steve
On Tue, 16 Oct 2001, joanna bujes wrote:
> At 01:18 PM 10/16/2001 -0400, you wrote:
> >BTW, Chomsky also thinks that sports are stupid. I listen to sports
> >radio all the time and I listened to the baseball playoffs last night,
> >but since 9/11 I have to agree with him that sports are stupid. I had to
> >accept this shortly after 9/11 when the *host* of a show on ESPN radio
> >was calling for Afghanistan to be nuked. They only reinforce patriotism
> >and other dysfunctional stuff in society.
>
> I've never watched sports except for tennis, gymnastics, and diving (more
> like art than sport). I couldn't quite see the point of watching something
> I'd rather be doing. But my son watches sports and so did my first husband.
>
> It's not enough to say sports are stupid. What I've noticed is that
> watching sports is a virtual social experience. It allows you to share
> something (symbolically) with thousands...millions of other people, it
> matters who wins and it doesn't matter (cause it's a game), and it's an
> escape from an otherwise fairly unbearable reality. It makes social
> participation simple (though virtual) and it eliminates the problem of
> building social consensus because we all agree on the rules.
>
> If you want to hang out with other people and share something "positive" --
> sports is one alternative. Is there any other alternative in this our
> great, modern, advanced culture? I can't think of any. I mean everything
> else, compared, is more like a special interest than a shared activity. I
> go out and dance Argentine tango...there's a few hundred such dancers in
> the Bay area and there's a place to go and dance every night of the week,
> but this is a far cry from the great universal of sports.
>
> Joanna B
>
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