The Evolution of Kevin Durant

Kevin Durant is changing. Up until the last year's MVP speech, Durant was the face of the NBA. Kevin Durant, the ultimate good guy. A person of utmost humility and respect. He not only is the best player around, he is not arrogant nor does he smack talk others. His brand and image oozed of niceness and I would have never thought he would change into this new persona. For gods sake, Durant is the epitome of a nice guy. What's happening to Kevin Durant is not only interesting, it's completely unexpected and fun to watch. Here is a recollection of events I found in chronological order:

Nov 2014 
Kevin Durant calling Dwight Howard a pussy. At first I surprised because that's not very KD-like. But I gave him a pass since it seems to be a meme for everyone to call Dwight a pussy.

Feb 2015
Kevin Durant shows us his new attitude.


Here is KD taunting Chris Paul telling him "you're still down 20 points homie."


Here is KD flexing his ego by saying "I'm a bad motherfucker."


And here we have KD raging, and committing a flagrant 1 foul.


And here is some fresh beef on social media:

Congrats Mr. Thunder, such a honor to play alongside you @nickcollison4
— Kevin Durant (@KDTrey5) February 3, 2015

Dude who averages 3 pts & 3 rebs gets 2-year/$8M extension. No wonder they won't make the playoffs.
— Chris Palmer (@ChrisPalmerNBA) February 3, 2015

@ChrisPalmerNBA means a lot coming from a dude who got fired for being a dumbass
— Kevin Durant (@KDTrey5) February 3, 2015

This is hilarious! KD is known to be supportive of both his teammates and his coach. It's not uncommon these days for high profile folks to start shit on Twitter, but KD!?


Here's the latest crapshoot: KD finally breaks down his facade and shows us a glimpse of his true self. To quote:

"You guys really don’t know shit. To be honest, man, I’m only here talking to y’all because I have to. So I really don’t care. Y’all not my friends. You’re going to write what you want to write. You’re going to love us one day and hate us the next. That’s a part of it. So I just learn how to deal with y’all. My first few years in the league, I was just finding myself. I think most of the time, I reacted based off of what everybody else wanted and how they viewed me as a person. I am just learning to be myself, not worrying about what everybody else says, I am going to make mistakes. I just want to show kids out here that athletes, entertainers, whoever, so-called celebrities, we aren't robots. We go through emotions and go through feelings and I am just trying to express mine and try to help people along the way. I am not going to sit here and tell you that I am just this guy that is programmed to say the right stuff all the time and politically correct answers. I am done with that. I am just trying to be me and continue to grow as a man." - Kevin Durant to the media

Conclusion
What does this all mean? Kevin Durant is done being a nice guy. For the first part of his career he was a nice guy, and I think he was spoon fed by his marketing team to be a politically correct, restrained, and nice individual. But what he just told us right now is that he is fed up being someone he's not. I applaud you Kevin Durant. Stand up for yourself. You aren't fooling anyone with your facade. Break down this mister nice guy that your agents created for you. Learn from Westbrook my friend, he executes. I mean sure, you won't be liked by everybody anymore, but who cares about that? Look at Kobe Bryant, people love him and people hate him. But if you're well liked by all, you will be loved by none. I think it's ten times more memorable for us if Kevin Durant was a badass rather than some pushover who never did anything. I think as the season progresses, we'll see more and more of the new KD. No one wants to see a boring, bland, nice guy. Cheers to the new, edgy Kevin Durant.

You da REAL MVP

Thoughts on the Breakdown of Society

Recently I stumbled upon two very interesting articles. They both are somewhat related and I think it’s fascinating. The first article I read was about a scientific experiment performed by scientist John Calhoun. Calhoun is famous for conducting an experiment with rats. He created a “utopia” world for a population of rats. In his experiment, the enclosed environment had all the right variables for a perfect universe: unlimited supply of food, lack of danger (predators), and plentiful of breeding partners. At first, the population grew steadily and at a constant rate. Eventually, the population reached a tipping point and it stopped. Eventually, the utopia became chaotic. Males split into two categories, the violent ones and the passive ones. The rats grew restless and pointless violence would occur randomly. Females no longer reproduced. Non-violent rats withdrew from society altogether, confining themselves into solitude and avoided all but the most basic survival needs: (eating, drinking, and strangely… grooming). In the end, even after the population had gone down to tolerable numbers, the mice never got back to a high reproduction rate, or as I call it; they stopped hooking up with each other. Society broke because everything was too perfect and overpopulation caused havoc amongst the perfect world they lived in.

It’s extremely interesting because no matter how Calhoun changed the variables within his experiments, the same thing would happen over and over. The behavior and end result very predictable. Why does this matter? I think it matters because I can see a trend happening in the human race itself. There is one nation in the world where the number of deaths are surpassing the number of babies being born: Japan. Japan is facing a very real problem, the population is shrinking and shrinking fast. In Japan, stores sell more diapers to the elderly than they do to newborn children.

Here’s why the second article I read about is so fascinating and why it’s relevant. Like I mentioned in my earlier post, Japan is a country of singles. Men don’t pursue the opposite sex, birth rates are in decline, does this sound familiar? In this article, the author explains the concept of hikikomori. The term basically is the equivalent of a person who has gave up on himself on society and never leaves home. The term shut-in defines as a person who never leaves the house other than for basic needs (like buying food). These people have pulled themselves out of society by choice. There are over 1 million Japanese people who currently have this problem.

This looks extremely similar to the social experiment John Calhoun created. In our modern society, we are essentially in a world where all our basic human needs are fulfilled, ex: food, shelter, lack of danger. What’s so similar with the case of Japan and the rat experiment is the lack of living space. Japan is a series of islands that is home to millions of people. Overpopulation is a big problem. Overpopulation was the tipping point for the breakdown of society in the rat experiments. Rats began to turn either violent or pulled themselves out of society. My theory is that the tipping point for Japan has been reached and we are our in the stage where the population will continue to drop until a point where it restores itself when overpopulation is no longer such a big problem. However, the problem with this is that the damage will be catastrophic by that time comes. With an aging population, economic problems arise. When half of the population is enjoying their retirement, the strain on the working class will bring burden to the economy as a whole. How do you expect the Japanese economy to flourish when only half the population is earning income? The breakdown of society looks very real.

There are a ton of factors that go into the problems Japan currently faces. Why does this even matter, after-all we aren’t in Japan? I think this phenomenon is also slowly occurring in the urban cities of America. The only difference is that the land mass here is a lot more spacious and we will not hit that tipping point anytime soon. But there is definitely something going on because in large urban populations, single men and women are increasingly having trouble finding a right partner. Whatever the reason might be, when the tipping point comes, you’ll know where you've read it first.


Documentary on hikikomori: http://vimeo.com/28627261