I don't watch Formula 1 racing. Watching around 20 high octane, high performance, super turbo charged, high speed, precisely engineered, aggression driven egos, is not my idea of a relaxing, exciting, or even interesting Sunday afternoons. Quite apart from the environmental and eco-unfriendly consequences for the planet. What's the carbon footprint for one of these races anyway?
But yesterday while enduring a few minutes of the German Grand Prix, I became aware (again) of the ethical black hole that is contemporary multi-billion professional sport. Two cars from the same team are in front. We hear the radio instruction / information to the first placed driver that his team mate in second has the faster car, and incidentally has the best chance of the two of challenging for the championship. Note the ambiguity – information / instruction. There is no doubt whatsoever (as the post race judgement confirms) that the rules were broken and Ferrari were cheating.
But then we were treated to the moral wisdom of Michael Schumacher saying he would do the same. The only reason for being there is to win and you do all you can to win. Including cheating. Other ex-drivers also upheld win any way you can as the prime moral imperative. Eddie Jordan who knows the business inside out, was incensed. And how refreshing to hear unambiguous anger at blatant cheating being passed off as legitimate tactic! In 2006 Schumacher's own benefiting from exactly the same scenario caused the new rules to be written. That these rules clearly prohibit instructions from management to drivers to concede position in the interests of the team, are supposed to preserve the integrity of the race.
What was obvious yesterday was that there is a dark side to integrity, an anti-ethic, a moral obligation to ignore the ethical and regulatory framework that defines the parameters of the sport. Cheating isn't bad; it is to be redefined as hunger for winning, loyalty to the team, commitment that is absolute, not to upholding the virtues of the sport, but to being first even if it requires the negation of all sportsmanship. Thus a new virtue displaces all the other virtues and values that make sport as spectacle and genuine human activity meaningful. And the judgement of a £100,000 fine imposed on Ferrari is the equivalent of a premier league footballer on £100,000 per week having to pay a fine of £1000 for moving the goalposts or breaking an opponents leg – thereby nobly upholding the moral imperative to win any way you can.
And what about the savage erosion of the fundamental sporting ethic of excellence, fairness, honesty, admiration for achievement and genuine endeavour? If win any way you can were universalised as an ethic what would that do to business and the markets – well, we know the answer to that. Or apply such egotistic nonsense to community life, the fabric of social relationships, international and foreign policy, and the world becomes a bleak, unstructured free for all. In an age of globalised technology, instant and pervasive viewing of high profile sporting events, and an idolatry of power, competition, and mega-scale corporate interests, the moral imperative of win any way you can, rapidly corrodes virtues and dispositions essential to human community. Professional sport fueled by greed driven lust for victory, then becomes a social menace, a shop windowing of unprincipled egos, an arena in which we display not what is good, humanising and life-enhancing, but the very patterns of behaviour that if universalised would consign us to a world where goodness, truth and beauty take their place in the lower league places of human aspiration.
The picture shows Alonso contemplating his recked car. He was the one given the drive through yesterday. Wonder if the same picture doubles as Alonso contemplating the wrecked image of a sport whose moral engine has blown, and whose ethical wheels are smashed beyond repair.
The latest news on all this can be read here.
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