Sports and violence

The new English Premier League Season started this weekend and the anger has already been running rampant. Cheating and violence, anger, shouting, frustration, madness, and that is just in my house on an Arsenal match day. There is nothing that quite gets the blood boiling like a good soccer match. This last weekend Arsenal played their first game and it was not a great called match. There was some fairly dangerous maneuvers from both teams, but a really nasty series of bad calls. I was watching it on replay and 3,000 miles away and I was so angry. I shouted, cussed out the ref, and am still not really over it. All of that over a single, fairly inconsequential soccer match. I consider myself a mellow guy. I have been better at dealing with my personal anger issues and here I was shouting at my television.

All of this over a sports match. And to be honest, my reaction was pretty soft compared to some of the reactions coming out of England about the match. Fans from both teams have been in a near war of words that only a few years ago may have been a straight out war. Imagine the reaction when a family is unjustly hurt. Their is a great deal of anger and desire for revenge, but, to my knowledge, not so much violent reaction from the average person. When countries feel hurt or threatened the reaction almost always seems to be retribution. America has gone to war over the mysterious sinking of the USS Maine that many believe was overblown by the press*. Yet history has it's cases of peaceful reaction to violence and repression. Look at the overthrow of imperialistic Britain in India by Gandhi, look at the civil rights marches and movements of Martin Luther King, Jr. Think about the modern day protests in Yemen, Egypt, and Tunisia. Was every person involved in peaceful protests without violence? No, but in the cases of Tunisia and Egypt especially the overthrow of the regimes came about by peaceful, not violent action.

I will admit that I am learning everyday to be more of a pacifist. My current goal; end my anger at bad drivers (this could be impossible given the typical Spokane driver) and stop bitching to my wife about it. Will I ever eliminate my shouting at soccer matches on the television? Probably not, but I don't need to get so angry at it that I scare people around me. I need to fix the everyday angers in my life before I can hope to make a change for peace in the world.

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*http://www.smplanet.com/imperialism/remember.html