Stupid, But Dangerous, But Awesome (?) Sports and their Social Implications

Ripped Directly from The Globe and Mail

Next, the Olympics?
“Blood trickles from a gash below Paul Bedard’s left ear, a wound that could have been worse considering that he incurred it while kissing a 2.5-metre alligator under water,” Jacqui Goddard writes for The Times of London. “… He resurfaces holding the alligator over his head before hauling it to the side of the pool, staggering onto the adjoining sandy beach and flopping it onto its back, a move that renders the creatures immobile.” The event was staged by the Seminole Indian Tribe of south Florida as part of a push to get alligator wrestling recognized as a professional competitive sport. The hope is that Freestyle Alligator Wrestling Competitions (FAWC), a body co-founded by tribe member James Holt, might one day become the alligator equivalent of World Wrestling Entertainment.

What exactly are the barriers to getting alligator wrestling classified as a professional sport? Perhaps its a question of paternalistic welfarational concern for the anthro-combatant. Should the gov't care about its citizens in this way? I guess its kind of nice that they do. But, why do they care? Its not as if those participating in alligator wrestling are the best and the brightest. They're clearly not. Not incredibly smart guy = Alligator Wrestler is like the closest thing you are going to get to a tautology in the Human Sciences with 2 non-synonyms. Even if it is a valued cultural activity, its still probably best belongs to history.

Further, the gov't probably will find some other way to screw over those people's lives economically anyway as the oppresed southern underclass is a usual target. So why care for them in this instance?

Turning to the question of the social ramifications of the state legitimating this sport by bestowing it a professional ... Imagine a nation where all laws were the same as now but where issues of leisure suffered no state intereference. Xtremadelphiaopolissstanyork - where all was game, and no one could blame anyone but themselves. Would society suffer? We could still ban kids from doing certain sports or activities (even libertarians probably want some paternalism for kids). But no bans for adults.

Possible social ills

• lost grief days at work for friends and relatives of the extreme sport dead




• psychological trauma resulting from this




• thrill seekers would need to find something even more extreme and potentially dangerous to others if previous thrill achieved through the now legalized sport was through participating in a dangerous and illegal activity

The list would go something like this. Its not a huge list. The list for nearly any activity, even one as banal as knitting probably has its fair of resultant social ills (as well as benefits).

So does the state ban these activities because of the minimal social ills to others outlined or because they care about the individual participant? And - even if the gov'ts intentions are the best - how would care be defined by a cold, bureaucratic thing like a state. Remember, all political vocabularies justify niceties accorded by the state to its citizens within the language of cool, calcuable rights. Rights mention nothing about caring. And, can a thing, like a state, care in any anthromorphic sense of the word?