Tradition & sport

Det har uppstått en diskussion om sport. Det kan därför vara på sin plats att referera till den italienske traditionalisten Julius Evola, och dennes uppfattning om sport. Framför allt anser jag att Evola har en poäng när det kommer till massporter som fotboll, hockey, bandy/innebandy etc, vulgära sporter som genomsyras av nedåtsträvande andlighet. Sport för plebejer således. Nåväl här är Evola:   

Regarding the degenerated forms of asceticism, I would lie o point out the spirit of a phenomenon that is ore properly connected to the plane of “work” (that is, of the fourth caste). The modern world knows a sublimated version of work in which the latter becomes “desinterested”, disjoined from the economic factor and from the idea of a practical or productive goal an takes an almost ascetic form; I am talking about sport. Sport is a way of working in which the productive objective no longer matters; thus, sport is willed for its own sake as mere activity. Someone has rightly pointed out that sport is the “blue collar” religion. Sport is a typical counterfeit of action in the traditional sense of the word. A pointless activity, it is nevertheless still characterized by the same triviality of work and belongs to the same physical and lightless group of activities that are pursued at the various crossroads in which plebeian contamination occurs. Although through the practice of sport it is possible to achieve a temporary evocation of deep forces, what this amounts to is the enjoyment of sensations and a sense of vertigo and at most, the excitement derived from directing one’s energies and winning a competition-without any higher and transfiguring reference, any sense of “sacrifice” or deindividualizing offering being present. Physical individuality is cherished and strengthened by sport; thus the chain is confirmed and every residue of subtler sensibility is suffocated. The human being, instead of growing into an organic being, tends to be reduced to a bundle of reflexes, an almost to a mechanism. It is also very significant that the lower strata of society are the ones that show more enthusiasm for sports, displaying their enthusiasm in great collective forms. Sport may be identified as one of the forewarning signs of that type of society represented by Chigalev in Dostoyevsky’s The Obsessed; after the required time has elapsed for a methodical and reasoned education aimed at extirpating the evil represented by the “I” and by free will, and no longer realizing they are slaves, all the Chigalevs will return to experience the innocence and the happiness of a new Eden. This “Eden” differs from the biblical one only because work will be the dominating universal law. Work as sport and sport as work in a world that has lost the sense of historical cycles, as well as the sense of true personality, would probably be the best way to implement such a messianic idea. Thus, it is not a coincidence that in several societies, whether spontaneously or thanks to the state, great sports organizations have arisen as the appendices of various classes of workers, and vice versa.

Stycket är saxat ur en längre text kallad: Regression of the castes