Extreme sports (1, 2, 3)

Extreme sports (1)

Have you ever wondered what extreme sports are for? Have you ever wondered why no other animal on Earth, not only doesn’t do any extreme sports, but doesn’t do any sport at all? Why has no other monkey ever tried to climb the Everest for the fun of it? Why have I never seen a herd of hippos line up and then race for who from them gets to the nearest lake first and just for the pleasure of the victory? Why does no eagle fly into a dark cave and then communicate to his fellow creatures “I did this”? Why has no wildebeest ever tried to cross a river on a tightrope for the fun of it? Why dive in a shark-infested sea? Why, in short, why jump from the sky from an airplane without a parachute?

According to Aristotle, man is a rational animal. Pascal did not see it this way when he wrote: “All the unhappiness of men has only one source, that is, not knowing how to remain quiet in a room”. Here, thanks to Pascal, are some reasons why we do extreme sport, a sport we know in advance that it can cost us our life, yet we do it!

Man, if we want to see him as he is, we must see him as a very unbalanced and dangerous creature among all the other creatures on the planet (no one, however, denies him other qualities, but these come after, if they ever come). He is a very dangerous person to himself and to all the other animals on the Earth that hosts him. He is a nonsense being and before him he has only death and this will happen in one way or another, and he knows it. This view of himself doesn’t help his condition already fragile and destined to perish in an ocean of absurdity.

I associate extreme sports with extreme boredom, feeling useless, not wanting to adapt to a society full of injustices, not knowing what to do with one’slife in such a world. And so man discovers that he is unable to live his own existence as nature gave it to him. Here, then, the real meaning of extreme sports: they are a challenge against everyone and everything.

And when we think that all this social and natural breakdown is due, not to a healthy, good and just brain, but to a brain that consciously or unconsciously has created step by step with only the instinct of procreation and domination, then, without a doubt, we realize in what an evolutionary disaster we are.

What is your idea about this subject, reader?

Extreme Sports (2)

I was wondering these days, given the interest that aroused the first post on Extreme Sports, published on Facebook, if the Colosseum, this arena of screams of life and death or kill or you will be killed, has something to do with Sport Extreme? And, by association of ideas, even with wars, with extreme violence, with the Inquisition, with bonfires, with concentration camps, with death sentences. I am inclined to say “Yes”, and I mean this Yes in this sense: between the gladiator and Caesar I see a certain affinity; between wars and those who organize them as well, and so on. Does the Colosseum, then, have or does it not have something to do with “Extreme Sports”?

Let’s make this clear immediately: he or she who is at the mercy of an Extreme Sport or has an iron will to realize his “dream” at any cost, even at the cost of his life; and he (I would leave “she” out in this contest ) who has the power to create a Colosseum, to create the Inquisition, to make wars, to kill, to burn his fellowmen alive, etc., certainly doesn’t use his body like an athlete to realize his “dream”, but the body of others and in a negative way! In other words, we could say that we have two types of Extreme Sports, one that we consider positive ( climbing the Mont Blank ) and the other negative ( organizing the Second World War ).

And not only. We also know that sports in general are highly acclaimed and privileged by politicians. Why? Because they keep millions and millions of people attached to the TV. It’s not for nothing that sports heroes are paid tons of money, while an assembly line worker earns just as much as he remains alive. The first acts as an actor like the politician, the second makes himself useful to society as a bricklayer. Etcetera, etcetera, it never ends! In any case, I think that these Extremes Sport have similarities in common: physical, psychological, cultural affinities. However, I’m not sure. I could also be wrong and I ask you, readers, what is your opinion? So, eventually, we will be wrong together. Thank you!

Extreme sports (3)

We have always given ourselves names and invented names, millions and billions of names, but there is one that binds us all together: we are all creatures of the earth and the universe without meaning. Nobody is born with a sense. He can only conquer it, give it to himself, create it for himself and only while he is alive. The same for she. Is there a culprit for all this? No. Not at all. There are no culprits either in the plural or in the singular. This is how things work. The bottomless and meaningless cesspool to which our destiny is linked, is the absurd cause of all our doings, thinking and living.

Having to deal with these existential conditions, those who understand them know that you never risk anything even when you risk everything. This is why extreme sports, despite sometimes the protagonists push themselves to fatal and crazy risks, for them, however, the game is already done: they go ahead with their goals and, if necessary, go on until the encounter with death and with open eyes!

An example. A 35-year-old mountaineer. He is located at seven thousand meters on K2. He can’t take it anymore. He is exhausted. He is half frozen. He is alone. What to do? It is the seventh time that he has tried to climb K2. Go back one more time without having reached the top? He had promised his wife and children that this time he would make it. And now? And now start going down with all this fiasco in mind?

What about his fame, his fans, his friends and to those who expected more of him? To hell with all these ideas! Yeah, to hell with it, but they wallow in his brain. He knows the abc of existence ad nauseam. To die as an old man and a failure? No, he doesn’t even want to think about it!

His mind, in that dramatic and decisive moment, becomes more and more mathematical, speculative, ruthless. For the first time he knows his true face, his  alter ego: is inflexible, clearheaded and devoid of feelings. However, if he doesn’t go down now, he will have no escape.

When business men are betting, not on a god like Pascal, but on their business, they reason like this: if we lose, we lose nothing; if we win, we win everything. So are the extreme sport men, like the mountaineer stuck on K2. In front of him, however, there was no victory, but the defeat, a defeat that, at that moment, he turned it into a victory!

If you have something to say, you’re welcome