POST-HIERARCHICAL ANALYSIS · 002

When Rules Are Shared, Creativity Becomes Multiple

A post-hierarchical analysis of Dalius Jonkus’s “Football as an Expression of Universal Civilisation”

Concepts marked with ? can be explained without leaving the article.

Text analysed: Dalius Jonkus, “Futbolas kaip universalios civilizacijos išraiška”, Literatūra ir menas, 3 July 2026. Read the Lithuanian original ↗.

Dalius Jonkus considers football not merely as a sport or mass entertainment, but as a form of universal civilisation. People of different languages, religions, traditions and historical experience play the same game, recognise the same rules and can appreciate one another’s mastery. The culture in which the modern game originated no longer owns it: adopted by other societies, football becomes a shared instrument of human culture.

This is a fertile thesis. It separates universality from the domination of one culture and cultural diversity from mutually sealed worlds. A post-hierarchical perspective, however, invites one further step. Football also shows how a shared invariant foundation can release different participants’ creativity, and how decentralised interaction produces an outcome that no player could create alone. Humanity may be united not by identical forms imposed on everyone, but by common rules that enable different contributions to interact, be compared and form a shared result.

The article and its context

Jonkus published his essay during the 2026 FIFA World Cup, when the enlarged tournament revived disputes about quality, commercialisation and the inclusion of less celebrated national teams. He moves the discussion to a philosophical plane: what does football’s worldwide spread tell us about civilisation itself?

He places football beside writing, money, astronomy, science and technology—forms that cross ethnic and geographical borders and can be appropriated by different cultures. Nations may play in recognisably different styles, yet they participate in the same space of rules and mutual intelligibility. This matters at a time when universalism is suspected of concealing Western domination, while cultural differences are increasingly imagined as closed identities. Jonkus rejects both the equation of the West with humanity and the claim that every culture is inaccessible to others. A civilisational form may arise somewhere in particular without remaining the property of its birthplace.

What Jonkus sees clearly

Universality is not ethnic property

The strongest idea is the separation of universal validity from cultural origin. The fact that a phenomenon arose in one society does not mean that it must forever express only that society’s identity or power. Civilisation is full of forms discovered in one place, adopted elsewhere, modified and developed by many cultures. Origin explains history; it does not confer perpetual ownership of meaning and future development.

A shared world does not require one culture

Jonkus draws on the Greek intuition of one world: mythologies and languages differ, but refer to a reality people share. This is an important counterweight to radical relativism. Without a common basis, claims could be neither compared nor tested and intercultural dialogue would become parallel monologues. Yet one world does not require one culture. Shared reality lets different perspectives supplement, correct and enlarge one another.

Football combines unity with plurality of style

There is no separate Japanese or Moroccan football in the sense of mutually incompatible games, yet teams and regions have recognisable styles. Common rules do not erase those differences; they make them visible, comparable and meaningful. If every team used its own rules, there would be neither a common game nor a way to recognise distinctiveness. Universality is a shared grammar capable of generating innumerable sentences.

Participation depends on ability, not origin

In principle, anyone who develops the necessary abilities can participate. A player’s value should be determined by contribution rather than nationality, social origin or proximity to a historic centre. Former “peripheries” can therefore become equal to or stronger than traditional centres. Status does not guarantee future superiority; the geography of competence continually changes.

Where the account needs to be extended

Global diffusion does not prove universal justification

A form can spread through imperial power, economic pressure, institutional dominance or historical accident. British commercial, military, educational and administrative structures helped football travel. This does not reduce football to colonial power, but it requires us to distinguish how a form spread from why people later appropriated it creatively. A stronger criterion of universality is whether different participants can adopt, alter and contribute equally to its development.

Universal forms are collectively made

Some historical examples are necessarily simplified. Chinese writing is not a language-independent code of pure ideas; money and astronomy likewise have complex, plural histories. The larger point survives: civilisational universals rarely emerge as finished inventions of one culture. They are formed through long processes of transmission, adaptation and correction. Universality is not merely a property of an object; it is also the collective history of its development.

Football’s rules are universal, but its institutions remain hierarchical

The game also includes federations, club owners, broadcasters, sponsors, player markets and political interests. Rules on the pitch are uniform, but opportunities to participate in making decisions are not. Who defines the tournament format, venue, schedule, broadcasting rights and financial flows? In these matters football remains a centralised hierarchy. Universal rules alone do not produce post-hierarchy; those affected need a legitimate way to deliberate about and change them.

Football as a model of post-hierarchical order

Despite its institutional hierarchies, play itself offers a powerful analogy. A team has a coach, captain and positions, but a match cannot be controlled through commands from a centre. Events change too quickly. Every player must understand the whole, interpret others’ actions and respond autonomously.

Good play appears neither when everyone blindly executes one plan nor when everyone plays alone. It emerges when individual initiative synchronises with the state of the team. A player without the ball creates space; a defender anticipates movement; the value of one decision depends on how the rest respond. This is distributed intelligence: understanding and decision are not concentrated in a single centre but continuously formed in interaction.

Football reveals four principles: invariant rules provide a common basis; differentiated roles recognise unequal abilities and functions; dynamic competence gives situational authority to whoever best sees and uses an opportunity; and a shared outcome reveals the value of contributions through interaction. Order thus comes from common principles and distributed competence, not from total centralisation or chaotic individualism.

From universal to collective civilisation

In Jonkus’s essay universal civilisation is primarily a civilisation of shared instruments, rules and a shared conception of the world. Post-hierarchy adds another criterion: a universal form must not only be accessible to everyone, but allow everyone to contribute meaningfully to its continued creation. Civilisation becomes genuinely universal not when all use a tool created by a centre, but when no centre retains an exclusive right to define its future.

In collective-intelligence systems this would mean transparent principles of evaluation; anonymous assessment that limits the influence of identity; a right for every competent participant to contribute an original proposal; competence accumulated through recognised contribution rather than office or origin; visibility of agreement, disagreement and polarisation; and preservation of the common result as knowledge available for further learning.

How decisions about common rules should be made

Post-hierarchical decision-making should proceed in two stages. First, knowledgeable participants—players, coaches, referees, sports physicians, organisers and other experts—use collective intelligence to define the problem, develop alternatives and assess their consequences for quality, safety and access. Second, those directly affected—federations, clubs, players, supporters and other relevant groups—choose among the professionally prepared alternatives.

This protects both competence and the right to participate. Experts cannot govern the whole system alone, while the decision is not reduced to an uninformed popularity vote. The same architecture can be used for international technology standards, climate, heritage, migration, AI and common human resources.

Universality that organises rather than destroys diversity

Jonkus persuasively shows that football is not simply Western because its modern form arose in Europe. African, Asian and Latin American societies are not passive consumers: they transformed it, created styles and developed players and teams without which global football is unimaginable.

The deeper lesson is that commonality and diversity are not opposites. When rules are clear and equal, differences can become the creative energy of a common game. Humanity needs neither one culture declaring its norms universal nor a world fragmented into incomparable identities, but a common architecture in which experiences meet, are evaluated by universal principles and create an outcome owned by no single centre.

The football field is a small model of such a civilisation. Its boundaries are shared. Its rules are shared. Yet nobody can create the game alone. Universal civilisation begins with common rules. Post-hierarchical civilisation begins when, under those rules, we learn not only to play but to think together.

flowchart TD
 A["Knowledgeable participants refine alternative rules"] --> B["Affected people choose common rules"]
 B --> C["Equal conditions for participation"]
 C --> D["Different cultures and experiences"]
 C --> E["Different abilities and styles"]
 C --> F["Independent contributions"]
 D --> G["Multiple creativity"]
 E --> G
 F --> G
 G --> H["A shared outcome owned by no single centre"]
 H --> I["A post-hierarchical universal civilisation"]
 classDef process fill:#e9e5dc,stroke:#6f6d66,color:#191916
 classDef diversity fill:#f4f1ea,stroke:#191916,color:#191916
 classDef post fill:#f4f1ea,stroke:#a93b2b,color:#191916,stroke-width:2px
 class A,B,C process
 class D,E,F diversity
 class G,H,I post