Foxy Thoughts

In our hyper-specialized society, “amateur” is far from a noble description. It is, in fact, usually the opposite, a term of disparagement, insult, attack. Meanwhile, in the sports-entertainment industry, it has lost all meaning, corrupted by the NCAA’s exploitative hypocrisy and the corporate/nationalist perversion of the Olympics. But the word’s roots lie in the Latin word for love. The amateur does it for love, with love. We amateurs need to re-capture, re-invigorate, and return the word to its origins.

It is an uphill battle. In the popular mind it might best be expressed by the ancient Greek adage, “The fox knows many things, the hedgehog one big thing,” cited by, among others, the great Erasmus, but made most famous by Isaiah Berlin. I definitely don’t mean to disparage the hedgehog when I say I am a fox, although of course the truth is most everybody is a mixture of both…