Yesterday, on the flight to Wellington from Melbourne, I caught up on the whole Essendon, ACC, doping and gambling in sports rubbish.
I look at the outrage people feel around this and I don't understand the shock they exhibit.
This is the culture we have built for ourselves. Sport, for the longest time, has been about winning. So has politics.
It is up to us to take winning and relegate it to an outcome or a by-product, rather than a goal. We need to change the way we think about these things.
A game of football should be enjoyable to watch because of the quality of competition and not whether or not our team won. It's difficult because winning is our measurement for success. So divorcing the idea of winning from the joy of competition takes a lot of effort.
Similarly, in government, winning the next election should never be as important as doing the best job possible now. Campaigning should be about belief in what the best job could be rather than what people want to hear.
It is the fault of no particular group that this is what our world has become. It's the way these things evolved.
We have the power to change them,
slowly and over many years. It is incumbent on us to be vigilant and vocal about what we really want.
That being said, if I'm wrong and all we want is to win, then let's stop it with the bullshit shock and disgust. Be honest about what you want, for fuck's sake.