Medieval fete/cult of sport/macho finance

Recently we took a trip back in time, we went to the Fete Medievale in Cagnes sur Mer. In the afternoon there was a tournament, with jousting and hand-to-hand fights:

The kids in the audience loved it - was this encouraging aggression and sadism? Oh well, I played cowboys and Indians as a kid and I hate wars. However, this bit of escapism, into the era of chivalry and rescued damsels, has unfortunate connections with the current disaster in Iraq:

Medieval militarism and European expansionism

Chivalric orders first appeared with military activities against non-Christian states. During the Middle Ages, Western Europe aggressively sought to expand its area of control. The first orders of chivalry were very similar to the monastic orders of the era. Both sought the sanctification of their members through combat against "infidels"..."

http://www.medieval-life.net/chivalry.htm

After the tournament we strolled round the site which had examples of medieval crafts and products for sale - but also a fight school for kids, of both sexes:



They were instructed to stay down once "killed", but some couldn't resist peeking as the last two standing battled it out:



Some of the people strolling around were themselves in medieval costume, ready for the feast at Haut Cagnes, the medieval village above Cagnes sur Mer later:





But of course the crafts included making weapons:



Then it was time to catch the bus up to Haut Cagnes (while giving a young French woman a lesson in queuing etiquette, approved by a French guy) for the feast:



It had period entertainment - at least this could be enjoyed without too many unfortunate associations:





This is fun:





Fire dance:





But later, as I explored some medieval connections on the internet, I discover that re-enacting medieval fighting involves a million people around the world, many of them are Americans - who do it in what one might call a "shock and awe" style - or "full force" as they call it.

The Belegarth Medieval Combat Society is a sport where participants fight with foam padded safety equipment made to reflect medieval weaponry. The sport's combat is hard hitting and fast-paced, requiring a level of skill and aggression that challenges its participants to be physically fit.

Belegarth.com is a social networking website for people interested in Belegarth and medieval combat. Belegarth.com has existed as a location for our local sports organizations to communicate and discuss combat and other activities surrounding the sport of Belegarth and medieval combat since 2001.

http://belegarth.com/

This photo isn't the making of a Hollywood film, these American guys are about to attack each oher - just for the fun of it:



Here is a short video of a "battle" - "full force":

http://www.jubilex.com/movies/pennsic31/hadrian-1.mpg

One of the things I enjoy doing is historical middle ages fighting with a group called the SCA (society for creative anachronism).

This group is approx a million strong with members everywhere from New York to New Guinea. our goal is to recreate historical middle ages life through education, study , and practice. No there are no wizards or elves or any fantasy things.

The fighting is full force , I have a real set of steel armor, and of course we use UNPADDED wood. If we used steel I would not be alive to tell you of the group. it can be dangerous of course, people have been seriously hurt doing this, but it is a extremely rare situation that something does happen because everyone is really a brother even if they are your enemy.

We practice how we know/think that soldiers trained and learned back in the middle ages.

http://forums.darkfallonline.com/showthread.php?t=15826

The Iraq connection made explicit:

The group I belong to is run by a bunch of marines, our leader is actually over in Iraq right now unfortunently.



Notice the all-American sporting background.

Ibid.

It's no surprise that such "full-force" fighting should be popular in the US; there is a lot of money to be made from encouraging an obsession with competitive sports, and some die on the sports field because of it:

So powerful is the culture of sports in America that young men eagerly, even fanatically, mortgage their physical futures for a moment's football success. The payments are high.

"Players are much bigger than ever, much more muscular," Curry says. "It's year-around conditioning with no rest for the body. Some players are enormous, and they'll do anything to gain or lose weight. What's the cumulative effect of all that? We don't have the slightest idea."
...
Two weeks ago, the Broncos' defensive back celebrated over the body [ he wasn't killed - luckily] of Antonio Freeman, a Packers receiver. Brown had rendered Freeman unconscious. He did it with a helmet-to-face-mask hit as the sprinting Freeman stretched up toward a thrown football.

For the illegal hit, Brown was suspended a game and fined a week's pay, almost $25,000.

After the sort of violent assault that has paralyzed defenseless men, Eric Brown danced around the fallen body, laughing, hopping, his own body made electric with savage thrill.

It made no sense.

"But it does make sense," Bill Curry says. "It's what all of us in the business want. Listen to us. `Headhunters,' `kill shots,' `blind shots, `clothesline.' We have to look at our whole culture, even the game's language."

Words reveal who we are. When Jerry Glanville coached the Falcons, he so loved one linebacker's attitude that he thought to praise the young man. So he called him "a borderline trained assassin." Heaven help us.

http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m1208/is_38_225/ai_78790066

Cf.:

[Eric Brown]"You've got to play with emotion. You get a chance to make a hit, you can't think about how you're going to hit him. You've got to go out and hit him. There are consequences afterward, I guess." [!]

Freeman has taken his share of vicious blows in the past, including one from former Minnesota Vikings cornerback Corey Fuller in the 1996 finale at Lambeau Field in front of the Green Bay bench. He missed four games with a broken arm in 1996 and one game in 1998 with a broken jaw.

http://www2.jsonline.com/packer/rev/aug01/packnot21s2082101.asp

Macho Finance

It's not surprising that this powerful "culture of sports" affects other areas of society:

Women have long been underrepresented in financial services, where a macho culture and long hours meant women faced prejudice and the need to sacrifice the time they could spend with children.

… "When you really look at the people working in hedge funds, it is almost like the extreme sport of the financial industry,"
…
Gur's research using magnetic resonance imagery found that in women, the size of the orbital frontal lobe, the part of the brain that assesses the context of risk, is larger in proportion to the amygdala, the primitive animal brain that responds to threats, than it is in men. For example, Gur said, at a party, "when someone says something nasty, the amygdala reacts and says, 'Kill him.' By contrast, when the stimulus is sent to the front of the brain, it may say: 'He is a drunken fool; don't bother with him.' "

To Sargent, their heightened capacity to evaluate context means that women "are more methodical, better at weighing all sides, and they often ask: 'What is my downside?' "

http://mobile.iht.com/articles/mmidas.4.7080752.xhtml

But it's not just a question of biology, of course, certain abilties or tendencies can be encouraged or discouraged in a culture. Thus, though it may have been quite macho for some time, the culture of financial services like hedge funds has changed recently to become even more macho:

In his recent book "Hedgehogging," Barton Biggs, a longtime Morgan Stanley investment strategist who started up his own fund, writes of a hedge fund manager who complains that "our nice old game is being played at faster and faster speeds by bigger and rougher guys, so it's getting tougher and more dangerous all the time. Everybody is on steroids. The violence level is soaring. It's like the NFL."

ibid

We have just seen the latest example of the results of such a culture in the current financial crisis, where people were encouraged to take absurd risks in a highly competitive context. We need to move to a culture where people ask not only: "What's MY downside?" But also "What's our collective downside - of this sort of culture/ideology?" After Iraq, New Orleans, the Minneapolis bridge and the financial crisis, perhaps even sports-crazed Americans weilding medieval maces for a fun weekend are going to demand more attention to the downside and provision for a better upside.