I know these are allegations and we don't know precisely what's transpired, but if you've been paying attention to the man's lyrics, the way he conducts himself and every other facet of his life, there's nothing even remotely surprising or inconsistent (sadly) with this behavior at all. So, my point is about the publishers, do they not know that? Of course they know that. I mean, these people are staffed with savvy clever marketers and all that. My point is this all begins to look more and more like one big publicity campaign. I don't think this is cynicism, I think this is realism at this point. The idea that this is about morals and principles looks more and more like a charade as you see people turn instantly. So, on the one hand, that does sound a little bit like the Nike kind of story we talked about years ago when they said, "Oh yes, we want to stand up for these people's rights and we are conscientious". We don't want to exploit anyone until it hurts us financially and then if you can't beat them, join them.
That kind of mentality, that's part of what I'm getting at where our culture no longer has the moral resources to deal with this. I'm just speaking in impersonal terms of the culture and the way market mindsets work these days. It's not a moral way of thinking. It has everything to do with advantage and financial incentives. Money is almost seen as the final symbol of all that is most essential and real. You can measure it in dollars.
Nathan:
I'm just trying to think here if the vast majority of conversations about morals and principles is always used as a critique. I'm not sure that I've seen a positive vision of someone saying, "that's a really good and principled person". It's almost always used in the negative of this person. I used morality as an attack platform against something else that I don't like. So, it seems to me like it's being used as a single sided weapon sort of. It's kind of my last resort. When I'm getting beaten, then I just accuse the other person of breaking trust or I accuse the other person of being a shady character. Morals matter to me only when it's convenient to me and I use it to elevate my image as a righteous person in the face of this other person who's my enemy.
Cameron:
I have no other cards to play, so now I'm gonna play the Moral card.
Nathan:
Yeah, it's kind of like last resort.
Cameron:
You know, and it also does bring back to mind Alistair McIntyre's word "emotionalism". He wrote After Virtue in 1981 but he's been saying that; for a while, we have been using moral language but what we're really doing is we're just disguising personal preference in moral language. And this is why our moral conversations are, as he uses the word, "interminable but irresolvable", we can't do it. It's very hard to argue with him on that one, especially if you listen to political speeches or if you read these PR statements from companies who have dropped somebody from their publisher, you’ll get a lot of moral language, but really, it's disguising personal preference. And that's because we don't have a shared moral standard.
Living in a Principle-less Society
Nathan:
So, what do we do then? I was thinking there's a kind of a two-fold move here. I was thinking when Jesus was talking to his disciples about who's the greatest in leadership and power. He talks about; this is how the Gentiles do it, they lord it over each other. There's a way in which I think we can look at some of this stuff and say, "and that's the way the world works kids". Jesus saw this, "this is how the Gentiles do this". But the next line is very important here. We live in a time in which people often say, "it is what it is", but as a Christian we live with a sense of "it is what it is, but it isn't what it ought to be". And so, it's that concept of oughtness that is different.
When Jesus says "look, this is how the pagans and the Gentiles do it, but not so with you", this switch of Jesus having a very clear vision of how the world operates, that's what we're just doing here. We're looking at this and we're analyzing, we're saying "this is how the world operates". And then as Christians were saying, "but not so with us". And then he goes on to say, "whoever wants to be the greatest must be the servant of all", that whole speech of where he's shifting around and saying, "this is how the world works. This is how, as my follower, I want you to behave". So, I think we can look at a topic like this and be not losing sleep over this. I'm just pointing out some curious things as they fly by in my life and say, "Well, yep, that's an indicator of how the world actually works". But just because I see it as an indicator of the way that the world actually works does not mean that it becomes paradigmatic for me. It doesn't become the paradigm by which I try to emulate. It's not a goal for me. I think through the, "but not so with you". And I think about everything that Jesus taught about finances and money and everything else in life and get my moral vision from Christ and recognize that it is fundamentally incompatible with the majority perspective of the world.
And so, once we parse that out, then that puts us in a totally different platform where we can comment on, critique, point to, describe, and explain whatever is happening between Saudi Arabia and PGA. But on the other hand, we can also see that as not an infringement or a temptation for us, because that's not where we're really orienting the needle of our moral compass. So, I'm not bent out of shape about this. It's just a reminder to me, once again, that "This is how the world does that".
How then do I make decisions in my life that are compatible with the things that Jesus said? How do I root and become a principled person of integrity that can generate trust in my family, in my community, in my church, with you Cameron, with those of you who are listening, and in my interactions around me. So just because we see the breakdown of things sometimes doesn't mean that the opposite isn't true. And so that's what we're striving to build with lives of consistency and integrity. We can shake our heads at some things but also use them as reminders of the directions in which we want to grow.
Cameron:
Yeah, that's well said. With regard to the whole "it is what it is" mindset, it's true to say, "we're looking at the world and this is largely how it works in the United States". It's true to make that observation. It is false however to say, "therefore we need to play along. If you can't beat them, join them. I'm just being realistic".
Nathan:
"When in Saudi Arabia, do as the Saudi Arabians do" doesn't have the same fun sound to it.
Cameron:
Right. Which is why I tend to be wary of the way people use the word realistic sometimes, "I'm just being realistic". No, it may be "the way things work around here", so to speak, but that doesn't mean that you must be a part of it. And in fact, if you are part of the kingdom of God then you are part of a people set apart for the Lord and you do have a moral vision and you do have consensus on that vision in the church and you have a rich moral language that has sense because there is consensus on it. And you also believe human life has a telos, has a purpose that goes well beyond profits and dollar signs. It's recognizing that (this has always been the case; this is nothing new) being a Christian is going to come with a cost. Being a Christian always comes with a cost. Even during times of cultural and financial stability, self-sacrifice is part and parcel with the Christian life.
Why? Because you're part of the Lord's kingdom. And the Lord's kingdom is at fundamental odds with what Augustine called the "kingdom of man", the way of the flesh, the way of the world here, which is usually centered on pride and self-interest in some way, shape, or form. So, the gospel brings you into conflict with those systems and those worldly powers, and that's okay. That's why we need each other and that's why we need the empowerment of our Lord and His Holy Spirit. And with all of those things in place, you can do it, and you'll be just fine.
So yeah, you don't need to lose any sleep over any of this. You can be concerned, you can be saddened, but you don't need to be in despair. This is a common refrain for thinking out loud but we're getting older so we repeat ourselves and we can just console ourselves by saying "we're being consistent". But there's no reason to feel any sense of despair here. It is interesting to watch these kinds of events unfold and to recognize that the culture doesn't have the moral resources to deal with these kinds of dilemmas any longer. We truly are a cut flower society as Os Guinness has said. Now we've removed the flower from all the roots that have nourished it and that flower is undeniably in its wilting stages. But don't be afraid. Continue to follow your Lord, press into your churches with fellow believers, worship the Lord in spirit and truth, and all shall be well.