> If anything this is "over the top". I was responding to point out that
> some
> how sports has become "the opiate of the masses." If anything it is the
> "amphetamine" of the masses. Or to quote Karl Marx directly "Religion is
> the sigh of the oppressed creature, the heart of a heartless world, just
> as
> it is the spirit of a spiritless situation. It is the opium of the
> people."
> In no way can sports be said to be the "sigh of the oppressed" or the
> "heart
> of the heartless world". At times it is represents the cruelty that comes
> from a heartless world. All team sports has a tendency toward soccer
> hooliganism.
=======================
Spectator sports has its share of beer-bellied yobs, but I'd hestitate to
compare the occasional soccer riot to the long history of cruelty and
violence provoked by religious belief. Marx was addressing one aspect of its
contradictory nature, but it has been as much a stimulant as a narcotic, and
it's hard to say which has been the more socially destructive.
In modern urban societies, including in the US, professional sports is now more widely and intensely experienced than religion but largely continues to serve the same function as a source of group identification, relief from material concerns, and distraction from politics. That's all the analogy was intended to suggest.