On Habits, Mythology, Tribalism, and The Path to Change
Musings on Cultural Behavior, How That Behavior is Formed, How it Is Ingrained and Reinforced, and How People Can Change
One of the explanations for why football only exists in America — despite numerous attempts for it to gain a foothold elsewhere — and why thinking people would still continue to watch and participate in something they know is unhealthy and dangerous to children and the short and long-term health of high school, college, and professional players is something called “tribalism.” Tribalism exerts an unseen, unspoken coercion on people to continue taking part in things they know are unhealthy.
We are all tribal to some extent, and some people are more influenced by it than others. In some ways, it is part of our DNA, but in most cases, it is directly connected to our environment and upbringing; the family we are born into, the community we grow up in, the schools we attend, the friends we make, our education, and our life experiences all go into this mix. And tribalism comes with a certain set of rituals.
Rituals get repeated so much that eventually, the ritual itself replaces the bigger reason we started the ritual in the first place. So keep the concept of rituals in mind as this moves forward.
Cultural behavior is formed and reinforced by a mix of habit, myth, and tribal-like customs. The word “tribe” can be defined to mean an extended kin group or clan with a common ancestor, or it can also be described as a group with shared interests, lifestyles and habits. People tend to form friendship networks with people of similar occupations, interests, and habits. Myth, on the other hand, reinforces conformity within the tribe.
Tribalism and social bonding help to keep individuals committed to the group, even when personal relations may start to deteriorate. The power of tribal bonding keeps people from leaving the group. It can also lead to pressure and criticism when a tribal member is unwilling to conform to the established doctrine and expected behaviors within the group. In this way, a tribal group — at its extreme — can operate like a cult, a major characteristic of which is the opposition of any critical thinking or self-analysis.
Habits.
Webster’s defines “habit” as “an acquired mode of behavior that has become nearly or completely involuntary.” A different definition is “a behavior pattern acquired by frequent repetition or physiologic exposure that shows itself in regularity or increased facility of performance.” Yet another definition is, “Addiction. A drug habit.” The interplay between the words habit and addiction is relevant in the observations that will follow. Recent conversations about social habits or addictions — whatever term we choose to use — raised a number of questions. I’m not talking about physical or psychological addiction to substances; I’m focusing on cultural addictions.
For example, binge-watching something on Netflix. Sitting glued all day to CNN or Fox News, feeding off whatever angst the talking heads are generating today. Spending hours each day on your Facebook or Twitter feed. Or getting up early every Saturday to watch Gameday and then five or six college football games. And doing the same thing on Sunday with the NFL. These are not physical addictions, but once ingrained as a habit, there are similar psychological withdrawal symptoms if you do not engage in the habit. It’s sort of like the habits we follow during what is now collectively referred to as the “Holidays.”
The current definition of “The Holidays” is, “The time from November until the beginning of January during which many holidays are celebrated.” Urban Dictionary puts its typical, jocular spin on this definition as, “A period of roughly six weeks, lasting from the end of November to sometime in January. It includes a number of religious holidays, traditional celebrations, and family visits. It is generally accepted to be both the best part of the year (for people under the age of fifteen) and the worst part of the year (for people over the age of fifteen).”
Are there some consistent habits people follow during what are now informally called, “The Holidays?” Well, there was time in the not-so-distant past when Thanksgiving and Christmas were both observed according to their original meanings. And I am not arguing that people aren’t still doing that. But somewhere in time, things morphed into something more generic. Now, everything from late November through January 1 is all globbed together and colloquially and uncontroversially called, “The Holidays.”
For instance, Thanksgiving in many ways has lost all its original, traditional meaning and become an opportunity to watch three football games and start the holiday gift shopping. “Black Friday” appears to have become more important now than Thanksgiving. Just watch your television right now or check out the unsolicited ads on your social media feed. People have been doing this routine for so long now it’s just rote. They don’t even really think about it.
And then over the next few weeks, this all transfers over to Christmas. A cynic might say it’s just a big gift-getting and Instagram or Facebook post opportunity; put up a pretty, shining brightly-lit tree, and festoon it with a horde of brightly-wrapped presents. And then post about all of it on social media.
There is very little emphasis on what Christmas is really about. We hear nothing outside our churches about the original purpose of the day. But we are bombarded with ads about how some guy went to Jared or how some husband or wife bought the other a new $75,000 luxury sedan and put a six-foot-wide red bow across the roof before parking it in the driveway on Christmas morning.
A cynic — or a realist — might say “The Holidays” are one, long, annoying commercial now. And no matter where you stand, we have become inculcated to all this. It’s all sort of mindless, a bunch of habits that have been formed for a long time. And habits are hard to break, especially when everyone else is doing the same thing. You better get with the Black Friday crowd and all the gift hunting in November to December, or you’re on the outside looking in, a stranger in a strange land.
Now, not everyone succumbs to this secularization and commercialization of the season. I’m just using it as the jumping-off point for everything that follows. But there are many reasons the season has come to be what it is now.
In many ways, ours is a culture of habit, some might even say addiction, and I’m not talking about substance-abuse; I’m talking about social addictions. The irony is people are quick to judge substance abuse, but they give no thought whatsoever to their own social habits or addictions.
There’s a saying called “feeding the beast,” the notion being if you’re purchasing or partaking in certain things — online pornography, street drugs, overindulgence in alcohol, etc. — you’re feeding the beast. The analogy with social addictions is if you are partaking or purchasing certain things that damage others, you’re feeding the beast just as much as the guy watching online porn or buying “recreational” drugs on the street. But sports fans don’t see the analogy, and they get offended when someone points it out. How did we arrive here? How does anyone arrive at a place where behavior is routine, unthinking, automatic, and ingrained? Why don’t we ever consider alternatives? Are there other ways of thinking and living? Do we care? Should we?
Myth.
Myths reinforce habits. We cling to certain cultural pursuits, positions, and opinions, in part, because of the myths attached to them. “Myth” has various definitions:
- A traditional story, especially one concerning the early history of a people or explaining some natural or social phenomenon, and typically involving supernatural beings or events;
- A widely held but false belief or idea;
- A misrepresentation of the truth;
- A fictitious or imaginary person or thing;
- An exaggerated or idealized conception of a person or thing.
“Mythology,” on the other hand, is defined as a collection of myths, especially one belonging to a particular religious or cultural tradition. Ah yes. “Cultural tradition.” We hold onto the myths almost as tightly as a running back does a football, not wanting to fumble them away. We do it without even really thinking about it. If we maintain the myths closely like the runner does the ball — we feel secure. And security is very important.
Security, or at least the illusion of it, permits us to go about our daily lives in relative calm. And so we cling tightly to this notion of security; in our cities, our neighborhoods, our schools, even the security of the myths we hold closely. Because we know if we let any doubt whatsoever steal its way into these myths, we may let them slip away, like a fumble. And when you fumble the ball away, the game, as well as all the mythology surrounding it, begins to unravel.
Mythology is a powerful thing, and it’s no more powerful in America than it is with the sport of football. What would happen if we explored these myths and deconstructed them so we can perhaps disabuse ourselves of them? Once they are stripped away, there might be nothing left to buttress the habits or addictions other than simple tribalism. Tribalism provides the nuanced and subtle coercion necessary to keep us participating in things we otherwise or ordinarily would leave behind if we followed our internal consciences.
Tribalism.
Tribalism reinforces habits and myths. Once we get beyond the habits and the mythology, and once we are completely honest with ourselves, we realize there’s something tribal in all of this.
In anthropology, a “tribe” is often defined as a human social group. Exact definitions of what constitutes a tribe vary among anthropologists. The concept is often contrasted by anthropologists with other social group concepts, such as nations, states, and forms of kinship.
Tribalism, on the other hand, is defined as, “the state or fact of being organized in a tribe or tribes; the behavior and attitudes that stem from strong loyalty to one’s own tribe or social group.” I do not use the word tribe here to describe any ethnic or anthropological group; I use it in the informal, social sense. The operative definition here is the behavior and attitudes that result from strong loyalty to one’s own social group and the things that group holds important.
Think of sports tribalism as the gateway drug to all other forms of tribalism. Consider young children.
Teaching them to cheer for a certain team equips them for integration into larger society as they grow up, but it’s an integration into various social tribes. And so children are taught to think, act, and behave tribalistically. And although sports tribalism on the surface appears innocuous, it’s just as blind and irrational as any other form of tribalism.
Consider it. What is it about “our team” that we love? The coach? The players? The logo? The mascot? The tradition? The answer is that we find part of our identity in that label and we attach emotionally and we defend the “honor” of that label even though it has nothing to do with “us” in reality. Yet the desire to be part of a tribe, to have this tribal identity, is a strong and coercive phenomenon.
Current theories suggest that people’s political beliefs are driven by their identification with a group — similar to sports team loyalties, but more rooted in values — which makes them harder to change. And this is not merely “social” conjecture, it is backed up by science.
For instance, in one MRI study, researchers randomly divided subjects — none of whom knew each other before the experiment — into two teams and asked them about each other. Even though before the experiment they were all strangers, subjects were more positive about the “teammates” they had just met than rivals on the other team, and had distinct patterns of brain activity in the regions of the brain that respond to both rewards and threats in the environment. These parts of the brain help us differentiate between friend or enemy, telling us what is safe or threatening. The same brain patterns appeared when subjects thought about political groups with opposing positions.
Acting as a member of a certain group leads you to adopt that group’s priorities and motivations. So can we ever overcome group identity to change someone’s mind? Yes, but with logic and reason as opposed to emotion or fear. Whenever participants were asked about opposing political opinions, many of them had increased activity in the region of the brain that processes emotion and fear. These individuals were less likely to change their minds.
So, when you listen to the news, or watch political shows, or listen to political radio today, do you pick up on the narrative of fear and emotion? Why do the talking heads do this? They want you to be more easily indoctrinated to think as they want you to think, and to activate your tribalism to disparage anyone who doesn’t hold your political beliefs. People do this with politics, and they do it with sports teams. And so, as Albert Einstein once noted, tribalism, like nationalism, is “the measles of the mind.”
Habit, Myth, and Tribalism as They Relate to Football.
Habit, myth, and tribalism all come together to reinforce each other in a symbiotic sort of echo chamber, regardless the subject. This is the way it is with football in America. People might stop to give the multitude of serious issues facing American football on the professional and college levels some brief, surface- level thought; concussions, head-trauma, long-term neurological disease, suicide, substance abuse, domestic violence, brushes with the criminal justice system, the ever-increasing number of players being carted off the field with apparent head, neck, or spinal injuries, and the sham of a settlement the NFL foisted on the former players who built the league, just to name a few.
But there’s no deep reflection or action to change. Football is such a deep part of the fabric of many Americans’ lives from September to January they wouldn’t be able to function without it.
Indeed, it’s the social addiction of our times, and anyone who doesn’t participate is viewed as a strange insurgent not to be trusted and a person who should be viewed with suspicion.
The myths that contribute to and buttress this continued appetite despite all these problems abound, and we will now look at and deconstruct a few of the most common ones.
Myth #1: “Football, for players and fans, is a normal, healthy pursuit.” Consider a couple of questions. First, do you ever ask yourself why you get worked up on Sunday over whether a bunch of adult millionaires win a game played by children in their backyard? Second, do you ever ask why you get worked up on Saturday about whether a bunch of 18 to 22-year- olds do the same?
What does it tell us when people are so emotionally tied up with the win-loss record of their team that they engage in “reflected glory,” a psychological term describing why fans use the term “we” after a victory by their team as opposed to using the term “they” when their team loses — a practice called cutting off “reflected failure?” The team wins and everyone celebrates, at times partying as if they’re welcoming home a conquering army. The team loses, and people are in various ways, sad, disheartened and angry, and children cry, like the army lost the battle.
Think about it deeply for a minute. Why is it important whether a football team wins or loses? What tangible benefit do you derive from it? Ask yourself these questions. Don’t just ponder the questions; actually speak the answers out loud. Write them down. You might feel a bit foolish. “It’s very important to me that my football team wins because …..”
Stand in front of a mirror, look yourself in the eyes, and say one of two things. First say, “I’m a fan of football because it makes me very happy and makes me feel fulfilled.” Second, say, “Being a football fan more often than not stresses me out, makes me anxious, and leaves me feeling generally drained.” See which one makes you feel foolish and which one sounds more accurate.
You get the idea. Hopefully.
Consider this; if American football is such a great spectacle that provides some kind of overwhelming physical or social benefit, why isn’t it played anywhere else in the world outside the United States? Every effort to get football to catch on abroad has failed. Does this tell us something about the rest of the world, or does it tell us something about America and football fans?
Myth #2: “As long as kids stop playing after high school, they are not at risk for developing serious long-term health issues.” This is a mantra often trotted out by those who want parents to keep allowing their kids to fill out youth and high school rosters, but recent studies show it to be false. Although the highest rates of CTE have been found in former NFL and college players, people who stopped playing after high school can also develop the disease.
Recent analysis by the Boston University CTE Center found signs of the disease in the brains of 177 former players, or 87 percent of all the football players in the study. CTE was found in 29 percent of high school players, 87 percent of college players, and 99 percent of National Football League players. If that percentage is extrapolated out, it means on average that every three out of ten players who played high school football will develop CTE. The mere fact that one study at Boston University found CTE in 3 out of 10 people who stopped playing by the age of 18 should give any reasonable person pause. But regardless of when a person starts playing football, the longer they play, the higher their chances of developing CTE.
A newer study determined that in a sample of 266 deceased former amateur and professional football players, the risk of developing CTE increased by 30 percent per year played, meaning that for each 2.6 additional years of football played, the odds of developing CTE doubled. Among those with CTE, for each additional 5.3 years played, the odds of developing severe CTE doubled.
And just last week, The New York Times published a report detailing a new study recently issued by the Boston CTE Center that found a shockingly high number of young victims who never played football beyond high school who nevertheless still had CTE. Specifically, researchers examined 152 brains of contact-sport athletes who died before turning 30. More than 40% (63 to be exact) had CTE. Of the 63 diagnosed with CTE, 48 had played football. That means that 76% — or every 3 out of 4 that played football — had CTE before the age of 30.
Myth #3: “Football prepares young men for life.” This is an often repeated, yet vacuous cliche’. And when analyzed and deconstructed just a little bit, it is revealed as an empty platitude with no real, tangible meaning. Any sport can teach kids lessons like hard work, dedication, teamwork, and overcoming adversity. We don’t even need sports to teach kids these lessons.
But football’s various apologists would have us believe it’s the best sport at turning boys into young men and young men into adults, with its repetitive head-to-head hits, sometimes brutal injuries, and players knocked unconscious at times, all for the fans’ and spectators’ fun and entertainment. “It builds toughness and overcoming adversity,” these people chant, as if getting physically knocked to the ground, knocked out, and sustaining concussions or dishing these things out to others are a normal part of everyday adult life around the office. But let’s seriously break this one down and deconstruct it.
What really happens in a football game? First and foremost, one team wins and one team loses, so football prepares young men for “winning and losing” in life, so the argument goes. Beyond the weak effort of attempting to apply the metaphor of winning and losing to some activity in life after sports — in the office when someone “loses” the new account to a competitor, let’s say — there are very few places outside an athletic contest where someone wins or loses. The most notable place is probably the battlefield, but less than one percent of Americans now serve in the military, and the costs of winning and losing in battle are higher than anywhere else; it’s literally a matter of life and death. To compare these stakes to winning and losing a sports game is ridiculous and obscene. So we must dismiss this only arguably similar analogy.
Other than winning and losing, players hit each other, get hit, and have to “get up off the ground.” Football makes you tough, the mantra goes. Again the metaphor is strained, inaccurate, and misplaced. The argument here is that you get knocked down in life and have to get back up. But you don’t actually get knocked down in life. If someone did that to you in real life, it would be an assault; a crime. What the argument is really saying is that football prepares one for facing adversity later in life. This is a better argument, but it still ignores the fact that almost any sport can prepare someone for overcoming adversity later in life. Any sport involves winning and losing. Playing baseball, basketball, volleyball, softball, running track, swimming, tennis and every other sport involves someone winning and losing. The Boy Scouts prepare kids for dealing with adversity. Getting good or poor grades in school prepares kids for dealing with adversity.
But for some reason, football apologists act as though football has some sort of talismanic power and ability to do this much greater than anything else.
Many of my fellow Marines never played football, and they are some of the toughest people I have ever known. And in 26 years of being one myself, I can’t think of a single time I drew on my experience playing football to get me through some physical or mental challenge, or mission. Not once.
Because, as I found, there is just no comparison between the two.
If you want to prepare a young man for life, there are many other ways to do it. Sure, sports provide some limited preparation in dealing with and overcoming adversity, but their real value is in teaching someone to be a good teammate and to subordinate himself to the greater good of something bigger than himself. You don’t need football or even sports in general to teach this.
The real truth is that people learn how to deal with adversity in real life by experiencing adversity in real life. The things we experience in sports as young men and women remain locked up in a time capsule, limited to that brief period of time in which we actively played the game, and any lessons we learned were limited to those experiences. Any attempt to seriously transfer those experiences from age 9 to 22 into real life is misplaced and unrealistic. It would be like me telling you about how a long field goal I kicked in college somehow helped me win a jury trial 15 years later. You can see how ridiculous it sounds.
This myth is possibly the biggest and most dangerous myth of all. And when you hear it, pay close attention to the person repeating it; it’s usually someone who still revels in the glory of his playing days, and who still is as rabid a football fan as anyone out there.
It will come from a football coach, or an athletic director, or someone in the media whose livelihood depends on football surviving. It will almost certainly never come from someone who has experienced the negative and devastating consequences of them or someone close to them having played the game.
Examine this myth very closely when you hear or see it, and expose it for what it is: An effort to get you to stay in the tribe and to recruit new bodies to fill up rosters.
In 1979, when I was about 11 years-old, my father — a former all-American and all-pro football player — was talked by some other fathers into coaching my little league football team in Houston, Texas. Dad had volunteered for years to help out as an assistant, but he didn’t want to be the head coach of any team because he didn’t want to have to deal with any crazy parents.
The season didn’t go very well. We won about half our games. Then, after a close win one night, his fears were realized and something happened that made him never coach another down of football. A drunk, angry father of one of my teammates physically accosted my father on the way out of the stadium. I didn’t witness this incident, but some of my friends and their parents did, and they all told me what happened. The other man reportedly ended up ass-deep in a trash barrel, but I saw my father shortly after it happened, and he looked shaken and upset, particularly because he was coaching as a favor to everyone, and he was attacked in front of a bunch of kids for that favor.
One of the other kids’ fathers — a man my dad had played against when they were in college — was trying to get my dad to reconsider his decision on the spot to quit. All I can remember my dad saying, was, “That’s not what it’s about. That’s not what it’s about,” over and over.
Looking back now, I’m not sure what any of it was about — kids playing tackle football at the age of ten or a drunk father getting obsessed about it — but I think what Dad was saying was we shouldn’t have grown adults assaulting other adults over youth sports (which probably should go without saying).
I never asked him about the incident. But I knew what he meant. Being attacked by an irate parent in front of a bunch of kids is definitely not what it’s about. He never coached football again on any level.
But what was his offense against the drunk man on that night? He hadn’t given the man’s son enough playing time. And he was physically attacked over it. This was my first of numerous experiences with the darker side of football and some of the people who participate in it. To this day, I am still trying to determine if there is a distinction with any difference between these two concepts: Football and the people who follow it — its culture.
I wouldn’t play another down of football that year. My father wouldn’t let me. Maybe he knew something about the sport and its fans — its culture — all the way back in 1979 that was already giving him doubts. He didn’t let me play in 1980 either. I wouldn’t play again until he relented in 1981, when I was in the 8th grade. But all the way through my high school years, I think he went back and forth over whether he believed I should play football, even as I began to excel and gain attention from college recruiters.
I was a good baseball player too, and as late as the spring before my senior season in high school, he wanted me to quit playing football. I think he knew something. There was a week in the spring before that senior season when I told my high school head coach I was done with football. After all his other efforts failed, he opened a desk drawer and pulled out about fifty recruiting letters I had received from various Division One programs seeking to recruit me. This last-gasp Hail Mary changed my mind. And although I continued to play, I also continued to learn more about the dark side of the game and its culture.
I tell the story about my father being attacked by a drunk parent only to show that people take football seriously; way too seriously, I would argue, and to the extent that it’s unhealthy. For many people, whether their team wins or loses is the prime factor in their weekly happiness during football season. And there are not many cultural activities that create such intense loyalties and equally passionate rivalries and controversies.
Tribes in one form or another have existed for as long as we have. In current society, although we no longer roam around in search of food and shelter and our tribal markings and loyalties remain hidden unless we openly reveal them, our societal organizations are much larger and more complex. But our brains still respond to group identity the way they always have.
The habits and myths of the “tribe” still combine to coerce conformity within the established groupthink. “Groupthink” is the practice of thinking or making decisions as a group in a way that discourages creativity or individual responsibility; a psychological phenomenon that occurs within a group of people in which the desire for harmony or conformity in the group results in an irrational or dysfunctional decision- making outcome.
Cohesiveness in a group — or the desire for cohesiveness — may produce a tendency among its members to agree at all costs. This causes the group to minimize conflict and reach a consensus decision without critical evaluation. And most people who continue to consume football do not engage in any critical evaluation of the multitude of medical and ethical issues facing the game and its proponents.
Some habits are very hard to break. Adherence to traditional mythology is very strong. The tribe gives people an identity. They wear its colors proudly, even lovingly. And like some combustion engine, these various elements keep each other moving in a mutually reinforcing machine, like the echo chamber mentioned above. If you’re on the inside, it’s difficult to leave, and if you’re on the outside, it’s hard for those on the inside to hear anything you’re saying from the outside. And there can be costs to listening to what the outsider says, even if the outsider speaks the truth.
Today is Thanksgiving, although you could also call it “Three NFL Games Thursday.” American football fans will get the opportunity to feast on the two Fs, Food and Football. When they have finished the meal and are doing their level best to digest all that turkey, dressing, mashed potatoes, and pumpkin pie, they may suddenly find themselves screaming at the television, angered by an official’s poor call, or joyous over a touchdown. If that happens, just understand that this is the result of habit, myth, and tribalism; the outcome of the football game is as important to some as the meal and the day they are celebrating. To football apologists, it’s all wrapped up together in the same package, and it just wouldn’t be the same if one of the pieces were removed. That’s the established orthodoxy within the tribe of American football.
The Path to Change.
Like myths and tribal behavior, we hand certain cultural practices and beliefs down to the next generation. For instance, people hand down their political opinions and positions on social issues to their children, and typically the children retain the same views as their parents, at least in the beginning. They’ve been inculcated. The son of two Republicans is likely to be a Republican himself, and so on.
It’s the same with religion or the lack thereof; parents of one religion typically have children who follow the same religion, agnostics beget agnostics, and so forth. This is usually true unless something intervenes and alters the course of this generational trajectory. That something can take the form of any number of things; people, events, or experiences.
Sometimes it takes the form of affirmatively charting a new course in a different direction or deemphasizing and eventually abandoning the old ways of thinking and living.
It’s the same with sports. And change can come about through intentional action or inaction. A recent conversation I had with a friend illustrates this point. He was asking me for my views on whether his kids should play football, and if so, at what age.
“Do you think I should let my son play?
That’s a decision you and he have to make.
Come on, what do you think?
Seriously, do you think I’m going to tell you what you should let your son do? It’s not my business.
Ok, fine. Did you let your boys play?
They never wanted to. I never pushed them and I never said no. They never asked.
So your dad played in the NFL and you played in college and your sons never played?
No.
And you never stopped them?
No.
That’s hard to believe. Why didn’t they want to play?
I really don’t know. Probably because I never talked about it and they never saw it on television in our home. And they didn’t grow up in the south. Football was just another sport where they grew up. More kids played baseball, soccer, and surfed than played football.
You never talked about it or watched it?
No.
You never played catch with them?
Sure I did. With a baseball. Both of them played baseball. They played baseball, soccer, basketball, ran track. They swam, surfed and skied. They are both good athletes.
But not football? Why not?
It just never came up, I guess.
Why not?
I don’t know. Maybe because they had other interests. All I know is I will never have to answer the question, ‘Dad. Why did you let me play football?’ That’s one thing that has not been handed down to the next generation in our family.”
I left the tribe long ago, even though it took me years to explain why, even to myself. I played on the Division One level, and then I found I was never able to become a very good fan after my playing days were done. There were many reasons for this, and I would not come to fully understand them for many years. But when the answers came to me, it was all very simple. I had evolved, and this personal evolution began even before I stopped playing.
The point? It doesn’t take some sort of difficult, concerted action to change; sometimes you just stop doing certain things and start doing others. Change old habits.
Through deemphasizing and to an extent abandoning the old habits, myths, and tribalism, while simultaneously emphasizing and taking up newer and more healthy interests and pursuits, and taking a new and different intellectual perspective, one can move forward and bring about change. And this change can be generational.
But the route to change involves breaking ingrained habits, jettisoning long-held myths, and leaving the tribal customs and expectations behind.
Glen Hines is the author of six books, including the recently published Welcome to the Machine, all available at Amazon.com and Barnes and Noble. His writing has been featured in Sports Illustrated, Task & Purpose, the Human Development Project, and elsewhere.
