Sport and War, wow they are so similar...

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Sport and War, wow they are so similar...

Postby Joe Hillshoist » Mon Jun 19, 2006 6:50 am

For a start they both involve humans.<br><br>I am so over hearing people winge about sport.<br><br>How is sport sublimated warfare?<br><br>I mean maybe warfare is sublimated sex and sex is sublimated life and life is horrible get me out.<br><br>I think it comes down to that prohibitionist worldview, the fear that if God notices someone having a good time somewhere he'll call in the 4 hoursemen, and cancel heaven.<br><br>But I know I am ignorant and hopefully less than hafway thru my life, so I have a lot of learning left to do.<br><br>Please enlighten me. <p></p><i></i>
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Re: Sport and War, wow they are so similar...

Postby 4911 » Mon Jun 19, 2006 7:11 am

take it easy man, things are always only as bad as you view them to be. When you change the way you look at things, the things you look at change. <p></p><i></i>
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Re: Sport and War, wow they are so similar...

Postby Joe Hillshoist » Mon Jun 19, 2006 7:29 am

I am taking it easy<!--EZCODE EMOTICON START :smokin --><img src=http://www.ezboard.com/images/emoticons/smokin.gif ALT=":smokin"><!--EZCODE EMOTICON END--> <br><br><!--EZCODE QUOTE START--><blockquote><strong><em>Quote:</em></strong><hr>things are always only as bad as you view them to be. When you change the way you look at things, the things you look at change<hr></blockquote><!--EZCODE QUOTE END--><br><br>I was hoping someone would explain why sport is so bad so then I could say that. <p></p><i></i>
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bad

Postby blanc » Mon Jun 19, 2006 10:40 am

why is sport so bad? depends which sport <!--EZCODE EMOTICON START :D --><img src=http://www.ezboard.com/images/emoticons/happy.gif ALT=":D"><!--EZCODE EMOTICON END--> <br>personally I like (watching) rugger - rugby football y'know<br>half crazed tanks with bandaged ears good naturedly piling into each other and scrumming around for a mis-shapen ball<br>so much better spectator wise than that nancy footy game <br><br> <p></p><i></i>
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Re: bad

Postby Et in Arcadia ego » Mon Jun 19, 2006 11:54 am

Sagan had a lot to say about it in his Billions and Billions publication. I could care less about sports, but I'm very capable of aggression without it, for the record.<br><br>Perosnally, I view sports as an opiate for the masses more than a tool for stirring up the locals. <p></p><i></i>
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Re: bad

Postby Joe Hillshoist » Mon Jun 19, 2006 12:03 pm

Thanks for responding.<br><br>I am going somewhere with this.<br><br>It may take a while. Opiate for the masses, well I dunno about opiate, but it can serve the purposes I think of when I hear that.<br><br>I'm more responding to something someone said out here on this side of the screen and that HMW mentioned, almost word for word, about tribalism and warfare and the worst elements of humanity. I doubt they know each other or even live on the same continent btw. So that meme is out there.<br><br>What do you mean by an opiate (for the masses) BTW. Cos junkies can be quite motivated at times. And incredibly passionate about their habit.<br><br>I think religion and sport are very close to each other, closer than warfare. <p></p><i></i>
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Re: bad

Postby professorpan » Mon Jun 19, 2006 12:05 pm

There are good aspects of sports and bad aspects, as with most things in life -- I am leery of oversimplifications of complex sociological phenomena.<br><br>"Sports" is a broad category, encompassing everything from long-distance running to college field hockey to frisbee golf to superstar basketball players and everything in between. Sports can have negative effects (football/soccer riots, encouraging passive viewing/couch potato syndrome, taking over male discourse, and pushing triumphant nationalism) and positive (emphasizing fitness, teamwork, providing a safe channel for aggression, and serving as healthy recreation).<br><br>I'm sure someone (cough, cough) will chime in to explain that sports are part of a cleverly orchestrated plot to turn everyone into competitive fascists, ignoring the complex, dynamic history of sports and games going back centuries. Hence my preemptive tone ;-) <p></p><i></i>
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Re: bad

Postby Joe Hillshoist » Mon Jun 19, 2006 12:21 pm

Blanc only the rah rah boys call it rugger.<!--EZCODE EMOTICON START :p --><img src=http://www.ezboard.com/images/emoticons/tongue.gif ALT=":p"><!--EZCODE EMOTICON END--> <br><br>I assume you are talking about rugby union, not rugby league. Which are two very different sports with different rules and even team sizes.<br><br>footy is not soccer football<br><br>Its a game called Australian Rules, based on a combination of gaelic football and an aboriginal australian sport.<br><br>Its much better than that nancy game too <!--EZCODE EMOTICON START :D --><img src=http://www.ezboard.com/images/emoticons/happy.gif ALT=":D"><!--EZCODE EMOTICON END--> <br><br>Has a misshapen ball too, and is played on an oval, not a pitch. And they don't wear any pads. No line of scrimmage.<br><br>Rugby players usually call it Aerial ping pong.<br><br>I won't say what else we call thugby, its a family show.<br><br>"why is sport so bad?"<br><br>I guess one of the reasons is that apparantly watching blokes pile into each other good naturedly might inspire us to heights of bloodlust ala ... well hundreds of places in Iraq.<br><br>I find that a little hard to credit tho.<br><br>Perhaps any expression of nationalism ie watching the aussies get beaten yesterday by brazil (+ 1), 2 nil... is only 1 step away from goose stepping to the nearest target and pogromming them back to the stone age or something.<br><br>Yeah that must be it. <p></p><i></i>
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Re: bad

Postby Et in Arcadia ego » Mon Jun 19, 2006 12:22 pm

<!--EZCODE QUOTE START--><blockquote><strong><em>Quote:</em></strong><hr>What do you mean by an opiate (for the masses) BTW.<hr></blockquote><!--EZCODE QUOTE END--><br><br>I consider the historical references where blood is employed as a satiating device against social unrest:<br><br><!--EZCODE IMAGE START--><img src="http://faculty.washington.edu/nh2/classes/colosseo.jpg" style="border:0;"/><!--EZCODE IMAGE END--><br><br>[Today, instead of the Colosseum, we have the pathetically watered down UFC on payperview..]<br><br>And then there's that Mayan spectator sport where the participants are killed if the ball touches the ground:<br><br><!--EZCODE IMAGE START--><img src="http://www.greatdreams.com/mayan/mayan-ball.gif" style="border:0;"/><!--EZCODE IMAGE END--><br><br>Of course, as professorpan wisely points out, not all sports have the same effects, but I tend to side with Sagan to a large degree about the social function of sports that harness the 'us against them' meme, in that accumulated aggression is channeled against an external body, which is 'healthy' for the community itself. The Lucifer Principle has much to say about this as well.<br><br>For the record, I didn't have any unpleasant 'jock experiences' to get over; I was actually kicked off the wrestling team for breaking an opponent's collar bone. If anything, I was already too aggressive to begin with.<br><br>Nowadays, a frisbee does the job just fine..If more people played frisbee and chilled the fuck out, there wouldn't be an NWO, heh..<br> <p></p><i></i>
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Re: sports as mock wafare.

Postby Hugh Manatee Wins » Mon Jun 19, 2006 12:56 pm

<!--EZCODE QUOTE START--><blockquote><strong><em>Quote:</em></strong><hr>Nowadays, a frisbee does the job just fine..If more people played frisbee and chilled the fuck out, there wouldn't be an NWO, heh..<hr></blockquote><!--EZCODE QUOTE END--><br><br>How true. I was the free-style champ at my high school but refused to go to gym where the boys attacked me for fun. <br><br>For some reason, it was only the guys on teams with numbers on their backs at school <!--EZCODE BOLD START--><strong>who beat me and terrorized me </strong><!--EZCODE BOLD END-->out of school for having hair a little too long.<br><br>Why is that? Biology? Psychology? Cultural programming?<br>Could this violent anti-social behavior be amplified and channeled into selling war and capitalism as social ideals? Would that be the very core of Orwellification?<br><br>Thanks for the intro, Prof Pan. lol.<br><br><!--EZCODE AUTOLINK START--><a href="http://www.icdc.com/~paulwolf/oss/foundingfathers.htm">www.icdc.com/~paulwolf/os...athers.htm</a><!--EZCODE AUTOLINK END--><br><!--EZCODE QUOTE START--><blockquote><strong><em>Quote:</em></strong><hr>Cantril's work during the first decade after World War II focused on elaborating <!--EZCODE BOLD START--><strong>Lippmann's concept of the stereotypethe (sic) "pictures in our heads," as Lippmann put it, through which people are said to deal with the world outside their immediate experience. Cantril specialized in international surveys intended to determine how factors such as class, nationalism, and ethnicity affected the stereotypes present in a given population, and how those stereotypes in turn affected national behavior</strong><!--EZCODE BOLD END--> in various countries, particularly toward the United States. 71 Cantril's work, while often revealing the "human face" of disaffected groups, began with the premise that the United States' goals and actions abroad were fundamentally good for the world at large. If U.S. acts were not viewed in that light by foreign audiences, the problem was that they had misunderstood our good intentions, not that Western behavior might be fundamentally flawed.<hr></blockquote><!--EZCODE QUOTE END--><br><br>It was the height of the Vietnam War chaos in 1971 when football was put on primetime TV as ABC's Monday Night Football.<br><br>Besides ritualizing the values and mechanisms of war, this gave men something else to talk about.<br><br>Eating up bandwith while reinforcing the needs of the National inSecurity State which has been working hard since WWI to convince Americans that war is permanent, not obsolete.<br><br>And now sports is all most men talk about. <br>Many times I've asked strangers if they've heard of Fallujah and most haven't. <br>So Fallujah will happen over and over with a new crop of sports- watching young men pulling the trigger against 'the other team.'<br><br><br> <p></p><i></i>
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Sports as aggression

Postby existentialist » Mon Jun 19, 2006 12:57 pm

Come on... let's face it, sport at a National level is jingoism at it's best. Here in England, there are many hundreds of thousands of soccer 'fans' driving about with St George flags attached to their cars. As a nation, we would love to meet and trounce the Germans or the French (our traditional enemies) in the World Cup. Can you imagine the deflation of the populace in the US if the US National Team played against an Iraqi side and lost, regardless of which sport it was?<br><br>At a local or regional level it is just a matter of fan's pride, but on a world stage, it means so much more. <p></p><i></i>
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Re: Re: Hey Joe

Postby Seamus OBlimey » Mon Jun 19, 2006 1:32 pm

I sort of tend towards the idea that it's a cheaper alternative to war. Healthy competition providing an outlet for those instincts.<br> <br>Would be more entertaining if the cheerleaders had to fight for what they shout for.<br>I'd love to see Bush squaring up to Chavez in the ring or Blair V. Saddam. Imagine the pre-match banter.. <p></p><i></i>
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"Soccer is war"

Postby nomo » Mon Jun 19, 2006 1:40 pm

Most famous quote of the late Rinus Michels:<br><!--EZCODE QUOTE START--><blockquote><strong><em>Quote:</em></strong><hr>Nicknamed "The General" and a man of few words, Michels famously compared soccer to war.<hr></blockquote><!--EZCODE QUOTE END--><br><!--EZCODE AUTOLINK START--><a href="http://www.theage.com.au/news/Soccer/Father-of-Dutch-soccer-dies/2005/03/04/1109700662715.html">www.theage.com.au/news/So...62715.html</a><!--EZCODE AUTOLINK END--> <p></p><i></i>
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Re: Sports as aggression

Postby Hugh Manatee Wins » Mon Jun 19, 2006 1:59 pm

<!--EZCODE QUOTE START--><blockquote><strong><em>Quote:</em></strong><hr> Come on... let's face it, sport at a National level is jingoism at it's best.<hr></blockquote><!--EZCODE QUOTE END--><br><br>Yup. Tribalism. Big Foam Finger-ism. Belonging as survival.<br><br>I know a former stand-up comic who said the most dead room of glassy-eyed drunks could be roused by starting out with "How about those (insert local team here)?"<br><br>The Pat Tillman story with his head literally blown off by 'friendly fire' is the reality that the 'Chicken Little' win-the-big-game-make-daddy-proud<br>propaganda hides.<br><br>This John Graham essay begins to touch on the issues.<br><!--EZCODE AUTOLINK START--><a href="http://www.giraffe.org/speeches_seahawks.html">www.giraffe.org/speeches_seahawks.html</a><!--EZCODE AUTOLINK END--><br><!--EZCODE QUOTE START--><blockquote><strong><em>Quote:</em></strong><hr><!--EZCODE BOLD START--><strong>How the violence in pro football<br>is poisoning our culture<br></strong><!--EZCODE BOLD END--><br>“Go Seahawks!” screamed 65,000 people, urged on by 64 sign-waving “Sea-Gals” on the field and a leather-throated guy on the PA system. The Seattle Seahawks were in the football playoffs, but facing a team that had already beaten them twice this season. “Go Seahawks!” Not loud enough, yelled the PA guy. Not nearly loud enough. GO SEAHAWKS! 65,000 people now on their feet waving towels provided by the management. Men with huge wigs and faces painted Seahawk blue and green ran down the aisles, beating their chests like the warriors in Braveheart. Fireworks exploded in our ears, while a two-story-high monitor at the end of the field showed race cars exploding in fireballs. Three Army helicopters clattered low over the stadium, just missing skimming the top of just missing sounds like they intended to hit it an American flag the size of a living room.<br><br>The message was unmistakable: “Football is war,” and the promoters of the game were doing everything they could to conflate the two. As the decibels in that stadium rose to the level of pain, the whole place shook with battle cries. And the game hadn’t even started.<br><br>I kept to my seat. I like to watch and play sports, including contact sports. I cheer for my teams. But this afternoon I felt like I was on the island in The not because I was shy Why suggest that—it didn’t occur to me that you might be but because I was scared. Lord of the Flies. Or in the amphitheater in Nuremberg. In , by the realization that in this very Blue city that had just voted for John Kerry three-to-one, had that PA guy suddenly screamed, “Kill Muslims!” or “Bash gays” many of those roused, roaring people would have shifted to those cries without thinking.<br><br>You think I’m kidding? You should have been there. Or, I suspect, at the Big Game in most any other pro football stadium in the country.<br><br>Of course, other sports are violent too. But only football, and especially pro football, cloaks itself so deliberately and so thoroughly in war imagery. Even the language used to describe the game equates a gridiron with a battlefield. A quarterback in the shotgun formation evades a blitz of onrushing linemen and throws a bomb, his injured ribs protected by a flak jacket.<br><br>I don’t blame the athletes for football-as-war. They’re just highly paid employees, not policy-makers. I miss the hired-gun line. I blame the promoters and the media, both eager for high ratings and profits. Even the best competitions can occasionally seem dull, especially if you’ve never bothered to learn the fine points of a game. But war imagery—as produced for us by promoters and sports media—is never dull, so conflating football with war sells tickets.<br><br>Don’t get me wrong—I not only like contact sports, I have a history of liking war. By the time I was forty I’d put myself in harm’s way so often I’d almost died a violent death fourteen times. A John Wayne wanna-be, my assignments in the US Foreign Service had put me in the middle of wars and revolutions, including 18 months in one of the most dangerous areas of Vietnam. I loved it, loved the adventures and especially the ultimate adventure of war. But at the height of the battle for Hué in 1972, I finally “got” the total irresponsibility of a life driven by an unholy cocktail of adrenaline and testosterone.<br><br>So maybe I’m like a recovering alcoholic, who knows too well the perils of drink. From the perspective of a sometimes violent younger life, I see big dangers in pro football’s identification with war.<hr></blockquote><!--EZCODE QUOTE END--><br><br>...more on this page and worth reading.<br><br> <p></p><i></i>
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Re: bad

Postby Joe Hillshoist » Mon Jun 19, 2006 2:16 pm

Arcadia<br><br>I get what you are saying, and I do agree. On that 2 minute hate level, even in Australia it was becoming offensive at the melbourne commonwealth games. There was heaps of jingoism, but a nasty side to it that i hadn't noticed before.<br><br>I didn't know the Maya played that game with such bloodlust. but then they were a bloodlusty society when they lived in cities. Maybe thats why they don't anymore.<br><br>But I believe that sport has been played in S and C America for a long time, before the maya, (and lets face it even soccer players can get shot in s america today). It was also a dangerous game, due to the fact that the ball was made of solid rubber. a strike on the head may be fatal, and on the foot crippling. That takes nothing from your point tho.<br><br><!--EZCODE QUOTE START--><blockquote><strong><em>Quote:</em></strong><hr>Nowadays, a frisbee does the job just fine..If more people played frisbee and chilled the fuck out, there wouldn't be an NWO, heh..<hr></blockquote><!--EZCODE QUOTE END--><br><br>Fuck yeah<br><br>Oh BTW Did you get yur moniker from that killing joke song?<br><br>Sport is a mythological process and any cultural technician that wants to turn their society fascist could well do it.<br><br>"For some reason, it was only the guys on teams with numbers on their backs at school who beat me and terrorized me out of school for having hair a little too long."<br><br>I didn't like the jock mentality, thats why I stopped playing Aussie rules, tho I play it now, near 40, and can still do all right. So I have no regrets about not doing it then, tho I sometimes wonder how far I could have gone. Aussie rules is a great game tho, it can be more like riding a motorbike than that experiment in fascist war programming americans call football (WTF is that? Was that sport invented by aliens or did it surface after 1946?). Hugh if Grid Iron put you off football, i suspect you have been the victim of some of that reality programming that being discussed by you and prof. pan.<br><br>BTW I played it for half a season so its not like I have no experience with it. If anyone asks why I stopped - Cos its crap. Football is supposed to be fun to play.<br><br>All the same Hugh, you should have gone back. And you should have hit the first bloke that said or did something and kept hitting until one of you cpouldn't get up.<br><br>Its a sad fact of life that most male humans throughout history have had to risk fighting aand death at one time or another.<br><br>Way back in the day, it was because tribes and cultures needed protection. They still do. And the ones most equipped and expendable were young men.<br><br>Thats just the way we got here, and there is some merit in the attitude that if you haven't got the courage to get hurt then you are weak. That might sound fascist in itself, but every human has fascist tendencies, or the primal motivations that can be their foundations.<br><br>I am a football coach, and so I am interested in hearing what you say, cos I take doing that seriously. just cos its my way of equipping kids to deal with a fucked up world. Or trying, and its fun, and some of the kids I have coached will be playing seniour football in the next year. Some with me, that'll be awesome. Some perhaps with reigning premiers the Sydney Swans. But he's got other options too.<br><br>The kids out here are pretty unique. They get exposed to a lot of amazing stuff. Lucky. Not like the suburbs...<br><br>There used to be a joke...<br><br>Whats the definition of confusion?<br><br>Fathers Day in Nimbin.<br><br><!--EZCODE QUOTE START--><blockquote><strong><em>Quote:</em></strong><hr>So Fallujah will happen over and over with a new crop of sports- watching young men pulling the trigger against 'the other team.'<hr></blockquote><!--EZCODE QUOTE END--><br><br>I actually find this pretty wrong. It just doesn't reflect the culture I live in.<br><br>Maybe its a hemispherical thing.<br><br>Maybe it just smacks of this:<br><!--EZCODE QUOTE START--><blockquote><strong><em>Quote:</em></strong><hr> Lippmann's concept of the stereotypethe (sic) "pictures in our heads," as Lippmann put it, through which people are said to deal with the world outside their immediate experience.<hr></blockquote><!--EZCODE QUOTE END--><br><br>Its 3 oclock, Im going to bed<br><br>PS Hi seamus, 0 2 to Brazil. What a bitch, and the ref - now there's a conspiracy, soccer refs -oh well, they had their chances and could have taken them. I reckon Brazil will take us a lot more seriously if we meet again. no Renaldo starting thats for sure.<br><br>even me old man who played soccer for his country was stunned at how well australia played. he rates them in the top 10 in the world. I dunno enough about it to say, well top 10. Thats sounds right.<br><br>see there's no jingoism here<!--EZCODE EMOTICON START :b --><img src=http://www.ezboard.com/images/emoticons/tongue.gif ALT=":b"><!--EZCODE EMOTICON END--> <p></p><i></i>
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