Ben's personality exposed by a penalty kick
Posted: Thu Jul 01, 2010 7:25 pm
I think the underlying causes of Ben's many character flaws were exposed by his ….. attempts at penalty taking.
As he took the penalty his arms involuntarily reached for the sky just as a school girl’s might attempting the same thing, his upper body was vertical and as stiff as a board, his leg could barely articulate a pathetic swipe at the ball, his foot barely contacted the ball and the contact point was utterly random, as was the trajectory of the ball. The novel challenge to body and brain was well beyond the capabilities of either. Neurons in his brain which had never fired before were suddenly exercised and then delivered desperate and speculative instructions to muscles which were shocked by their arrival; the end result was a truly embarrassing mess of incoherent limb movement.
In that one act he demonstrated that he is a social outcast: he has never played with a ball; he has never been part of a team sport of any sort; he has probably never engaged in physical competition or coordination with other people in a physical task; and he is unaware of the behaviour of the effects of forces on objects and utterly unaware of how to use his body to apply them; he is detached from much of the real world.
One can speculate what is cause and effect: was he a social outcast first and thereby denied opportunities to engage in team activities and sports, or did his physical ineptitude lead him to being a social outcast?
I personally think the social outcast state predated the physical ineptitude and the latter is simply a symptom of the former.
The end result of his formative years is an effeminate, social deluded, immature, limp, self-indulgent, socially inept character who seems to think that because he feels disconnected from groups of others, that he must be part of some elite with special rights and powers which include being able to take things from the group without consideration of the needs of members of the group.
No doubt his belief that society should be governed by a powerful elite, of which he should be a member, with authoritarian powers that are immune to the wishes of the masses, reflects an underlying worry he must have that society as currently formed will leave him isolated from power in society in the same way he is isolated in social groups.
He is annoyed and frustrated by his isolation and lack of influence and so he attempts to change his situation with ingratiation with and manipulation of others, which all end in abject failure. Were it not for the odious Mario he would be even more isolated and powerless than he already is.
If only he had bothered to learn how to kick a ball to overcome his social ineptitude at an early age he may have turned out so differently.
As he took the penalty his arms involuntarily reached for the sky just as a school girl’s might attempting the same thing, his upper body was vertical and as stiff as a board, his leg could barely articulate a pathetic swipe at the ball, his foot barely contacted the ball and the contact point was utterly random, as was the trajectory of the ball. The novel challenge to body and brain was well beyond the capabilities of either. Neurons in his brain which had never fired before were suddenly exercised and then delivered desperate and speculative instructions to muscles which were shocked by their arrival; the end result was a truly embarrassing mess of incoherent limb movement.
In that one act he demonstrated that he is a social outcast: he has never played with a ball; he has never been part of a team sport of any sort; he has probably never engaged in physical competition or coordination with other people in a physical task; and he is unaware of the behaviour of the effects of forces on objects and utterly unaware of how to use his body to apply them; he is detached from much of the real world.
One can speculate what is cause and effect: was he a social outcast first and thereby denied opportunities to engage in team activities and sports, or did his physical ineptitude lead him to being a social outcast?
I personally think the social outcast state predated the physical ineptitude and the latter is simply a symptom of the former.
The end result of his formative years is an effeminate, social deluded, immature, limp, self-indulgent, socially inept character who seems to think that because he feels disconnected from groups of others, that he must be part of some elite with special rights and powers which include being able to take things from the group without consideration of the needs of members of the group.
No doubt his belief that society should be governed by a powerful elite, of which he should be a member, with authoritarian powers that are immune to the wishes of the masses, reflects an underlying worry he must have that society as currently formed will leave him isolated from power in society in the same way he is isolated in social groups.
He is annoyed and frustrated by his isolation and lack of influence and so he attempts to change his situation with ingratiation with and manipulation of others, which all end in abject failure. Were it not for the odious Mario he would be even more isolated and powerless than he already is.
If only he had bothered to learn how to kick a ball to overcome his social ineptitude at an early age he may have turned out so differently.