Kalokagathia--Why Schools Should Not Play Sports

The Greeks had a word for it -- kalokagathia, which descried a noble human being as one possessing the perfect union of body and soul.

The term was also used to celebrate the equality of all citizens and the ideal national unity that transcended any differences in class or wealth.

This concept was central to all that it was to be Greek and explains why gymnasiums were not simply exercise centers but also centers of advanced learning—the high schools and colleges of the ancient world. Indeed many of our terms used in academia, including academia itself, come from Greek gymnasium terms. The akademeia was the gym that Plato taught at!

Amateur sports were an important part of this concept but to be admired a person could not simply be a champion of one thing, he much be a master of many different and mutually balancing skills. A one trick pony, someone who could only run fast, or lift heavy weights, or box or any of a dozen other skills, was an object of mild contempt.

A well rounded athlete.
Most people today know that the Greeks gave us the Olympics and think that the modern games somehow resemble the ancient ones but the fact is that Ancient Greeks would have been horrified by such a gross and disgusting spectacle. For one thing sports were only one small part of the true Olympics, poetry and music were equally important events and the writer of the best poem or most accomplished armature musician was often far more highly honored than the person who only won a race or wrestling match.

The Greeks admired a strong body but they knew that mules and oxen were far stronger than the best athlete and yet lacked kalokagathia since they were only dumb animals who lacked poetry, music, art and philosophy. In other words they lacked souls.

The most highly respected athletes were all rounder, people who combined in themselves many different, and mutually balancing, abilities which is why the pentathlon (five competitions) was the quintessential Olympic event. These five events were the stadion (a short foot race) wrestling, long jump, javelin throw and discus throw and one had to do well in all or most of them to win. A hulking, muscle-bound freak may have been able to win the wrestling but might not have been as fast as a lean runner or as agile a jumper or as coordinated as the discus thrower and would have been merely a laughing stock. He would also have been a loser if he were out performed in the other events.

This emphasis on mental and physical “balance” is what was celebrated in the athletic sculpture of the Classic era. This was the golden age of the amateur, in the original French meaning of the word which can be translated as "lover of", reflecting the amateur's motivation to work as a result of a love or passion for a particular activity. To compete in an athletic or artistic competition for money was considered something contemptible and utterly lacking in kalokagathia.

All this changed, however when Greek culture was taken up by non-Greeks during the Hellenistic period following Alexander the Great’s conquest of Persia. These new “Hellenizes” were not quite clear on the concept and started viewing athletic competition as a form of entertainment instead of a way of developing a balanced mind and body in order to become a worthy citizen of a democratic state.

The results were predictable. Soon money grubbing athletes moved away from kalokagathia where winning was an honor to professionalism where winning was the only thing that counted. Instead of well rounded human beings these sports prostitutes (as the Greeks themselves called them) transformed themselves into single purpose freaks.

The 18th century Enlightenment, which gave us the American Revolution, was based on a revival of Classical ideals and among the values that were revived was amateur sports as a means to achieving kalokagathia and better citizens of the "New Athens" they dreamed of building. But the Classically trained gentlemen of the era knew what had happened to Greek culture once the taint of money touched sports and were determined to prevent this degradation at all costs. One of the chief arguments they made in their battle to have sports made part of the curriculum in high school and colleges was the belief that sports would help build character, that they would help build kalokagathia.

That is why there are rules designed to prevent professionalism in school sports, rules that are today routinely flouted. High School and College sports, or at least the high-stakes, high-profile sports, have become merely a method of training what the Greeks would consider “sports prostitutes.”

The modern professional (and to a very large degree Collegiate) athletes have become single purpose trained, drug enhanced, over specialized freaks who lack in true health or physical fitness and whose artificial lifestyles and training often lead to a post career life of pain, ill health and even early death.

The Classical Greeks considered watching a sport that they could not play or had not played in their youth, pathetic and it was not at all uncommon for a heckler from the audience to be invited to come out onto the field, strip down and show everyone how to do it better. If the person was not at least willing to try he was ejected from the game. Could you imagine that happening with today’s couch potatoes sports fans? The stands would be empty. The simple fact is that modern “athletes” play at a level far beyond the capabilities of all but fellow over specialized freaks.

It is time to admit that the noble experiment of the 19th century amateur sports boosters has failed beyond all hope of redemption. The only reason we have sports in schools at all is because these idealist believed that they would teach kalokagathia (all educated people of the day at least read Greek and Latin). They do not. If some people wish to play sports, or if the sports/entertainment industry wants its employees trained, then both parties should pay for them themselves and not siphon off much needed educational dollars for their own ends.

Although Robert Heinlein was not an Ancient Greek he did understand their concept of kalokagathia and summed it up memorably:

“A human being should be able to change a diaper, plan an invasion, butcher a hog, conn a ship, design a building, write a sonnet, balance accounts, build a wall, set a bone, comfort the dying, take orders, give orders, cooperate, act alone, solve equations, analyze a new problem, pitch manure, program a computer, cook a tasty meal, fight efficiently, die gallantly.

Specialization is for insects.”

Who Cares?

Who we care about and why we care about them tells other people a lot about who we are and what kind of morals we have. I am not referring to personal family, lovers and friends. I mean, who does a person invest their moral and political passion in?

I was thinking about this today as my Army buddy Tom and I walked around the festivities in Golden Gate Park held in honor of the annual AIDS walk. Thousands of people had turned out, many carrying placards bearing pictures of a loved one they had lost to the disease and others bringing panels for the AIDS quilt, a section of which was displayed on “Hippie Hill” near the Haight street entrance to the park.

Tom seldom talks about his brother Michael, whom he lost to the disease, but today he did. In a voice thick with emotion he said “If Michael had come to live with me here in San Francisco back when he wanted to he would probably still be alive. Here in the city he would have had access to information on AIDS prevention and even if he had still gotten it there is a large network of medical and social services available that he could never have found at home. Saint Paul killed my brother.”

As Tom described his part of the Twin Cities the place was a sinkhole of prejudices and enforced ignorance back in the 1980’s with virtually no awareness programs and no medical support for the Gay community of any kind. “The way they see it,” Tom said, “is if you are Gay you can just go right ahead an die. It’s your fault even if you have never heard of AIDS in your life.”

Perhaps he is right, I don’t know, but I do know that my Aunt Kathryn was one of the nicest, most caring people I have ever known, a pillar of her church and a ready volunteer for any good cause that needed her help. She would be well into her 70’s by now but she died of AIDS in the early 1990’s contracted from a blood transfusion after a minor operation. The same governmental indifference and political infighting over what was considered the “Gay disease” killed her just as surely as it killed Michael.

To this day I still encounter people who consider themselves to be kind and moral people who remain indifferent to the plague because it “only kills those people,” as though one’s sexual orientation was sufficient cause for a person to die.

Each year 3.1 million people die from HIV related causes, 20,000 of them in this country alone and yet there are a lot of people to whom the deaths of an estimated two to three thousand damaged fetuses is a cause for deep concern and violent emotions while the deaths from AIDS are only a statistic.

Why should this be? Why is one group of more importance than another? I believe it is because, for some people at least, it isn’t about the lives of “real” people at all but rather it is about how they feel about themselves. For example there are many people who do not like the sort of women who break with their “traditional” roles and these people seek to punish those women for being different. For this sort of person the hypothetical life of a possibly deformed or mentally retarded fetus, who may not even survive birth in any event, is secondary to the chance to impose their values on the hated group.

That is why they so stridently ignore any evidence that the D&X procedure is necessary to the life or health of the woman. Who cares? They don’t know them or their “child” and will most likely never meet them. If someone hadn’t told them that these people even existed they would have no way of finding out but now that they do know about them they are able to feel smug and morally superior to someone else, a wonderful compensation for their normal feelings of inadequacy.

I met and worked with Eric Hoffer, the “longshoreman philosopher” when I was working the docks as a summer job back in high school. A totally self educated man he was considered by many intellectuals the best read and most learned man of his generation. Before he died many famous universities granted him advanced degrees based on his writings alone.

In his book “The True Believer” he dissects the sort of person who passionately advocates a cause and refuses to be swayed by facts or rational argument. As he put it “Faith in a holy cause is to a considerable extent a substitute for lost faith in ourselves.”

Those sorts of people who passionately proclaim that nothing you can say and no facts that you can show them will change their mind have all but admitted that the question is not about truth at all but about what they WANT to believe. As Eric put it “Far more crucial than what we know or do not know is what we do not want to know.”

How we see others is often only a reflection of how we see ourselves so when someone tells me “There are an awful lot of irresponsible, self centered, selfish women out there…” I get the distinct impression that they believe that they will see one of those women if they look in the mirror. That is not, by the way my opinion of them, I believe however that it is their opinion of themselves.

For others it is the sense of striking back at the world that they see as mocking and persecuting them that is the lure. “A dissenting minority feels free only when it can impose its will on the majority: what it abominates most is the dissent of the majority.”

This fills me with a great sadness. I have come to like some of these people very much and have seen their good and bad sides just as they have seen mine. They are, at heart, good and loving people who feel deep passions and who often hurt so much precisely because they care so much.

The world has not always been kind to these people and has bruised them with its rough edges. Being passionate and intelligent people they have perhaps felt these bruises more deeply than less passionate or intelligent people might have and this has shaken their faith in the world and in themselves. I don't know who said it but is true. "A cynic is a disappointed optimist.

A lot of their anger at the world and at the people who they see as wicked and immoral is really them projecting their feelings for themselves onto others.

How we see others is a very good indication of how we see ourselves.