ultimate filosofi

he writes on the bus a manifesto of fun
how to play the most human part in the greatest game yet
a handbook for the digital eye in bits and bytes along the way to the first three games henpecked on OC's screen
these are his feelings and his thoughts on what his ultimate's about
WORKING TITLE: ULTIMATE: THE NEXT FOUR DECADES
L: i propose (if we want to cut to the chase) that u.f. as it is currently formed represents an idealized—imperfect admittedly but better than any other currently available model—sportacular model of how to live
based first and foremost on the concept of Spirit of the Game (SOTG)
this is no explicit rule but rather a sort of mantra
i will approach the disc from three angles in order to qualify how the SOTG mantra manifests thru UF:

1. as we watch it
2. as we play it
3. as we live it

1. why do we watch sports?
p. weiss's sport: a philosophic inquiry provides well-formed, practically logicianistic direction toward this line of thinking
written in the -20BPs, weiss's approach is 180º from any 'fun' discussion of sports
the style is stultifying at times
but his gists are sound
it is written ignorant of disc sports per se (marker of all kinds of cultural energy shifts) but reads applicable to them
long & short: sports are an underrepresented factor in our potpourri of sociocultural things, yet arguably as transcendent a force as any other avenue of activity or art
that was a big thing, labeling sport art
it is a physical art form created en masse between two messes of folks
and as with anything receptive to an artistic label, an entity chock-full of all the implicit subjective panalogical differences such a considerable term entails
the ISPD is of course why it happens:
ART is only meaningful if imbued w/such flame by its participants
sport as much as music can be considered the ritual of a thousand thousand cultures
kept inflated driven by our need—homeostatic, practically; a basic human condition to strive—for happy excellence
can you think of any who would rather not be the best?
and even those who profess as such
('gee i'm the worst @ such-n-such')
are most often drenched in irony
meaning their thoughts are dumb and lying in turn
well that's kind of mean to say but my point is that best is best, universally speaking
no matter the context there exists such a thing as a superlative good
and it's usually 
sport is a way to determine the hierarchy
w.o bloodshed or even contact necessarily

ultimate is the first sport of major note to explicitly codify what heretofore was (is) referred to as sportsmanship
which term itself may demonstrate aptly the need for this revamp
frisbee grew up outside this corporate jungle sprung up and rooted in the US-driven shitty 80s in major ways 
the money thing is maybe biggest b/c @teotd $$$ is the impetus for all the moves of any major enough institution
a gross oversimplification for sure of a whole slew of drives that push us to pursue unnatural (i.e. human-made; memetic; of ends not purely biological) goals
but let's call spades by their suit: capitalism's pervasive societal filter means every action, noun, moment in time, can & should be evaluated in pecuniary terms. it is a bloodless enterprise, the green backs would have you presume, but don't let the light green fool you: in sufficient ordination/denomination the cash monster will draw blood like any other beast large ambitious and avaricious enough to bite w/no fear of losing teeth
by which metaphor i mean to get across that by creating a fuel for & made of life that is yet separate from life itself, there arises a logical false equivalency:
if you can measure a person in terms of money/hr, it stands to reason you can count her by her years of cash cumulatively or to be earned, ergo you can precisely determine how much would need to be paid out accordingly to 'society' the debt of her life's lose
it is a deceptive, destructive act
life should be an entity figured separate from a commodity, like very far from it. it is a resource, sure, and one in turn constructed/fed/maintained by reasons that themselves would constitute commodities
but sentience itself—a sense of self!—is valueless

ii)
i am pretty adamantly biased b/c i play MXD myself; but i argue this insider perspective is precisely what allows me to qualify the sport as cohesively as it deserves
frisbee possesses (is imbued w/) a unique (among sports) bizarro meta quality
derived from its regulatory SOTG clause which puts all the onerous officiative duties squarely on the shoulderse of those who play it
meaning yes @teotd the calls are made by the persons the foul, violation, w.e., affected/were effected by
they hold the responsibility of determining the truth of what occurs in a game
frisbee does not require—and in fact may function best w/o—a higher authority to run its play
which by most modern standards entails it being bare-bones to the point of essentialist;
one may even label such an arrangement...ultimate?

it is the ultimate game due to the mutually-minded competitive design
hard to say of course if this flavor of socialist behavior is rooted in the sport's very origins or arose gradually over the years of quasi-official tournament play, tourneys that only meant as much as they were given by their participants
which came first: the behavior or the mindset which unleashes it??
ok but anyway the moieties are still around, both chicken & egg in tandem
so the race is irrelevant when we all win 

the sport of ultimate itself plays out via a p. simple repeated sequence: throw, [run,] catch, x∞
as videos show, there are only as many ways to throw as can be adequately imagined (never mind execution)
catches, too, come in all forms and fashions, so thematic variations of the sequence abound
nevertheless much like (global) football the beauty comes from working w/in the dictated limitations
it's kinda the opposite of footie: you can't run w/the ball, you can't let it touch the ground, you can't
unlike footie, however, frisbee has not (yet) been absorbed digested & vilely repackaged by the system
it is self-aware as an overarching style of play, thanks to the practically req'd self-aware governance of its individual players
you know you're playing a game & that your playing is what makes it the game it is rather than any other
& this is totally i think a positive byproduct of its extensive history w/o a strong central governing body
now there's WFDF & USAU (among other (inter-)nat'l bodies); until recently the UPA guided the show
but b/c there was never any award or big-time legacy achievement reachable it gained necessarily the vibe that most derogatory conceptions of ultimate adhere to & denigrate
namely the fact that people only played & perpetuated the game for its (their) own sake
love of the game
'joy of play'
after a time this (love of the game) thankfully became as much a tradition & custom of the sport as the disc itself
which is anarchy! b/w i refer to the natural 'absence of government and absolute freedom of the individual, regarded as a political ideal'
since the players make the game it offers promising glances at a society in micro
in many respects SOTG encapsulates/ may be referred to responsibly as the reciprocal version of the globally oft-quoted Golden Rule:
'treat others as you'd want to be treated by them'
it says if you want to have fun you should ensure you're not quashing anyone else's fun
it sounds silly to have to explicitly say a game should be fun
but b/c it does say this ultimate frisbee gives itself the leg-up on assholian behavior
win at all costs is a frowned-upon m.o. b/c it's just a game, meaning quote 'blah blah blah'
there's nothing to it
it's just a game
this mantra is reductionist, sure
and like most reductionist philosophies it can be abused (how low can you go?) but never excessively
the community is self-correcting as a body & i think a signif. % of disc-jockeying pop. has bought into it
agreed to inflict the moral high ground on the rest 
it is moral, not economic
(b/c why would a game be able to be measured economically? what does fun cost?)

ultimate is self-regnant w/ the aim of each realm offering only best limbs—the sacrifice of an exquisite corpse—so that the Frankensteinian product sums up to something greater than its individual constituent parts
but if not all hands remain on deck in full (i.e. AWOL from SOTG) the ship flounders in choppy waters
such is life
[hence the metaphor)

two interrelated questions to which i think the answers will be universally 'no' then 'yes', respectively: 

• have you ever won a championship?
• would you like to?

i'm in the no/yes boat. the urge to achieve greatness seems global if not outright embedded in the fabric of the universe

but reappraise the claim in light of the human 

self-officiation is a part of the SOTG but should not be mistaken for the guiding principle entirely, which i hope to disentangle the concepts of herein 
(iii)

the grassroots populist mindset that UF relied on to sustain itself w/o corporate oversight ensured that its growth was incremental and more often than not of democratically ordained progressive ends
§ frisbee participants are not too dissimilar from Bernie Sanders supporters, demo-wise: predominantly male, mostly white, & pretty liberal. but ironically given the key demo, mixed ultimate is a frightening spectacle to the gladiatorially minded men of yesteryear b/c it dissembles the walls btw genders erected & consecrated by the patriarchy way back when during the Indo-European invasion