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Thread: The Value Of Sports

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    United States Avalon Member Mike's Avatar
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    Default The Value Of Sports

    Not too long ago I started a thread on transgenders in sports, and within that thread Dennis and I had a discussion about the value, or lack thereof, of sports.

    He made some undeniably true arguments for sports being irredeemably corrupted. They stuck with me because, although I knew them to be true, I still held a belief that sports were mostly a positive and productive thing.

    I've had sporadic thoughts about that now and again since, and I think I'll collate them in this thread here, and see what everyone thinks.

    I'm beginning on the premise that sports are a good and worthwhile endeavor. Feel free to agree or disagree, or whatever. I'm open to updating my thinking.

    1) although in football, for example, 2 teams are competing, they are playing within the framework of an agreed upon set of rules. Despite the competition, there is a structure in place that, if corrupted, will only hurt the corrupter. So there is a mutual cohesion there, and respect for that cohesion, despite the fact that each side is jockeying for position. Despite all the stress and emotional and mental and physical turmoil, there is a fundamental cooperation between the players and coaches and referees (and fans even!). It's actually a wonderful training ground for life, in that way. I can't think of a better way to prepare for all those dynamics.

    2) I think that any time we're striving to do anything well, we are competing; if you explore your motivations you'll likely find that you are trying to not only be the best you can be, but you're also hoping that you are better than others. Even if you're striving to do well in meditation, for example...you're attempting to be better than you were yesterday. That's competition with self. So it seems inescapable. Envy gets a bad rap. It's a very motivational emotion. It's how great accomplishments are often fueled, and how those accomplishments are often exceeded.

    3) Nothing plays out the universal archetypes with as much power and drama and conviction as sports. The underdog. The redeemer. The humble winner. The gracious loser. The hero. And so forth. These archetypes are built into our DNA, and we act them out dramatically in sports and the arts. It's a necessary ritual. We need to tell our ancestral stories to ourselves again and again and again. It's vital for the collective psyche.

    4) In sports, you are always orientated towards a goal. In life, you also must be orientated towards a goal or you will become lost and disorderly and undisciplined and prone to bad habits to fill that void previously held by discipline. Structure, discipline, order, responsibility and goals - they give life meaning. Sports are the perfect training ground.

    5) human being are meant to work against things. we're meant to struggle and solve problems and then to struggle again against adversity and challenges. It's why we're so disappointed when a journey towards a goal is over, despite it's often extreme difficulty. it's that old thing about the journey being more meaningful than the goal

    6) I think fighting is the most honest art there is. There is no room for posturing or affectation. Your life is on the line. Every part of you must be awake and hyper aware in the most urgent way possible, in every single moment. There's no excuses. There's no room for the modern diseases of anxiety, social phobia, ADD, etc. Those are luxuries in today's world, and all based on the erroneous assumption that we are entitled to safety. We're not. And where else can you get that lesson in such a rapid way than in fighting?

    7) sports familiarize you with your environment very quickly. if you get tackled, you feel it. if you get plunked with a baseball, you feel it. punched in the face, ditto. it gives you feedback immediately. there is a philosophy among our younger people today that insists that reality is a social construct, that personal "narratives" are just as valid as what us sane folks call objective reality. and it's mostly because they're not getting that immediate feedback that something like sport may provide; they're too busy sitting in front of their computers, avoiding the very reality they claim does not exist.

    I was shooting for 10 reasons lol, because it seems much cleaner and neater than 7. But I'll stop there.
    Last edited by Mike; 14th March 2020 at 05:04.

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    UK Avalon Member Jayke's Avatar
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    Default Re: The Value Of Sports

    8) Sports helps cultivate a champion mindset, which kind of encapsulates several of the points already made above, but is worthy of its own distinction.

    From Allan Snyder, cognitive neuroscientist:
    Quote What makes a champion — and I mean a champion in the broadest sense of the word — is the champion mindset… The champion mindset is the transferable commodity and not the skill itself’. This is the key insight which we find in Professor Snyder’s remarkable celebration of individual achievement:

    What Makes a Champion! The elegant simplicity of Professor Snyder’s theory of champion mindset belies the profound nature of his discovery. You hold in your hand a distillation of the three key elements of championship — a blueprint for understanding what separates the true champions from the rest of humanity. This is not some impenetrable academic treatise, blinding the reader with science and complex analysis. These are the real-life stories of great achievers, told with a first-hand immediacy — stories which illustrate ‘the fundamental aspect of mind’ that enables the champion to achieve extraordinary success; a mindset that drives the special few to ‘challenge others and to expand our horizons’.
    Back when affirmations were still popular in the ‘positive thinking’ community, I would forego the trite and mundane affirmations “Every day, in every way, I'm getting better and better”, and start the morning mantra with some Heka war dancing while chanting out the lines from the ‘I am a champion’ speech below.


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    UK Avalon Founder Bill Ryan's Avatar
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    Default Re: The Value Of Sports

    Kurt Hahn, the founder of the Outward Bound schools in 1947, wrote that group-based adventure activities were "the moral equivalent of war". He'd seen how young men of every nation had gained a huge amount of maturity and learning through the Second World War... and the Outward Bound vision he had was how to substitute for that in peacetime, without anyone suffering or getting killed.

    To learn the lessons of wartime, there need not be any human enemy. He was 100% right.

    He wrote:

    The Six Declines of Modern Youth
    1. Decline of Fitness due to modern methods of locomotion [moving about].
    2. Decline of Initiative and Enterprise due to the widespread disease of spectatoritis.
    3. Decline of Memory and Imagination due to the confused restlessness of modern life.
    4. Decline of Skill and Care due to the weakened tradition of craftsmanship.
    5. Decline of Self-discipline due to the ever-present availability of stimulants and tranquilizers.
    6. Decline of Compassion due to the unseemly haste with which modern life is conducted or, as William Temple called it, "spiritual death".
    Hahn not only pointed out the decline of modern youth; he also came up with four antidotes to fix the problem.
    1. Fitness Training (e.g., to compete with oneself in physical fitness; in so doing, train the discipline and determination of the mind through the body)
    2. Expeditions (e.g., via sea or land, to engage in long, challenging endurance tasks)
    3. Projects (e.g., involving crafts and manual skills)
    4. Rescue Service (e.g., surf lifesaving, fire fighting, first aid)
    Ten Expeditionary Learning Principles

    These 10 principles, which seek to describe a caring, adventurous school culture and approach to learning, were drawnfrom the ideas of Kurt Hahn and other education leadersfor use in Expeditionary Learning Outward Bound (ELOB) schools.
    1. The primacy of self-discovery
      Learning happens best with emotion, challenge and the requisite support. People discover their abilities, values, passions, and responsibilities in situations that offer adventure and the unexpected. In Expeditionary Learning schools, students undertake tasks that require perseverance, fitness, craftsmanship, imagination, self-discipline, and significant achievement. A teacher's primary task is to help students overcome their fears and discover they can do more than they think they can.
    2. Having wonderful ideas
      Teaching in Expeditionary Learning schools fosters curiosity about the world by creating learning situations that provide something important to think about, time to experiment, and time to make sense of what is observed.
    3. The responsibility for learning
      Learning is both a personal process of discovery and a social activity. Everyone learns both individually and as part of a group. Every aspect of an Expeditionary Learning school encourages both children and adults to become increasingly responsible for directing their own personal and collective learning.
    4. Empathy and caring
      Learning is fostered best in communities where students’ and teachers’ ideas are respected and where there is mutual trust. Learning groups are small in Expeditionary Learning schools, with a caring adult looking after the progress and acting as an advocate for each child. Older students mentor younger ones, and students feel physically and emotionally safe.
    5. Success and failure
      All students need to be successful if they are to build the confidence and capacity to take risks and meet increasingly difficult challenges. But it is also important for students to learn from their failures, to persevere when things are hard, and to learn to turn disabilities into opportunities.
    6. Collaboration and competition
      Individual development and group development are integrated so that the value of friendship, trust, and group action is clear. Students are encouraged to compete not against each other but with their own personal best and with rigorous standards of excellence.
    7. Diversity and inclusion
      Both diversity and inclusion increase the richness of ideas, creative power, problem-solving ability, and respect for others. In Expeditionary Learning schools, students investigate and value their different histories and talents, as well as those of other communities' cultures. Schools' learning groups are heterogeneous.
    8. The natural world
      A direct and respectful relationship with the natural world refreshes the human spirit and teaches the important ideas of recurring cycles and cause and effect. Students learn to become stewards of the earth and of future generations.
    9. Solitude and reflection
      Students and teachers need time alone to explore their own thoughts, make their own connections, and create their own ideas. They also need time to exchange their reflections with others.
    10. Service and compassion
      We are crew, not passengers. Students and teachers are strengthened by acts of consequential service to others, and one of an Expeditionary Learning school's primary functions is to prepare students with the attitudes and skills to learn from and be of service to others.

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    United States Avalon Member Mike's Avatar
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    Default Re: The Value Of Sports

    Jayke, that speech gave me the goosebumps. I watched it several times. It was f#cking awesome dude. Thx. You won't be the only one shouting out that speech to start your day now


    Bill, there is an ex-con youtuber named Wes Watson who spent 10 years in some of the worst gladiator style prisons in California. Much of his wisdom was gained there, but his followers often make the mistake of assuming they would have to go to prison too in order to achieve the mindset he has. He is constantly reminding us how foolish that is, and offers up what he calls his program in place of the prison environment.

    His approach, or program is not unlike Hahn's. I couldn't help but see the parallels as I was reading your excellent post. It's no coincidence. These are universal in the best of ways, because they have stood the test of time.. but in today's climate, might seem unreasonable in some ways and even radical! In this distorted victimhood culture we live in currently, we're not taught to conquer our fears (or at the very least face them forthrightly and with courage) we're taught that it's ok to be scared and, in all likelihood, it's probably someone else's fault that we are scared.

    So what I especially like about Hahn's approach (and Watson's) is the emphasis on personal responsibility.

    And it all just reaffirmed this idea that we can consciously create the conditions that mold us as men and women, and those conditions can approximate the character building effects of war, prison, or almost any extreme challenge.

    And if we expose ourselves to these challenges on a daily basis, thru sport or other means, we will be much more prepared to deal appropriately with more serious challenges later on should we be exposed to them
    Last edited by Mike; 14th March 2020 at 18:36.

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    Default Re: The Value Of Sports

    Quote Posted by Jayke (here)
    8) Sports helps cultivate a champion mindset, which kind of encapsulates several of the points already made above, but is worthy of its own distinction.

    From Allan Snyder, cognitive neuroscientist:
    Quote What makes a champion — and I mean a champion in the broadest sense of the word — is the champion mindset… The champion mindset is the transferable commodity and not the skill itself’. This is the key insight which we find in Professor Snyder’s remarkable celebration of individual achievement:

    What Makes a Champion! The elegant simplicity of Professor Snyder’s theory of champion mindset belies the profound nature of his discovery. You hold in your hand a distillation of the three key elements of championship — a blueprint for understanding what separates the true champions from the rest of humanity. This is not some impenetrable academic treatise, blinding the reader with science and complex analysis. These are the real-life stories of great achievers, told with a first-hand immediacy — stories which illustrate ‘the fundamental aspect of mind’ that enables the champion to achieve extraordinary success; a mindset that drives the special few to ‘challenge others and to expand our horizons’.
    Back when affirmations were still popular in the ‘positive thinking’ community, I would forego the trite and mundane affirmations “Every day, in every way, I'm getting better and better”, and start the morning mantra with some Heka war dancing while chanting out the lines from the ‘I am a champion’ speech below.

    Yes that’s inspiring. But sometimes that works and sometimes it doesn’t.

    When I played varsity high school football in 1969 at Granada HS in Livermore CA (a bunch of kids from geeky computer-type and science-minded parents) our coach gave a “pep talk” that was the exact opposite of what this coach did. We were playing an away game to a team that was supposed to beat us, and beat us bad. Why? Because it always did.

    In a nutshell, Coach Wilson, expressing himself as adamantly as this coach did, called us a bunch of losers. We went out and beat the home field team, Manteca high school, located in northern CA (a bunch of big farm boys) by a field goal.

    Reverse psychology. It works too. Sometimes. I’ve never forgotten that experience.
    Last edited by Satori; 14th March 2020 at 22:48.

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    United States Avalon Member Chester's Avatar
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    Default Re: The Value Of Sports

    This is a great thread... deep, thought provoking, stimulating... Brilliant points, Mike, nice 8.) Jake, and Bill, this is classic Bill Ryan... who pulls something out of I cannot imagine where frankly... stuff he has comes across and learned and yet also has maintained access to and BAM, there it is at a perfect time and Satori with a wise point and example backing it up (though it never worked for me with regards to my sons haha).

    I love the point Mike makes about sports being an opportunity for "archetypes" to arise within a framework where (in most cases), all "the players" walk away. The learning opportunities experienced within a far less harmless dynamic than "war." Yet still... war we have. And yes, much of the war is caused and managed by "arm chair" quarterbacks, there's still plenty of out breaks dotting the globe that I have to ask, is war simply a part of the human condition, of "being human?"

    And I haven't seen a specific member chime in yet, but I would imagine he would say (rightfully) why does this have to be the case? Why does war have to be a perpetual human trait? And then I can hear him say, "If we can agree we can transcend war, why can we not see the wisdom in ceasing the simulations of such in the sporting games we play? Don't they just feed the monster?"

    My problem is... I like to play. Maybe that's why I incarnated here at this time. I like the challenges. I like the chance to overcome my lower nature. I like the competition and I like sometimes letting the other guy win. I never like to lose but I never resent the victor when I lose. All the above applies to so much more than sports.
    All the above is all and only my opinion - all subject to change and not meant to be true for anyone else regardless of how I phrase it.

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