I have started to form a theory about the sports a culture plays and how it organizes it'self.. in other words, how the culture, mostly the men of the culture, arrange themselves to tackle (or not tackle) challenges or even just daily organization as they arise in a place.
I think my first inkling that there might be something there came about in my observing the differences between latin places where they played only soccer, and where they played baseball as well. I think I had just traveled through Central America and noticed a difference in Panama, where you can actually drink the water through most of the areas close to the canal, and started to make some assumptions from my first world brain about productivity. Although at first this theory was about a notion of effectiveness and competence (how Northern European, how Rugby/American Football!) it seemed to offer insight beyond being a judge-mental outlet for my grumpy frustration with the Soccer worlds of bottled water only!
What I noticed was that in Soccer Culture's (I will say Football only once.. you must have by now figured out I am a yank...) there is rarely a developed perception of hierarchy or specialization.. kids playing soccer together are separated by skill, but rarely dominated in way that is quantified or physical.. it's all kind of light and non accusatory... and involvement is almost incidental.. moments of being completely responsible for the action are fleeting and seen more as opportunities than obligations.. a laissez faire attitude prevails, as well as a thinly spread perception of responsibility that is easily shrugged or passed off.. much effort is displayed, but the tides of the game mean that effort can be expended or wasted likely with not much notice by others until you reach higher levels, which only seem to exist as profit centers for those who come from more stratified portions of a culture that, in keeping with an all encompassing theory, likely valued other sports more originally. So you see soccer is the sport of the careless poor and middle class, living unstructured yet not necessarily unfulfilled lives.. but somewhat in a vacuum of the pressures that create quantifiable improvements to quality of life.. it's the game of the Flavellah and the cement sea of dirt roaded anywhere third world, a what me worry world of hand to mouth existence that doesn't really want to have a game plan...but living with passion nonetheless..
Enter baseball.. a group effort but with times of defined and calculable individual leadership and performance.. key decisions are made constantly with immediately measurable outcomes.. people are sidelined and even shamed for lack of performance which can be undeniably proven.. the players are at the mercy not of perception but of the weight of prior performance.. their personalities tend to be tempered to reveal nothing but what they want, ecstasy and agony traded for calculations on what and what not to reveal...the player tempering himself to not reveal his perceptions which could be exploited, but to reveal what might be an asset in an endless calculation that exists in a confrontation with defined rules, concentration and performance becoming a virtue over spontaneity with results and the cool application of precise force the virtues of these societies.. they seem to burgeon a middle class with more distinction, like a crew of team captains assigned one to every 9 or 12.. there is less chaos and more improvement, but somehow unexpected magic...less daily despair but more grid of the long season, the working class wholly enfranchised to the valuation of themselves by numbers and the most recent results instead of by status or perception of authority perhaps won long ago... it's almost the downside of too much honesty...in a culture that for an outsider is supposed to be a paragon of carelessness as we stumble south for Pina Coladas and beach bungalows..
Enter the Rugby culture to add a determination to so much calculation.. and to return some of the spontaneity of a fluid game but add the personal responsibility in an instant that demands both awareness and toughness, teamwork and individual performance balanced to create a somehow perfect balance of humility and pride, individual satisfaction and community success. Leadership and cohesion are on par with individual performance, the many become the one, and the society tackles problems aggressively but simply, with less calculation for self aggrandizement than the simple selfless solution to a problem... charmless perhaps on the surface, these cultures have a tidiness and a subtle tendency towards mutual humanization despite a tough front that leads to an unexpected respect, added to by the fact that aggressiveness is sublimated through a contest long enough to not leave one the luxury of departing the field of play with unspent emotions, so that problems are solved in one go, with a fresh start and a calm way consistent through the population but with the sheep dog potential for self defense while aggression is shunned. It might come as no surprise that this this might be the best culture to have accomplishments in on a day to day, but the lack of mercurialness can leave one wanting for controversy handled loudly and unprofessionally.. these are cultures of understood whispers and not savage incrimination, humor shared but nary the relish of one sacrificed for the entertainment of all... might not here enter the cultures of individual sports, the realm of the solitary with various manifestations for all, from the complexity of emotions that vent from ultimate fighting, boxing, or any other pugilism, to the weird worlds of insecurity, individuality, and effectiveness that come from Asian Martial Arts, to sports of technological precision like shooting, archery and the weird mix of bowling horseshoes and bachi realms, places where life becomes about individual tests...skiing, and other sports of gliding emphasize a n odd combination of gliding through life as an individual, appearing effortless and solitary yet with great effort to give such an effortless appearance, with ll the manifestations of leisure that seem so symbolized by that glide...
Now we arrive at American Football, a fine place to start before I expound on every sport that comes to mind as somehow exemplary of the aspirations and mindset of every valley and subculture that plays it. Football seems to dominate somehow a corner of any theory as it is so specialized and intricate that it all but requires a complex and dominating culture to spin off in every far flung direction from it looking for the satisfaction of the challenges it creates... It's complex.. completely complex.. it is the Land Air Battle of sports, the multi phase rules bound protected yet gladiatorial manifestation of a culture as ambitious for self preservation as it is for mental stimulation and glory... it creates it's own values, removed from the true vicissitudes of unprotected battle, but then through spectacle and calculation vaults it's complex modes of cooperation into dominance.. people specialize, they armour, they see themselves as a team and as a sub team, can take credit as a group or as an individual or as a team or special team as easily as they can shirk it or asses blame on another, blamelessly from the sidelines as their responsibility is rarely more than half the game. It creates complex nuance and the temptation to calculate for personal or group glory, and for both or for neither.. moments of true responsibility are there but often fade in the context of the whole effort if convenient.. and simple virtues carry only so far as the true complexity of the game requires more calculation than earnestness for eventual prevalence, no matter what is expected of the various sub groups who learn to fit within the hierarchy. And then there are the rules, the calculations to compromise entertainment and commerce, to turn commerce into entertainment and entertainment into commerce with an endless fiddling and halting to always guarantee fair play and to leave the game in the hands of the intellectuals instead of the savages while simultaneously rewarding the bottom dogs for their savagery and the top dogs for their thoughtfulness, but never letting the savages run away with the show, all at the expense of sublimation, so that you remain pent up dreaming for another day of it as often as not, but never straying from the group mentality to a fighting or rugby way of thinking.. to protect one so that true humility might never come and ones true value might never be known so long as the group as a whole moves forward.. what a culture this must be, the savages led by the sages to mutual benefit, the sages in turn controlled by the high priests and on and on.. so contrived as to almost appear as if it could never satisfy anyone except that the group acquiescence to the value of the game makes it a juggernaut of sorts... the world's smartest organism, able to identify any weakness if you give it enough time, predisposed to aggression and opportunism all under the guise of fair play... unifying all who should appear strong.. all kind of makes me think of that guy in Mad Max with shoulder pads, but before I keep going on into Chess and Indy Car Racing I will assume you have gotten the point.. sports and values are teammates in an endless human game..
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