When Healing Becomes Educating, Vol. 6 - Waldorf Research Institute

is completely empty.” Without realizing it, he was accurately describing the
inevitable outcome of the one-sided use of the limbs, which draws thinking
down into them and the instinctual sphere of the body. Having freed itself
from that sphere in the course of evolution, thinking is once again sucked
into it, there to become a bodily instinct. The empty head is quite simply
the ultimate sporting phenomenon. Because of it the players can achieve
the exceptional performances so admired by the crowd who get carried away
on stormy waves of emotion when they witness someone “writing sporting
history” with his legs.
The mass of spectators approaches the game in a wave of expectations
they hope will be met. Tension rises and mesmerizes the crowd; its release
can be immense and lead to violence. The other side of the coin is the desire
for sensational experience in the stadium; this joins forces with virtuoso
displays of instinctual movement, and the two make a whole. This has little
to do with the human being’s spiritual self-determination. At the time of
the ancient Games there was also a philosophy. One of its propositions
was: Remove thinking from the human being, and he becomes an animal
(ektherioutai = becomes an animal, Aristotle).
The statements that follow are from reports published in the Zuricher
Zeitung, the Frankfurter Zeitung, the Stuttgarter Zeitung and other papers. The
objection that such things need not be taken too seriously will be dealt with
later.
During the 1984 Olympics, a false start meant that Edwin M. had to
kneel at the starting line for a second time; and “the Coliseum was as silent
as a church.” In the end, we read that he—like other competitors during
those Games—”was not an ordinary mortal.” Yet while the Games were still
in progress he came into conflict with the law after molesting a detective,
just like any ordinary mortal.
During the Germany-Brazil World Cup Match in 1986, a score of 1:0
had been reached. When the losing side renewed their attack a “mood of
holy anticipation filled the stadium.” The Queretaro stadium in Mexico
was called the “cathedral of football.” When Diego Maradona played in
Stuttgart in 1989 people called him simply the “football god.”
This vocabulary might be regarded as merely metaphorical, resulting
from lack of imagination on the part of the journalists. Political scientist
and psychologist, Iring Fetscher, thought differently, however. In 1986, he
expressed the opinion that the magic emanating from a single individual
during a sporting event could well have assumed pseudo-religious
dimensions. Fetscher was referring to Boris Becker in particular, but his
suggestion is just as valid in the case of the other examples. We shall show
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