Alypius’ Temptation
Alypius was Saint Augustine’s student and friend who was later baptized with him by Saint Ambrose. But his conversion also entailed a turning away from his addiction to the gladiatorial games. Though he had forsworn them at one point, his resolve was undermined by (who else?) his young peers who one day dragged him along to the arena. Naive young man, he resolved to keep his eyes closed and to hold himself detached from the spectacle. But, as Augustine says in Book Six of his Confessions, would that he had plugged his ears as well:
For, upon the fall of one in the fight, a mighty roar from the whole audience stirred him strongly. He, overcome by curiosity, and prepared as it were to despise and rise superior to it, no matter what it were, opened his eyes, and was struck with a deeper wound in his soul than the other, whom he desired to see, was in his body. And thus he fell more miserably than the gladiator whose fall had caused the crowd to roar — a cry which entered through his ears, and unlocked his eyes, so that his soul was stricken and wounded. Alypius had been more audacious than courageous, and so much the weaker in that he presumed on himself, rather than on You.
For, as soon as he saw that blood, he immediately imbibed a sort of savageness; nor did he turn away, but fixed his eyes, drinking in the frenzy thoughtlessly, and reveled in the wicked contest. He became drunk with the lust for blood. He was no longer the man who came there, but one of the crowd he had joined, and a fit companion of those who had led him there. Need I say more? He continued to gaze, shouted, was excited, carrying away with him the frenzy which stimulated him to return, not only with those who first enticed him, but also before them, indeed, to draw in others.
Fast forward 1600 hundred years and open to an op-ed piece in today’s Boston Globe on the spread and commercial success of “human dog-fighting.”
at the Ultimate Fighting Championship in Las Vegas a few weeks ago, a Los Angeles Times writer observed: “The blood is gushing out. . . just a beautiful sight for the UFC 100 crowd, the folks here in Mandalay Bay screaming with hunger for even more.’’ Another reporter noted that the eventual winner “used at least 17 unanswered blows’’ while his opponent was flat on the canvas.
Las Vegas? At least Alypius had the real thing: Rome!
Sports in general provokes more hostile feelings than we care to admit. In addition to other problems. Overall they are salutary and contribute to the common good. Yet one must be conscious of the “fanatic” from which the word fan comes. The irrepresible Red Smith used to appeal for more perspective when he wrote that it “is only a game.” But somehow the feelings enter the irrational even in these “wholesome” sports. Seemingly peaceful people become savagely antagonistic when it comes to their favorite team.
Boxing and the so called Mixed Martial Arts are in a separate category. There is that same roar when someone is getting knocked out and invariable disappointment when there are no telling blows in what is absurdly called the “Sweet Science.”
Why there is not more protests from the churches is revealing. Is it because these combatants have left the womb and are now fair game as long as they consent? Or is it because women have nothing to gain or lose in it?
I find the UFC to be, at least on occasion, unbearably violent. The “17 unanswered blows while the opponent is flat on the canvas” type of episode is just horrifying to watch. Yet from the talk I hear from the fans, it’s exactly the sort of thing they relish.
I don’t follow the “sport” closely enough to know if they have had any ring deaths or serious injuries, but it seems inevitable. By comparison, state-sanctioned boxing seems safer, and seems to have much more concern for the safety of the fighters.
I recently dropped my cable TV provider, Dish TV, because the adds for such “ectreme” sports were simply barbaric. I don’t want them in my house. I wonder why the American Medical Association doesn’t speak out against such violence. I should also mention that MSNBC, in spite of its good news coverage, plays those horrid “documentaries” of U. S. prisons over and over on Saturday nights and other times. The series conveys this message: be a thug and get on national TV.
By the way, the other night I happened to check out the biography of Anderson Cooper of CNN at Wikipedia. I’m a fan of his ever since he showed such empathy for the people whose areas were devastated by Katrina. He actually began to cry when interviewing some and had to move off-camera. However, the biography has extensive quotes from his autobiography about how he himself earlier in his life became totally insensitive to the suffering of the peoples in the wars that he has reported first-hand. Very, very interesting. One short incident he recounts is simply horrifying. He has obviously restored his empathy, God bless him, and I think he’s a lesson for us: even the most insensitive should not be despaired of rejoining the human race..
Recently, my charming little town west of Chicago has decided to give up trying to replicate the touristy atmosphere of the charming little town just to the south that gets all the business and go into supporting cage matches instead. Some of my neighbors had thought that when the Harley Davidson dealership opened at the west side of town it was the beginning of the end. The streets were just full of bikers on the weekends. But I could tell that most of these savage looking bikers were actually accountants from the city relaxing after a long week of trying to account for the recession. (It was the women that gave it away; it’s one thing for dad to sport a goatee for his “hobby” but another thing altogether for mom to have to start wearing mispelled tattoos. Also, they all had nice purses.)
When the promoters came with the first cage match proposal, the city council was split and the mayor had to break the tie. His main argument was that yes, cage matches were brutal, but they were to be held on the far east side of the town, over the river towards where the Mexicans live. How bad could it be?
The town got a taste of how bad it could be when the promotional posters started going up on main street. Large full color posters of what appeared to be buff, almost naked young men. Now even the mayor started becoming outraged. Blood sports were one thing, but buff, almost naked young men was something else again and steps had to be taken. So the posters came down. But the event was held. And it drew such a crowd that the promoters are now referring to my charming little town west of Chicago as the “Cage Match Capital of the Mid-West”.
The big fear now is that the kind of people that like to go to cage matches are going to scare the biker trade out of town. This is what is known as the slippery slope. In America, the lower forms of savagery always pushes out the higher forms.
Would it make sense to use a kind of double-effect logic here, in which sports in which injuring or incapacitating your opponent is the intention (boxing, MMA,) are considered separately from those in which injury to self or opponent is incidental (football, basketball, etc.)? I suspect even then we’d need to begin to take seriously sports in which serious injury is so common as to render even this unreasonable–for example, I understand most pro football players experience serious or crippling arthritis later in life. It does stand to reason–having muscular 300-pound men chase you and slam you into the ground can’t be good for you!
A word, though–note that women’s participation in sports (at least in college, I think also in high school,) tends to track with a HIGHER overall GPA than those who do not participate, while for men, participation in sports tracks with lower GPA and higher non-graduation rate, at least for sports with big pro leagues. And I remember vividly how the passage of Title IX meant uniforms that weren’t ragged–a sense that our teams counted for something. So go watch the women’s teams! (Except boxing, MMA, on grounds as above…)
Those of us who live in “sophisticated, urbane, liberal enclaves” such as San Francisco, New York, etc. tend to think that we are experiencing the reality of live in these United States. Wrong, wrong, wrong.
Today on a San Francisco talk show I heard an hour of blatant racism dealing with the Gates incident and the upcoming “beer gathering” in the White House this evening. And this is from the uber-liberal capital of the Left Coast!
All you have to do is go about 30 miles in each of 3 directions from SF (I can’t speak of 30 miles into the Pacific) and you will encounter another world of people who have escaped in many cased to get away from “those people.” Take you pick as to who they mean, but it isn’t right-wingers, racists and homophobes.
Even the diocesan newspapers for San Francisco and Oakland get more than their fair share of letters from those who think that the devil incarnate is alive and well in the Bay Area. Why those letters are published is beyond me, but I suspect that they represent the majority of communications received by those diocesan house organs. These letters are usually interspersed with pleas for people to pray the rosary and attend novenas to some saint or another. And, of course, to fight abortion.
FWIW – my father has remarked that in his day (he was born in the mid-30′s and finished high school in the mid-50′s), fighting was much more commonplace – it was just sort of part of life for boys, and even for grown men (and girls). But he also believes that fights tended to be less violent, maybe in part because people were smaller then than they are now. Growing up in a culture in which fighting is commonplace, boxing is actually (to borrow Unagidon’s categories) a less savage / more civilized way to settle disputes: no gouging, biting, kicking, etc.
I’ve read that, during that time period in which my father was growing up, the most popular sports in the US were baseball, college football, thoroughbred racing, and boxing. Certainly boxing was important in the Catholic urban population centers. You can hear not-yet-oldtimers here talking about famous local matches that would pit the champ from the Irish neighborhood against the champ from the Italian neighborhood (or the Polish against the Lithuanian – substitute your ethnic groups as needed). Some Catholic-run community centers had gyms with rings, speed bags, and the whole nine yards.
Now, with the advent of MMA, boxing quickly is becoming obsolete. Not sure what any of this says about our culture, but it seems that things have changed.