Revolutions and meta-activity everywhere in life
Learning from the evolution of scientific knowledge (or how federation rulebook obsession might either kill the sport or be a symptom of radical change)
The question spree started with “what is this thing on the telescope?”, “what the hell is this blur on the specter”, evolved into issues such as “what is matter?”, “what is life” and finally “what is truth?”, “what is knowledge?”, “where is God?” and “who am I?”. The first part is the perception of “anomaly” – according to Thomas Kuhn, the first expression of a movement towards radical change in scientific knowledge. It means people realize there is something wrong with the model they are using, but they still have only that model to use. So they put a lot of effort to patch up the model here and there where it shows signs of wearing. This is the “had-hoc explanation” stage, where people get anxious and uptight because they are failing to carry-on their normal life based on the model, which doesn’t work very well anymore.
The following stage is open crisis and people start asking basic matter-of-fact questions: if the whole thing about life was bullshit, then what is life, after all? Or what is matter? Or what is a species? Or whatever. Finally, there is the meta-science stage, where the crisis is totally mature and everybody has gone crazy and wildly critical of everything. So they start questioning their activity and obsessively discussing rules and more rules. It is an extremely “normative” period in everybody’s life. “This is good science – no: this is horrible science!” “All science is revolutionary – no: science is always conservative except during revolutions”. And so on, with the usual additional claims of “I am right and you are totally wrong” or “you are against ME, therefore against SCIENCE, therefore you are the ENEMY and therefore you are a s.o.b.”.
So, where does powerlifting come into the story? Right here! The powerlifting mainstream is obviously deep in “meta-activity” (how should we call this? Meta-lifting?…): the number of bytes wasted (oops: sorry, I meant “employed”) on rule discussion far exceeds (by many orders of magnitude) technical discussion. Hair-splitting arguments over the exact amount of glute contact with the bench that qualifies a valid Bench-press dominate a good part of many meets. And while years and tons of writing on which bench shirt models, cuts or fabric should or should not be legal, an interested lifter has one single good article to read on what are bench shirts, what they are made of, how they are used and the differences between them (Shawn Lattimer’s “An Introspective Look at Bench Shirts”).
I have attended a championship two weeks ago where it downed on me, at a certain point, that referees were much more interested in the exercise of applying rules than in the lifts or the lifters. The focus of the event shifted, perversely, from lifting to law-enforcement. The “in doubt, benefit the lifter” principle was inverted 180o: thumbs were always on the red button and a shadow on the bencher’s head meant “no-lift”. What does this mean? I hope it means we are on the verge of a radical change in the sport. That this is just an expression of temporary loss of meaning and that soon a new order might emerge. Another symptom of this condition is the fact that many of the best lifters got so sick with the “law-enforcement” environment that they just left and started creating novel institutional arrangements for the sport.
Certain local, non-sanctioned meets became traditional and today attract more attention and better performance than events in official federations’ calendars. These trends tend to grow, rather than shrink. There is no possible way of quenching them through any means besides thorough professionalization of the sport and pouring of big money in it – which won’t happen in this galaxy. Not even the unlikely promotion of powerlifting to Olympic status would do the trick.
As I see it, the revolution is pretty advanced. Alternatives are spread out for all practitioners to choose from (and more may come). The sport will never return to its original raw-only, etc, etc state – History is irreversible, in science, in sport – in life!!
August 19, 2007 at 11:28 am
this was also pretty much evident at Rio de Janeiro´s para pan bench press event, where spectators after some time did stop the cheering as they had no cue on what to expect from the lift. Bar too slow up RED LIGHTs; half a inch uneven extension just during ascent RED LIGHTS. A friend of mine just left off: " Im leaving, Im sick of so much NO LIFT"… Achieving good lift became a matter of luck, a matter of mood of the referees. I saw a perfect para pan record being made on 200 kg being red lighted, just to be called a good lift at fourth attempt, but at fourth attempt, the lift form was worse, but this time it was ok for the referees. So what ???