 Beauty is not the goal of competitive sports, but high-level sports are a prime venue for the expression of human beauty. The relation is roughly that of courage to war.The human beauty we’re talking about here is beauty of a particular type; it might be called kinetic beauty. Its power and appeal are universal. It has nothing to do with sex or cultural norms. What it seems to have to do with, really, is human beings’ reconciliation with the fact of having a body
There’s a great deal that’s bad about having a body. If this is not so obviously true that no one needs examples, we can just quickly mention pain, sores, odors, nausea, aging, gravity, sepsis, clumsiness, illness, limits — every last schism between our physical wills and our actual capacities. Can anyone doubt we need help being reconciled? Crave it? It’s your body that dies, after all.
There are wonderful things about having a body, too, obviously — it’s just that these things are much harder to feel and appreciate in real time. Rather like certain kinds of rare, peak-type sensuous epiphanies (“I’m so glad I have eyes to see this sunrise!†etc.), great athletes seem to catalyze our awareness of how glorious it is to touch and perceive, move through space, interact with matter. Granted, what great athletes can do withc their bodies are things that the rest of us can only dream of. But these dreams are important — they make up for a lot.
3 comments
Faith is greater than humility, and concentricity exists for all who feel for it.
In what ways are you comparing faith to humility?
I tend to think of dreams as the ultimate goal for video games to replicate.
Dreams On Demand, would be completely awesome.
Aside from that, i tend to disagree: dreams are not enough to make up for anything my body can’t access or enact.
There is no consolation for the inconsolable.
But i tend to agree with the notion of “kinetic art.” Life motions as an art form, is one of my more abstract interests. How i open doors, how i interact with various things, how i position myself for various interactions, and why, and various useful maneuvers i’ve discovered through first hand experimentation, by employing certain tactics, principles, and considerations.
Ideally, if you’re mobile enough, and have sufficient predictive capacity… you can avoid pretty much anything damaging. And with certain training, you can develop a degree of economized motion that will allow you to remain in motion indefinitely.