The weather had been very pleasant until just recently, and Bear and I had been spending long periods of time outside in the side yard running, barking, roughhousing and just generally playing around. Which eventually led Bear to ask:
“Cadbury, what is our humans’ word for what we are doing now?”
“Play,” I responded. “They often use that word to describe activity that has no particular reason or purpose other than enjoyment.”
“Why don’t I see our humans play like we do?” Bear asked.
“Well, first of all, they work hard to ensure that we have a very nice life, and we should be grateful for that. They do play, just not in the same manner.”
“While the form and manner of their play can vary widely, often it has a very specific purpose, which the humans call ‘winning.’ That generally means that one human or a group of them perform more tasks, or perform them better or to a higher degree, than other humans or groups. (One of the forms involves walking a lot and hitting a little white ball until it goes into a hole in the ground; that activity seems to result in an equal amount of enjoyment and frustration for the humans playing it, which all seems incomprehensible to me.) The humans call these activities ‘sports’ or ‘competitions.’”
“You may have noticed a lot of interest these past few days in what the humans call ‘the Olympic games’ which are a series of competitive sports held at specific intervals in varying cities and involve humans from many different parts of the world. Our humans do not compete in these games, but really enjoy watching them on TV. This year they’ve even put a TV outside so they can watch them while enjoying the good weather!"
“You know, Bear, you’ve actually been watching some of those games yourself, though you didn’t realize it at the time. I’ve noticed your all-consuming fascination with any activity that appears to involve a ball of some sort being kicked or tossed or thrown or hit in some way. Just about any example of that which you have watched on the TV recently was part of those games.”
“Cadbury,” asked Bear, “why are the humans so interested in winning?”
“Now that’s an interesting question,” I replied. “I think that humans are competitive by their very nature. That may have come about initially from the struggle early on in their existence to simply survive, to get food and protect themselves from other animals that might take that food away from them – or even see them as food themselves! But there’s more to it than that.”
“Humans experience some types of feelings we do not, which they call emotions. One of them, envy, involves wanting to take something away that another human or group of humans have. Another – and this is a big one – is pride, which seems to be an overwhelming need to feel, and to be perceived to be, better, stronger, more attractive, more powerful, or more virtuous, than other humans. Both of those emotions share the common element of one human or group gaining or achieving something at the expense of another human or group. When those two emotions combine, the result can be conflict, which when it happens on a very large scale, is called ‘war.’ In human history, war has been horrifically violent and damaging, even for the supposed ‘winners.’ For the most part humans try very hard to avoid it.”
“Which actually brings us back to the topic of sports. It’s my impression that humans invented sports as a way to channel their competitive impulses into similar, but less destructive, activities. They created an amazing variety of contests and placed rules around them which both keep them from getting out of hand and serve as the basis for determining who ‘wins’ and who ‘loses’ the contest. These ‘games’ are thus healthier and safer alternatives to war. In fact, the Olympic games you’ve been watching on TV, which involve humans from various human ‘nations’ competing against each other, were established specifically for that purpose.”
“What do the humans get when they win at these sports?" asked Bear.
“Well, it depends on the particular sport, but in the Olympic games, the top three winners get big circular pieces of metal that they can hang around their necks. The humans call them ‘medals.’ In other sports, the winner may get a metal plate or a big metal cup, and some winning groups (the humans call them ‘teams’) get big metal rings. They might also receive money, which is a much larger topic that we can discuss later. In every case, the winners get something called ‘bragging rights’ which as far as I can tell is the right to tell everyone else that you won, which satisfies the winner’s pride at the expense of the loser’s envy. I don’t find that very appealing personally, but it certainly is preferable to war.”
“So now, dear Bear, you will have a much better understanding of human behavior when watching sporting events on the TV.”
“Oh, ... I forgot to tell you. Don’t be alarmed when you see the humans who are not participating directly in the sport activities (the humans call them 'spectators’) dress and act strangely and get excited and jump up and down and yell loudly while watching sports – they are merely experiencing a temporary form of ‘game insanity’ which is entirely harmless and tends to dissipate after a day or two.”
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