Emily Melcher

 

The Thymotic Urge

(Some Thoughts on Football and Religion)

Delivered on April 2, 2006

At The First Parish in Bedford

 

“Let me tell you what men want,” writes David Brooks in a recent New York Times article.  I’m quoting him, and since he actually means “males,” I will let it stand as written.  “Let me tell you,” he says, “why some middle-age men wear the sports jerseys of semiliterate behemoths half their age while others customize their cars with so many speakers they sound like the hip-hop version of the San Francisco earthquake as they roll down the street.” 

 

“Recognition,” he says.  “Men want others to recognize their significance.  They want to feel important and part of something important.” 

 

Plato recognized this hunger for recognition, which he called thymos (t-h-y-m-o-s), as one of three parts of the soul, the others being reason and eros, or desire.  The thymotic urge lies behind the best and worst acts of humankind, since the striving for recognition requires an assertion of individual or group dignity.  It motivates both heroes and tyrants.  On one hand, as people compete for personal or group glory, or for the right of others to be recognized, thymos can lead them to make sacrifices for causes larger – or other – than themselves; on the other hand, the thymotic urge can drive people to terrorism or tyranny. 

 

Francis Fukuyama, author of The End of History and the Last Man, points out that there is a fundamental tension between the thymotic urge and societies that strive for universal equality.  The tension arises because universal recognition apparently doesn’t satisfy the thymotic urge.  Human beings want to be recognized not just as equal, but as superior, and they want that recognition from select others, rather than from the state – or maybe even from the church.  In such societies, according to Fukuyama, the thymotic urge can be safely and appropriately expressed both in business and – here it comes – in institutionalized sports, especially in “extreme sports” in which the risk of death is real but the glory is available. 

 

Which brings me, at long last, to football, and to the importance of recognizing the Pittsburgh Steelers’ glorious victory over the Seattle Seahawks in the Super Bowl!  The hard-working players on this hard-working team from a hard-working town need such a victory now and again in order to satisfy the thymotic urge of the players and their supporters.  Rather than joining David Brooks in dismissing football players as “semiliterate behemoths,” or disparaging their middle-age, jersey-clad fans, we might do well to recognize that doing so would simply be an expression of our own thymotic urge – our own need to assert ourselves or even to see ourselves as superior.

 

The truth is that my own disinterest in institutionalized sports comes from two things:  First: I was never any good at team sports, and being forced to participate in them in school put my inferiority on display.  Fortunately, my thymotic urge found expression in other ways:  While I hated team sports, I developed considerable skills in individual physical disciplines, such as walking tightwire and riding a unicycle, where I could compete with myself to learn increasingly difficult skills, and gain the recognition of others when I performed. 

 

The second reason for my disinterest in institutionalized sports is that I’m afraid of the crowd.  I thymotically insist upon my right to think for myself and feel for myself, and I am afraid of groupthink and of being swallowed up – or invisible – in a crowd.  Does this sound familiar to any of you?  I actually have the same feeling when I gather with 5 or 6 thousand other UUs – people I think of as my group, my “peeps,” at the General Assembly of the Unitarian Universalist Association.  I feel irritated, discounted and manipulated, and yet, I have friends who have the time of their lives there, and get pumped up in entirely harmless ways – like most football fans – pumped up by the energy of the crowd, and by the feeling that we’re engaged, together, in some epic struggle. 

 

I must confess that, for weeks now, I’ve been dreading this service… Football?  How is that relevant?  How is that religious?  And what is that middle age sports fan in his Steelers jersey thinking?

 

But I do see a connection between sports and religion.  People come together in groups and as groups at least in part to express and channel thymotic urges.  Some of us don’t like sticking out individually – o.k., some of you don’t like sticking out individually – but, boy, do we like to insist that Unitarian Universalism is something unique, something – dare I say superior?  Our loyalty to our team may not be all that different from the sports fans’ loyalty to theirs.  After all, it’s the thymotic urge that leads people to assert their individual dignity and the dignity of their group, and to do heroic things not only for themselves, but on behalf of others. 

 

So here we are, and, thanks to that sports fan, I’ve learned a new expression that helps me to understand and articulate some things I’ve never been able to adequately grasp before.  The notion of the “thymotic urge” helps me appreciate the function of institutionalized sports, and exposes some of my own motivations, thereby allowing me the thymotic pleasure of besting myself.  Perhaps I’ve taught some of you a new expression, too, and, if you happen to like words, I may have satisfied your thymotic urge to know more words than you did when you came in here, or to know more words than the typical football player, the football player who can best you or me or any one of us in his dedication to a demanding and dangerous team sport – a sport that formalizes humanity’s struggles in a game – kind of like I suspect buying this sermon for his team satisfies the thymotic urge of a certain middle-age, jersey-clad member of this congregation.