Saturday, March 17, 2007

Keep on keeping on

A scathing, cynical and condescending attitude prevents me from serious analysis of people's behaviour, activities and tastes. For example, laughing at the tackiness of football memorabilia (esp. SD dolls) ignores the fact that such tokens or talismans represent a substitution (no pun intended) of religious iconography where football in fact takes the place of organised religion in the lives of many modern people.
Following football requires certain ritualised practises: attending matches in the flesh or at least watching on TV, discussion with other believers, listening to pundits (sermons), wearing garments to show belonging such as team shirts, scarves, also enacting rituals oneself in groups by playing football recreationally. Each of these activities possesses its own set of rules and repeated behaviour patterns, modes of speech, physical gestures etc. This not only cements belonging feelings in practitioners but reinforces those feelings in others too.
Football is just one example, many pastimes have such associated behaviour patterns. The fundamental need to act out repeated behaviour patterns is borne out by the number of people with some kind of compulsive behaviour problem, repeated hand washing, door checking etc. Since the most basic lifeform must perform repeated actions to survive, such as seeking out light or proteins, we can see repeated activity is ancient indeed.
The point is when the urge comes to ridicule someone for their behaviours it would be wise to think about the origin and reason for these , a deeper understanding of individual and likely more general human behaviour will occur.