A pride of lines

My problem is that I am easily bored. So I cannot understand how people can join lines which they don’t absolutely have to. Even in the bus line, I used to sit on the bench until the line reached a certain length and, of course, I always made sure to have a book to read. Yet most people will wait in line for an hour or more, apparently content to just macco other people or think their own thoughts. I guess they must find other persons, or their own thoughts, a lot more interesting than I do.

This was why I watched with complete disgust the scenes last week when people lined up to get tickets for the TT—Bahrain football game. I was disgusted at the organisers, who with cynical contempt arranged their business so as to take full advantage of people’s sporting and liming enthusiasm. But, perhaps unfairly, I was even more disgusted at the people in the lines, who were so lacking in pride or principle that they allowed themselves to be subjected to that kind of stress and humiliation.

Now I am not a fan of football, so in that sense I cannot empathise with the dedication that led to people going to ticket outlet three to four hours before sales were to start. But I do have my own powerful enthusiasms. Still, if there were long lines to go hear biologist Richard Dawkins give a lecture on evolution or (to prove I am not entirely intellectual) see dancer Darlene Beddoe model Victoria Secrets lingerie, I would have to forego the pleasure. Still, I think it is fair to say that last Friday’s spectacle showed how immature this society truly is.

This is a place where the heroes are sportsmen and beauty queens. If you win a Miss World or Miss Universe title, or even place in the top 10, you are virtually guaranteed a job, a public forum, and free underwear. And if you are a top footballer, cricketer or runner, you will be lionised to the extent where you can even be used as a symbol of academic achievement — even if you have never actually achieved anything academically.

So sport — or, more specifically, the three sports listed above — has the status of a religion in this society. In the run — up to the TT— Bahrain matches, newspaper editorials and commentaries portrayed the game as a patriotic event, with the massive crowd at the Hasely Crawford Stadium being hailed as an example of national unity. However, since the T&T team has no Indo—Trinidadians on it, this assertion makes sense only on the premise that it is Indo—Trinidadians who prevent national unity. And the lack of Indos on the team already makes some of the ethnocentrists here raise their racial flags, even though India with over one billion people does not have a world—class football team.

The overt belief, though, seems to be that reaching Germany would somehow make Trinidad and Tobago a better society. And, although I understand the appeal of sports, all this hyperbole irritates me. I like squash, tennis, and volleyball, but I like them as sports. I enjoy watching the superior coordination, reflexes, and grace of champions and, when I play volleyball or squash, I experience that sense of "flow" which is the closest any human being can come to perfect contentment. Intellectually, I understand that physical play was how youngsters learned the skills needed for hunting and fighting in the prehistoric environment, which is why small children find play—fighting such fun. And, in the same way, adults get enthused about organised sport because it embodies the qualities that ensured survival and reproduction on the African savannas — strength, stamina, speed. The worship of sport is therefore hardwired in the Stone Age brains encased in our Silicon Age skulls.

The thing is, we do live in a Silicon Age. And, although CLR James’s thesis in Beyond a Boundary may have been true in its day, a society is only fooling itself now if it sees sporting achievements as something that will provide a competitive advantage in the real world. Yet this is the argument proffered even by some intelligent commentators. However, save for vague talk about "people coming together" or the "West Indian spirit", these commentators never explain what the mechanism is that would convert pride in sport to, say, economic achievement. Nor do they offer even one example of a premier sporting nation that has solved its basic social problems through sport — because they can’t.

Germany was a developed country before it had a world—class football team, and Britain continued to be a strong nation when its cricket team was being beaten by everyone else. By contrast, Argentina. Brazil and Mexico have long been plagued by totalitarian tendencies, violence and official corruption, despite the supposed moral benefits of "sportsmanship." So, with T&T on the way to Germany, all those persons who place such faith in the power of football now have a chance to test their belief empirically. After all, if they are right, we should at least see a decline in the murder rate, that supreme symptom of social disorder, over the next three months. (My own prediction: over 350 dead by year’s end.)

With all that, let me make it clear that I do think sport is important and I do think it should be supported. But that is because I consider recreation important, just as serious work is. If you conflate the two, however, it reveals nothing but childish confusion. On the day that we treat sport merely as spectacle and sportsmen merely as sportsmen, it will be a sign the country has begun to grow up. E-mail: kbaldeosingh@hotmail.com

Website: www.caribscape.com/baldeosingh