Answer: Nelson Mandela had two eyes and two arms right to the end.
Regarding the recent death of Nelson Mandela, I heard a sports commentator this morning praise Mandela for using rugby to unite black and white South Africans early in his presidency. The commentator then went on to extol the virtues of sport as an activity that promotes peace.
Well, there is some truth in that, but there is also truth in that sport is an activity that promotes conflict — it’s all a matter of where you look. So, for example, Mandela’s promotion of sports may well have (temporarily) induced black and white South Africans to call a truce, but only so as they could better unite against a common enemy: the other players in the Rugby World Cup.
The difficulty is that it is competition that is the problem: competition causes conflict, conflict between one person and his neighbor, between one family and the next, between one tribe and the next or between one country and the next. The members of one family in internal conflict, all competing for attention, all competing for control, may call a truce when faced with the family next door with whom they wish to open hostilities, or which has got up their noses. They will recognize that unless they unite, they will lose the battle. This is why people or groups or tribes or nations create alliances, but as soon as they have conquered the opposition, they will disunite once more and move the theatre of war back to the level of the individual.
Thus anything that is competitive perpetuates conflict. If you want peace, then you must learn to live by other means i.e. by cooperation, not competition.
Sports are an unnatural form of competition for the very reason that few get hurt. I don’t see the promotion of sports as something that makes people become more competitive than they other wise would be. I like certain sports almost as much as anyone, but when it comes to stifling the natural urge to compete it is very shallow.
If the leaders of a society are using sports to keep their society from unwanted inner aggression, that is because they don’t respect their society. Sports is just a temporary solution that when used when other techniques can keep much needed inner conflicts at bay, but the techniques must always be adjusted, and in the end no on but the leaders themselves, in their quest for power, are better for it.
If Mandela respected the South Africans at all he would have told them how much they have in common due to their locality alone and emphasized the ways the rest of the world was oppressing them or could be oppressed/further oppressed by them, then the South Africans could have united under something that would actually be tenable and potentially improve all of their lives on average.
But, of course the draw back, if you want to call it that, is that the rest of the world wouldn’t be praising South Africa for being a symbol of “reparations” and peace.
No one but the leaders themselves, - and the athletes who are averaging 5-10 million-dollar-a-year contracts plus millions more in endorsements in most major sports?
How did you get anarchist from that? I mentioned how South Africa could be unified by something tenable, rather than the ephemeral unification that Mandela helped provide (just like MLK helped provide an ephemeral unification for America). An anarchist is not interested in explaining how a country can become better unified.
I was using the term “leaders” in a broad perspective. Mandela was considered a leader, and supposedly he supported, not controlled, the progression of sports. The commissioner of a league could also be considered a leader and even those working under him, perhaps even a coach or an influential athlete could be considered a leader. As Duality mentioned the Athletes who make millions also benefit from the progression of sports, and they too could be considered leaders in a sense, or at least part of the “leadership”, even if they’re too piss stupid to realize it.
…so what do you propose in it’s place? as you can’t remove an already implemented solution without replacing it with at least another similarly viable model or greater…
I don’t know if leaders are using sports this way, but they function well, not so much because of competition - since most people are not competing but rather spectating - but because it is an utterly inconsequential drama. REal dramas, potentially around political issues, go on the backburner.
As Americans we’re not as used to associating sports internationally, so in that case it really is more of an innocuous pastime than anything; one which American leaders are certainly not antagonistic towards. In smaller countries international teams may provide some unity, but my argument is that it’s completely baseless.
Well, actually, I did give the answer above, but here it is again: cooperation. I am saying this knowing that you will not understand the REAL difference between cooperation and competition, and more importantly, you will have a notion of cooperation (almost certainly) which makes it seem in some respects unattractive. The truth is that competition is lose-lose while cooperation is win-win — when one properly understaqnds those two concepts. It’s obvious that in competition there is always at least one loser; what is not understood is that there is no winner i.e. the act of being competitive, by its very nature, damages those who indulge in it. When one allows competition to be one’s motivation, one looses interest in the thing itself i.e. if one is a competitive sports person, one’s love is of winning or even competing, but not of the sport itself. This is unhealthy and damaging. In life, one MUST do things for their own sake. If one is cooperative, then whatever one does, whether it is art or rowing or managing a company or anything else, one is doing it because one loves art or rowing or amanging a company etc.
One fallacy about cooperation is that it involves self-sacrifice for the sake of others. No. This is completely wrong. When people are cooperative one finds that the conflicts just disappear.
This just doesn’t fit my experience. I have enjoyed competition that was win win. With the right people there is a great challenge and respect and the competition provides a kind of focus that I find improves certain games, for example. I have experienced bad competition and I would guess this is more common. I tended, in sports, to be in underdog positions, loved the challenge, did not resent the Winners - in the contexts I continued to participate in - and they certainly enjoyed themselves. I especially liked team sports, learned from both winning and losing, but as said, tended to lose, given the nature of the teams and the size of our pools of possible players.
I have also played games and sports that did not have Winners and losers and sometimes this was fun, but I am glad I’ve had both.
yeah, I have seen this happen, but it is not a rule. What you are saying does not fit my experience as a rule.