Way back in the day, (~10,000 BC) the only sport on Earth was killing stuff. There really wasn't much to do besides killing people...and making people. Sometimes for better and most of the time for worst, violence is an integral part of what makes us human. I'm here to talk about "the better".
Violence is under attack in schools and in sports. Three Virginian middle schoolers were expelled last September for waging an airsoft battle on their own yard while waiting for the bus one morning. These types of knee-jerk reactions to violence are just the beginning of this oppressive, paternalistic movement. Those kids were just doing what kids have done since the dawn of time: imitate stupid sh** they think is cool.
When I was in middle school, I wore a backwards white Volcom hat daily, and busted my obese middle school ass on a tiny Walmart skateboard with a Blink 182 graphic on the bottom. Even if only for a few fleeting moments, I lived out my fantasies of "Tony Hawk Pro Skater" on the Nintendo 64, just like those kids lived out theirs from Call of Duty. Even cooler: unlike those dweebs, I almost talked to a girl.
These childhood fantasies, no matter how unbelievably stupid they are, teach us valuable lessons without causing any real harm besides cuts and bruises. When your grandpa acted out his middle school war fantasies, he most likely got trench foot and a sucking chest wound. How do you think he feels when he hears that the local elementary school banned running on the playground? It probably gives him one more excuse to hate you and what your generation is doing to the world.
Logically speaking, this attack on violence is robbing kids of a very important part of their development. In the real world, there are absolutely winners and losers. My high school football coach always told us to get as low as possible, drive our feet as hard as possible, and throw every fiber of our being into every impact. But this wasn’t to inflict injury - it was to prevent us from getting injured by the other guy.
Just like the gridiron, the world is an inherently violent place. Those who don't learn to face conflict with tenacity will repeatedly and undoubtedly get their sh** wrecked. Exposure to controlled physical violence in our formative years prepares us for the far more cutthroat psychological violence we all face on a daily basis as adults.
Professional athletes who make their living in blood are becoming polarizing figures. A growing minority believes that mixed martial arts fighters - and even now football players - make poor role models, and they campaign to neuter or even ban these types of sports. But this attitude isn’t just an overreaction: it’s intolerant. Some dudes genuinely get their rocks off from beating the crap out of other dudes, and seemingly don't mind it very much when somebody else beats the crap out of them. What's the difference between this and dudes who get their rocks off from, say, having sex with other dudes? The groups who seek to deny the fighter the right to live his life the way he wants are no better than those other groups who seek to deny a gay man from living his life the way he wants. Both groups think that they "know better,” so they preach these self-satisfying messages of moral superiority from atop oozing heaps of bullsh** and shamelessly tell others how they should live their lives.
Will is a sophomore majoring in International Studies. He is a humor columnist for the Opinions section.
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