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Jan. 20, 2005 - ”For us, there is only the trying. The rest is not our business.”
—T.S. Eliot
The cultural confluence of the NFL playoffs, Hollywood’s award season, the NCAA basketball finals, the arrival of college acceptance/rejection letters and the publication of the new Zagat restaurant guide all have got me thinking about the spiritual corrosion caused by the cult of winning. Now I am just as happy to win or to see my team win as the next guy or gal, but things have gotten out of control. And, by the way, why is it that you never hear about that many female Vince Lombardis? It’s almost always guy coaches and guy fans who say, “Winning isn't everything, it's the only thing.”
That philosophy—actually, its passionate hold on people makes it more a secular theology—has corrupted sports and our public and private lives in several ways. There are the not-so-rare news reports of violence committed by outraged parents at their children's sports games. The destruction of the integrity of baseball and baseball records and the baseball players’ bodies by steroid use is just the most recent and visible example of a cultural commitment to winning at all costs.
In the cult of winning, as opposed to the noble pursuit of winning, losing also becomes a character flaw. Losing has become the secular equivalent of sinning. You never lose because your opponent was just better than you that day. You lose because you let down your team or, in individual sports, because you let down yourself or, in its full pathology, you let down God. The pointing to the heavens by athletes who have just scored a touchdown or hit a homer or kicked a goal seems reverential, but think about the opposite. If God is given the glory for success at sports, then God must be given the blame for defeat. God cannot be happy when we win lest God be angry when we lose.
The cult of winning has also destroyed politics and the people who report on politics. Instead of using elections (and confirmation hearings) as occasions for public debate on the defining moral and political issues facing our country, so much of political news is driven by polls, and polls are merely the political translation of the sports question, “Who's winning?” President Abraham Lincoln did not have pollsters, but if he did, he would most certainly not have asked them to take a poll about freeing the slaves.
And while we are talking about slaves, are you aware that there is no word for “winning” in the Bible? What happened in Egypt around 3,250 years ago was called “leaving Egypt.” It was not called “Beating the Egyptian team.” One nice proof for this is the Jewish legend that God silenced the Jewish people as they celebrated after the Red Sea closed up over the Egyptian army. God chastised them saying, “My children are dying and you are celebrating?” For this reason we are commanded to dip out 10 drops of wine at the Passover meal to remember the suffering that our freedom caused through the 10 plagues God sent upon Egypt. Freedom is worth celebrating, but not cheering. Today politics is all about cheering or booing. Talking and thinking has been drowned out by the obsessive desire to win for your team.
Winning has also kept us from learning from each other. I have a rule in my synagogue that when a child gives a speech for his or her bar or bat mitzvah at age 13, he or she cannot say of anyone they thank in their speeches that they are “the best.” Why say about your mom and dad that they are the best? There is no way to know if such superlatives are true and it is, in a way, degrading to other wonderful parents hearing the speech. What these kids mean is that their parents were really good—not good as opposed to best, but good as in loving the way many other loving parents love their kids. So I tell them to say it that way, because that way it is both true and also undermines the cult of ranking and winning that keeps us from appreciating each other in nonhyperbolic ways.
Every damn thing is ranked nowadays. You can look up the rankings of the best toaster and the best zoo, the best pizza and the best doctors, the best city and the best movie. What we really need to know is what persons, places and things are good enough to know, visit and use without disappointing us, and, honestly, we can't even know that. The act of ranking includes and excludes in the same act. In picking a winner, we also pick losers. What is wrong with just being definitely good enough?
I flew home from Los Angeles on the same plane with Sarah Hughes right after she had won the gold medal for women's figure skating at the 2002 Winter Olympics. After the pilot turned off the seat-belt light I went over to her and congratulated her on her victory. I am always interested in what people learn from their peak life experiences, and I asked her what was the most important thing she had learned. Before the flight attendant grabbed me and told me not to bother her or she would personally shoot me, Sarah said, “I learned that the skating was more fun than the winning.” I said to her, “And that is why you won.”
High
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