tradition/history/politics
Writing for a cause
As I woke early on a sublime Sunday morning, I yearned for a good walk and more importantly, a good talk. After a Saturday rife with action, scarcely finding a singular moment of rest, the day volunteered itself for contemplation; however, contemplation was worth little without the flame of competition. For the task, I drafted a worthy adversary and set off to find a suitable destination, not merely for its physical value but also to be the spark to the laid kindling. “Now my friend,” I began assertively. “The day awaits with open arms. The sun is high, and the wind is still; let us walk through the woods into the adjacent farmland. Bear witness, my friend, to man and nature as God intended.” The spark was lit – I knew from his face – and I could see the competitive spirit germinating within him. “On a fine day, why would we go see such drab sights that remain unchanging whether it rain, snow, or hail? The grass and trees remain rooted, indifferent, and at the absolute mercy of their surroundings, yet man has a choice. What demarcates us from the tree is just that choice: our facility to react and ultimately master. Let us venture into the city, for on days such as these, throngs of people emerge and realize their will. Their faces adopt a new countenance, their step quicken to a new cadence; bear witness, dear friend, to that which represents man in nature as he intended.” “You find us admirable for our susceptibility to warmth and cold? While the city dweller needs a fine day to ‘realize his will’ as you say, the farmhand has no choice but to do so each day or he will surely starve. Just as a noble tree, he is far less infantile than we. He does not merely avoid the trying weather due to the challenge it confidently poses to our fragile figures, rather, he stands unwavering though he is made of flesh and blood, not wood. You say that the tree remains undaunted by the hard times, yet you infer that it does not do so through will; so I ask you, have you never seen a tree contort as the wind howls through her branches? The tree that remains rigid breaks; the tree that is weak snaps; the tree that has become susceptible to disease shatters under such conditions; pure will and strength keep the remaining generation ‘undaunted’ as you say. The man of nature is much the same. He is the product of the unwavering generations, the ones who were both malleable and durable. It is he, not us, who possesses a will worthy of separating man from beast. As he accepts the struggle, his flesh comparable to our own begins to take on the countenance and strength of living wood; in essence, he yearns for the hardship as we yearn for the comfort of days of warmth and leisure. Our assertion of our distinctly human nature is not purely distinguished through outright differences to the beasts of the forest – such as the choice you mention to abstain from participation in our due hardship – but the careful balance of our higher capabilities with what is true for both ourselves and our enduring companions. The only definite connection man has with God is the created natural world – anything more is speculation and the fallibility of the human mind – a creation of his the same as our own being, so would not reaching him require a holistic pursuit of his essence through his two knowable creations in tandem? Was not Chiron symbolically the teacher of many a Grecian hero exactly for his union of the world of man and beast? Through him, the greatest heroes of old learned their craft – that being the craft of true human excellence found within the upper echelons of heroism – so it is to the world of beasts, symbolized by Chiron’s equine body, that the greatest men owe at least half of their excellence.” At this, my companion laughed aloud. “You never cease to amaze me; a man will rarely advocate for reverting to mere building material rather than becoming the builder themselves! Your ideal man is jaded and calloused, not admirable. He has no sensitivity – unlike the man of the city – for the cold wind has frozen his senses and the hard earth has dulled his edge. How can a man appreciate the true warmth of spring when his exterior is more scar and burn than skin? Just as a babe experiences the first breath of life with all its immense stimulation – often eliciting tears of pain and joy simultaneously – we civilized men do the same with the sensations of life. We do not let the sting of cruelty tarnish our view of man, because we hide and extinguish it whenever it arises through our means to create institutions far surpassing the will of a single man in power and morality. We do not let the sting of winter wind hide the full caress of a spring day because, just as with the evil of man, we purge it from our experience through homes of comfort and warmth. The man you idealize is nothing more than a victim to the innate evils of the world, while I have risen above and can appreciate this day upon us with clarity and excitement. My appreciation is that of a wide-eyed child, in fact, it is the very same wonder, for my sword has been left sharp in idleness and comfort, while you are rusted over from years of abuse at the hands of the unforgiving elements. You merely wish to see fellow victims of nature in your ‘stoic trees’ and ‘resilient’ grass. It is not I who idealize the victim and revile the strong, but you.” I now understood why I had been so adamant about inviting him specifically. We both believed in the virtue of strength, yet differed so completely on where that strength was derived from or how it should be cultivated. “My friend, it seems as though you have not once stepped into the woods on a spring or winter day. While her bark may well protect her during times of trial and tribulation, does it stop her from blooming with lush leaves and flowers at the first subtle touch of spring’s hand? No, my friend – she feels this subtlety for the very reason that she has a comparison to distinguish it by. After the long, hard winter, the melt of snow from her flexed branches certainly feels as sublime as the breath of life taken by the fragile newborn. It is untrue that the tree with the thickest bark is unable to feel intensely, rather, that tree is simply able to experience a wider range of stimulation without collapse. The exotic flower may be beautiful – it is within its very fragility and impermanence that it is so – however, it can never compare in strength and value to the majesty of a fully formed oak. The sweetness of a ripe peach only becomes exquisite when the taste of the bitterness of an unripe one is known – just as spring is to winter. Unfortunately, man is fickle, and no experience can be felt ‘objectively’, rather, its beauty, value, and intensity are only felt when comparison can be made. The man of the city is not satiated by merely sitting idle in the warmth of spring, rather, the stimulation is of such minimal importance that presently drama or the allure of international travel trump it at the first suggestion. The bar for his pleasure and satisfaction has been set so high, that he is perpetually deprived of common joy. He constantly seeks more stimulation, more pleasure, more of the newness you yourself have expressed yearning for, yet by the day's end the actions taken that once offered the key to joy now serve as a mere benchmark as to what must be achieved tomorrow. How can a man not feel he is a failure when each day he must exceed the victories of the last? No, my friend – it is exactly the man who keeps himself a babe that is joyless. A babe grows for the very reason that he must, and in growing with challenge, his necessity for overcoming becomes satiated from surpassing trial and experiencing the same events as a stronger, larger, and more capable being. The satisfaction of a toddler with the ease of movement after enduring the difficulty of navigating the unwieldy body of a newborn for so long is evidenced as they run ceaselessly through life; would he feel that joy if he had never had to learn to walk, run, and skip arduously? When the farmhand is young, the harvest is hard. He does not know how much food will last him the winter; he does not understand the temperament of his moody plow-ox; in essence, his first years are characterized by challenge and are the most likely to get him killed. However, as the years go by, the ox becomes a friend and co-worker, and the necessary food can be estimated to the day with a mere glance at the shed full from the harvest. The actions are precisely the same as when he first began his career, yet, his satisfaction is derived from the ease with which now they are completed. The bar for him remains set, for the challenge that he has overcome creates a ‘new’ experience from events that have transpired before. When one grows as a person from hardship, he is born again, and each experience he takes is like the first step of a newborn for he inhabits a new soul just as the babe inhabits a new body. On the other hand, a man whom experiences physically new events in the same body and soul will, inevitably, run out of the former before the latter.” As I turned, the smugness that characterized the facial expression of my adversary had shifted from smugness to a furrowed brow and a flexed jaw. “Your point is intriguing, yet I relegate it to mere rhetorical skill and wit – both of which I regretfully conceded you possess – than true soundness and truth expressed by your argument. Philosophizing and analogies to flora and fauna are all well and good, yet neither can satisfy the empirical evidence that lies firmly in my camp. Fine, the woods and farmland we shall traverse, yet do not think you have won; I can beat you on your territory as cleanly as if it were my own.” -E.S.
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“Rugby is a game for barbarians played by gentlemen. Football is a game for gentlemen played by barbarians. Rowing is a sport for gentlemen played by gentlemen,” (altered Oscar Wilde quote). Though Wilde never wrote the last sentence of the opening quote, I find it a fitting continuation, for the stereotype of rowing as deeply aristocratic and gentlemanly is well-earned. I originally heard this additional extension to the quote yesterday from a friend of mine before we embarked on the much dreaded 2K test – for those who do not know, a 2K is the primary gauge of a rower's strength on the water – and I am proud to say that with these words ringing in my ears, I was able to shatter two previous personal bests within the span of one week. Though squarely third on the team of around thirty, I still take considerable pride in what I have accomplished over my four years; however, who would believe me if I told them rowing drove my burgeoning interest and work surrounding philosophy? If you are browsing my writing, you will likely have a general understanding of my philosophical convictions, which to summarize, are a cohesive but tenuous mixture of traditionalism, Catholic thought, and a healthy dose of Nietzsche, which are all traditionally lauded for their abstraction and lack of tangibility. However, through my own experience, I seek to pluck these philosophies from the clouds and show that their metaphysical teachings are firmly translatable into even a modern man’s life. I am sure you are already groaning; no one wants to hear another rehash of some bland college application essay or a rehearsed speech by an uninterested student about sports’ impact on character, yet I promise you this dive into my experience with rowing falls in neither of those categories. To illustrate my thesis that rowing shaped my traditionalism and philosophical work, I will draw on my personal journey over my four years with the sport, as well as the overall history of rowing and athletic practice as a whole, and clearly show the undeniable tether between the two seemingly unrelated disciplines. Man is a fickle creature, and his interests ebb and flow dramatically year by year, decade by decade, and century by century; yet some of his interests extend beyond the exoteric and dip into the primordial, one such example being sport. Great civilizations have always engaged in sport, and there has been much speculation as to why this is the case. Despite the pages upon pages of intellectual jargon that beat around the metaphorical bush eternally on this topic, the answer is painfully simple: sport is a simulation of war. Many may find this analysis juvenile, yet in every period excluding our own, such a simulation has dual interconnected purposes. For one, a great society is characterized by order and stability (stability of structure, not necessarily stability through perpetual peace unless it is peace by absolute domination) yet the youth are naturally predisposed to violence, vitality, and rash physicality. The foremost problem through most of history for sophist lawmakers has been what to do with Hebe (youthful vigor), for there is nothing a gluttonous nature-rejecting bureaucrat disdains and fears more than vitality – a quality in himself which has been left underdeveloped or actively stifled to pursue his decadent path. Here we come upon the famously nihilistic and lamenting quote: “Give them bread and circuses and they will never revolt,” (attributed to the poet Juvenile). Juvenile is lamenting the decline of a vital aristocratic regime – what Spengler would call a ‘culture’ – into the empire of hegemony and decadence – in Spenglerian terms, ‘civilization’. Across the globe, we can see the tangible effects of youthful dissatisfaction, whether it be the rise of alternative politics in the West or the emergence of young male Jihadist movements in Africa and the Near East, such as Boko Haram. These movements comprised of young, uneducated, ill-equipped men have shaken the global order to its foundations rather than the seemingly titanic feuds between great powers. Just as the fascists rose to power on the tide of dissatisfied male ethos; just as the bronze age collapsed as a result of vital and nomadic sea peoples; just as Rome – a city of rouges and outlaws – dominated the Etruscans surrounding them; so will increasingly radical groups of young men come to shake our present age of rigid convention. The concept I laid out has been fairly well established by both the academic works of Costin Alamariu, such as Selective Breeding and the Birth of Philosophy, and his popular (though admittedly unacademic) exhortation Bronze Age Mindset, and is the fundamental foundation of Nietzschian aristocratic political philosophy. In essence, the nihilistic view of sports is merely that it is a means for sophists to channel youthful vitality in highly controlled and sterilized situations, yet as an athlete, this answer is unsatisfying and represents only an accurate reflection on the adulteration of sport, not its true essence. Sport can be an opium, or it can serve as a highly influential demarcation of virtue and worthiness. In Nietzsche’s view, an aristocracy will arise through a pastoral conquest of a settled, agrarian society. From that point of initial contact, some semblance of a social contract can be found. The resources of the masses flow toward the cultural pursuits of the distinct aristocratic class, and the military prowess of the ruling class establishes security beyond the primeval rule of custom through law; this is the essential symbiosis that founded civilization as we know it, not merely that of the West. Once the aforementioned marriage of forces created such a civilization, the noble task of cultivating an ever-complex cultural identity and upward-oriented state begins. During this process, relative peace becomes more common, and Thomas Hobbess’ requirement for a noble state to overcome the state of nature, in his words: “I demonstrate, in the first place, that the state of men without civil society (which state we may properly call the state of nature) is nothing else but a mere war of all against all; and in that war all men have equal right unto all things,” (Præfatio (Preface) of De Cive), becomes satiated through a rigid hierarchy. However, the fundamental power and vitality that allowed for the initial spark of excellence in these nomadic populations arose from their hyper-militaristic primal roots, so civilization, luxury, and peace posed a distinct risk to their ruling spirit. Edward Gibbon, through his groundbreaking history of the decline of Rome, reflects the basis for such a profound fear. His thesis states that Rome’s fall was due to a fundamental shirking of duty and weakness within their formerly vital patrician class, not external factors. Unfortunately for the Romans, though they borrowed much of Hellenic culture, they were unsuccessful in the primary Greek ideal of a physically vital ruling class. Of course, my statement is somewhat dramatized. Greece also went through periods of aristocratic decadence and decline, which eventually led to its dissolution as an independent civilization, yet the fundamental truth of their physical notions remains poignant. The primary term to associate with this cult of physicality is Kalokagathia, essentially equating the beauty of the body with the virtue of the soul. Additionally, the term was essential to the concept of a vital aristocracy, not merely an individualistic standard. Coined in Athens, the term was used among the aristocracy to communicate the standard that each aristocrat was expected to live up to; unlike modern ideals, it was an expectation rather than a detached hope that one would become an almost intermediary being to the realm of the Gods. Based on the previous paragraphs, it is clear why this ideal – so flagrant in its refutation of the modern ‘don’t judge a book by its cover' mentality – became the ruling philosophy of Hellenic civilization and ultimately cared for the already sewn seed of the original nomadic domination. The Greeks fundamentally understood the connection between civilizational survival, greatness, and retaining the original spark of vitality that allowed pastoral people to conquer a more numerous agricultural group, which was often only preserved through war. Here we stumble upon the dilemma of empires: ever-expanding the borders of one’s holdings will allow for a constant honing of the physical and military character of their aristocracy – the beating heart of any civilization – however, what happens when those ever-extending plains cease to be unknown; when there is no step left to fight for; when the entire store of fuel the civilization was predicated on, conquest, runs dry? Look to modern Greece, Italy, and England; you will find the once-raging torrents of civilization frozen over in indecision and mediocrity – desperately looking towards their past while not having the courage to embark on the deeply turbulent path to escape from the mire that their mythical forefathers arose from. However, not all civilizations took the path of insatiable conquest and survived with thriving noble classes despite lacking the riches and spiritual benefits of perpetual conquest. Civilizational survival lies in another Aristotelian value, eudaimonia, which expresses that the true heights of man are only reached through the cultivation of balance. For an aristocracy, balance is essential: balancing military commitments with artistic ones, balancing heavy-handed justice with civil content and self-determination among the peasantry, balancing readiness for combat with religiosity, and finally, balancing their vitality with cool-headed rationality to administrate a state while stimulating cultural development. Medieval Feudalism and Greek aristocracy are the systems that best exemplify such self-sustaining civilizations of balance, which bred stability and noble cultivation like none other. The similarities, differences, and eventual dissolution of these two civilizations would require multiple books, so in the spirit of sport, I will focus on athletic competition as a heightening institution as opposed to the sophist pacifier it could, unfortunately, mold into. To comprehend the importance of sport and non-military physical arts to these people, one must look to their art, for our purposes, sculpture. The first category of Greek sculpture that heralded the emergence from the Grecian Dark Ages was the Kouros, which became the primary cultural output of archaic Greece. These statues have been cited as not holding a religious connotation, however, through their embodiment of Kalokagathia and Hebe, they served as an essential representation of the intermediary between the divine and the tangible found through the symmetry of the athletes rippling muscles. These statues were used primarily to commemorate not great warriors – though much of Greek civilization at the time was structured around honoring military prowess – rather, they honored athletes. As can be seen from the emergence of the Olympic games early in Grecian history, sport would often take primacy over war and internal conflicts, evidenced by the ékécheiria (Olympic truce); in the Greek vision, the physicality of war and sport were indistinguishable from each on an esoteric level. Even the renowned crowning ceremony, which saw victorious athletes crowned with olive branches, represented the unshakable tether between the strength of the body and the virtue of the soul, for the elevation of athletes to near-divine figures honored both qualities in conjunction. Julius Evola famously said: “The blood of the heroes is closer to God than the ink of the philosophers or the prayers of the faithful,” (Julius Evola, Revolt Against the Modern World), yet Evola was a medievalist and scholar of the classical world, so I have no doubt the quote could be extended to encompass the ‘sweat on the athlete’s brow’. In the case of Classical Greece, we find sport used for the heightening and honing of an aristocratic civilization: a way for the spiritual fortitude engendered by athletic prowess to translate into a noble caste without necessitating the blind instability and Faustian pursuit of constant warfare and conquest. By this point in the essay, I am sure my stance on the state of modern sports is evident. Rather than heightening the ideals of classical civilization and nobility, modern sports seek only to distract – hence why it has become so corporatized. The foremost industries in the modern day are all characterized by their capitalization on the distraction of the masses, and sport has been instrumental in serving as one of these cultural anti-depressants. As mentioned before, the path of modern sports is far from uncharted; such a path leads to ultimate civilizational decay. How long did the Roman bread and circuses ploy last until the great columns erected by the early patricians crumbled to dust under vital barbarian hordes? The mentality is not hard to understand, for it is the mentality of every bureaucratic secular government (though pioneered by the Enlightenment). The primary goal of government fundamentally shifted, initially predicated on elevating the spiritual state of a culture, yet now focused merely on suppressing vitality and discontent. When scientifically assessed, it is only logical; measuring societal success by lifespan is a far easier task than taking the time to analyze closeness to the divine through artistic output and spiritual vitality. When sport becomes a science on how to distract and entertain, its original function of channeling youthful vitality and heightening the highest echelons of society is tossed to the wind. In the modern day, sports from grammar school to the professional leagues fundamentally separate the physical, intellectual, and spiritual elements of athleticism; symbolic of most evils of modernity, in our scientific pursuit of categorization and isolation, we have lost the nobility of harmony that even the ancients had a fundamental understanding of. We can see the effects of this daily; society is controlled by men whom have neither the courage nor the discipline of the past, and lack the duty to the divine that physical excellence once cultivated in an aristocracy. They promote technological progress, restriction, and separation from nature, for they fear nature – whereas the athlete has mastered her. The society we reside in was crafted by urban intellectuals who fear, reject, and destroy nature, hence why they seek to relegate sport to a secondary role. They are much the same as the primeval farmer, ruled by custom and fear, unable to separate the inventions of their manipulative shaman from natural, divine realities. The time we live in spiritually is far less advanced and natural than it once was, no matter how many veneers of technological advancement are placed in front of our eyes to distract us. Man’s goal of discovering the divine through his own ‘nature’, pioneered by the athlete, has been entirely subverted. These last few pages have been both impersonal and exceedingly academic, yet I find a rigorous and thorough analysis warranted for such an important topic. Sport is not merely a means for distraction or keeping the general population healthy through elevated children's games: sport is a profound means of preserving cultural, moral, and intellectual cohesion and prowess. For much of my childhood, I, unfortunately, rejected these fundamental truths, not only because I was lazy but also because our society so radically shifted what it meant to be an athlete. Crew, however, changed that, because though it is a team sport like none other – requiring perfect timing with those on your boat – the relationship each man cultivated with the oar and the boat differs wildly. When I am cranking the faded blue handle, caked in the blood and sweat of countless athletes before me, it is what I tell myself in those excruciating moments between the 900-meter and 500-meter mark that hold the power to make or break my workout. Those who never hear that voice within are relegated to perpetual mediocrity; they constitute the meat and potatoes of the team that provide a foundation for the few to build off of. However, those who find that voice calling out to them in the wilderness are a breed like no other, and in cultivating that voice, they can turn a whisper into a cry capable of triumphing over all primal instincts. The connection to aristocratic morality is apparent, for they too master their nature. Rather than living for sustenance, they reject the mere primacy of life and chase metaphysical ideals; a rower scoffs and his fatigue and physical pain to achieve much the same glory. The aristocrat does not find pleasure or release in mere work but rather in excellence to a level as biological as trained; a rower is never satiated by achievable goals. A nobleman must devote his life to martial training, where even the minute movements decide life or death; a rower’s hands dropping an inch can lead to a sizable defeat in the heat of a race. Just as a duel, a race is only mere minutes, and once it begins, there is no going back. If the rower lacks the mental fortitude to cultivate perfection for six minutes, he loses, and the nobleman, in turn, loses his life. There are no substitutions, no breaks, and no lulls in the action; each second demands an absolute commitment that most cannot muster. The question as to why rowing was and still is a staple of the British aristocracy is quite simple: it is the complete synthesis of all they stand for. Sport, though bastardized at the high levels, still retains its deeply traditional foundations, and rather than rejecting the lot because of the few adulterations, we should instead seek to purify the noble institution to cultivate mastery, not subversion or distraction. -E.S. |
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