We are not evolving as human beings. I suspect we are actually regressing in intellect and in conscience. I have never paid to see a boxing match except for Rocky in the theatre as a child. I did see a nephew once in bout. I don’t understand an effort of beating someone up as sport. If I was accosted physically by someone on the street, I would see this as a perfect place for inflicting utter harm on another but not in a ring surrounded by spectators. The martial arts have a strong modicum of respect and conduct entrenched and disciplines are oriented around self defense. In other words, boxing and martial arts are two different things.
In a core subject within my Physical Education discipline back in the early ’80’s we had taken up the merits of boxing in a debate. My position then was as it is now. Don’t do it. Don’t support it. It doesn’t serve society or the individual. There are so many other ways to compete physically and mentally which don’t have the end goal of uncivilly harming someone else’s good health.
Why do we pay to watch? Why do boxers pursue the sport? Do men and women box and pay to watch boxing because of some neanderthal like instinct of survival where fighting is perceived as a means for self sufficiency and perhaps expressive toward the onlooking female as way to gain favor. Of course, this motive contrasts with the cooperative ideal of a civil society whereby conscience in a higher form may morally restrict unleashing unnecessary physical harm on another human being.
In our quest for freedom, do we act beyond the conscienable? Do we exempt moral suasion in the face of a perceived overriding freedom and quest for profit? Do we actually possess intuitively the capacity to empathize wholly with the plight of another when another is carried from a ring on a stretcher? Can an individual be guided intuitively at all by an awareness of spirit extending beyond the self or is any effort only fictionally derived from parent / teacher coaching? If we are more than blood, bone, and water….where from do emotions such as guilt, greed, and love manifest? What must we think of the love lost by the death of a boxer? Having paid to watch boxing where a person dies, what are we to think of ourselves?
The fellow who recently died was an Irishman named John Cooney aged 28. It’s very sad. Thinking of all who knew him today and all his good deeds throughout his 28 years.