Fans And Rationality: Why Worry? Just Like It!

Rational thinking says, "Given these premises, then what". A prerequisite for rationality is then a well-established set of premises, or axioms.

In everyday of one's life, one finds oneself in circumstances where the situation doesn't lend itself to easy decision-making. And in most of these, what is found wanting is not so much the faculty of reasoning as a clear understanding of the premises of one's thoughts.

This is true with any subjective thought, especially one where two parties are at each other's neck over whose take on a situation is correct ("Obviously you *$#%, I am telling you, so it is"). It is obvious that both parties either do not know what the other's premises are (perhaps even one's own), or, but quite rarely, are arguing over whose axioms are correct.

The thing about axioms is that you cannot question them. Axioms are where you start your reasoning process, so you cannot go one level-up, to put loosely, and question them precisely because there is no "one level-up".

Sports is one arena where the decision as to the outcome of a situation is made quite easy by having clear-cut axioms—"If the ball lands outside the line, you forfeit your point". Where these axioms are found wanting are usually situations that were over-looked while the rules of the sport were put together, rather than situations where confusion prevailed as to what these should be, and as such these can be put out of our discussions.

Sports are created for past time and enjoyment of most of the people, and for the intellectual enjoyment of the few. Since past time and enjoyment are subjective thought processes whose premises are not clearly established, or at-least, which do not have a universal definition, the objective results that the sport presents are sometimes turned down by the need for and nature of these emotional exercises.

The people who turn down the objective and mathematical results of the sport are in effect asserting that these results, though they may be instrumental in deciding who takes the money and the cup home, are not pointers to who is the better player. To put simply, "the winner need not be the better player"—a pretty vague statement, though!

When someone says, "(A former World No. 1) is the No. 1 for me, because I like him more", what he/she does not realize is that he/she is accepting that his/her bias is what drives his/her decision more than the objective rules of the sport.

It is like saying, "He plays a silky smooth game. The silky smoothness of how somebody plays ought to be taken into account when you decide who really wins. The rules of tennis don't take this into account. But tell you what, there is nothing ideal in this world, and I would rather cope with it".

The coping doesn't really happen. Whenever a fan's favourite loses, he/she is in tears saying, "Oh! He should have won - he played much better. You know, sometimes tennis can be cruel."

The "much better" is the subjective part—you have a scale that measures success differently from what the sport dictates, and different from the scale of other people. The "tennis-can-be-cruel" is where you show your dislike for the rules more explicitly for whatever reasons, perhaps one among them being that in your revised set of rules, possibly including a panel of judges which decides whose silky-smoothness was more silky and smooth, your idol would have won.

These tendencies, though they appear negative, are nevertheless the one's that help the sport grow. For one reason, fanfare, the word that identifies these tendencies, is where money comes from with which you pay these guys to play. Perhaps it also helps that people are more interested in quarrelling a bit—what fun is it if everyone agrees with you.

The world of sports is indeed a curious and elegant mix of hypocricy and faith—perhaps a mirror that reflects the life of every individual on this planet. No wonder we like it so much!