There were two good football games yesterday, and while whoever you or I were rooting for is a product of our ethnocentric identity groups or functions of our personal relations to the team (because, in a particular way, the effects of who wins and who doesn't is quite arbitrary), the thing which is not as arbitrary, or meaningless, are the injuries. The injuries are real. And I don't know how to feel about this. On the one hand, as a parental figure quite close to me would say, "They're grown men making millions of dollars. If they get injured, that's what's coming to them." On the other hand, there's no escaping the wince, pending your empathetic faculties do not totally shut down after kickoff ("Tackle him! Get him! Pull him down! Grab him! Yeah! Yeah!"), incited by seeing someone's knee buckle sideways or seeing someone's head snap back or crack into the ground. Many times, these are life-changing events in people's lives that for us are a trivial part of our entertainment. Motives and compensation aside, the destruction of the human body--no matter who it is--insights unease because of our instinctual, immediate, unconscious identification with the scene we are viewing. But even that is externalizing it; "Wow, I'm glad what happened to that guy has not happened to me" is much different than, "This human being is sacrificing his body, and future well-being, to give me (or all X hundred million of us) an exciting experience." Maybe tearing your ACL or getting a concussion isn't that big a deal, but it's interesting to think about the physical attrition of athletics, especially football, and the legacy of suffering many players experience (highlighted in recent lawsuits against the NFL).
I can't say I can take a stand here either way, or even if there is stand here to take. Even rationalizing this might not be the answer; I'd rather just practice deep empathy and try to imagine the physical trauma and life effects that these injuries have to connect further with these human beings who give us so much enjoyment. The only point I'm comfortable making is that the injuries, and their effects, bear a need for more awareness than we give them. It reminds me of the generations of soldiers who have given their lives for our freedom, of mothers who have given their lives for their children, of explorers and scientists and entrepreneurs who have given their lives and bodies and time for the cause of a better life and world for all the humans they will never know. But these instances are all different than the mass diversion of football, a thing that has a fraction of the importance to our lives or impact on our well-being than enforcing justice, providing nourishment, and developing potential. Because, when it comes to whether the brutality of football is worth the pleasure of watching it, the question that is perhaps both most important and least important is this:
I can't say I can take a stand here either way, or even if there is stand here to take. Even rationalizing this might not be the answer; I'd rather just practice deep empathy and try to imagine the physical trauma and life effects that these injuries have to connect further with these human beings who give us so much enjoyment. The only point I'm comfortable making is that the injuries, and their effects, bear a need for more awareness than we give them. It reminds me of the generations of soldiers who have given their lives for our freedom, of mothers who have given their lives for their children, of explorers and scientists and entrepreneurs who have given their lives and bodies and time for the cause of a better life and world for all the humans they will never know. But these instances are all different than the mass diversion of football, a thing that has a fraction of the importance to our lives or impact on our well-being than enforcing justice, providing nourishment, and developing potential. Because, when it comes to whether the brutality of football is worth the pleasure of watching it, the question that is perhaps both most important and least important is this:
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