Sports are the new opiate of the masses

[fishwax]

at least, that's what my hyper-conservative (psychotically conservative, even) old supervisor used to say. And while I love sports, I think he may have had a point ...

[Oeditpus Rex]

1. New?

:shrug:

[ghostsofgiants]

3. As opposed to religion being the original.

[Oeditpus Rex]

7. Marx must've never seen a baseball game

[ghostsofgiants]

9. Lucky bastard.

[Oeditpus Rex]

19. Feh. You might be amazed

about who were baseball fans.

Walt Whitman, Mark Twain and Jacques Barzun come to mind.

[ghostsofgiants]

27. Baseball has always bored me...

I used to have a fondness for hockey as a child, but that passed. Sports in general hold no interest for me these days.

[Oeditpus Rex]

31. I won't try to persuade you

People either like something or they don't. But I always tell people who say baseball is boring, "You're not watching it right."

[fishwax]

38. baseball is both boring and beautiful

the boredom is part of it's charm, and while that won't make sense to those who dismiss the game as "boring," I think most baseball fans will know what I mean in a way :)

[Oeditpus Rex]

40. I do

Part of the beauty of the game is it affords much time for socialization. The best times I've had at ball games had little to do with the game itself.

Problem is, too many people have never been to a game, and it's absolutely impossible to get that sense from teevee. ("Damn Yankees" author Douglas Wallop called the two "Where the blue sky meets the green grass" and "Where the black screen meets the beige rug.")

Plus, you only see what a camera director thinks you want to see. In my case, at least, he's wrong half the time.

[fishwax]

41. i can definitely relate to that

Plus, you only see what a camera director thinks you want to see. In my case, at least, he's wrong half the time.

i know what you mean about that. (then again, I have that problem with football sometimes too ...)

There's something really beautiful about the pace of baseball, both within a single game and along the course of a meandering season. Whereas football is, by design, a diversion--a three-hour burst of excitement to mark the weekend--baseball is there every damn day for half a year.

Baseball ebbs and flows in a way that captures life in a way that other sports don't. Baseball provides an even keel that other sports can't touch. Win 62.5 % of your games in the NFL (10 wins), and you may not make the playoffs--win 62% OF your games in mlb and you've got 100+ wins, an impressive feat that, potentially, gives you a shot at "all-time" status.

I love the flow of baseball even on TV. I grew up in a geographical situation that made it extremely difficult to go to games live, but as a fan I still appreciated the way things went on TV ... the easy pace of a pitcher shaking off a catcher's sign, the building drama of a batter fouling off a 3-2 pitch, the explosion of energy with a 1-out, 1-on line drive flying just over the shortstop's head and into the left-center gap.

Oh damn. Baseball has a mystique and appeal that a mere baseball game often can't even match, and I'm deeply captivated by it, in a way that only a fan of baseball or the fiction of W.P. Kinsella could really relate :)

[Oeditpus Rex]

42. You got it, man

That's utterly poetic. You should send it to a sport magazine or something. Baseball America, maybe. :thumbsup:

[ghostsofgiants]

2. I'm inclined to agree.

[fishwax]

12. ZombyWoof has a pretty good Chomsky quote

that makes a very similar point: http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=105x4538588

I think there is a lot of truth to it, too. Living in a horrifically conservative state during the last election cycle, I was at least satiated by the excitement of following the local college powerhouse. This can be both a good and a bad thing, I suppose.

(Of course, the irony of this insight coming from my arch-conservative boss, who thought anyone who didn't like football was basically a communist, is off the charts ...)

[Ron Green]

4. Pro sports seem to serve as the way to keep men from being intimate with

each other. It's the default topic of conversation, when it might be more useful to find out something real about another man.

[fishwax]

8. true, but the opposite is also true ...

sports also give men opportunities to be intimate with each other and to express otherwise difficult/uncomfortable emotions, etc. As Billy Crystal (or one of the other characters) said in City Slickers: when my dad and I couldn't talk about anything else, we could talk about baseball. :)

[Bill McBlueState]

5. i like this opiate better

The existence of the Rose Bowl is not up for debate, which is more than you can say about the central focus of a certain other opiate of the masses.

[hfojvt]

24. can you say

BCS?

The existence of a national champion in college football is often up for debate.

[Bill McBlueState]

43. ah

point well-taken!

Faith in the BCS is much like faith in anything else.

[cssmall]

6. *sigh*

You know, that is bad thing about Pure Marxist theory is that it is so blind to anything else being an opiate of the masses, but let's have fun with this:

Sports provide someone with one thing, if performed correctly, money. In effect, the athletes are no different than you or I selling our labor to whomever to earn money. In the long run, America has never operated off an offical religion besides money, which just seem to be good at it. Furthermore, I believe that Horatio Alger stories codify that belief. So, in essence, it is not the religion of following a sports team or anything else, it is the religion of followin' the O' Mighty Dollah.

Sportspeople just earn more money for selling their labor, in the end, they're slaves too.

[Ron Green]

13. I think the slaves in this case are the people sitting at home watching

game after game, listening to endless sports talk shows, playing fantasy ball, and generally letting other people do their athletic activity for them.

I saw a good definition of a football game: "22 men desperately needing rest and 60,000 people desperately needing exercise."

[cssmall]

15. Hm?

I don't really know. But, I was analyzing out of Marxist theory, now if you want to hear how I really feel about it, I'd be more than obliged to tell you.

[Oeditpus Rex]

22. Here's another that sort of cites Nietzsche

One man (the quarterback) out of 22 seeking order within chaos.

[fishwax]

18. lol :) he was far from a pure marxist, of course

and I don't think he'd buy your marxist analysis of sports :)

His argument was simply that people avoided talking/thinking about real or important issues by talking/thinking about sports. And I think he had a point, to a large degree. He shared a thousand of his little pearls of wisdom in the years I worked with him, and this is the only one I think had any credibility whatsoever :)

The pure marxist perspective has some merit, though, and taken seriously helps to prove my old boss's point, in a roundabout way. To wit: athletes are labor, but there are tons of working class folks who side with ownership whenever there is a labor dispute in sports, b/c they don't want to miss their games.

No matter how rich and spoiled a few select athletes may be, they are still labor, and the owners are still richer and spoilder ;)

[cssmall]

26. Excuse me for burning the midnight oil too long this evening.

Perhaps I should have focused on that it was my analysis and that Marx definately wouldn't say I was a good one. Of course, he said he wasn't a Marxist!

[Spider Jerusalem]

10. Did he not know about television?

Sounds like it.

[fishwax]

14. funny story about that ...

At the time I worked with him, I didn't have cable, and he was a cable news junkie. At one point, he was asking me if I'd seen some show that was on a cable channel:

Arch-C: oh that's right, you don't have cable.

Me: No, I don't have cable ...

Arch-C: You don't have cable?

Me: No, I don't have cable ...

Arch-C (incredulous): How do you FUCKING LIVE?!?!

Me: I read?

ah, good times with that guy :)

[Spider Jerusalem]

17. Hehe...

ah, the irony. Not a sports fan, evidently, but don't take away HIS "opiate"...

[fishwax]

20. the dude was layered with contradictions ... he eventually gave up cable

when his older kid hit 9th grade, because he thought it was part of the reason the kid was having trouble getting motivated (the kid had a TV, game system, VCR, and cable in his bedroom ... umm ... yeah?)

Anyway, I think getting rid of cable was harder on my boss than it was on his kid. (trust me, son, this is going to hurt me more than it hurts you :rofl:)

[EstimatedProphet]

11. Actually, sports on TV

TV is a pretty stong opiate in its own right

[Oeditpus Rex]

23. If sport is the opiate

teevee is the pusher.

Sport would have nowhere near its popularity if not for mass media.

[EstimatedProphet]

35. Absolutely

TV becomes more important than life itself for a lot of Americans, and sports is the most extreme example of that.

[fishwax]

25. I definitely agree about TV, but

I think sports is also pretty strong, and that sports derails a lot of thought/energy/emotion/anger that ought to be directed at the structures of power.

To wit: During the 2000 recount debacle, I lived in a very conservative state with a very good football team (Oklahoma). If many dems in the state of OK were forced to answer truthfully whether they would prefer a Gore win in the courts or a Sooner win in the Orange Bowl, I think many would have a hard time deciding.

Fortunately by 2004, most had wised up (I know, because I asked this question of all my liberal/sooner fan friends), and would have gladly let the sooners get their asses kicked in the NC game in order to secure a Kerry win. (Unfortunately, the former happened without the benefit of the latter :(;))

[Fleshdancer]

16. My husband says the same thing, but I think it's TV, not just sports

a sports game eventually ends but a tv can stay on forever.

[Zomby Woof]

21. It's an old opiate

But some of us are non-addictive in our enjoyment of sports, or so I aspire. :D

[fishwax]

28. i aspire to that too

but i have an addictive personality, so i'm not sure it always works out that way :)

[sir_captain]

32. Eh, is it really so bad?

As it happens, I'm currently working in substance abuse clinical research, and if one has to be addicted to something, I feel pretty safe in saying that sport is relatively harmless. I'd gladly switch it in for some of the things my patients do, anyway!

On that topic and for the trivia banks--opiates are by definition natually occurring, so I think we should be talking about the opioids of the masses.

All that said, I'm looking forward to spring training. :-)

[sir_captain]

29. What's wrong with a diversion?

I really don't see a lot of harm in it.

On an unrelated subject--this whole opiate of the masses saying is, I think, questionable. An opiate, by definition, is naturally occurring. The saying ought to be *opioid* of the masses.

[fishwax]

33. Look up opioid, and the definition is opiate

:)

Anyway, I suppose the primary definition is, technically, a deriviative of opium, and therefore organic, but another definition of opiate is "something that dulls the senses," so the whole opiate of the masses thing is probably okay. :)

As for diversions: I don't necessarily see a lot of harm in a diversion, either, and I'm a huge sports fan, but I do think that there is a lot of energy and emotion that is, perhaps to an unfortunate degree, diverted by sports ...

[sir_captain]

36. Oh, I know

figuratively, it's fine. :-)

Though actually, in a medical sense, opioid is the all-encompassing term for opiates (something like opium or morphine, ie, naturally occurring) and artificially synthesized morphine-like drugs (vicodin, oxycontin, demerol, etc--anything that fits the so-called "morphine rule" in organic chemistry.)

But it's true--that definition is probably not in the Webster dictionary.

As for the diversionary properties of sports, I'm not that concerned. There is undoubtedly energy wasted on sports that could be better spent elsewhere, but I'd bet that there's at least an equal, if not larger amount of good done as well. There's a lot to be said for the fact that sports news is some of the only positive news one can read in the daily paper nowadays--to my mind, I think sports helps keep a lot of people, including me (and sounds like you too!) sane.

[fishwax]

37. sports definitely keeps me sane

especially when my teams are winning :)

And I agree that the energy devoted to sports does a lot of good, too. I don't entirely agree with my uberconservative former supervisor on this issue, I just often reflect that he had (inadvertently) raised an interesting point, and I think there is occasionally a need to remind people that it IS just a game. (I remember during the 2000 Florida recount, news organizations saying--without a hint of irony--that the recount needed to wrap itself up in order to make room for a truly important event: the Florida State/Florida game ...)

But I love sports, and I've no intention of giving up on them anytime soon ... not with the promise of "next year" :D

[bumblebee1]

30. I enjoy sports on tv.

I just can't watch six to eight hours of football or any other sport. I didn't see either the Orange or Rose Bowls. I work second shift. There is a book written by John Gerdy entitled "Sports- The All American Addiction." Mr Gerdy played college basketball for Davidson and pro ball in the CBA. This book blew my mind. Mr Gerdy even gives some suggestions about how to break the sports habit. You don't have to go cold turkey: Just watch less.

[LSdemocrat]

34. Everyone has their diversions

For some its sports, others tv shows, music, books, friends, movies.

And for those really lost souls there's the DU Lounge. :7

[SmileyBoy]

39. You expect me to think about politics all the time??

If I spent all my adult life worrying about what Bush and his gang are doing to this country, I would've put a bullet to my brain a long time ago.

Sports are keeping me sane.

[Strong Atheist]

44. Agreed!

:evilgrin: