Delights of Volleyball

I watched Russia play the US on Thursday in an Olympic volleyball qualifier. What an exquisite sport! What a fusion of team spirit and individual excellence! On the one hand, every player must stick to his spot and responsibilities, and understands his partners’s intentions in a flash, almost reflexively. On the other, one has to excel technically, in serving, blocking, receiving, etc. It is like the most dynamic segments of modern societies: a complex but efficient web of social interaction between highly and many-sidedly intelligent professionals. Social self-organization skills plus individualism: the summit of the Western, and other advanced civilizations.