The Qatar World Cup Moral Dilemma 

Para la versión es castellano: El dilema moral de Qatar

The football world cup is one of those mass sporting events designed so that we all forget our differences, put out ideologies and politics aside and come together to celebrate as one big human family. Or that would be the idea.

But humans are usually incapable of doing such a thing and these huge events are increasingly becoming ways of showing the deep contradictions of the time we live in.

On the one hand, we have the Western powers, still living on the yield of having implanted a system that is taking the planet to the verge of collapse and which, in turn, might make life in it very difficult. And that’s not mentioning that it was only possible due to the spoliation of entire nations.

The west, on the back of this brief success over mater -brief in historical terms- claims the role of the moral judge over the rest of the world. Let’s use an example that you might all have seen.

You have probably met someone who has done well in life, well in economic terms. He is in a comfortable situation and from there he leads a more or less safe life. He has family, a circle of friends and influence over those close to him. Perhaps he might even have some deserved admiration from those who seek the same. But this comfort and security, this feeling of ‘having made it’ surrounds him with a fragrance of arrogance that he applies to everything.

Because he’s done well -well in financial terms- he feels the right to have an opinion and judge everything, even things he might not have a clue about or legitimacy to speak of.

And that’s the West’s role right now. Because ‘we’ve done well’ we assume and take for granted that our morality must be superior to that of those materially inferior.

But what kind of morality? Materialist morality. And what’s materialist morality? Well, it is the morality of matter, which has no sound foundation because matter, at its essence, is empty. And because it does not have a solid foundation we live in a time of liquid beings, as Bauman has theorized.

What the West seems to not have accepted yet is that dominion over Technique has led to a brief success over matter, but at the price of Love, with capital letters, as Wagner so brilliantly showed.

So the Western powers meet the other, this time the Gulf powers, an other undergoing a different kind of crisis, but which confronts them with their empty morals. And at this confrontation, no matter how loud the cry, Capital reigns supreme, as it happens every time the foundations are not solid.

These gulf powers feel above others but not because of their domain over Technique, as the West does, but because of a Divine right. Wealth flows under their feet. And that wealth has blinded them to the Reality of the Giver of all gifts. Instead of thankfulness with humility because of the gift given, they feel chosen. That’s why it does not matter who dies in their quest to show the world their perceived status nor the completely unnecessary squandering in spectacle and distraction.

Wealth has become their test (64:15) as it warns the Sacred Book they recite at the commencement of the circus.

The same Sacred Book that warns those who are given gifts and they become haughty and stingy because of it. The same Sacred Book that speaks at length about justice, generosity and helping the needy. But this or more difficult -because it hurts the pocket- than reducing morality to sexual inclination and drunkenness.

The example, in this case, is not like the one who has done well, who has had some success and because of that feels entitled to have an opinion about everything, but like a new rich person, who, all of a sudden, needs to prove himself among those who are already wealthy.

And that’s where the conflict lies. The West, the old rich, try to assert their moral superiority because the financial one is gone. A fluid moral with no possible real foundation because it is based on matter, and the matter is empty.

And the Golf powers, the new rich, have reduced morality to sexual inclination and drunkenness because they have forgotten the laws that govern the wealth that flows under them, a gift that, instead of turning them tankful, has made them haughty.

This article was originally published by the author in Spanish at: El dilema moral de Qatar