So what does Matt Dawson, TV and radio pundit and former English international rugby scrum half, have in common with George Eliot, England's greatest Victorian novelist, and Philip Davis, George Eliot's most recent biographer? I know. It's the kind of question that sounds so unlikely to have an interesting answer, that the person who formulated it needs to get a life, or at least more of a life!
I've just read Matt Dawson's comments on the England v Argentina game last night. Once again an English player was sent off for a tackle considered reckless and dangerous. In explaining the psychology of a physical contact sport played with ferocious intensity and for the highest stakes, Dawson said, "The presence of mind and that split-[second] decision thinking is missing."
With adrenaline pumping, early in a game played with controlled aggression, and in the immediacy of confrontation and collision, mistakes are made - and consequences can be both serious and last much longer than that split-second wrong call. Only if there is presence of mind and good decision making in split seconds, can the rugby player avoid the consequences of getting it wrong. The aftermath is regret, and consequences for the rest of the team. Now, hang on to that thought, and Dawson's advice about presence of mind, split-second decisions, and so making good choices, and avoiding costly mistakes.
Few people saw more clearly into the tangled connections of human motives, decisions, choices, mistakes and regrets, than George Eliot. Her novels provide some of the most morally astute, compassionate commentary on human behaviour and our tangled relationships in all of literature. Amongst the recurring themes is the tension created in our choices and decisions between what she called in one of her letters, "the immediacy of experience, and retrospective reflection."
In other words, every decision we make has consequences, and sometimes the consequences for a split second decision can be far-reaching, and unforgiving. It isn't that we meant to hurt, offend, cause to suffer, but nevertheless outcomes cannot always be foreseen, or controlled once set in motion.
Philip Davis has written an extraordinary study of how George Eliot the author has written her inner autobiography into her greatest novels. The chapter I read this morning coincided in insight with exactly what Matt Dawson was saying in the post-match analysis. What the English players lack, at times, is "The presence of mind and that split-[second] decision thinking."
What Davis points our about George Eliot's moral imagination is that she gets it; it is the very nature of moral life that we are all faced with situations that require presence of mind and split-second decision making, and sometimes we get it wrong. And when we do, in the moral discourse of George Eliot it is because in the "immediacy of experience" we make our move, and only afterwards is there time for "retrospective reflection." Followed by feelings of regret, guilt, and the need to live with the consequences.
I am currently writing a paper on the decline of the humanities in education, and asking what we are losing when those subjects that teach us to think reflectively, creatively, intuitively, imaginatively, are relegated to options rather than essentials in human education and formation. Story-telling is one of the ways we learn to imagine, to reflect, to empathise, to encounter alternative ways of seeing the world and of being in the world. Reading stories well is an exercise in moral formation and the opening up of the moral imagination.
That Matt Dawson's diagnosis of a malaise in an international rugby squad, echoes in significant ways the moral universe of George Eliot, I find deeply heartening! And you would think, wouldn't you, that with three red cards in 4 games, the coach will sort this out by re-telling the stories for "retrospective reflection." This followed by instructing those muscled giants in the need to harmonise "the immediacy of experience" (the decision to tackle) with the post-tackle "retrospective experience", (of a red card), and a weakened team.
And as revision before the next game, if they don't quite get what George Eliot was on about, then let the coach quote Matt Dawson, and point out the consequences when "The presence of mind and that split-[second] decision thinking is missing."
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