Editorials - Positional and cooperative logic
by Luigino Bruni
published in Avvenire on 11/08/2024
Homo sapiens is a competitive animal. For a very long time, our competitors have been natural events, predatory animals and other human communities that were our rivals for scarce resources. Behind the fascination that runs, jumps and arrows still exert on us there are traces of a collective DNA that has performed those essential gestures for tens of thousands of years, on the success of which survival often depended. Hence their primordial appeal that glues us together and enchants us in front of the TV and in the stadiums.
The Olympics are a great expo of human comedy, a celebration of some of the best dimensions of humans. That excellence displayed and celebrated is the result of virtues that we value and desire for ourselves and for everyone. These include the capacity of self-discipline, tenacity, the processing of defeats, loyalty, so much so that we have even invented a noun to synthesise all these: sportsmanship. And it is hard to find anyone who would deny that these are universal virtues that apply in every sphere of life.
Alongside these obvious virtues there are other, more controversial aspects. These include a certain militaristic environment that surrounds sport and the Olympics even more, made up of flags and thus of that patriotism that for some is a virtue but for others (including myself) is not - after every major global sporting event, for example, the idea of Europe always comes out weakened. Although one could reverse this legitimate criticism by staying on the same level: sport is also a narrative and symbolic elaboration of violence in order to transform it into its opposite. It is a metamorphosis of war, an instant of its resurrection.
And, perhaps, looking at those flexible, blunt swords that only give off a green or red light and those spears thrown without an enemy to strike, we can even discern a certain fulfilment of Isaiah's great prophecy: ‘and they shall beat their swords into plowshares, / and their spears into pruning hooks; / (...) / neither shall they learn war anymore.’ (Is 2:4).
Once we have recognised all this beauty, we can and must try to say something else. Sport, when looked at properly, is a great cooperative phenomenon. This is evident in team sports, but no less essential in individual ones. Behind what appears to be the talent and skill of an individual athlete there is indeed a ‘whole village’ made up of coaches, technicians, doctors, federation, amateur sports clubs, training partners, and many others. Among these ‘many others’ there are also the competitors, essential companions to every athlete, because the skill of those who compete with us is a decisive ingredient in our good results - not having enough excellent competitors is a misfortune for a potential champion. In sport (and in life), competition is also a form of cooperation.
And yet in the sports narrative, it is precisely the cooperative dimension that is missing, overpowered and dumbed down by the one built on rivalry and medal-winning. The success of a performance is measured on the single axis of medals; a fourth place is considered a defeat, to the point that the Italian federation made a counter-appeal (not accepted) to transform an excellent fourth place with an Italian record into third, clearly to the detriment of another athlete.
In fact, it is the positional logic that is critical in the great Olympic metaphor, also because it becomes stronger and more absolute in the Olympics. Anyone who plays sport or loves it knows that ‘success’ in a sporting event is a function with many variables. Along with the final ranking result, which certainly counts, there is one's own improvement, there is the passage of the first rounds accompanied by the warmth of the crowd, and above all there is the participation in the event desired and dreamed of since childhood. We ended up ridiculing De Coubertin's motto - ‘the important thing in the Olympic Games is not to win, but to take part’ - which emphasised what the first ‘prize’ of sport was: to be able to compete, as the swimmers Francesca Fangio and Giulia Gabrielleschi reminded us after their elimination and sixth place, respectively.
Thus, when the positional dimension of sport, the victories and medals are made absolute, that great spectacle of the Olympics is spoiled. The Olympic village, seen from the outside (not from the inside), loses its stupendous democracy and equality and divides into winners and losers, sport becomes the apotheosis of the inequality of the society of the ‘happy few’ - there are much fewer Olympic medal winners in the world than billionaires. There is coherence between a sport that sees only medals and a society that sees only GDP - by the way, the overlap between the medal standings and the GDP standings is almost perfect.
Sport has always been like this. For the winners‘ tears of joy the losers’ tears of sadness have always been needed. I can only be first if there are second and last ones. This is true. But the positional dimension is increasing along with the extension of the culture of capitalism based on the dogmas of meritocracy and leadership. In fact, the bug is not to be found in the community of sportsmen. The malady emerges when we take sport and make it a metaphor for the world; when rankings, winners and medallists leave the stadiums and swimming pools and expand into other fields. Because that ‘zero-sum game’ (-1/+1), an important dimension of sporting competition, is not the game of civil and economic life, which is instead the place of ‘positive-sum games’ (+1/+1). In economic and civil cooperation, not only do rankings not count, but its logic is radically different: an exchange between a big and a small one can be more advantageous for both than an exchange between two ‘big ones’.
In businesses and in offices there are also positional dimensions; but economy and society are first and foremost cooperative networks, where my ‘victory’ does not necessitate someone else's ‘defeat’. Merit badges, which are unfortunately increasing in our positional society, fray labour relations and worsen everyone's ‘performance’.
