The World Cup final

The football (soccer) world cup has just finished with an ugly final between The Netherlands and Spain. This was the first time in the world cup when I stopped watching a game voluntarily before it ended. When it ran into extra time, I decided that I had enough and watched funny videos with Heni instead. Maybe the hot weather contributed, or I was frustrated because I could hear everything happening a minute before I saw it on my screen (delay between TV and online version), but that's not the point of this post, anyway.

It's been three days since the final, and I think I had enough time to observe people and read enough online news, blogs and comments to see something I learned about from a book I've read recently. The idea of what I learned is the following. Given that you have some opinion about something, for example, you slightly favour a football team or like a certain aikido master's moves better, if you are put in a group with like-minded people who have the same (but perhaps equally very slight) tendency to view things the way you do, your view (and, similarly, that of others) tends to become even stronger. For example, if I support the Netherlands more and I have a chat with a couple of Dutchmen who naturally support their own team, I might become convinced that the ref was supporting the Spaniards, and they might also become more convinced because I'm a kind of outsider and my opinion makes theirs more valid. Equally, if I tend to support the Spanish team for some reason and I go to chatrooms (or Facebook) or read comments at certain online news sites I might be convinced even more that the Dutch played dirty and their points about the referee are nonesense. So I become polarised.

Why can that be? I mean, what's the reason behind this particular and observable tendency? I'm not sure, but I think there are a couple of things that play some part:

1. It's a recent experience and it's not digested yet. Some things are not explained, we don't understand why decisions were made like they were, players/teams played the way they did, even why that poor octopus made the "choices" it made. Too many unanswered questions (probably they remain unanswered but we will forget about them having better things to do).

2. Things didn't turn out to be the best way they could have (we lost/we didn't win in normal time, and even, we didn't get into the final/last four/etc.) Things could have been better if this and that had happened, the ref had done this, the coach (sorry, manager) had done that, etc. Some might even say that - without a favourite team in mind - football didn't turn out to be the way it was expected from a final (though I think beautiful finals are quite rare, there is too much to lose = not win).

3. Something else I haven't thought/read of. For example, about the reason for the polarisation process in general.

Now, let's do the thing I used to do in my older posts: translate this into aikido terms, and see if we can observe similar situations.

Let us suppose I like the way Master X does aikido so I join his/her dojo, or find one that knows him/her and respects this master. My view is to like Master X, others in the dojo also like Master X, so we might even have long discussions about how good Master X is (we become fans, and click on real-life like buttons). We might even get to the point where Master X is so good in our view, that he/she couldn't get any better, and everyone else is certainly worse. Now, if we can't make him/her better, we can show how good he/she is by contrasting, i.e. by saying how bad others are! So Master X does kotegaeshi perfectly, but Master Y (probably from another organisation or style) does it, or another technique differently, hence, badly. Students in Master Y's dojo go through the same process, and we will hate each other's dojos nicely and conveniently. We don't consider what points they have, they don't care about our points, and we don't want to get on with them, why would we (and at this point we might have a connection to objectification).

The problem is I think if we stop here. Why should we hate each other for nonsense reasons? If you don't want to, you don't mix with others but it doesn't mean you need to think about them in a bad way. Let them be unless they directly threaten you (in which case we step out and lead but still not destroy). Spain won, they should be happy, and the Dutch should learn from the experience and be happy with the second place. There is no need for "what if"-s, there is a need to understand that you can't have an alternative present in which the ref or players chose to act differently. There is no need to pick points that would have changed the current present, especially if you pick points that support your view and ignore points that support the "other side". And when I can react to your "what if" with a "yeah, but what if...!"? Ehh. Also, there is no need to keep showing that Master Y doesn't do things the way you think it's good. It doesn't make sense (without knowing and understanding the other side's view) to say that Master Y does this technique badly because "what if I attack like this or counter like that".

And perhaps there is no need for me to be frustrated by people wanting to polarise... :) I just haven't found a nice group that does not particularly support the Netherlands or Spain but, rather, nice football itself. :)