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Individualism
By WILLIAM J
PRICE
Saluki Head Coach
In 1988 I spent a few
months in the former USSR studying the Soviet sport system. Instead of
looking at training methods or techniques which are fairly standard
throughout the world, I went there with the idea that something else was at
work within the USSR sport system that produced top athletes from a very
small base with very limited facilities. What I found eventually became the
central theme of my thesis i.e. individualism vs. collectivism.
In graduate school we had
phrases that were half a mile long describing this but what it all came down
to is that the Soviets understood what a team was all about. They understood
the importance and power of groups. Loosely translated the word soviet
means group. It was a country, a government and indeed a nation made of
groups. As a foreigner I was able to see things that were invisible to most
of the Soviet people because I looked with a different set of values. The
force of collectivism was one of the things I saw. It was so pervasive in
Soviet society that it was invisible to those who lived there. The same way
individualism is invisible in the United States.
We tend to think that
individualism is what keeps us free. We never suspect that individualism is
simply a form of social control that effectively prevents us from forming
groups that could change the status quo; groups that could otherwise perform
remarkable feats. Nowhere is this more evident than in sport. The signature
of an effective team is a collective mentality: we are part of something
bigger than ourselves. Without the collective mind set what should be an
effective unit becomes a mere showcase for individual talent.
In swimming the team effort
is not easily recognized because we tend to see only the race as being the
sport. Admittedly the race itself is largely an individual effort but the
success of that race depends on the quality of the team environment. This
quality is built on the support the swimmers give to and receive from one
another.
The Soviet political system
failed because they did not recognize the value of letting an individual be
an individual. With almost the same uncompromising attitude we resist
working collectively lest it threaten our individuality. Both positions are
wrong and ultimately self-destructive. In sport we must realize that when
the tide rises all boats are lifted.
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