SPORTS – BEAUTIFULLY USELESS
There was a
time when sports were a valuable development for youthful expression and
growth. A time when a person's internal competition, momentarily substituted an
external competition, became a teaching tool for objectivity, clarity, and the
impetus to move forward and multiply. To create for the betterment of the
community, through individual endeavor, to hone in on the youthful days of
playing sports and create memories of sacrifice and effort that would be a
storehouse for the future, when childhood was no longer an excuse. For it was
playing that captured the muscles and spirit of youth and taught the mind and
body to work together for a common cause." play" made it possible to
give one's all while sometimes applying brutal effort to win. It was
"play" that joined all the combatants at the end of the contest in the companionship of grace and effort. Of course, an effort was not always enough.
There was also luck, the turn of the dice, the fall of the coin, the mistake by
a player or a referee. But all these variants became a part of
"play."
Then, society’s
need for competition took over. The spectacle of winning and losing became more
important than teaching social skills through "play." Competition
extended the "play" into a lifetime of adolescent fantasies.
Competition replaced value with expediency, the ability to suppress one's true
love of a game with a crass dedication to 'winning at all costs.' And then the
gamblers took over, offering long odds for fans' idolatry and encouraging fans
to pay for their addiction through meaningless patronage that soon emptied
their pockets and destroyed their families with rage, anger, and betrayal. Competition
soon mirrored our economic and political system of savage practices to keep
those with little or no access to economic or political power at bay. While the
powerful recklessly change the rules to suit themselves, even as they undermine
their adversaries in the name of survival of the fitness.
We have come
now to accept competition as the primary measurement of humankind's progress.
Once, pleasurable pastimes Cooking, Gardening, and Beauty are now defiled. We
once indulged in such self-expressive activities as cooking, gardening, and
beauty and appreciated them in the eye of the beholder. But now, they are
measured in the money they attract, the followers they generate, and the paid
publicists who promote them. What is beauty, a good meal, a beautiful garden?
There is no consensus today outside of competition, money, and
manipulation.
Sports is
nothing more than a gambler's den. Sports are divorced from their service to
youth and society. Sports gambling is simply turning money from one greedy hand
to another. And what is gambling? Nothing but a deluded belief in a winner as
unique because of the role of a dice, the pull of a handle, or the purchase of
a ticket? In none of these situations does the human in their being
participate. The gambler leases his life to the abstract belief that her
passion for winning will align with the cards, dice, roulette wheel, or favored
team and reward them with money. An abstract commodity that is subject to
taxes, debt, envy, jealousy, loss, and theft, and nowhere does it confirm that
the winner is unique in any way.
Is
competition now the judge of progress? Was it unleashed competition and energy
that pulled humankind out of the mud of poverty and elevated the human
condition to the luxury of freedom? Even a cursory view of history undermines
that myth. From man's earliest days, slavery created wealth and progress. There
have certainly been feats of ingenuity, like the Dutch clearing the swamplands
of the Netherlands, the Israelis turning the desert into farmlands, and in
recent years the Chinese pulling half a billion people out of poverty. And
there are numerous other collective and individual feats worthy of
acknowledgment. Equally, there are disasters. The dustbowl of the American
southwest. The slaughter of millions of people in WW1 and WW2. Wars of profound
uselessness. The first three are examples of cooperation—the last three of
competition.
Sports today
is a conduit through which billions of dollars are circulated, primarily
between the hands of the same groups of people. The sports players who put
their lives on the line will pay dearly for the rest of their lives, for the
'privilege' of entertaining their fans, with horrendous physical and mental
damage—the pressure to perform begins at elementary school. Once identified as
having the essential attributes of sporting prowess, the child is on a track to
a one-dimensional life. All other interests in everyday life become sublimated
to this primary goal. "Play" is abandoned—everyday preparations for
competition and the elusive hum of success proceed with designed exercises and
diets directed at the smell of success. And what is success? It changes daily,
weekly, yearly. Invariably primary goals are implanted in the child's mind by
parents and coaches. But the child is still living in the present! The child is
still too young to understand what one year consists of, let alone five or ten
years into the future—a dream of the Super Bowl, the Olympics, or the World
Cup. A slow-moving fixated passion is germinated and built-up day by day. Soon
the child has no identity outside of the goals set for the following day and a distant,
elusive future. And what if she should falter? How do her parents and coaches,
who have put so much into her, react? Does she dare to fail?
In all major
sports, the pool of prospective candidates is limitless. Children from around
the world long to become sporting icons. They believe they will enjoy the
attraction of money and associated fame once they have climbed the "greasy
pole of success." That is the carrot. The whip is the millions of
'Losers" left behind to rue the day of that missed pass, failed tackle,
burst liver, broken jaw, hyperextended knee, the racism/sexism of the coach,
referee, agent, manager, and fraudulent business partner.
The
competitive edge enters darker zones when the economics of sporting teams are
fully exposed. Players are bought and sold like commodities to satisfy
corporate and personal bank balances, revealing the dehumanizing habit of
treating human beings as chattel. Today we see more women entering the
professional sporting ranks, and on a superficial level, it is all good. Except
women don't get paid the same as men, irrespective of the fact that most
top-rated men's sports teams do not pay their way. But the given argument is
that women do not generate equal money! Well, nor do men! Women are demanding
to become hostages to the money-making machine of the gambler's world, just
like men, in the belief that parity with other enslaved people will make them
free (?)They may believe they are liberating their role in society. Still, in
truth, they've just exchanged their role for a more rabid, hungry, and
desperate condition of exploitation that attracts even more envy, hatred, and
despicable treatment. In a world with no respect for people as human beings, it
makes no difference what your gender, race, or ethnic origins are when you are
nothing more than chess pieces manipulated by vipers in pursuit of money and
power.
Individual
and collective dreams run out of steam when a fully conscious human being
realizes they are nothing more than pawns in an elaborate game of exploitation.
Yet, for many, the promise of sports is the hope and belief that they will
improve their bank balance and redress the fault their society made by denying
them honorable and legitimate avenues and choices to prosper and grow their
families. Thus, competition is not between equal participants but between
desperate humans denied all other choices but to throw their bodies and souls
on the ashes of poor fortune and hope they make the grade. And once-famous such
stars become even more enamored of their luck and skills, knowing all too well
that those who they left behind are standing in the shadows ready to plunge a
knife into their back if they should falter or bring the fantasy of sports
exploitation to the light of day. That was Colin Kaepernick's unforgivable sin.
Finally, the
highlight of the beautiful uselessness of sports is borne by the fact that none
of the skills developed to put a ball in a net, over a line, in a hole, or a
basket, provide the individual with any life skills or abilities to decern
between right or wrong, good, or bad, love or hate, or between value and fraud.
Professional sportspeople fail to advance to emotional adulthood because they
are caged in adolescent emotions that rule their lives. Winning and losing is
their only obsession. Their only meaningful existence, as human beings, is
predicated on the rules of coaches, referees, and their management cabals. The
moment a game is won or lost, the ability to enjoy it evaporates. To marvel at
the effort expended by the athlete, the doubts overcome, the renewed faith in
one's abilities. The proficiency of their labor is of nothing. The only
recourse is onto the successive win or loss. It is continuing the
merry-go-round of tomorrow, which never comes. It is living in a vacuum where
all true human feelings are suppressed. It is becoming automated with a
public persona and a private disconnect. It is living a schizophrenia existence
showered with money and notoriety but lost to one's soul. Sport is a
beautifully useless enterprise desired by all and fated to destroy the few who
reach the heights of "suckcess."
