The Football Frenzy: Arbitrary specialization & the handicap principle

A human being should be able to change a diaper, plan an invasion, butcher a hog, conn a ship, design a building, write a sonnet, balance accounts, build a wall, set a bone, comfort the dying, take orders, give orders, cooperate, act alone, solve equations, analyze a new problem, pitch manure, program a computer, cook a tasty meal, fight efficiently, die gallantly. Specialization is for insects. (Robert A. Heinlein)

Who are the pinnacle of modern Western society? Our political leaders, variously despised and mistrusted? Our philosophers, who don't exist in the minds of a majority? Our artists, ignored if they don't produce carefully constructed entertainment to numb the pain of living our lives of quiet desperation? I think a strong argument could be made that the pinnacle of modern Western society, from the view of modern Western society itself, in terms of those paid the most and getting the most media coverage (easily argued, I think, to be the two primary definitions of status for modern Western society), are professional sports players. ("Most of them don't make that much and aren't known", yeah, yeah. Same goes for all the other aforementioned categories, and everything in general.)

I'm not looking to judge whether that's right or wrong. I'm simply looking to understand why. Because it is, I think, a very strange thing, and if you spend a few minutes thinking about it I would hope you'd agree. Especially if you adhere to modern Western society's (yes, I'm getting tired of typing that out) apparent worship of rationalism and efficiency, then you have to wonder: how are sports players rational or efficient? They don't do anything useful. They provide entertainment, sure, but as an explanation for why we consider them the best of us it's like saying we like them because they give us pleasure. It's redundant and cyclical. The question is, why do they give us pleasure? Why do we enjoy them?

Heinlein--for all that he was, good and bad--would cast a negative judgment towards this, obviously. He believed that the Renaissance man (to use a terrible term; maybe the Jack of All Trades?) was, or should be, the pinnacle of society. Of course, in a technological society, or a globalized society, or any society of sufficient complexity, it's more-or-less impossible to be a Renaissance man (and even the real Renaissance men probably weren't all that Heinlein wanted us to be). Because specialization is an intrinsic part of sociological development--more, it's evolutionary. Heinlein's true heroes would be single-celled organisms, who have to do everything for themselves because they have no one else. Of course, they don't do a whole lot--intake energy and reproduce, mainly. We can do all the things Heinlein wanted us to do because those single-celled organisms specialized and evolved.

But--this is the real argument I'm looking to make--there's nothing intrinsically useful about specialization. It's inherently arbitrary. You may say, how can that be? We're clearly better off than single-celled organisms. But of course we're not. Insects (which are much more generalized than we are, whatever Heinlein says) outnumber us in the trillions, and single-celled organisms outnumber them by orders of magnitude more. We may be the most powerful lifeforms on the planet, but we're far from the best survivors. Every step towards specialization is a step away from independence, a step away from basic survival and towards arbitrariness. Why do we use money? Work jobs? Play games? Wear clothes? There are explanations for all of these, of course, and good ones, but from a survival standpoint, they're all pointless (more-or-less).

Why do we specialize, then? Why did some of those first cells evolve towards specialization? After all, they didn't make a choice. It was survival of the fittest, wasn't it? Shouldn't we have never evolved if it wasn't a better route? I don't have a particularly good answer to that--I'm not a biologist, or anywhere close to one--but I do know a little about something called the "handicap principle". Think of a peacock. Why would anything evolve to so clearly identify itself to predators? Peacocks aren't particularly dangerous. They're not particularly good at escaping predators. It's a very dangerous thing for a peacock to be colored like it is. It's supposed to attract peahens for mating, sure, but why are they attracted to a peacock that's doing something idiotic? The answer is the "handicap principle": animals demonstrate they are fit for survival by demonstrating unfitness. That doesn't make sense, of course, so let's try again: animals demonstrate they are good enough to survive by deliberately handicapping themselves and still surviving. Peacocks are still around, so clearly they're able to survive despite their idiocy--and that makes them impressive.

This is, I think, at the core of specialization and its arbitrariness, at the core of why we value professional sports players more than any other type of person. Because they're pointless. Because they're useless idiots. Because they are supremely able to do one thing that absolutely cannot benefit themselves or anyone else in any real way. They are the ultimate specializers, the ultimate handicapped. And we love them for it, because they survive in spite of it. And yet--they survive only because we love them. This is, in its way, as cyclical as the answer that we like them because we are entertained by them. But I think it's closer. I think we intrinsically value specialization and arbitrariness on a genetic scale, and we can't help ourselves but love professional sports players because of it, be fascinated by them and shower them with attention.

And you know what? That's not a bad thing. Because remember, this is completely contrary to modern Western society's worship of rationalism and efficiency. Rationalism and efficiency are about accomplishing what's most important in the best way possible. They're about survival. But there is a part of each of us that doesn't care about survival. There is a part of each of us that wants to be specialized arbitrarily, that wants to be idiotic, that wants to be irrational and inefficient, that wants to be--different. That's what specialization really is, after all--difference. If everyone was rational and efficient, if there was only one best path to survival, then we'd all be the same. And many in modern Western society would greatly prefer that.

But you can't take away our irrationalism and inefficiency. You can funnel it into the worship of professional sports players, turn it into massive spectacles of distraction away from the dark horrors in our hearts, but you can't take it away. And eventually it will break out, and people will wake up, and they will tear down those false idols of rationalism and efficiency and act beautifully idiotically, beyond any authority. Until someone asserts authority and begins it all again, or we all die, spectacularly unfit for survival.

I look forward to the end of the world.