Evaluating the Metabletic Watershed

The basic disquieting historical phenomenological intuition ofVan den Berg’s De Reflex is that humans increasingly act in automated ways, without interference of the critical and conscious mind, notably when it comes to transport and movement in the era of ever-increasing industrialisation and automation. According to him this tendency has to be stopped, because it diverts us from our original destination: being truly human, being pensative and going solo (orduo or trio, but that’s the maximum). Since the stakes are that high—during the time of writing he identified the detrimental effects of posonistic self- estrangement— 2010 cetainly passess Van den Berg’s litmus test: poson has absorbed poion. But the normative imperative is still there: choose the path that is too narrow for a spinal mass, and search for real and reflective life beyond the mechanic iterations of the madding crowd.

In contrast, although similar mechanistic and reflexive tendencies were already at work, , 1974 stands out as a miracle year, not because of the quantitity of sportive highlights, but because of their meditative reflective poionistic quality. Apparently, the authentic poionistic individual could still overcome the posonistic tendencies. Observed through the lense of historical phenomenology, however, 2010 turned out to be a year of utmost mechanic reflexivity. Anno 2010, subtle and tentative

poion has given way to brute and straightforward poson.

In the post-2010 era of increasing reflexivity, contemporary sport can hardly be considered an appropriate tool for carving out an ecosophical-ascetological stance. Sport does not seem to result any longer in an open-minded Sitz im Leben, an attitude which lets many flowers blossom co-existentially: a comprehensive and peaceful attitude, which still enables to vent our inborn vertical tension by climbing the mountains of life, but at our own pace, as proposed at the end of the previous chapter.

But this should not be considered the inevitable final word, I would argue. The lessons to be learned from 1974 is that, in the folds and margins of opsonic society, exceptional reflective experiences can still be attained. Notwithstanding Van den Berg’s metabletic intuition that the marco-world is moving in spinal directions, an ecosophical-ascetological understanding is still something worthwhile to pursue, albeit agasint the grain. Van den Berg’s descriptions of sport as spinal, reflexive and automated movements, running over the spine, to some extent seems to have taken over critical self-reflection. What he seems to overlook, however, is that there is always some room for manoeuvre, in every specific sport practice, from professional soccer to recreational cycling. In every case there is a constant hovering between the dominant trend (sport as an instrumental means to utilitarian ends, say power or success) and the recessive trend (a rich conception of sport as a full-fledged, eudaimonistic being-in- the-world).

The poion-poson distinction outlines the polarity of human sportivity. Poion and poson are complementary dimensions of sportive phenomena. This polarity defines a continuum on which individual athletes can be scored as it were. Seven times Tour de France winner (1999-2005) Lance Armstrong, for instance, although characterised by Van den Bossche as a posonistic, calculative rider, also bears poionistic traits. Notwithstanding his focus on quantity, there is a hint, even in Armstrong (nicknamed The Boss or King Lance) of a hip romantic,123 _{a post-Nietzschean qualitative holist who re-}

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valued all the existing cycling values. As a straightforward Texan, Armstrong challenged the rusty European standards of cycling that were taken for granted until then. He, for instance, turned the time trial into something completely different, by introducing high cadence spinning (souplesse!) instead of using the big gear (brute force!). He also frequently challenged the tacit mores of the peloton: training at low intensity and racing a lot and hard. He trusted on his long training sessions, submerged in a Van den Bergian solitude, and concentrating on the Tour de France, the Sancta Sanctorum in professional cycling. “Armstrong is a rarity because he prefers to go out on his bicycle day in and day out, rather than upgrade his form in races” (Abt, 2001).124 _{In this sense, he personifies Pirsig’s John Sutherland, who}

simply rode and trusted his intuition.

As a cancer survivor and cancer fighter, leading his Livestrong-foundation and his homonymous team, Armstrong furthermore was a man with an unmistakable mission; a role model with a high societal impact. What of course tipped the poion-scales the other way again was his démasqué as a consistent doping sinner in 2012. Still, counter-balance can be found in Armstrong’s return to his first love in sport, the triathlon, after ending his professional cycling career in 2011, a remarkable return to the preferred poionistic attitude again, which never became completely extinct. By pushing the horizon of human possibility to the limit, this combination of long distance swimming, cycling and running, the classic triathlon is the ultimate manifestation of the ascetological-ecosophical attitude, as outlined in the previous chapter.125

The same applies at the other side of the spectrum. Alexander Vinokourov, according to Van den Bossche the poionistic and romantic rider par excellence, because he was always attacking and never calculating, turned out to be a hell of a fraud.126 _{He was unmasked as a dope-sinner and he allegedly}

won the 2010 edition of the cycling classic Liège-Bastogne-Liège only by bribing Russian Alexander Kolobnev, who broke away from the pack with Vino at the Roche aux Faucons, at 16 kilometres before the finish line. Kolobnev was said to have let the Kazakh win in a half-hearted sprint after a short private chat in the last kilometre.127 _{When confronted with this, Vinoukourov did not deny that a payment was}

made to Kolobnev, but he said that he did not really buy the race: “It’s my private life. I often loan money left and right” (Velo News).128

The critical reversal of the Armstrong-Vinoukourov case learns that the quality-quantity watershed between 1974 and 2010 is not a matter of either /or, because both dimensions are always present. The bottom-line of Van den Berg’s ‘doctrine of change’, applied to sport, is that every epoch has its typical poion-poson dynamics. Synchronous facts that draw the attention of the beholder must hang together,

124 Lance Amstrong in the New York Times:“You have to have a basic gift and then it’s how you work with that gift, how you shape it, the work that you do, the intensity you do it in and then the motivation for the race. I’m very motivated for this race. It’s everything.” (Cited in Abt, 2001).

125 This critical point will be elaborated in Chapter 7: On Agon and Ecosophical Endurance: Finding your Own Pace. By revaluing the Sisyphean concept of askesis as a contemporary and relatively clean and green means to fight the struggle with and against oneself, we may overcome the uncompromising fight against our natural environment and transform the human condition into a ‘coexistent agony’ wíth the world. This, however, without throwing the competitive, proto-agonistic baby that still lingers in us out with the bathwater. The classic triathlon embraces both impulses: coexistence ánd competitive agonistic strivings.

126 Van den Bossche was not aware of Vinoukourov’s treacherous ways nor of Armstrong’s doping usage when he wrote his cycling book. 127 It has to be noticed that this is a common practice in professional cycling as of the early days. Cycling has always been a game of haggling,

covered by a peloton-wide omertà, a code of silence. The contemporary high-tech registration of races has just made this more visible. 128 Vinoukourov and Kolobnev will face judgement in a Belgian court on March 13, 2018.

“but also other, unmentioned but synchronous facts in principle comply with the law of synchrony, which claims that the events at hand are related in a significant way and form a pattern, an image” ( Zwart 2002, p. 169). The poion-poson distinction allows us to explain the contrast between the image of 1974 and the image of 2010, and therein resides the added value of metabletics.

The metabletic comparison also allows us to evaluate changes in the norms and standards of sports, since these are always human activities embedded in fluctuating historic settings. Metabletics helps us to determine the moral value of a remarkable sportive event, regardless of the specific motives of the athlete at the time. In other words, metabletics claims to understand the athletes better than they understand themselves. The metabletic reading allows us to confer meaning to concrete sporting acts and to explain why they continue to appeal to us. The explanandum, the phenomenon itself (say the allegations of doping or bribing in professional cycling), and the explanans (the worded explanations of that same phenomenon by the athletes and coaches involved) may diverse, but from a metabletic perspective there is something posonistic about doping cases in 2010 and something poionistic about those in 1974.

The resulting subjective ‘thick descriptions’, a phrase introduced in anthropology by Clifford Geertz but originating in William James (Toulmin & Gustavsen 1996, p.209), are a necessary condition for the scientific study of human sportive behaviour, which has to deal with Zeitgeist fluctuations. Understanding human behaviour requires a broader view, a thick and creative use of language. “The thick descriptions cultural anthropologists give of the activities they study are not written in the dry, cool, abstract language of physical theory, but in the rich, concrete, colourful language of daily life” (p. 209). According to Stephen Toulmin, writings of ‘the anthropological kind’ (which include the broad internalist take on sport, I would argue)129 _{therefore rather “resemble reports by investigative}

journalists more than they do the papers of technically trained physicists” (p. 209).

Van den Berg’s style of writing can also to be characterised as ‘thick’. He not only thoughtfully identifies prima facie randomly chosen but on closer inspection metabletically coherent facts, representing moments of transition in history, he also looks at the incidents and anecdotes, the backstage of the concerning era. By means of his imaginative casuistry and meaningful asides, he follows the journalistic adage ‘show, don’t tell’. Moreover, his elliptic and apodictic sentences address the reader directly with an unequivocal message: leave the levelled path that leads to doom, my contemporaries.

Whilst questionable from a strict historiographic or social scientific130 _{perspective, the metabletic}

method has its benefits for tentatively approaching the practical-philosophical subject-matter of this study: How can endurance sport at large and cycling in particular contribute not only to self-knowledge, but also to self-improvement and to sustainability? Looking through metabletic lenses, and armed with the dichotomy of poion and poson, I concluded that Van den Berg’s fear of a scorching spinalism definitely applies to 2010, but also allows us to explain what was so exceptional about 1974.

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Furthermore I have attempted to show that multiple perspectives are possible. What at first sight looks like sheer quality may harbour calculative traits as well, and vice versa. The proviso does not undermine the explanatory power of Van den Berg’s metabletic disapproval of the reflex as such. What he seems to have overlooked (or willingly ignored), however, is that ‘acting over the spine’ as a result of technological progress also provides unique opportunities for finding real life. In other words: poson enables poion. Instead of melancholically focussing on supposed original perceptions of earlier, pre- technological times,131 _{and supposedly more reflective days, we should also acknowledge the potential}

benefits of technology for a life lived to the full. We should look through the glasses, not only at them.132

Now the remanining question is: how can a critical assessment of (sport-)technology provide an escape route for the stalemate between idealistic ponderings and concrete scenarios for a sustainable concept of endurance sport?