(Violence) Pain and Sport

This week.
A strong editorial note in our Macleans magazine calling attention to the amount of damage football has been causing to its participantsand asking for what to do???

Violence leading to Pain

We began this section introducing Violence because from its many forms, injury and Pain are two of the most common outcomes of it. Lets see what a sport medicine doctor says about sport: http://www.youtube.com /watch?v=zmTZSbMg_Pk

Pain
Meaning of Pain really?! Isnt pain well, just pain? Thus, the pain we feel changes not only as a sensory experience (the degree of pain) but also how we perceive it and how it affects us.

Episodic Memory
The recollection of events that we experience. This narrative is done with little filters. It is just the story with us as protagonists. It is specific to each one of us.

Semantic Memory
In a nutshell, how we comprehend the things that we have experienced based on current knowledge and understandings. Sematic memory is general knowledge learned through education and culture.

Autobiographical Memory
Although in the article says that episodic memory is closely connected to autobiographical memory, latest studies show that autobiographical memory is based on a combination of episodic and semantic memory.

In Sport
Athletes learn unique ways of relating to pain. In the context of sport, pain seems to reflect a culture that rewards and glorifies it reinforcing a gender identity.

Types of Pain: Unspeakable Pain

Unspeakable pain the inability to articulate pain so you can be satisfied you are conveying the right message and others can understand what you re feeling. As many in the experiment found out, they could not properly articulate and achieve both goals. Pain was unsharable. Fortunately, over time, and under certain conditions, wrote Sparkles and Smith, physical pain can find a voice, and when it does it begins to tell a story. (Reader, 2013-2014:197198)

Types of Pain: Naming Pain

Naming Pain once we began to try a proper adjective for the pain suffered, these athletes came out with many of them: sharp, shooting, intense, burning, hot, scalding, searing. All these words reflect our understanding of the world (context). (I am surprised no one mentioned a swearing word to describe the pain)

Types of Pain: Welcomed Pain

Welcomed Pain Pain as a sign of being alive. Pain seen as a hopeful sign that not only they were alive but maybe even would recover one day. The author mentioned that most athletes dont like pain when associated with injury. While I fully agreed with that statement, I would also say that pain, in most sports, is an intrinsic part of the formation of an elite athlete.

Types of Pain: Hidden Pain

Hidden Pain this is perhaps the clearest illustration of the construction of hegemonic masculinity. Their injury was not going to transform them into sissies. They may be hurt but they are still men; the Marlboro man! Men who did not talk about their pain. Men who were still men despite the pain.

Types of Pain: Locked in Pain

Locked in pain they are breaking down as the pain is taking over their lives. This is the time for frustration and anger, still rejecting any help but timidly asking for painkillers. This is the time in which major contradictions are faced; socialized not to talk and admit pain and, on the other, pain as an unbearable one and asking for some help.

Consequences
Athletes are taught to normalize pain by ignoring, masking, hiding it. Athletes, being as obedient as they have been taught, follow orders and expectations faithfully. Continuous conflict: athletic therapists and doctors versus coaches.

Culture of Pain
In sport we have glorified and rewarded violence and pain. Alvin Williams, a guard for the Raptors in the early 2000, often played injured and he was widely praised for it. He finished his career after playing only 2 full seasons in the NBA.

So, where are we?

Review our culture of violence and pain. Violence is not our destiny. We have developed some very successful tools to deal with violence in our civilized societies. For the most part, we are way less violent than not long ago. (Steven Pinker: The surprising decline in violence. Ted talks.)
http://www.ted.com/talks/steven_pinker_on_the_myth_of_violence.html

So, what else do you do?

There is nothing else to be done, not so long as fans stand and cheer. We are in love with football players, with their courage and grit, and nothing elseneither considerations of science nor those of morality can compete with the destructive power of that love. Malcom Gladwell