Why We Need Sports - Cue The Ancients

    I spent a good portion of my young life playing sports; as a youngster with my friends in the neighborhood; in high-school and college bouncing a basketball, as well as finding a love for recreational tennis; and as a young and old adult becoming addicted to that horrific game that if you spell it backwards, is “FLOG!” Do with that bit of Scottish wisdom whatever you’d like. 

    As time went by, aging brought forth questions like, “Why do I do this?” and “What's the point?” or even, “Does this even make me a better person?” And being the dork that I am, as I got a little older and  hopefully, wiser...I started to search for and find answers to those questions, and many more. As usual, these questions led me back to conversations with the ancients. And as usual, these conversations opened up vistas I never would have imagined. If you have the time, I’d like to share them with you.

    From baseball games (without gloves) in Civil War army camps, to NFL football games that gave people something to cheer about during the Great Depression, sports have always been a central part of American culture. Their extreme popularity may be a clue that sports provide something vital to the health of democracies. If Plato and Aristotle were right, sports offer an antidote to democracies’ inherent predisposition to misperceive boundaries.

    In Politics, Aristotle observed that democratic regimes arise from a misperception of the true scope of equality. Democracies are prone to the fallacy that “those who are equal in any respect are equal in all respects.” In other words, “because men are equally free [under the law], they claim to be absolutely equal [in every way].” Similarly, in The Republic, Plato described how democracies’ overestimation of the scope of equality leads them to project equality onto every social relationship in society. “Democracy is a charming form of government, full of variety and disorder,” says Socrates, “and dispensing a sort of equality to equals and unequals alike.” In short, Plato and Aristotle saw democracies leveling all social distinctions, blurring and distorting true boundaries.

    But I think sports offer democracies a welcome, refreshing chance to redraw distinctions in accordance with real boundaries—in other words, without bending equality beyond its natural scope. Like a splash of cold water in the face of an equality-minded society, sports continuously make it clear that citizens must earn their individual status, without relying on egalitarian pronouncements frown on high affording everyone equal status. Democratic citizens tend to embrace this challenge for the same reason Cuban exiles in Florida embrace a paycheck even in an entry-level job: because humans want to earn their accomplishments, not have their livelihood handed to them by the state.

    Sports continuously produce new winners and losers. This is a reminder to democratic souls that, in many ways, people will always be unequal—but also that the ways in which people are unequal are always in flux. The pursuit of victory will always be, in some sense, the pursuit of a temporary unequal status. This is something to celebrate. Notwithstanding Karl Marx, who sought to eliminate competition on the grounds that it is predominantly a force of destruction, competition is, in fact, vital to social progress, innovation, and productivity. Everyone has a drive to stand out for achievement, and this incentive helps avoid the stagnation (and frighteningly annoying idea) of an “everybody gets a trophy” society in which no one has any motivation to push the ball forward. In sports and in other areas of life, from The Voice to Top Chef, democracies crave competitions because they encourage citizens to push the boundaries of their advancement to achieve things that no laws can bestow on them.

    As serial blurrers of proper boundaries, democracies tend to see boundaries as the enemy. “No limits” and “breaking down barriers” are common catch phrases. Even worse…”you can be or do anything you set your mind to.” Well, no you can’t. Fortunately, engaging in sports continuously puts people in new situations that force them to recognize and contend with real boundaries. Rather than explaining boundaries away with platitudes, sports train the mind to sharpen its perception of boundaries and get creative in working with them. This is good training not only for the mind but also for the soul.

    Sports also engender a respect for law and order. Through sports, we quickly discover that transgressing some boundaries is not OK. There are consequences. Some things are “out of bounds,” a “violation,” “offside,” “fair,” or “foul.” Too many transgressions and you can “foul out.” And there are inflexible boundaries that determine what counts and what doesn’t: Put the ball between these goalposts and you score. Outside them, nothing.

    Sports train the mind to pay attention to the boundaries of space, time, and our own internal state. No wonder this University of Chicago study found that the brain lights up on MRI scans when people are playing—or just talking about—sports. There are spatial boundaries for the brain to navigate: lines, boxes, zones, fences, walls, markers, hoops, circles, and lanes. Temporally, we have to be aware of minutes and seconds, breaks, halves, quarters, periods, shot clocks, and timeouts. And our awareness also encompasses the amazing potential and intrinsic limitations of our own mind and body. Internally, athletes are always navigating the boundaries of their concentration, tenacity, speed, strength, endurance, flexibility, coordination, height, weight, muscle fiber types, climate tolerance, and breathing.

    The boundaries of team dynamics present their own challenges. Five point guards, nine shortstops, or eleven quarterbacks won’t do. There are delineated roles, each with its own boundaries. Success comes from complementarity, matching players’ abilities (see the 1995–96 Chicago Bulls, 1984-85 Boston Celtics [maybe the greatest team ever], or 2004–05 San Antonio Spurs). This is an exercise in creating social harmony. In fact, according to Aristotle, complementarity among people with differing capacities and virtues is the very reason cities—and families—come into existence. Finding ways to contribute on a sports team is good practice for citizenship. The process of developing virtues in sports can also prepare the way for advancements in other areas of life.

    Through sports, we become keenly aware of boundaries that are determined by our own effort. The feedback is often immediate: “Look, I got two seconds faster since the season started!” or “I slacked off on my diet, and now I can’t keep up.” “Success leaves clues,” said Jim Rohn, and sports illustrate concretely how our own actions lead to progress or regress. This encourages us to wonder about the boundaries of what we truly can be, and to try to become more than we are.

    On the other hand, abstaining from sports steals many potential clues as to where our boundaries lie. In a culture presenting myriad opportunities for comfort, passive consumption, and entertainment, it’s easy to persuade ourselves that we are okay “just the way we are.” But inactivity can facilitate the delusion that we have reached our limit. By not physically exerting ourselves in real and difficult ways, we miss flags that could expose our regression. As the Greek stoic Epictetus put it in Enchiridion:

    How long will you then still defer thinking yourself worthy of the best things? What teacher then do you still expect that you defer to him the correction of yourself? You are no longer a youth but a full-grown man. If then you are negligent and slothful, and are continually making procrastination after procrastination, and proposal after proposal…you will not know that you are not making improvement, but you will continue ignorant, both while you live and till you die. And if anything laborious, or pleasant or glorious or inglorious be presented to you, remember that now is the contest, now is the Olympic games, and they cannot be deferred; and that it depends on one defeat and one giving way that progress is either lost or maintained. 

    The process of developing virtues in sports can also prepare the way for advancements in other areas of life. Hippocrates observed this in his 400 BC treatise On Ancient Medicine: “Even today, those who give their attention to exercises and training are always making some additional discovery by the same method, investigating what food and drinks a person will best overcome so as to become as strong as possible.” Indeed, a good deal of modern nutritional science has its roots in sports nutrition research. For example, the benefits of hydration, amino acids, creatine, and timing carbohydrates, not to mention the vast array of popular energy and protein bars and drinks, were all driven by sports science.

    When it comes to the boundaries of brain function, recent studies suggest that “brain games” like Sudoku (I suck at Sudoku) do not appear to cause significant improvements or protect against mental decline. Thank the gods… But sports do. It turns out that consistent exercise significantly increases the brain’s volume of white and gray matter, particularly the hippocampus, prefrontal cortex, medial temporal lobe, and caudate nucleus.

    And sports also provide feedback that can help guide us in the realm of ideas. For example, sports can expose the boundaries where ideologies and other beliefs become nonsensical. Philosopher Brian Kemple writes that an ideology is “any belief in what ought to be, irrespective of understanding what is.” In other words, ideologies are abstract belief systems that do not necessarily comport with experience. Historian Christopher Lasch wrote that “Ideologies, however appealing, cannot shape the whole structure of perceptions and conduct unless they are embedded in daily experiences that confirm them.” Sports provide the kind of daily, observable experiences—sometimes public and documented—which can be drawn on to confirm or disconfirm ideologies. For instance, Hitler hoped to use the 1936 Berlin Olympics as a showcase for the Nazi ideology, specifically his belief in the superiority of the “Aryan race.” But this belief was only disconfirmed by the numerous medals won by Jewish competitors that summer—including a silver in fencing won by Helene Mayer, the only Jewish member of Germany’s own Olympic team (think about that for a second)—not to mention four gold medals won by African-American Jesse Owens. It’s always nice to see the Nazis get slapped around, isn’t it?!

    In discussing Plato’s Republic, my old college history professor once said, “Justice is about drawing distinctions in the right place.” Given that democracies tend to blur distinctions, by strengthening our perceptions of all sorts of boundaries and their consequences, sports help democratic souls improve at drawing distinctions in the right place. And in this way, sports help democracies become more just.

Write to Peter: magtour@icloud.com