So Christian Eriksen collapses on the pitch, and the entire world holds its breath. The man is doing well, we are told. British medics, ever the paragons of calm professionalism, praise the Danish heart device that saved his life.
But let us not get sentimental. This isn’t a story about the triumph of modern medicine, though it is that too. It is a story about what happens when a society still believes in institutions, training, and a shared sense of duty.
The Danes had the foresight to implant a defibrillator. The British medics had the discipline to use it. And the rest of us, we had a spectacle.
We watched a man nearly die on live television, and we felt something. But what, exactly? The Victorians would have known.
They would have seen a moral lesson: the frailty of the body, the importance of preparedness, the quiet heroism of the trained professional. Instead, we get endless Twitter threads and a flood of heart emojis. The defibrillator worked.
But what of the social defibrillator? Our collective pulse is weak. We have forgotten that civilisation is not a given.
It is maintained by people who know what to do when the heart stops. That Danish device, that British team: they are the last remnants of a world that still believed in competence. We should praise them.
But we should also worry. Because next time, there might not be a miracle. And we will have only our memes to console us.
