{"id":28029,"date":"2013-11-30T17:58:44","date_gmt":"2013-11-30T17:58:44","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/rafaelfajardo.com\/portfolio\/warrior-culture-and-muscle-men-in-the-nfl\/"},"modified":"2013-11-30T17:58:44","modified_gmt":"2013-11-30T17:58:44","slug":"warrior-culture-and-muscle-men-in-the-nfl","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/rafaelfajardo.com\/portfolio\/warrior-culture-and-muscle-men-in-the-nfl\/","title":{"rendered":"Warrior culture and muscle men in the NFL"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href='http:\/\/www.christiancentury.org\/blogs\/archive\/2013-11\/warrior-culture-and-muscle-men-nfl#.UpZTDR7mQ1U.twitter'>Warrior culture and muscle men in the NFL<\/a><\/p>\n<div class=\"link_description\">\n<blockquote>\n<p class=\"p1\">Just as the lines between games and war are fluid, the opposite is also sometimes the case. In his 1938 book\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/books.google.com\/books?id=oZgA8UDf3_4C&amp;printsec=frontcover\"><em>Homo Ludens<\/em><\/a>, Johan Huizinga draws attention to\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/biblehub.com\/kj2000\/2_samuel\/2.htm\">2 Samuel 2:14<\/a>, when Abner challenges Joab to combat by announcing, \u201cLet the young men now arise and play before us.\u201d The ensuing battle confirms for Huizinga that \u201cPlay is battle and battle is play.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\">Huizinga insists, however, that both the player and the warrior live by a code of honor, one shaped by \u201ccourage,\u201d \u201ctenacity\u201d and access to \u201cspiritual powers.\u201d In other words, these are not lawless misanthropes. Advocates of the \u201cmuscular Christian\u201d movement of the mid-19th century made similar distinctions as they acclaimed the high virtues of athletics. British author Thomas Hughes depicted the mindless \u201c<a href=\"http:\/\/books.google.com\/books?id=yWMoAAAAYAAJ&amp;printsec=frontcover\">muscle man<\/a>\u201d as someone who exploits his body and succumbs to his \u201cfierce and brutal passions.\u201d The \u201cmuscular Christian,\u201d on the other hand,<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>has hold of the old chivalrous and Christian belief, that a man\u2019s body is given him to be trained and brought into subjection, and then used for the protection of the weak, the advancement of all righteous causes, and the subduing of the earth.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p class=\"p1\">With this in mind, we might conclude that the Incognito affair unveils not the problems of a \u201cwarrior culture\u201d but rather an absence of it. When the 2013 football season started, Incognito was a \u201cgood guy\u201d and a role model for healthy, rule-bound competition. But behind closed doors, he was a \u201cmuscle man\u201d living in a world that celebrated, enabled and encouraged his exploits. While this might be normative in the locker room, it runs afoul of the ethical standards of our time\u2014as shown most pointedly by the strict anti-hazing policies that exist in\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/www.sbnation.com\/2013\/11\/5\/5065834\/jonathan-martin-richie-incognito-dolphins-rookie-hazing\">the military<\/a>. Professional football would do well to recover\u00a0<em>this\u00a0<\/em>brand of warrior culture, one that prizes achievement and teamwork but not at the expense of human dignity.\u00a0<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<p>dignity and games<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Warrior culture and muscle men in the NFL Just as the lines between games and war are fluid, the opposite is also sometimes the case. In his 1938 book\u00a0Homo Ludens, Johan Huizinga draws attention to\u00a02 Samuel 2:14, when Abner challenges Joab to combat by announcing, \u201cLet the young men now arise and play before us.\u201d [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"link","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[],"tags":[1538],"class_list":["post-28029","post","type-post","status-publish","format-link","hentry","tag-humane-games","post_format-post-format-link"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p6PWot-7i5","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/rafaelfajardo.com\/portfolio\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28029","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/rafaelfajardo.com\/portfolio\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/rafaelfajardo.com\/portfolio\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rafaelfajardo.com\/portfolio\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rafaelfajardo.com\/portfolio\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=28029"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/rafaelfajardo.com\/portfolio\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28029\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/rafaelfajardo.com\/portfolio\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=28029"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rafaelfajardo.com\/portfolio\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=28029"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rafaelfajardo.com\/portfolio\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=28029"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}