Gao Huan

George Orwell��s piercing insight and lucid style render his works thought-provoking. ��The Sporting Spirit�� is no exception. It prompts me to think about the underlying motivations of sports, which we often overlook. Indeed, I find it startling yet charming to explore into the violent aspect of sports.

Freud, the Austrian psychologist, says, human beings have the instinct of death as well as the instinct of life. Since human beings have evolved from an inorganic state, they have a subtle inclination to go back to that state, i.e. an inclination toward destruction. When this inclination is introvert, it is masochism in its broad sense, which varies in degrees. When extrovert, it is sadism, which is more commonly manifested. People are usually unaware of this because of the firm grip of the moral principles inculcated in them through life. However, when the principles happen to loosen their control, people can get their repressed desire satisfied by some means or other. It gives them pleasure.

Why are there so many competitive sports? In my opinion, they are all the embodiment of the war, modified and developed by culture. A successful athlete often demonstrates the greatest strength and skills that are vital in ancient fighting, pursuing and escaping. When body-to-body battles were no longer frequent with changed social bonds, people needed to find a new way to appease the desire for violence, so they invented games to play, in which they could experience a virtual fight like in primitive times.

Rugby, soccer and basketball are typical examples. There is quite a lot of body contact there, which is by no means caress. We often see athletes getting wild and vicious on the field. They just can��t help attacking others. It feels so wonderful! Observing the rules, at this time, becomes so difficult. However, rules, in a sense, are just made to ensure that no one gets hurt too much or worse, killed, and thus make it possible to continue with the match.

As for those sports like volleyball and tennis, which involve little body contact, the implication of violence still exists, in a much more disguised way. The athletes have to exert themselves. They need to use their strength to the full. Doesn��t that resemble shattering a vase when one is in a rage? It feels much better and more relieved after an outlet.

Generally speaking, to defeat other competitors is the goal of competition. In winning a competition, one frustrates others by breaking their attempts to the same goal. �C�CIt is all destruction.

Furthermore, the violence of players can be contagious to the spectators, who often identify themselves with one side or the other of the competing athletes. Actually it is a long-standing tradition: the Romans got rapturous when they saw blood in the fight between the slave wrestlers. Compared to them, the turned-on boxing spectators are just apathetic.

Tyson bit Hollyfield��s ear off. This notorious act was even more violent than the rules-complying violence of the boxing match, which is by nature this way. I perversely find that sensational spectacle particularly interesting.

I am also perversely fond of the skirmishes on the soccer field. The yellow cards and red cards are just as fascinating as the goals. I know I am not being serious about this sport, which is considered art by many others. But it is natural for the young men to lose control of themselves and become savage. Sometimes bad conduct has a strange charm (as long as you are not the victim). Those soccer mobs, the headache of the police, are apparently extremely easy to be triggered by the violent scenes endemic to the soccer matches. They are too brutal.

When I say sports bear violent connotation, I don��t mean that sports should be banned because violence is bad. On the other hand, I am not justifying the excessive expression of violence in sportsmen and spectators only because violence is natural. Since we are living in a society rather than in Nature, we have to be controlled so that the whole system doesn��t collapse and we ourselves don��t all get beat to death and can go on.

Professor Sun Li's Comment: Good.

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