Dear Diary: Big Game
Last week, I made a somewhat intemperate remark about sport, at Facebook. I wished for it to be as illegal as cocaine. Frankly, I’d rather that cocaine were as legal as sport. But what occasioned the comment was the hubbub of enthusiasm for the Winter Olympics, which I encountered wherever I turned.
What I object to isn’t sport. It’s the yearning for transcendence that moves so many people to whip up enthusiasm at Big Game time. There’s a dreadful collectivism about it: no matter how interested anybody says that he or she is in figure skating, the principal appeal is the fact that everybody else is watching. This is what explains the success of reality shows. We’re wired to believe that the bonfire gets bigger and warmer when more of us draw up to it.
We’re wired for a lot of things that don’t work in civilization, and here’s why: civilization is intended to take over most of the survival functions that in tribal societies (most places on earth today, in my opinion) are seen to by instinct and self-interest. Consider our health-care debate. It’s obvious to all civilized folks that a society that doesn’t guarantee some minimal level of health care to all of its members is wearing a big black eye. The tribals, more shrewdly no doubt, wonder why they ought to pay for other people’s problems.
The United States has never been about civilization. Civilization in the United States was from the beginning seen as a weakness into which the Eastern cities had degenerated. They were “soft.” Not that the United States stands for genuine tribalism, either. It is Calvinist through and through: Me and God, two for the road.
But our rugged individualism turns out to be a crock. Except for a few woolly mammoths, it is awfully boring. Even Americans like to have friends — and with friends come commitments. Because we like to pick our friends for ourselves, though, we’re hardly tribal.
Except at Big Game time! Then we gather to form one immense tribe, rubbing our hands lustily in front of the gigantic bonfire of common spectacle. Because sport is utterly devoid of internal meaning (as all games are — which is why we play them, those of us who play), and because its external meaning is, ultimately, a numerical matter of scoring (you can argue the fine points of a game, but respect for scoring is the one and only universal in sport), the Big Game makes for a perfect Big Tent. Everybody is welcome.
That is, everybody is welcome to check individuality and insight at the door.
What’s exciting about watching sport is awfully close to what’s exciting about watching a poor sod stand on a ledge with a view to jumping. Things could go horribly, arrestingly, fascinatingly wrong!. When they don’t, and something ineffably beautiful happens instead, you ought to turn off the television set and find other beautiful things to watch — Fonteyn and Nureyev, perhaps. A beautiful performance ought to be your signal to leave the pack, and cultivate your own idea of beauty and grace. Tell me about that, and I’ll not only hear you out on Davis and White but watch a clip myself.