Alicia Jesenska is a writer and philosopher at the University of Buckingham. She is the Vice-President of PEN Vlaanderen and a VUB Fellow. Her column appears every two weeks.
At the beginning of this week I was allowed to sit at a table The appointment Join us to talk about the gulags of the past and Russia today. The reason was the publication of the Gulag memoirs of the Polish philosopher Barbara Skarga (1919-2009). It has just been translated into Dutch, and is the most informative book I’ve read in years. Knowing the past increases our understanding of the present; And so I can talk about that. The table discussion that preceded it also provided food for thought: Lorraine Parise, CEO of the Professional League, spoke about the growing problem of football hooliganism. What is the basis for this? What does that say about us as a society? And what can we do about it?
For true football fans, hooliganism is a sore that keeps vomiting. In recent weeks, more flares have been launched from the crowd on Belgian fields than balls are fired at a target. The security services can’t search everyone, and these torches are also cunningly hidden in the bras and underwear of the troublemakers, so I learned on the table.
problem
If the substance of fireworks is such an inconvenience and cost to society, shouldn’t we consider restricting its sale? If you can’t stop the flares from entering the stadium, you need to prevent the flares from glowing. Does the purchase of torches have a purpose other than to cause noise and inconvenience? The only social function of outbursts is to bully your classmate.
In addition, a change of mentality, a real cultural shift, also seems desirable if we are to tackle the problem of bullying in football. Football hooliganism is actually filler. You don’t encounter rowdy “supporters” or much less in any other sport. So there is a problem with football itself, and more specifically with the place of football in our society. If we reduce football to what it is – a sport like many others – then football hooliganism as a phenomenon would not exist. We must stop making football a matter of vital importance, and put footballers on a pedestal. Football is not the most important afterthought in life. It’s life’s most overrated sideshow.
before broadcasting The appointment Canvas announced a documentary about the year of the Genk race, a documentary on Louis van Gaal, and announced that after the broadcast, a talk show about royal football could be watched. It’s all well and good, but Troub is too much. I’ll admit it: I don’t care much about football. My interest in this sport is as great as that of the Dolphins in cross-country skiing and curling. But Canvas can also become a cultural channel rather than a sports channel, rather than surfing the social trend of glorifying football.
Society can be identified by its idols. You can learn a lot about the community based on its role models and typical personalities. A society in which hedonism, leisure and relaxation are the highest good, will place people who have made it their profession. That we worship artists and athletes says more about us as a society than about them as individuals.
larger than life
However, it is a good idea to have larger than life numbers to look for. They are an object of inspiration and ambition: a drive to pursue the values they embody. This was also a central idea in the moral philosophy of the German philosopher Max Scheler. In many works, he discusses the great importance of Vürbilder and the Fuhrer (then that word had a completely different connotation): moral growth and social progress are driven by role models, archetypal personalities, idols. Provided that it is really exemplary.
The World Cup in Qatar, overshadowed by the dark shadow of corruption and human rights abuses, may be the perfect occasion to start the transformation; The perfect moment to reflect on that sport that ignites tribal feelings in man more than any other sport. We should pay less attention to football; Hence – ironic – this column about football.
