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Watching sport is a part of our spirit and losing sport has been a real body blow to our collective well being. Within England and worldwide, the English Premier League is praised for giving hope and structure to lives otherwise lived in solitude and loneliness. A high profile example of this is from Claude of the infamous Arsenal Fan TV (AFTV). Claude and his fellow ‘critics’ are often themselves criticised for capitalising on Arsenal Football Club’s failures. Perhaps rightly so. As former chairman of Chrystal Palace FC Simon Jordan noted every time Arsenal lose AFTV’s views on YouTube skyrocket. On the other side of the coin, Claude praises Arsenal for saving his life from depression and suicide: “It has been a dark summer but at least I have this weeks match to look forward to”, Claude said in 2016. My own life is structured around the ebb and flow of the English Premier league. The drama of sport and the triumph of will against the odds is something we unite behind. We saw the power of victory when the first black captain of the South African Rugby team lifted the World Cup, reminding us how far South Africa has come and how far it has yet to go. In 1999 we saw what it really means to never give up when in the jaws of defeat, at 1-0 down, in the 89th minute, Manchester United won the European cup 1-2 after four minutes of added time.
Sport is littered with stories of overcoming adversity; it is why we love it. One instance was Steve Smith’s return to the Australian cricket team. After being disgraced in South Africa for his teams ball tampering on return he not only performed but was unanimously proclaimed the best batsman playing cricket today. Another example is Dejan Lovren the former Liverpool defender. Lovred fled Croatia to escape the Croat-Serb War in the 90s. Lovren returned to Croatia after the conflict because Germany refused his family’s visa application to remain in Munich. Only speaking German and struggling in broken Croatian, Lovren describes how he was bullied by classmates for his German accent and only accepted and respected on the soccer pitch. Not to mention the countless true stories now turned into successful films such as Eddie the Eagle, Invincible, Coach Carter and others. All stories of the power of the human will.
When we look closer at these stories it is clear that each achievement required a plethora of people pushing athletes toward success. It is team mates, it is family, it is friends and it is mentors. In Steven Gerrard’s biographical documentary Make us Dream, Paul, Steve’s dad describes how a coach of Liverpool approached him and said: “we would like to nurture your son”. Here, the choice of the word ‘nurture' is vital. It was the choice of Gerrard’s coach to nurture into success not to throw him into the deep. Small details have a profound affect on how we make decisions. Actions brought about by these decisions have a profound effect on people around us. We need to remember this in times of crisis when the instinct to retreat into egoism is strong (see A below).
This is why when wealthy Premier League teams announced their intention to furlough non playing staff it felt like a kick in the shins. For it is those who work in the shadows to nurture, contribute to and build up the lives of those around us who will be affected most. The top teams in the English Premier League have a turnover of over £400 million. There are vast expenses for the Football Clubs and as businesses if revenue stops then they must act prudently. We can accept that, it makes sense, but it remains tasteless. It forgets all the people involved in making the high performing athletes concentrate only on their craft, it exposes the wage imbalance as well as the precarious trust we place in employers.
With reference to my continued support of English Football and Liverpool in particular, sceptics have asked “why do you support this team from the North West of England, they have nothing in common with you?”. Indeed, I do not have anything in common with people who do not value taking care of each other where the resources are there to do so. This is why when Liverpool reversed their decision to furlough their staff I was relieved (see B below). However, the feeling of being taken for a ride remains. The commodification of excellence we can accept to a degree (praised be Nozick and his Neville Chamberlin example). Not just in sport; good doctors and lawyers are allowed to make a living off their expertise. Nevertheless, ignoring your responsibilities when you have the resources to act otherwise is like burning your cigarette into the skin of someone who asked for a sip of coke. Deciding not to act can no longer pretend to be a passive act. Withholding action is a stance and in some contexts is even a form of violence. It is worse if those who act purely in self interest, think it is morally right to do so, egoistly, while the business model is marketed as building up the community. This is the business model of English Football Clubs exemplified by the very real and important role they play for the likes of Claude from AFTV.
As the wave of fury towards the treatment of colleagues lower in the food chain washes over us we should follow Slavoj Zizek’s call on the news channel Russia Today to pause and reflect. Zizek explains that the situation is far too serious to panic; what we need is thoughtful and co-ordinated collective action. What is required for that is to step back to be thoughtful. What can Philosophy tell us about this fury? In Kant’s Critique of Practical Reason, Kant describes an ethical framework purged of desire. The ethical subject acts only on rationality in accordance with the categorical imperative. Very broadly this categorical imperative is based on two thought experiments. Take a moral principle such as you ought not to steal. Then consider would it be coherent if every member of society acted in this way and would you be satisfied when others acted this way towards you. If so then you act on said principle knowing it should be universally applied. In this way you act for rationality itself not just the action of not stealing because you only adhere to principles that pass our thought experiment. Usually people are critical of this for it glasses over an entire branch of the psyche which helps us intuit moral decisions ‘desire’ (see C below).
Speaking of, since Aristotle, ethics has tried to reveal the role of desire in making moral decisions. In Aristotle it is balance between virtue and vice as well as rationality and desire that is attractive. So how should we choose desire or rationality? On face value in one corner we have Kant, whose arguments propose rationality as primary to Ethics. In the other corner we have the underdogs, the forgotten and not taken seriously, Freud & Lacan for whom Ethics is nothing more than the articulation of desire. That which is named in an acute call for help in a mental health crisis and the urgent assistance found in the analyst's careful analysis or therapy. But this choice between desire and rationality is a false dichotomy. As Lacan illuminates in his Ethics of Psychoanalysis, and indeed his entire oeuvre, the relationship of rationality to desire is closer than we might originally accept. Is this not why some are so steadfast, in fact emotional, about holding onto a belief? Show me a God fearing person who holds onto their rational belief in God without any emotional vigour and I will pay Tottenham Hotspur’s furloughed staff myself.
Ordinarily speaking, I argue, there is no real need for an ethical system. That is to say there is no need to analyse all human action to assess which ethical system is in fact the correct one. Whilst interesting this does not do enough to explain what happens in an ethical crisis. This is why in waking life we sound out how to act like children learning to read. Soon we develop a synapse-esque quick fire understanding of right and wrong. It is an immediate un-interrupted spontaneous relationship to other social beings. Only in a state of emergency does ethics emerge. In a crisis, like this one, we are immediately called to action (see D below). In this immediate call we are in a state of anxiety and we must act straight away to alleviate the dangers. We must act to protect health care workers, reorganise the economy to deal with less travel, instruct factories to help solve the shortage of medical supplies, Covid-19 tests and personal protective equipment. War economy some will describe.
Interestingly, in this call to action and in this emergency desire and rationality, Lacan and Kant, are together. Naturally, this is a seminar long argument made in Lacan’s Ethics of Psychoanalysis and articulated in a book long discussion by Alenka Zupancic; it is certainly not my novel idea. Why does this crisis resemble Kant’s ethics? We want to reorganise and it is also the only rational thing to do; it is coherent and we can imagine everyone acting to reorganise behind health care. Thus it is a moral decision based purely on the practical subject motivated by rational urgency. Additionally, it is Lacanian as we are presented with a crisis in which our feelings demand action. This feeling motivates us to conform with our rational duty. The inability for us normal folk to affect much brings out our incompleteness that which we try fill by acting in accordance with what is urgently rational. This is why ordinary people in supermarkets have begun to act as though there is an invisible forcefield around them. Which, when broken, allows all sense of normal manners to go out the window.
To recapitulate, because it is quite confusing, the ethical action for Lacan is actually the subject of pure practical reason in Kant. This is because the call to action in Lacan presents itself universally as a need to act. This is why Lacan references the example of burying a loved one against the decree of the king; we could accept that it passes the categorical imperative; it is universal and coherent for it to be so. Moreover, it is because the need to act this way, to bury a loved one, is for its own sake. We don’t do it cause the action presents itself as good we do it because it presents itself as if there is no other way to act even under the highest form of duress; a sovereign command. This is the formal structure of Kant’s practical ethics, and it is also the way Lacanian moral desire presents itself. As I said earlier in the need for help from a therapist as a result of breakdown in our understanding of what the urgent call to action insists on.
If big business, and moreover individuals, ignore this emergency and continue to act as if business is going as usual then it is morally repugnant. Their capacity to make this decision functions within the ordinary immediate and spontaneous relationship to their business world, which we sadly accept as a descriptive characteristic, operates at a low standard. A standard based on power and of trying to out do one another at the expense of each other. In stark contrast, business is not as usual for every member of the business specially the most vulnerable; lower earners, visa holders or casual staff. We are in an emergency. For businesses to ignore this is a blatant denial of this emergency, of Ethics and rational decision making. Every afternoon my flatmate comes home and describes a work place where another person was laid off, where there is no work, where men with families do not know what to do next, where fathers are to be sent to their ‘home’ countries with no more opportunity there than here. As an aside we ought not criticise people for struggling to socially distance where their ordinary lives are already an emergency. This is a detached, classist and racist attitude and is often exhibited in South Africa where criticism of people living in slums has appeared similarly distasteful.
Hegel writes in his preface to The Philosophy of Right, that “philosophy is but it’s own time realised in thought”. After the call to action dies down and we have time to reflect and evaluate how we behaved I hope we can see the emergencies brewing that already require urgent action. The rebellion against extinction and the unrelenting struggle for economic freedom. We were not prepared for this pandemic because each hospital bed comes at a price. Rather than preparing for a disaster we prepare for the most lucrative outcome. Now we know how unprepared, how fallible and how finite we are. Imagine where we stand on climate change with continued neglect…after one of the worst summers and bushfire seasons in Australia ever. Just this week the biggest coral bleaching in history has taken place across the Great Barrier Reef. What if the reef just cannot sustain itself? And yet the pictures of a pollution free and beautiful Los Angeles demonstrate the world is already healing itself with less frantic pollution. Soon we will stand with those who made the right choices in this crisis and to prepare for the next one. We will remember those who nurtured us and with youthful fury we will carry those who ignored us into the new world.
Some Clarifications on terms:
A. Egoism: Egoism is the Ethical Framework that stipulates what is morally right for me is what is morally right. There are complex versions of Egoism that are more convincing than the vulgar way I have put it. However the vulgar egoism of capitalism I take as uncontroversial.
B. Why is wealthy non healthcare business reckless about government aid? As a detail which is considered a given, using the government to pay staff when you can yourself, at least for a period of time, in a health crisis, is using resources desperately needed elsewhere.
C. Desire: saving the question of what is desire for another forum.
D. The idea that capitalism is a constant crisis we leave for another forum. Even though in the deadlocks and crisis of capitalism, I would argue we need an ethics to navigate our way to a better and kinder world order.
Reference List
Premier League finances: the full club-by-club breakdown and verdict, The Guardian, Available Online: https://www.theguardian.com/football/2019/may/22/premier-league-finances-club-guide-2017-18-accounts-manchester-united-city
"I've Had A Bad Summer" | Claude Opens Up About Depression, Trolls and Arsenal: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WwXjdPLphDQ.
Make Us Dream (2018) directed by Sam Blair, accessed via Amazon Prime.
Peter Singer, Hegel: a Very Short Introduction, (OUP Oxford, 2001).
Nozick, R., 1974. Anarchy, state, and utopia (Vol. 5038). New York: Basic Books. “How Liberty Upsets Patterns” (160–164).
Jacques Lacan, The Ethics of Psychoanalysis.
Alenka Zupancic, Ethics of the Real.
Hegel, The Philosophy of Right.
Jack de Menezes, The Independent, ‘You haven’t got the faintest idea’: Former Crystal Palace owner Simon Jordan hits out at AFTV’s Robbie Lyle’. Available Online: https://www.independent.co.uk/sport/football/news/arsenal-fan-tv-aftv-simon-jordan-robbie-lyle-talksport-video-watch-crystal-palace-owner-a9242186.html.
Lovren: My Life as a Refugee | The full documentary. Liverpool FC, Posted Feb 10, 2017. Available online: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yKzP_9_xFs0.
Slavoj Zizek | Coronavirus situation is way too serious to be in panic. RT, Posted Mar 16, 2020 available online: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HabyJi66l0w.
Graham Readfearn, The Guardian: “More than half of remote reefs in Coral Sea marine park suffered extreme bleaching”10 Apr 2020 03.30 AEST Available Online: https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2020/apr/10/more-than-half-of-remote-reefs-in-coral-sea-marine-park-suffered-extreme-bleaching.
The Daily, Why The U.S is Running Out of Medical Supplies. https://podcasts.apple.com/au/podcast/the-daily/id1200361736?i=1000470065476