Causal Contingency I—NCAA Upset

Imagine the NCAA Basketball version of the worst-day-of-the-worst-day in "Lunar World." 

[a] Bleak [RF]

At the University of Virginia (before tonight), that would have been December 23, 1982. I'm old enough to say that, when I looked at the Minneapolis Star-Tribune early on the morning of Christmas Eve (time difference: they were in Hawaii), I was shocked to learn that tiny, tiny Chaminade University had upset the big, powerful Ralph Sampson-led Virginia behemoth 77-72. 

Wow. 

[b] Lonely RF

Even in a meaningless holiday basketball tournament in the middle of paradise...wow. Just...wow. I will never forget that day (and I love basketball).

I (and everyone else who loves basketball) will remember today, too (and probably even more than the Chaminade upset that almost none of us saw in-person or on television). 

Before tonight, #1 seeds had been 135-0 since the tournament went to its current six-round form in 1985. #2 seeds had lost a handful of times. # 3 seeds had lost a few more of them. Many #4-8 seeds had lost (a whole bunch more). 

But, over thirty-three-plus years, NO #1 seed had ever lost a first-round game. 

Until tonight. 

Virginia lost. They were not only a"Number-One" seed. They were the number-one-seeded number-one seed in the NCAA basketball tournament. this year. 

[c] Competition RF

This is the stuff of mythology (see below).

UVA will never shake off what has happened (as minor as it really is in the grand scheme of things in our global world).

And yet, its not even that "big a deal" in the biggest scheme of things. It's not even close to the biggest thing in Charlotesville in the last twelve months. Not even remotely close.

Um, just think about what has happened there this year. 

Yes, that's what I mean by perspective.

And yet the basketball mythology won't go away, either, at least if people focus 

[d] Upset RF

on...basketball.

As the historian Paul Cohen has written, history resides in "three keys": as lived experience (a crazy upset), as history (as reporting of what happened that we will read in the future (UMBC 74 UVA 54) and, most importantly, as mythology (a #16 seed defeats a #1). 

Mythology. Yup.

I still can't believe that I got to see it live (with several tens of millions of others). Still...wow. I wasn't sure if I would ever see #16 defeats #1 (and especially by twenty points...in which the #1 never had a chance). 

Wow.

Causal Contingencies (1)—New Rochelle (Virginia)

Click here for the "Causal Contingencies" Resource Center (all posts available)
Click here for the introduction to the Round and Square series "Causal Contingencies"
This is a "small" (小) post—click here for an explanation of Round and Square post lengths.

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On this date on Round and Square's History 

10 August 2014—China's Lunar Calendar 2014 08-10
10 August 2013—China's Lunar Calendar 2013 08-10
10 August 2013—The Art of Warning: Introduction
10 August 2012—Rural Religion in China (6)
10 August 2011—Seinfeld Ethnography: Nonfat Yogurt

[a] Generic shot RF

O.k., this "can't happen." That is why it is featured on "Causal Contingencies" (check the introduction. Mt. Vernon has the game in hand, and an exuberant player on that team heaves the ball into the air in celebration, just before time runs out. 

It is a glorious moment, and many champions (and their families and fans) have enjoyed just such a spectacle.

Except Mt. Vernon lost (sorry George and Martha, but you've done all right for yourselves).

It couldn't happen, and (this is the point of this entire series) a fiction editor would cross it out in red and note that "this preposterous...please fix it."

Except that it really, actually, happened.

We try to avoid cliché on Round and Square, but truth is...(you know the rest).

New Rochelle Beats Mt. Vernon (.1 to go)

Really. This can't happen.

But it did. 

"Causal." "Contingency." Stay tuned.

Causal Contingencies—Introduction

Click here for the "Causal Contingencies" Resource Center (all posts available)
This is the introduction to the Round and Square series "Causal Contingencies"
This is an "long post" (大)—click here for an explanation of Round and Square post lengths.

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On this date on Round and Square's History 

8 August 2014—China's Lunar Calendar 2014 08-08
8 August 2013—China's Lunar Calendar 2013 08-08
8 August 2013—The Art of Warning: Roles
8 August 2012—Rural Religion in China (4)
8 August 2011—Longevity Mountain: Up to South Heaven Gate

[a] Opportunity Costs RF

I like to say to give my students an observation I have had for some time (and by no means an entirely positive one) that "In the soul of every historian lies a secret desire—even after all of the handwringing postmodern niceties have been dispensed—to know exactly what happened." It gets deeper and more problematic, though. You see, every good student of history (and almost all of the professional practitioners of the craft, know how to lie about that deeply hidden feeling.
 
They've read Derrida, you know.

Um, well, actually most of them haven't.

They have heard of him, though, and they are pretty sure that he is laughing at them. Like former Vice-President Richard Cheney, historians can tolerate being loathed, hated, and disagreed-with. The one thing they can't handle is ridicule, and the "postmodern turn" even in the field of history has been an unwelcome...and even cruel...new twist. People laugh at people who want to know "what happened."

Many of those laughing people wear berets and sip Merlot in cafés in the 5e arrondissement.

[b] Contingent (several meanings) RF

I love the study of history, but I have always suspected that I am a wolf in sheep's clothing among historians. You see, I just have never been very interested in what "really" happened. Don't get me wrong here; I don't wear a beret (although I do like the Merlot grape very much, especially when it plays 15% to Cabernet Sauvignon's 70%, but that's another story for another time). 

Just hear this: this is no "denial" narrative unfolding in front of you. Far from it. There are things that happened in the past that matter so much (you know what I mean...yes, you do) that to pretend that they are just little playthings of memory is offensive beyond belief. 

As I always say, and in every classroom I enter, in both history and anthropology, there is a whole bunch of stuff that we can know, and know well. Don't even begin to try to give me a hand-wringing, beret-wearing sad-sack-story about the unknowability of everything. 

Pigwash. Nonsense. We know all sorts of things, and well. If we didn't, we'd never have dinner, never put gas in the car, and never make it to work (or receive monthly paychecks or buy groceries or...you get my point...we know a whole bunch of stuff).

And yet...and yet...there is sooooooooo much we will never know. Ever.

Ever (am I clear?)...

[c] Happened RF

We will never know whether Abraham Lincoln brushed his teeth the morning of his assassination (for one, he did not know that it was that morning). As the nonpareil historian Georges Duby noted, he will never quite know just how William of Marshall got onto his horse during his twelfth century rides. 

I will never know whether Sima Guang would have liked the serial (Oxford) comma, since Oxford (and punctuation) was a thing for future books, not his. And there are many things that are much, much more important that we'll never know, because the historical records don't tell us, and we can't just dream them up. 

We can know a great deal...but we will never know everything (and never know the answer to many of our most important questions—what "caused" the Civil War? or how did anthropology "begin?").

[d] Vortex RF

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Here is the rub. There are an enormous number of daily, repeatable consistencies in life. These help to create our sense (such as it is) of certainty. We know (if we check the paper or the website) exactly when the sun will set, and we have a pretty solid notion of the weather patterns to expect, even if they might trip us up now and then. We know that almost every year the University of Alabama will have a very good football team and that the University of Minnesota will not...but I am getting way ahead of myself.

Those repeatable consistencies are covered in the Round and Square series, "Structure, History, and Culture."

This series will explore "stuff" that just shoots out of the blue, stuff that "can't really happen." Stuff (please hear me clearly here) that a fiction editor would reject, saying "that could never happen, and your readers won't believe you if you write it."

And yet...and yet...it still does happen. In "the real world."

They are, indeed, contingencies. And they change everything. 

They just "couldn't happen" (could they)...and yet they did...

This series will explore those "contingencies."

Causal Contingencies (1)—I ♥ Double Seven

Click here for the introduction to the Round and Square series Causal Contingencies (coming soon).
A year ago on Round and Square (14 August 2012)—Rural Religion in China-10

Two years ago on Round and Square (14 August 2011)—Hurtin' Country: Cheap Whiskey

[a] Moments Earlier, Up the Path RL

This series will have brief entries that don't try to explain too much (regular readers of Round and Square might have heard that before, without seeing a great deal of textual shrinkage with the morning coffee). This one might work, though. The whole point of showing these "causal contingencies" is to illustrate how some stuff just comes from straight our of nowhere. And yet...and yet...it can usually be explained in some fashion. And yet...and yet...a stubborn sense that there is something we don't understand lingers. Historians think they study contingency. They actually spend a great deal of time studying things that are predictable, structural, and understood quite thoroughly with causal explanations. These posts "just happen," and I (mostly) let them speak for themselves. Read the introduction to the series to get a full sense of what "we" are doing in this series. 

I ♥ Double Seven
O.k., people, I haven't even written the introduction yet, but this series has to get underway. I have been thinking about it for some time (and have several "contingent" events for you, ready to go). This one just happened yesterday, though, and it is too weird to leave to a future date. You see, I spent all of my day wandering the nooks and crannies (and they are many) on the top (this is a vast area) of the southern sacred mountain 南嶽衡山/南岳衡山 in Hunan Province (China). Up I climbed to the South Heaven Gate. Still higher I trekked to the Zhurong Temple at the peak. Then down to the east to the "Meeting Immortals Bridge" and down, way down to the west, on my way to the Guangji Temple.

And then it happened (although I did not know it until I downloaded my photographs several hours later). I snapped a picture of my trail as I descended, and kept on going. I often do this as a mnemonic for my writing, sometimes taking seven or eight hundred pictures a day (mostly of the trail). I had no idea what I would find when I looked at my pictures.

You see, it is Double Seven Festival (七夕節/节) in China today, and everyone is enjoying the fact that the poor little herdboy and the pining little weaving maiden are having their annual assignation. I'm a bit of a literary romantic, but I never saw this one coming. Here is the picture. It is as though east met west, and the twain didn't quite know how to handle it.

How'd that happen?

I shall say no more (other than that the photo is untouched).

Comments?

[b] Heart-mind, Western-style RL