1. This does not sit well with the definition of culture as the stories we tell ourselves about ourselves—a definition usually credited anthropologist Clifford Geertz. In a sport context, this line would give us; sports are stories we tell ourselves about ourselves. That, however, contradicts the line that sport has no subject matter outside itself. As a serious philosophical statement about sport, propositional content, assertion, communication, storytelling, etc. this definition is obviously false. A back-pass in association football does not have propositional content, rather it is a footballing action, which may or may not be a good move in the match context in which it happens, when a boxer delivers an uppercut, he or she is not actually telling his or her opponent anything, but potentially knocking him or her out, and so on and so forth ad nauseam. However, originally the line was never meant to be read literally and thus constitute no challenge to the line that sport has no subject matter outside itself. If we go back to Geertz and the origin of this definition, we find a sober and perfectly fine usage of the phrase ‘stories we tell ourselves’ with regard to cultural products. Regarding the Balinese cockfights and what sets it apart from everyday practical affairs, Geertz’s line is that:
[I]t provides a metasocial commentary upon the whole matter of assorting human beings into fixed hierarchical ranks (…) Its function, if you want to call it that, is interpretative: it is a Balinese reading of Balinese experience; a story they tell themselves about themselves. (Geertz Citation1972, 26, my italics)
Then, in the very next sentence, Geertz makes it clear that ‘[t]o put the matter this way is to engage in a bit of metaphorical refocusing of one’s own (…) [s]uch an extension of the notion of a text beyond written material, and even beyond verbal, is (…)
metaphorical’ (Geertz
Citation1972, 26, my italics). No doubt, various sport events and the way we in our non-Utopian state of affairs set them up and interpret them have symbolic powers and can take part in building and maintaining identity. Let us shortly consider the case of association football. Football teams often function as symbols of local, regional or national pride and identity. No doubt, there are reasons to believe that part of football’s success is due to the sport’s potential in forging and reinforcing identity, but, to put it bluntly, some sort of attraction to the game of football is what made it suitable as a vessel of identity, not the other way around. There are aspects of association football, which makes it a suitable vehicle for forging and reinforcing identity. Suffice to say here, it is not because the football match or the sport as such (the football match qua football match, association football qua association football) has a subject matter outside itself, but rather because of the easily available us-against-them feature of the football set up, which not only facilitates for engagement in the sport, but also paves the way for football’s identity-making potential. Part of an identity-making and maintenance project can be to work football matches, cup tournaments or league campaigns into a broader or larger narrative. This seems especially prevalent in international football with regard to the identity-making projects of nations and nationalism. For example, supporters and media might cast an England versus Germany game as a continuation of World War I and II, or an England versus Argentina game as a continuation of the Falklands/Malvinas conflict or war, etc. Obviously, football matches are not continuous with, or even comparable in importance to, the actual wars. The co-opting of football proceedings into larger contexts or narratives is to interpret the match into a specific context or setting. This phenomenon described here might be subsumed under the notion of
extending. One extends the significance of the match, the tournament or the campaign beyond its sport perimeters thus making it be about something more than the staged artificial sport contest of the football match, the tournament or the campaign. It is not like the football match, the tournament or the campaign tells us story about, say, the on-going disagreement about the Falklands/Malvinas between the United Kingdom and Argentina. Sport events like football matches are not communicative vehicles by which humans tell stories about themselves and the world around them and their understanding of that. However, a football match between two countries can be drafted into a narrative that is spun about a conflict between the two countries, but, of course, the basis or source of that narrative is something different from and independent of the sport proceedings themselves. When England and Argentina faced off in the quarterfinal of the 1986 World Cup, the Argentinian players clearly saw the match as more than a mere football match and extended it to also be about the Falklands/Malvinas war. Diego Maradona reports that:
[W]e said that football had nothing to do with the Malvinas War but we knew a lot of Argentinian kids had died there, shot down like little birds. This was revenge. It was like recovering a little bit of the Malvinas (…) It was more than winning a game (…) In a way, we blamed the English players for everything that happened, for all the suffering of the Argentine people. I know it seems like madness and a nonsense now but truthfully at the time that was what we felt. It was stronger than us: we were defending our flag, the dead kids, the survivors. That’s why I think my goal meant so much. Actually, they both did. They both had their own charm. (Maradona, Arcucci and Bialo Citation2007, 127–128)
Interestingly, Claudio Tamburrini claims with regard to Maradona’s infamous handball goal in that match, which upset the English then and still has the power to rile them up—it surely did not help that Maradona afterwards gleefully commented that the goal was scored ‘a little with the head of Maradona and a little with the hand of God’—, that the cheating or rule-violation itself had a positive effect, since:
After it took place, football matches between England and Argentina acquired a special agonistic flavour, that seems to have overshadowed the tragic inheritance of the Falkland/Malvinas war. Thus, his goal had positive effects not only for the game of football, but even for the international community at large. (Tamburrini Citation2000, 28)
The argument seems to be that because of Maradona’s cheating or rule-violation, football matches between England and Argentina became a lighting rod for the hostilities between the two countries that otherwise, we must assume, would had manifested themselves on other more serious arenas. I will leave for others to consider whether this claim is correct. I suspect that at least in Argentina, the question of the Falklands/Malvinas is still regarded as an unresolved matter. As for the agonistic flavour of matches between England and Argentina one does well to also consider the ill-tempered quarterfinal in the 1966 World Cup in England. In this match Argentinean Captain Antonio Rattín was sent off, but refused to leave the pitch, resulting in a long delay of the match. After having left the pitch Rattín did his best to offend the British public, while England manager Alf Ramsey made sure there was no love lost between the two teams by refusing his players to swap shirts with the Argentinian players and referring to these as ‘animals’ in the English press. One might argue that the bad blood and long-standing rivalry between the two teams starts here and not with Maradona’s handball goal in 1986, in which case Tamburrini’s defence of the latter loses its bite. In fact, even before the 1966 match, there seemed to be animosity between the two football nations. Jonathan Wilson reports that in that 1966 World Cup ‘[s]o tarnished was Argentina’s reputation in England that they were booed on to the field at Hillsborough for their final group game’ and David Downing concludes that ‘[t]he Argentinians got the message, or at least
a message: the English didn’t like them’ (Wilson
Citation2016, 188; Downing
Citation2003, 99). No doubt, the possibility of extending—steer especially international sports into a larger narrative—is part of the reason why football, in particular, but also other sports enjoy such worldwide success as spectator sports.
2. A critic might object that it is by no means clear that humans are happiest when they win. Indeed, our critic might continue, Robert Simon has argued against that view and instead presented a picture of sport competition as a mutual quest for excellence and that does not entail winning all the time. In replying to this objection, it is important to first note that I did not write that winning is the only way to get joy from participating in sport competitions, only that a sport experience machine designed to provide maximum sporting pleasures for its subjects will provide the subjects with the experience of winning, not losing. Also, when one actually watches sport participants in various sports at various levels, it really does look like people aim at winning, doing better than someone else, not to lose, not to be last, etc., as opposed to coming in second, doing worse than someone else, be last, etc., and this provides an explanation of and reason for why people keep on arranging or seeking out sport competitions to partake in or watch, instead of merely doing various physical activities in the company of others or in solitude, or watching others do the latter. If participants did not, in general, get joy from winning, doing better than someone else, not losing, not being last, etc., then the behaviour of humans seen at various sport arrangements makes little sense. Someone unfamiliar with the theoretical territory of philosophy of sport might find this too obvious to even mention, but it is worthwhile reminding readers than anyone challenging the line that a sport experience machine as described in this section would provide its subjects with the experience of winning, owes us an explanation, which makes sense of how people behave in sport competitions around the world. Also, before we turn to the Simon picture, a few words on how we win are in order. In general, part of a satisfying winning experience in sport includes that the end result of winning connects to skills, i.e. that the reason you win a sport competition is, at least in part, predicated on your skills in the sport. This points to the fact that humans do no enjoy partaking in or watching games of chance with nothing of significance on the line. You can make games of chance exiting for creatures like us by investing, say, money, etc., on the outcomes, but games of chance as such do not excite us. There are reasons for that. Games of chance cannot be influenced by us thus they provide no action alternatives. Our minds as problem solvers look for action alternatives. Without action alternatives, in the case of games of chance, where nothing is on the line, creatures like us get bored. With regard to proceedings we take to be important, if we experience being unable to influence that which goes on, i.e. see no action alternatives, we get frustrated. If we experience being subjected to processes that are wholly based of chance or circumstances that we cannot influence, we get frustrated, helpless, and in the final resort, we give up and resign ourselves to our fate. Whatever it is that excites us about playing and watching sports, part of it is having perceived achievable action alternatives as part of the equation. Without them sports would not be psychologically satisfying. Perceived achievable action alternatives entail skills. Something being a skill is here minimally taken to mean that what you achieve action-wise is partly a result of your abilities and decisions, and not merely some random process. It is a well-known psychological fact that if you trigger typical fight or flight mental states in an animal, but deprive it of possible action alternatives, then frustration and apathy follows (Overmier and Seligman Citation1967, see also Seligman and Maier Citation1967, Seligman, Maier, and Geer Citation1968; Seligman Citation1972). Not seeing any achievable action alternatives when in a fight or flight state leads to frustration and, in the final resort, resignation. Assuming that the same or something similar enough goes for humans, a sport experience machine, where victories were not based on skills, but came over as chancy or random, would not bring joy to its subjects, but, more likely, over time, indifference. In general, skills are needed to make the sport experience enjoyable. Though, regarding human sports as we know them and skills, I would like to remark that I do think that many participants and spectators quite enjoy the occasional fluke in sport competitions, and, furthermore, that we would do well to remember that most sport competitions done by adults in our world are a far cry from anything anyone would associate with excellence in whatever sport we are talking about. Returning to Simon and his idea of sport competition as a mutual quest for excellence, we find that, in fact, Simon is not presenting an argument about how sports actually are done and perceived by their spectators, rather he presents an argument for how he thinks sports ought to be in order for sport competitions to be ethically defensible. Simon tells us that his line on sport ‘as a mutually accepted quest for excellence through challenge’ is motivated by how ‘sport should be regarded and engaged in’, i.e. ‘the ethical significance of competition conceived of as a mutual quest for excellence’, which is not how sports are actually done and conceived of, since, in fact, ‘[c]ompitition as the mutual quest for excellence, it must be emphasized, is an ideal’ (Simon Citation2004, 27, 27, 32, 39). Sigmund Loland commenting on the fourth edition of Simon’s work, points out that the work is ‘written on the normative premise of sport as “a mutual quest for excellence in the intelligent and directed use of athletic skills in the face of challenge”’ (Loland Citation2015, 334; Simon, Torres, and Hager Citation2015). My suggested sport experience machine is not premised on any normative principles of how one wished things could be or turn out, thus the Simon picture does not make contact with the view presented in this section. Simon’s project is different than mine and the function of the sport experience machine as a thought experiment is not threaten by the normative premise that sport competitions ought to be mutual quests for excellence in the intelligent and directed use of athletic skills in the face of challenge.
3. On the difference between ‘absolute’ and ‘relative’ adjectives, see Brasoveanu and Rett (Citation2018): section 2.2.1.
4. Keith Thompson considers the example of the perfect golf round taken from Julian Barnes. Barnes writes ‘One day I would play a round of golf in 18 shots (…) and then what?’ (Barnes Citation1989, 297, quoted in Thompson Citation2004, 63). Thompson concurs; ‘And then what indeed! In time he realizes that what seems ideal is totally boring’ (Thompson Citation2004, 63). I agree with Barnes and Thompson with regard to human sports—the sports we play, the way we play them and the reasons why we like to play and watch these sports—, but Thompson’s conclusion that ‘[t]he concept of utopia implodes because of its own contradictions’ does not follow (Thompson Citation2004, 63). What follows is that in Suits’ Utopia the notion of excellence in sport will be an absolute, not a relative term.
5. Note that Suits begged to differ with regard to the linguistic practice of calling these activities games (Suits Citation1978, 164).
6. When considering various versions of Utopias, Thompson argues that ‘the essence of the utopia is endless pleasure and delight, sport is not allowed because it has losers. In these utopias, by definition, all should be winners all the time’ (Thompson Citation2004, 61). He does consider that one might seek ‘to reinstate play and games by means of the casual, the playful, the noncompetitive (…) [b]ut it has little if anything to do with sport’ since ‘unless games have a sharper edge, boredom soon sets in with added maturity’ (Thompson Citation2004, 61). The value we put on sports, it seems to Thompson, clash with that of Suits’ Utopia, since ‘lovers of sport want “real sport” in their ideal states’ (Thompson Citation2004, 61). Setting aside Thompson’s comment about non-competitive games, translated to the sport case, we might imagine that Thompson’s argument would be that Utopia might offer sports that are casual and playful, but that we want so-called ‘real sports’ with sharper edges. As a consequence of the clash between the value of casual and playful pastime sports in Suits’ Utopia and the value we put on so-called ‘real sports’ with sharper edges, ‘[t]he concept of utopia implodes because of its own contradictions’ (Thompson Citation2004, 63). That does not follow. A carefree Utopia of pleasure and delight might very well have sports that yield losers as long as losing in sport does not infringe or destroy that pleasure and delight. What follows is that human sports—the sports we play, the way we play them and the reasons why we like to play and watch these sports—do not sit well with Suits’ Utopia. We, lovers of sport in our non-Utopian condition (like Odysseus in Phaiacia) will probably find Suits’ Utopia a disappointment sport-wise. Note that we need not worry about the fact that Thompson thinks that any conception of a Utopia will be incoherent because value pluralism is true. That might very well be the case, suffice to say here, the sport case is not what will bring down the concept of Utopia.
7. Scott Kretchmar argues that for Suits’ logic to go through—Suits writes that ‘Utopia—must consist fundamentally, if not exclusively, in the playing of games’, where ‘it is games which give us something to do when there is nothing to do’—, we must first according to Kretchmar assume that there lingers on one instrumental activity and a need it addresses; ‘[t]hat one remaining human need is the elimination of boredom’ (Suits Citation1984a, 197–198; Citation1978, 159; Kretchmar Citation2006, 71). Similarly, I suspect that this is what Holowchak is after, when he asks; ‘[o]ne may reasonably ask why people would play games if all psychological problems have been solved in Utopia’ (Holowchak Citation2007, 91). Kretchmar’s remark is reasonable. However, I am not sure it is the right thing to say, when we consider the possibility of playing games or sports in the Utopian condition. The problem when thinking about Suits’ Utopia, is that it is unclear exactly what sort of humans we would find there, i.e. how the psychological make-up of humans that would be happy and content in this Utopia would look like. So, it seems underdetermined whether or not they will play games and sports in the Utopian condition. I do not see it as a conceptual necessity that for someone to decide to do something else than what they are doing at that point, like for example, switching from, say, idly basking in the sun to start playing a game or sport of some kind, they must be bored with first activity. Certainly, some kind of curiosity and appetite for experiences seem needed for game playing and sport events to be invented and take place in Suits’ Utopia, but I do not see why boredom or the threat of boredom would necessarily be needed. Why would not curiosity and appetite for experiences do the trick; why must it be boredom that moves the denizens of Utopia to play games or sports? I cannot see that boredom is necessarily forced upon us, as part of this line of argument, curiosity and appetite for experiences will do. With regard to Suits’ line of reasoning, Kretchmar correctly points out that:
‘[a] second problem can be traced to Suits’s equivocal use of the phrase “nothing to do”’. What he actually meant when employing these words is that there would be ‘no problems to solve’ (Kretchmar Citation2006, 72).
Having something to do does not reduce to having problems to solve. So, even if there are no problems to solve, there might be plenty to do in Suits’ Utopia. Whether that is a problem or not, if it was the case that there would be no problems to solve in Utopia, depends on the psychological make-up of the Utopians and that, as pointed out, is underdetermined. Granted, humans in our non-Utopian condition are problem solvers per excellence. I am happy to go along with Kretchmar’s anthropological philosophy and the claims that ‘we find significance in negotiating problems, and we cannot live happily without the meaning that is thereby derived’ and that ‘Utopia, from the standpoint of anthropology, has been conceptualized as a slowly emerging reality’ (Kretchmar
Citation2006: 73, 74). However, Kretchmar’s aims of showing that Suits’ ‘notion of Utopia (…) is (…) [not] lacking in utility’ and that ‘[a]nthropological philosophy helps us see how and why solving artificial problems became a sine qua non of “the life most worth living”’ do not succeed (Kretchmar
Citation2006, 67). Whether this future breed of Suits’ Utopia will engage in all absorbing things to do and whether those things will be games or sports seems underdetermined. Maybe the Utopians at root will be problem solvers, somewhat akin to what we are, but then, maybe not. Furthermore, there will be things to do for the problem solving minds in Utopia without the introduction of games or sport. A not unreasonable interpretation of Suits’ Utopia is one where all practical problems regarding our material wellbeing, but also various psychological needs have been solved, thus there would be no need to engage in instrumental activities addressing such concerns. However, disciplines like mathematic, logic and metaphysics are still available for our Utopians. Certainly, at least the first two disciplines can be applied to good practical purposes in our non-Utopian state of affairs. The instrumental usage or employment of these disciplines would fall by the wayside in the Utopian state of affairs, but the disciplines as such can survive Suits’ Utopia and still offer intellectual challenges to engage with in a world where every material and personal and interpersonal emotional needs are met. Doing mathematics for the joy or fun of it seems a viable option even when all material and central psychological needs have been met. Suits might respond that anything that is not instrumental activities count as playing games—be that mathematics, logic, metaphysics, pure music, abstract art, dance, etc.—, making his Utopia a game playing place by default should the above-mentioned undertakings occur in it. At this point, we are allowed to mount what Holowchak calls the stipulation objection, and argue that if every activity or practice, which we prima facie in our non-Utopian state of affairs would not call games or sports, but which nevertheless seem like viable options in Suits’ Utopia, is either deemed to count as games or sports by default or else, somehow discounted, say we are told that the Utopian already know all there is to know about mathematics, logic and metaphysics and so will not engage in these disciplines, then it seems like Suits has reached his conclusion of a game and sport playing Utopia by stipulation (Holowchak
Citation2007, 92–93). Furthermore, should one opt for this latter argumentative strategy, then it must also be admitted that Suits has moved too far away from our concepts or understanding of games and sport for his Utopia to be of any utility with regard to illuminating the non-Utopian condition and state of affairs and our games and sports.
8. According to Suitsian standards, to play a game is to voluntary attempt to overcome unnecessary obstacles, and one might worry that eights does not count as a game, since there are no obstacles to be found in the way the sport is done (see Berman Citation2013). One can meet that worry by tweaking the sport design of eights slightly. In order to comply with the obstacle requirement of Suits’ formulation of what it is to play a game, let the movements of eights be confined to a certain limited performance space, wherein that space there is a given number of obstacles (perhaps akin to the obstacles for running that you find in steeplechase), which makes it harder to get the bodily movements of eights right. So this version of eights stand in the same relationship to the old one as, say, steeplechase stands to other footraces. I will leave for others to figure out whether these two versions of eights are indeed versions of the same sport or two different sports. Nothing in the argument presented in this section depends on that.
9. In the literature on Suits’ Utopia, writers, including Suits himself, are suspiciously silent on the question of how games and sports in Utopia can or will look like. A notable exception is Deborah Vossen, who has made an attempt to approach this question. Vossen’s starting point is some of Suits’s remarks about his Utopia needing:
[S]ports and games unthought of today; sports and games that will require for their exploitation—that is, for their mastery and enjoyment—as much energy as is expected today in serving the institutions of scarcity. It behoves us, therefore, to begin the immense work of devising these wonderful games now. (Suits Citation1978, 158–159)
In Utopia, ‘we will have all kinds of absorbing things to do. And I mean
really magnificent games; games so subtle, complex, and challenging that their inventors will be seen as the ludic Einsteins of the future’ (Suits
Citation1984a, 208, see also,
Citation1984b, 23–24). Vossen reasonably interprets this as meaning that ‘the Grasshopper is not advocating for a state of affairs wherein people derive a sense of productivity from the inconsequential challenges we normally call games’, thus the need ‘to be playing really magnificent
games of significance’ (Vossen
Citation2016, 261, 263, my italics). I suspect that Suits and Vossen would reject my sport of
eights as not being magnificent enough, not subtle, complex and challenging enough for it to fulfil the need of the Utopians to have something to do, which is deemed of enough significance to render life meaningful. Eights would not live up to a billing of being
a game of significance. Suits and Vossen would be wrong and their rejection of eights would build on a certain equivocation we find in Suits’ work with regard to the picture of the Utopians’ psychological make-up. In order to get his picture of Utopia off the ground, as already quoted in the main text, Suits describes the Utopians as very different than us:
Let us suppose that psychoanalysis has made such giant strides that it actually cures people, or that all the various kinds of group treatment have proven successful, or that some quite new development in socio- or psychotherapy or in pharmacology has made it possible to effect one hundred per cent cures for all psychic disturbances. As a result of these developments there is no longer any competition for love, attention, approval, or admiration. (Suits Citation1978, 150)
Note that Suits prefaces the sentence about unthought of sports and games with the observation that he envisages Utopia as ‘a culture quite different from our own in terms of its
basis’ and even though he at that point in
The Grasshopper has reintroduced ‘admiration and sharing (…) love and friendship (…) re-introduction of the emotions associated with striving’, there are no indications that Suits now regards his Utopians as being psychologically the same as humans in our non-Utopian condition (Suits
Citation1978, 158). The Utopians are presumably still very different than us psychologically. Following Vossen’s interpretation of Suits, these so-called magnificent sports and games
of significance, seem to me to presuppose that the Utopians will have a need to feel that what they do is of some sort of significance and importance. However, that looks like a psychological need or tendency we would normally associate with ourselves, the current day crop of humans, and I see no reason to suppose that the Utopians after their group treatment, socio—or psychotherapy, or pharmacological treatment, etc., would necessarily crave or need that. Most people in our non-Utopian state of affairs, I suspect, find fulfilment of the need to be or do something of significance or importance, i.e. feel that one makes a difference, in one’s everyday dealings with the world, ranging from trying to save the planet from ecological disaster, participating in a war, talking care of one’s children, helping one’s students to grow intellectually, taking the garbage out for the old lady next door, writing Christmas cards to relatives and friends, and so on and so forth. The existential abyss of the futility of human existence is kept at bay by these various instrumental activities, which in an imperfect world are all-important for survival, making a good or decent life, etc., and it is no wonder that our wellbeing derives so much from such instrumental activities by way of giving life a direction, purpose or meaning. Evolutionary it makes good sense for a creature to feel well about and seek out activities that somehow or another enhances that creature’s fitness. Of course, in Suits’ Utopia, enhancing fitness is not on the agenda, so the need to be or do something of significance or importance will not serve any such evolutionary function. It looks like Suits took his starting point in our non-Utopian need for significance and importance, tried to envisage a carefree Utopia filled with sports and games, and then found our sports and games, i.e. humans sports and games, wanting. Humans sports and games, Suits seems to tell us, according to Vossen, cannot provide the same sense of significance and importance as various instrumental activities do in our non-Utopian condition. The reason, Vossen tells us, is because human sports and games are inconsequential challenges. Thus the call for magnificent sports and games unthought of. However, this call should be resisted. Suits made the thought experiment of Utopia work by envisaging denizens of Utopia with a different psychological profile, than that which you find among us the non-Utopians, and I see no reason to think that Utopians in this sense would not be happy with eights and other games and sports of no particular consequence or importance. However, if you reintroduce the full psychological make-up of non-Utopians in Suits’ Utopia, then surely, our Utopians would have a lot of other things to get busy with—in-fighting and various power struggles are the most obvious ones—apart from playing sports and games, no matter how magnificent these latter activities and practices are dreamt up to be. In the latter case, our Utopians might fulfil the need for significance and importance by striving to reach the top, or as high as possible, in the hierarchy of Utopian society, a hierarchy, which one should expect would form very quickly, if the Utopians were psychologically like us the non-Utopians. Then, of course, they might not psychologically need these so-called magnificent sports and games of significance, since a feeling of significance and importance might be gained by the strive and struggle to get a good or the best position in Utopian society. Now Suits’ Utopia is not a place exclusively committed to doing sports and games. If Suits then replies that in his Utopia the Utopians have been clenched of such tendencies towards rivalry, hierarchy building, etc., then we are back to square one, since, again, we must ask why that version of the Utopians have a need for significance and importance in their being and doing. Why the need for sports and games unthought of, why the search for magnificent sports and games of significance? Either, Suits’ whole conception of Utopia as a sport and game playing place goes, in which case the whole detour through the Utopia thought experiment was pointless, or else, the sports and games of Utopia might very well look like my sport of eights. Setting that aside, let us still consider Vossen’s view on how games in Utopia could look like. Vossen seeks ‘to discern at least one Utopian game of significance’ (Vossen
Citation2017, 316). In the end, it turns out she cannot, as her suggested game for Utopians to play, is; ‘Utopians may be engaged in goal-directed pursuits instrumental in “raising Grasshoppers”’, i.e. showing or teaching non-Utopians how to be Utopians (Vossen
Citation2017, 319, see also,
Citation2016, 264). If the Utopian existence is deemed better or more valuable than the non-Utopian life, then being part of what makes someone go from being a non-Utopian to being a Utopian is no game or sport. Raising Grasshoppers, i.e. the making of the Utopians and the Utopian mind-set can hardly be seen as overcoming unnecessary obstacles, and does not count as a game or a sport. That activity is at heart an instrumental activity aimed at making the world a better place. Vossen’s magnificent Utopian game of significance is not a game at all. Vossen sees this, but thinks the problem is that ‘Suits’ definition of game-playing is too narrow inasmuch as it excludes really magnificent Utopian games of significance’ (Vossen
Citation2017, 325). That conclusion should be resisted. Sports and games in Utopia? Yes, why not! Sports and games in Utopia that
are of the same significance as instrumental activities are for us in our world? No, you cannot have that, because if you did, then it would not be a Utopia, but just another imperfect world. Note that I take Vossen to mean that we need games that are of significance in the same way as instrumental activities in our non-Utopian state of affairs are and not merely games that are felt to be of significance. The former being a requirement for such games to not merely be inconsequential challenges. Equivocation between various conceptions, views or outlooks on the Utopian state of mind, i.e. the presumed psychological make-up of Utopians, also carries over to discussions of skills in sports and games, and Suits’ Utopia. A careful reader might have realized that I, for pedagogical reasons, smuggled in a requirement in my description of eights as a Utopian sport, which is not necessary. I wrote that eights is not easy to get right and that it would take both time and effort to reach and maintain a top level of the sport, thus making it
a worthy pastime for the Utopians. This resonates with the orthodox line taken in philosophy of sport of good sports and games requiring high levels of skill for one to play them well. No doubt, this is what Suits is after when he describes his Utopian sports and games as requiring as much energy for their mastery and enjoyment as we today put into serving the institutions of scarcity. The same motif is found in Hurka, who emphasizes that ‘[i]t is characteristic of good games to be not only more difficult than they might be but also in absolute terms reasonably difficult’ and that ‘reflection on our intuitive understanding of the value of achievement suggests (…) difficult activities are as such valuable’ (Hurka
Citation2006, 220–221, 221). That is the right thing to say with regard to non-Utopians and human sports and games, but it is certainly not clear that it would also be the case that the Utopians’ intuitions on the matter would line up in a similar manner. Hurka claims that good games ‘cannot be so difficult that no one can succeed at them, but also cannot lack all challenge; they must strike a balance between too much and too little difficulty’ (Hurka
Citation2006, 221). If we take seriously the idea that the Utopian mind-set will be very different than ours, then that would not follow with regard to Suits’ Utopia. When thinking about sports and games in Utopia, we must be careful to not import or rely on our non-Utopian mind-set of thinking about what a good sport or game is. It does not follow, that eights must be hard, involve hard-earned skills, for it to be a good sport in Utopia, though the requirement makes it easier to persuade philosophers of sport that eights would have been a good sport in Utopia. How the ratio between difficult/easy, skill/luck or chance, etc., with regard to performance and success in a Utopian sport would have to be for the Utopians to enjoy doing and watching it seems underdetermined. The Utopians after their group treatment, socio—or psychotherapy, or pharmacological treatment, etc. might, for all we know, delight in sports and games, which are easy to get perfect, not care much or at all about getting good in the sports and games they play (after all, to practice in order to compete or perform in sports and games is much more ant-like, than grasshopperesque), prefer sports and games, where chance plays a much more prominent role than it does in human sports and games, and so on and so forth. Furthermore and importantly, pointing out this equivocation in Suits’ writings and how it finds its way into other writers’ thinking about Utopia—you cannot both get Suits’ Utopia picture of a place consisting of game and sport playing off the ground, while at the same time using intuitions grounded in the non-Utopian condition, when thinking about those possible games and sports—, shows that idealization projects like the one presented by Francisco Javier Lopez Frias, who considers Utopia as ‘
a Kantian regulative idea’, which ‘primary purpose is to uncover the possibility conditions of game playing and present an
ideal realization towards which we must converge’, are misguided (Lopez Frias
Citation2017, 143, second italics mine, see also,
Citation2016, 52). There is no reason to think that what fits fine with the temperament and inclinations of the Phaiacians will necessarily suit Odysseus and his fellow travellers. As writers on Suits’ Utopia has yet to present a picture of what Utopian sports and games might look like, with the notable exception of Vossen who pushes Suits’ thinking to the brim and ends up rejecting Suits’ understanding of sports and games, thus leaving us in the dark about what our subject matter is, the relevance of Suits’ Utopia for understanding human sports and games, remains an un-argued article of faith. For Suitsians to forge a relevance relation from Suits’ Utopia to our world with our human sports and games, they would need not only to get specific about their Utopian alternative, they would also need to face human sports and games as actual practices as they have emerged throughout human history, and not merely as failed, imperfect, non-ideal versions of the nondescript hypothesized Utopian sports and games, where inconsistencies between what humans actually do and what Suits writes that they ought to do cannot be explained away or dismissed by appeal or reference to Suits’ Utopia or some other nondescript ideal.
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