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| The Tour de France - the essence of what it is can resolve humanity's dilemmas. |
Watching the Tour de France I became puzzled as to why men
push themselves to such physical and mental extremes and along with that why
we, their less focussed fellows, watch with such adoration and dedication.
Such passion is not strange, scarce or unique, nor is the human
fascination with watching others search for the extremes of their abilities,
physical or mental.
The roads of France in July each year equate in a modern
sense with the “excitements” of gladiatorial Rome, as do the feats of men and
women on any of the world’s many sporting arenas from the bellicosity of boxing
to the beauty and finery of ballroom dancing.
Men and women test and push themselves to their limits and
we watch with unalloyed enthusiasm.
Sport, it seems, has evolved to become the modern construction
of war; that human confrontation that drives our emotions, ignites passions responding to a siren-call that leads
to outcomes commonly considered everything from horrible to honourable, but never
to be missed.
So we watch with our emotions unleashed, our infatuations running
free and, for maybe only a brief moment, we too are vicariously there,
sweating, experiencing and feeling the heat of the spotlight, although, unlike
the participants, our only investment is time.
Our urge to physically and mentally exhaust ourselves can be
philosophically understood, but even participants would probably be at a loss
to explain their behaviour as motivation seems to emerge from deep within the
human psyche.
Motivation is like the many-headed Hydra monster of Greek
mythology – it has many faces; identify one and there is another, and another,
and then another.
Sport voyeurs and the participants they watch are stimulated
and inspired in Hydra-like ways, but within that they are strikingly similar
and yet as different as a blink and a wink.
Interestingly, the passion, excitements, addictions and
distractions of sport, for participants and spectators alike, embody the values
that are taking humanity closer to the abyss.
We are watching, but not taking any note of where it is we
are going nor, it seems, do we care.
Distracted by the titillations of sport, and an endless
array of technological entertainments, we seem immune to and so ignorant of the
fact that we have exhausted our world’s environmental sinks and are consuming
our way to catastrophe.
Sport, and this “loudness” of other distractions are not of
themselves individually troublesome, but they are integral to the machinations of
a way of life that has disrupted earth’s ecological balance.
Enthusiasm, passion, patience, commitment, resilience, energy,
compassion, team-work, single-mindedness and tenacity are the ingredients for
success in the Tour de France.
They are, also, what is creating troublesome times, but applied
in pursuit of different goals they will resolve our dilemmas.
