Orwell: The Sporting Spirit
http://orwell.ru/library/articles/sp...glish/e_spirit
Quote:
Nearly all the sports practised nowadays are competitive. You play to win, and the game has little meaning unless you do your utmost to win. On the village green, where you pick up sides and no feeling of local patriotism is involved. it is possible to play simply for the fun and exercise: but as soon as the question of prestige arises, as soon as you feel that you and some larger unit will be disgraced if you lose, the most savage combative instincts are aroused. Anyone who has played even in a school football match knows this. At the international level sport is frankly mimic warfare. But the significant thing is not the behaviour of the players but the attitude of the spectators: and, behind the spectators, of the nations who work themselves into furies over these absurd contests, and seriously believe — at any rate for short periods — that running, jumping and kicking a ball are tests of national virtue.
Orwell's essays are quite good. I recently found this one on how absurd he found the idea that 'sporting' was associated with fairness and so on.
It's mildly interesting in a historical way (anyone know anything about this Dynamo tour he's talking about?) and also to read an attitude towards sport which is in many ways diametrically opposed to the common LoI attitudes.
Anyway, it really doesn't fit anywhere, so I'm plonking it in World Football. Mods, feel free to move it.
