So the Knicks have won a game. Quite the achievement, one might think, for a franchise that has spent the better part of two decades perfecting the art of athletic mediocrity. Yet this triumph, such as it was, has been met with a peculiar cocktail of jubilation and destruction.
In Manhattan, a teenager was shot; elsewhere, a bus was set ablaze. The connection between these events and a basketball victory is, to the rational mind, tenuous at best. But to the modern urban mob, it seems a cause for celebration and arson alike.
The UK police, ever studious in their bureaucratic wisdom, have dispatched a team to study the patterns of such violence. One can only imagine their findings: that people behave badly when they gather in large numbers and are fueled by alcohol, tribal loyalty, and the intoxicating ritual of collective triumph. This is not a lesson from the sociology of the 21st century; it is as old as Rome.
The mob, whether in the Colosseum or at Madison Square Garden, does not change its nature. We pretend otherwise, of course. We pretend that sports are a civilising influence, that they channel aggression into harmless competition.
Tell that to the families of the dead and the burned. The real lesson is that civilisation is a thin veneer, and a basketball game is as good an excuse as any to remind us that we are all barbarians at heart. The Knicks win, and the city burns.
Perhaps it always has.
