Football

At a time like ours which is not exactly devoid of fascination, football takes an exceptional position. Regardless if managers or street-sweepers, politicians or prisoners, more than that, even entirely opposite social groups will gratefully resort to that topic. The author cannot avoid the question what makes football that interesting, what makes it a social phenomenon. And the fact the question cannot be answered thoroughly, does not impair its attractivity. Quite the contrary.
As for the bare facts: 22 persons hunting a ball is from a technical point of view quite boring. The more amazing are the fuss that is made about it, the tears that are shed, the noses that are broken and the children that are procreated, simply because one team has beaten the other. This technical side can be called 'denotation'. This term means a quality which we can without being too malicious characterize as dull information - an implied invitation, in other words, to have a discreet look at the wristwatch and to wonder how time sometimes seems to stand still. But over that basis another component piles up, the cultural meaning which is attached to the neutral fact. And it seems it is exactly the hardly challenging original idea of football which literally cries for being emotionally and intellectually supercharged. Being trivial is still the best precondition of being profound.
Umberto Eco has stated a similar thing with regards to verbal sign systems, texts in other words. He subdivides them into 'open' and 'closed' ones. Closed texts imply a single reading, thus preferring being informative to being creative, texts for everyday use, for instance. In contrast, open texts enjoy their own variety of readings, thus inviting the readers to speculation. They do not confer their meaning in themselves, but require an actively participating reader. The interesting point of this is the more closed a text is conceived to be, the more meanings can be constructed anyway. There is no text with one single meaning. (With a compassionate address to religious fundamentalists of any kind.) In turn a text, however open it might be, cannot carry any meaning; its scope of interpretation, albeit variable, remains end- (if not bound-)less in principle. (With a recommendation to political ways of dealing with civil rights.)
Now football is a typical example for the first case; its rules are so simple even Americans feel bored by them. After all, baseball or American Football matches are much more complicated. But it is exactly its closed primitivity, its dull denotative component which elevates this simple sport to an eternally sung phenomenon; now we are talking about its connotative compnent. So we might be more precise: The less imaginative the denotation, the more creative the connotation.
And football has been experiencing quite a breathtaking connotative development in the last 50 years. Originally considered to be a mere working-class sport whose executors might at best become a petrol station owner after they quit kicking, thus belatedly trying to climb the social ladder, it has grown into a huge cultural form by now. It is the lubricant of the media machinery, it provokes more and more profound comments and reflections, it conquered the status of a philosophical issue long ago.More than the history of political parties it serves as a blueprint for a principle analysis of the history of mentality, for it is endowed with such a universal quality delighted sports palace attendants celebrated in this country about sixty years ago the last time. It is a code of the declining and constant values, mass psychosis, individual motivation, suspense, the schematic, in short: for everything and nothing. And nobody blames it for that. By now, the common fan himself reflects hedonistically upon the emptiness of the language of football (players). This means the factual component has become so complex that it reflects upon itself.So komplex ist die sachliche Komponente mittlerweile geworden, dass sie sich selbst reflektiert.
Nobody can evade football as a way of life anymore. Particularly before big events such as international championships even the disinterested loudly display their temporal reformation, exactly posing that kind of questions every real fan enjoys answering - for instance, what are the chances for the German team like, what is an offside trap, what is meant by the competition arithmetics and so on. Intellectual circles either participate fully, albeit aware there is still time left for a wink or they resort to the observation of the second order, which means they have a look at the football madness around (and inevitably at the first order object of observation, too, namly football). What is more, it has become a veritable topos to draw conclusions from the national team's state and its way of playing to the national state in general. And maybe for that reason, too, the professionals crawl more and more depressedly over the field, with the weight of the entire Western cultural state on their shoulders. Given that, the well-(?)meant advice to simply regain the joy of playing seems to be totally useless.
Technically speaking everybody tries to dissolve the closed factual form into the open medium of conclusion by finding relations to the economy, politics, psychology, mythology, biography, science and culture. So football can be anything, but hardly pure sport. This involves a certain danger: theoretically the football fans mightturn their backs to the expanding cultural relations which do not seem to have anything in common with the simple truisms of football. But paradoxically the inklings of the growing alienation of the fan basis, the credibility crisis of highly paid professionals actually secure its existence: every irated fan will dispute the football millionaire's frighting spirit and his enthusiasm, but not the notion of football as such. Lamenting the once innocent club sport has become too commercial just do not result in the break with football; instead the football business absorbs it functionally. Pure unadulterated football remains authentic for the fans; they only blame the overestimated and spoilt players who have forgotten to be enthusiastically earthy. So the spectators complain by the ten thousand about the missing club identification the players show, their luxury problems of motivational lack - but they do so at the only place they can utter loud criticism - the stadium, having paid the entrance fee. Paradoxial? Of course. Boycotting seems impossible. The fans see themselves as the guardians of the Grail of Football and detach themselves from all those intellectual smarties, eggheads, arrogant club chairmen, snappy managers, dubious consultants and just the lazy players.
So it is exactly that diversification of meanings making the fans aware of the authentic roots. Might others break the closed text open for futher readings, medializing the form - the fans do know it is closed. That is why the primitivity of football remains a constant scandalon for the other oberservers and keeps inducing intelligent and far-fetched explanations.

Elite

As we have inevitably noticed, the elite concept has been booming in the last few months. Before it will have exceeded its trendy half-life, the author likes to seize the opportunity to give some irrelevant thought to the semantic traps of this celebrated notion.
Since the beginning of time, May 8th 1945, to be more precise, Germany has had some difficulties in classifying citizens regarding their influence (foreigners or recent immigrants count for nothing, of course, since they cannot speak German they are autoatically inferior). And this is for two reasons: Firstly the concept somehow implies the selection procedure. We are about to imagine bored people in uniforms distinguishing two groups of newly arrived people at the loading ramp. Secondly since the 1970s it has become additionally out of fashion, for no potential member of the chosen ones wanted to qualify as a target for terrorist assassinations. From that point of view any elite will be well advised not to behave like that. The media have realized that for a long time, subdividing celebrities into A, B and C categories; while A does not have to stand for media attention, C must tackle the problem of how to make its lost self-esteem palatable to disgusted tabloid journalists. These two reasons bilaterally put the screws on the concept of elite. Which makes the problem right now all the more virulent when it comes to supporting elites appropriately. Again we are faced wit a highly paradoxical construction, for who is entitled to count whom as the elite? If we think it over, we can distinguish two constellations.
#1: The existing elite calls itself elite. Revolutionary assassinations apart, this involves great difficulties because this clientele cannot completely dispel the heretic suspicion it is only interested in its own profit. That is the way it is - lining each other up with monetary awards and lobby positions. Common good is a camouflage for selfish profit. And dog does not eat dog. So credibility is missing, because we might doubt the elitist intercessor's sincerity.
#2: Selecting an elite is an outsider's duty. Which again raises the question of competent assessment. How can I be sure who the elite is and to be treated that way if I do not belong to it, that is if I have no idea if the so-called elite actually is the elite? So credibility is missing, because we might doubt the non-elitist intercessor's factual competence.
In other words, elite is a phantom. As long as things work, no thought is squandered about it. As soon as things go wrong, it will be hectically watched out for - to hardly any avail, since the potential elite will only lament its tied hands.
Most interesting is the political elite's behaviour; probably thanks to expensive opinion research it has noticed a certain dissatisfaction with its performance and is now trying to lead the movement demanding elite support. In doing so, the politicians have turned a disadvantage into an advantage, sneaking out of focus. They ingratiate themselves as a kind of instantaneous water heater for supporting elites and save their position. After all, politics rids itself of tackling problems elites are entitled to solve by calling for elite itself.
Our hectic debate neglects what elite support really aims at. After all, elite support is an ambiguous term, as can be affirmed by the declining elite of the classical educated by use of the pair genetivus subiectivus and genetivus obiectivus; elite supports either means supporting an existent or a developing elite. In the first case the problem is to define an elite extensionally, in the second one to characterize it intensionally. Case no. 2 is more complicated, because we would have to decide what qualities are most useful for society and deserve to be supported sustainedly. Heaven forbid! It is much easier to enter the familiar battlefield for research budget and haggle about per cents instead of objectives. This is because the very principle of elite us self-contradictory; on the one hand it is meant to characterize a group of people who is a minority (thus detaching itself from the majority), on the other it is inteded to display qualities which are in keeping with the interest of the entire population. Elites are the primi inter pares. Furthermore (and her lies the biggest problem) they are meant to form a special but not an exclusive group. Otherwise social promotion prospects on the way up into would be impossible. But they must be possible if values such as achievement orientation and education are meant to be based socially. And this is the only way for elites to legitimate themselves - strictly theoretically speaking, of course. Talking about pinstripe suited washouts or the football players' or civil servants' working morale clearly hint at that crisis of legitimation only the elites' behaviour can alleviate and not their permanent crying for support. Once again, the best example is set by common language use: elitist behaviour just does not mean the elite's behaviour but simply the arrogance the incompetent people with useful contacts display.

Charity

Charity is a complex matter which requires great control skill. If it is too less applied, it will tend in the long run to hard-hearted stingyness which will roughly argue as follows: The present amount of my altruistic devotion does not suffice to improve other people's living conditions. Why not save it for my own affairs? Too bad, though, we can only be aware of our interests, but not of the changing conditions under which we might achieve them. We never can tell when charity might acquire the desired status of a favour which when the time will have come will insist on remuneration. We run the risk of misjudge the investive value of obligingness.
On the other hand excessive charity will tend to change the actant; who has given generously before might become a petitioner himself. That phenomenon may be rare, but should for the sake of completeness not go unnoticed, for once again it proves the asymmetrical character of so-called friendship. Charity as an abstract principle does not care who grants it to whom; the impoverished benefactor/benefactress, however, will do. Like so many other things, charity is a matter of the right measure.
Modern political life is mainly characterized by public arguing maintains a more deflationary idea of charity. Therefore it is so much distant from the ideal of discourse ethics which conceives different opinions above all to be exchange of positions which will allow the arguers to come out enriched, with adjusted positions and a deeper understanding. In fact, charity as being prepared not to deny contrary opinions are legitimate is very hard to find. Whoever dares step to the forum with an opinion of his own must loudly insist the other speakers - unless they do not hold a similar view - are ignorant bunglers who are not to be confided the country's fate to. We know that attitude too well: All people are lying -except me. Nobidy takes you seriously - only me. Public discussion for taht reason is a controversy, not a clarifying debate.
Conviction to be completely right, the opponent wrong, generates foam. Declaring a different opinion as incorrect is often a complacent semantic camouflage of the own ignorance. This way makes it easy, maybe a little too easy. It is just a matter of taking the easy way out to denounce a deviant opinion, to attest a moral and/or intellectual and/or mental defect. You will be sorry if you do not share my opinion.
Now what is comfortable is not necessarily what is reasonable; Ancient mythology enumerates several specimens of eccentrics who hold an opinion which differed from the majority's view, did not get a hearing and unfortunately had to pay for its ignorance. Theresias feared even Trojan gifts (and rightly so), but was not taken seriously. As the following slaughter showed, the majority was not reasonable. But what is reasonable is what the American philosopher Donald Davidson has called the Principle of Charity. It says it is an irrational strategy to deny someone's rationality only because he does not agree with us. Even if we cannot make out at first sight arguments backing an attitude or an action, this will not mean there are none. It is misjudging the Principle of Charity which displays arrogance. In calling someone stupid one confers that attribute on oneself.
So the Principle of Charity is a rare good in a knowledge-based society which constantly demands originality and intelligence while rejecting too many efforts in that direction as useless and senseless, thus preferring reliable failure to uncertain innovation. The prevalent Zeitgeist much too often poses the question Why instead of Why not. That is linked up with the discussion is organized in a strictly two-valued way: Either something is 100 per cent true or equally wrong. As we can easily imagine, this Everything Or Nothing tactics nips the Principle of Charity in the bud. Yet accepting reasons for a contrary opinion does not mean adopting them and deserting with flying colours.
Once again: The Principle of Charity is used too rarely. Whoever bears it in mind will run the risk of being isolated and falling victim to the running board traveller's dilemma: When everybody behaves foolishly, the person who refuses to take part will be the biggest fool. I want things to be changed, but do not want to start it off. For that reason the Principle of Charity is so problematic, rationality so risky. For instance: A and B are fiercely quarrelling over economic policy. A is foaming with rage and barking the terrible regulations strangulating the starving industry's flexibility must be finally abolished. On B's forehead the social vein is swelling, and he is hissingly propagating quite the contrary, capital is to be more fairly redistributed so that the inland demand will be stimulated. Now enter C, only armoured with Davidson's Principle of Charity, saying: But gentlemen, of course both views are up to a point justified. Want to bet A and B will stop short, only to let the club drop upon the unfortunate C in rare unanimity, just to return undisturbed to their confrontation, on condition enough dogmatic energy is left?
It just proves again one has to afford charity - paradoxically by being paid for it, namely as a professional mediator or a conflict therapist. Of course, this would not have to be that expensive, but as anything is purchasable, it is quite reassuring there is a price to reason.
However, the Principle of Charity will come to its inflationary border. It refers especially to dealing with its vowed enemies. Sooner or later (and in fact 'when' will be the most difficult question) we cannot afford to try to find reasonable arguments for anything. Some time the limit between rational liberality and cowardly relativism will be crossed. This is just when rationality turns again. So reason will be jeopardied on two sides: one the one hand if it centres on a single opinion, on the other if it is laid claim to any opinion. Only the golden mean can be useful - like so often: Tolerating an opposite view without quitting the own. It is well-founded dissent which is true communicative harmony, but not a bleak standard of opinion which calls itself consent.

Authenticity

Modern societies consist of a dubious principle, because its achievements are increased and decreased at the same time. By expanding the division of tasks the holistic forces representing what is behind are on the decline. On the one hand, the amount of knowledge is growing; on the other, it becomes less and less manifest. Domains of knowledge pile up without resulting in a general sum of individually relevant information. Simply because its quantity is beyond individual capacity. As a consequence, sectorial information A can at best evoke confidence within sector B that A will not harm B. Especially technological innovations can not deny that faint feeling of uneasiness.
Nowadays it is the mass media which own the monopoly of linking social groups. They are meant to generate the public. And this public consists of leftovers – all you cannot attribute to the other expert sectors. For this reason we talk about public opinion rather than public knowledge. This is an immanent problem – neither the producing nor the consuming factors of public dicourse are endowed with insight into what is reported. Otherwise we could not call them the public. In short: The Public is the battlefield of dilettants such as you and me.
Knowledge provided by mass media is predominantly virtual. To put it more complicated: it is not autoptical. It is impossible to prove or refute if dog leashes have ceased to be regarded a useful instrument in Iraq, not even what is happening two blocks away at this very moment because that would mean one was not sitting in front of this text. So the seaming side of modern enlightenment is its growing demand for attention and trust. As we are forced to rely on other people, we are condemned to convert hope into guess that these other people (the experts) will do the right things. That is why modern enlightenment is increasingly dependent on confidence constantly searching for credibility.
Credibility means both competence and reliabilty. It is apalling to be reigned by faithful idiots as well as by cynical technocrats.But in our knpowledge based society we are more inclined to assume the publically
observed expert is competent (just because we cannot know better). And this means it is reliability that is the problematic factor.
But how to do the right things in public? How to appear credible under the present conditions? It goes without saying that our political representatives (as the embodied public actors) attach very much importance to that issue. The answer is difficult, since, unfortunately, public perception changes beyond predictability. Might dozens of PR consultants, demoscopes and spin doctors try to evoke a different impression: We are not dogs secreting saliva because someone rings a bell. And what is worse, public opinion has become aware that media reports create their own kind of reality: that politicians act differently depending on whether they communicate secretly or in public. And it is that person which lets us ignore that insight who is the one to gain consent. The extent of ignorance is called authenticity. Surprisingly, authenticity is time-bound; for instance, being authentical in the Third Reich has come totally out of fashion; especially public shouting does not generate confidence anymore.
Therefore is seems the requirements of authenticity have increased to a large degree; as a matter of fact, they cannot be
fulfilled anymore, because today two aspects interfere that can only be analytically but not factually separated:
A) the public person claiming to be authentical is to be the way he is –. In other words, he is to be a real person.
B) the public person claiming to be authentical is to appear to be the way he is. In other words, he is to be a media personality.
As soon as the intended effect comes into sight, as soon as one has to be real in front of observers, strategical conscience breaks in. The public person is aware that his authenticity is examined. As a consequence, he cannot be that kind of person he might be in private. So, the demand is paradoxical, because it mixes up publicity and privacy. And it is the fact that this is impossible that makes it that interesting. A public person is necessarily a performer, and the audience, the public, is prepared to equate him with a liar, to suspect the appearances are deceptive. Many media attacks on privacy are owing to the inspired efforts to look behind the mirror, to observe with the camera without the camera, to find out what person the personality is.
Once celebrities in politics and economy could faithfully consult media consultants (mostly journalist deserts) who gave the same kind of advice to any face and forgot that lifting the corner of the mouth looked in one case malicious, but in the other sly. Well, those times are over. Nowadays authenticity demands different strategies. Having invested some thought on that issue, the author has come to the conclusion that there are two some politicians are already applying:
1) They turn inquiries into their authenticity in a modest lesson on the topic of media image constraints. Motto: "As a journalist, you ought to be aware of your professional expectations. We both know how to play the game, after all."
2) They ostentatiously (!) take pains to appear to be as boring, unimaginative and rhetorically incompetent as possible. Motto: "Attention! I am real. After all, there are too many swindlers who bombard the public with oratorical unit constructions. I am so ... matter-of-fact."
Both strategies count on minus times minus making plus. Strategy 1 argues: Yes, I am real, because I admit I cannot be real. Strategy 2 prefers to deconstruct the image of competence the media create: Yes, I am real, because I am incompetent.
In sum: Is an authentical person someone who lies best? Not necessarily: Authenticity means believing one's own lies.

Action

In many languages, words and actions are oppositions. Words seem to belong to the dusky domain of theoretical talking, whereas it is the action which courageously creates facts. Take, for instance, the role model of the taciturn cowboy whose communication efforts are focussed upon twinkling and spitting in the prairie wind while his gun acts. But even in civilized areas there are people who deliberate, announce, threaten, promise, and others who shut up and realize the talking. People languish for those active men or women prepared to end all the mourning and babbling. Without explanation, without hesitation.
But this is a misunderstanding of great consequences – and it is due to the implications of the word (!) action. Since human beings rely more exclusively than ever on their eyes, they concentrate on the immediately visible and neglect what can be heard in between. Furthermore, it is easier to close one's eyes than to listen carefully. But if we compare words with actions, it will strike us that they do not differ that much. After all, they both require consciousness and mind; and both of them are meaningful (it might only be dubious what meaning they convey). And both of them can be described with regards to their beginnings, their proceedings and their effects. Describing means understanding. Understanding is based on cultural convention. Words and actions are not contradictory; all the same, they are interdependent, for words must be embodied by actions, and actions become actions by being put in a verbal form. Otherwise we could only speak about behaviour that remains to be interpeted as meaningful action.
Cultural convention can only reveal itself within a certain type of situation. This especially goes for verbal actions. An utterance such as "He is very intelligent" can express as various action patterns as a praise, an envious concession, an ironical remark, a warning. That is why verbal actions are often ambiguous and much more comlicated to handle, for as opposed to nonverbal action they are always directed towards a partner player. We never act alone, whenever we speak; even monologues imagine an interlocutor.
It is the observable effect which separates words and actions. Hitting a nail into a wall to fix a picture is simple by comparison; but nailing another person to the wall in an argument is in contrast very problematic. But this by no means implies using words has no effects and is no action of full value. Vast quantities of human beings have already been delegated in transcendence because someone (but a certain someone) has just uttered certain words referring to a mighty instance called God, Allah, Property, Nation, Race, thus triggering off the manifest action. But we need not address to the world concience. Just look at everyday life. Some diligently chosen words suffice to contract marriages, arrest persons, put masses into a state of highest joy or anger. The issue becomes most crucial when someone intends to achieve a certain effect X, but lamentably ends up with Y - the notorious boomerang effect, for instance when you get spanked for a compliment. Sound waves sometimes generate physical uneasiness.
So we should not be too prompt to separate words from actions. And that fewer and fewer persons are ready to take over responsibility for what they have said does not back denial of words as actions - quite the contrary. Even modern sociological theories which prefer talking about communication to action confirm personal communication must be conceived as action. To put it differently: It may be true all of us are determined by constraints of matter - but we remain us. And at the age of automatism we do not respect people who put decisions into practice, but people who declare themselves responsible. We should not get fatigued to stress that especially persons in leading positions get also paid for being personal address groups for social sanctions. That the word became flesh is only partly true; backbone is indispensable, too.