On Sports and Games
They are the human race at its rawest, dumbest and brashest.
Look at the human scenario:
Each moment to each epoch: all the time: we face existential doubts and threats. We are doubtful of the future of ours as a race and of the world we live in. Not having a manual handed over has meant we have always been this way. We have doubted, we have been afraid — yet, we have survived.
We have survived because this existential anxiety has birthed art, philosophy, and science. These three disciplines have helped us survive and to not only understand our scenario better but also be used to it. If you think about it, the human scenario is scary: the size of the cosmos and all that! The entire world is gargantuan, and we tiny. We feeble. We different. We lonely! EXISTENTIAL DREAD
Art, philosophy and science have made existence a bit hopeful, calmer and tolerable. Their existence is understandable, but that’s not the case with sports and games.
Why do they not only exist but thrive?
Playing seems to be normal in all creatures. I have watched my good doggy grow up in front of me. He has played a lot. And I have seen other doggies and have seen animals on TV, they all play. I too, have played. But there’s a difference between them and me: I play seriously. I take my playing seriously. For them, playing seems to be a diversion, something done for fun. Short and Sweet. This type of playing seems natural from the above mentioned existential scenario too: take your mind off the dread! But here we are — humans — playing seriously — and not only that — watching others play seriously. What the clock!
As soon as I wrote the above sentence, I pressed Ctrl T and checked if there was any update on cricket. Why do I do that? especially when I sit down to write about something as serious as existential dread!
And why do they have such sophisticated websites with dedicated journalists?
If sports and games were all about temporary diversion, why didn’t I merely go out and play with my doggie after I completed the sentence above? — Or played a simple game on my cell phone?
No, I had to go check a website of a professional sport! Where players are fed and treated like gods; where commentators and journalists look like scholars in a conference; where viewers chew their nails as if they were watching gods fight rakshasas for the protection of mankind. Where money is invested as if the outcome of the sport/game will determine our outcome as a species.
By far, you may have noticed that I am talking about play-activities that are professionalized and not about play-activities that we do for physical and mental freshness and strengthening. The existence of the latter doesn’t surprise me at all.
Okay, art is like a pacifier. A child sees a tiger, you give it a pacifier not to unsee the tiger but to calm it. Likewise science is a telescope and philosophy a microscope.
But what are sports and games? — While they seem the most similar to art, they are unlike art as they don’t just pacify you, they make you unsee the tiger. They make you forget the tiger. They are not about teaching you to fight the tiger, they are about making you ignore the tiger.
Sports and games in this sense is ignorance. Okay, escapism!
Hiding?
This makes them eerily different from art and scarily similar to politics.
Yes, I do understand that politics is a quintessential thing for the management of human affairs (of any social creature for that matter), but it was supposed to be used to manage the affairs so that fishes don’t kill each other or a single fish doesn’t drink-up all the ocean…
But what did it become? — — what has it always been? — -I suppose trying to finish each other isn’t the essence of politics. But, it has always been the most enjoyable pastime of the most ambitious people of any spacetime. A competition of egos.
Exaggerating the use of something natural and turning it into something entirely different for the joy of a selected few ambitious people???
This is where sports/games = politics.
Now, the picture clears up. Sports and games aren’t like art, science and philosophy. There’s no point searching for the existential dread in them. Sports and games are about competitive ego, they are like fighting with your brother on who started the fire while your entire house burns to ashes. Sports and games are exactly what Satyajit Ray beautifully showed in Satranj ke Khiladi.
In this sense, sports and games are seriously done by either those who love their own ego or those who don’t perceive/don’t want to perceive the existential dread.
I consider, perceiving and working on existential dread the most serious and important thing a human being can do.
Which means such a human is wise. Such a human understands the scenario, hence such a human is humble. Not working on it implies such a human is raw, dumb and brash. Which is exactly what I think serious sports/game players/followers are. They are imperfect humans. Their existence and success and the existence and success of sports and games shows how imperfect human beings really are.
If we were perfect, we wouldn’t have professional sports and games. If we were perfect, we wouldn’t be killing each other; we wouldn’t be creating norms that suffocate each other; we wouldn’t be drawing lines and dying for it; we wouldn’t be writing articles such as these. We are a stupid and brash race whose only concern is to compete: both individually and collectively. We see glimpses of universal greatness, we smell existential dread and for a little while we change our ways but like an elastic rubber, we come back to the equilibrium of fight and tussles.
We aren’t art/science/philosophy, we are sports and games. There lies our true mirror.
