Kuuso on 28/7/2012 at 11:36
Can you move this to general chat, I misplaced it. Also, feel free to lock this, if it seems to close to the original thread.
This was one tangent discussed in the Penn Lions thread and I felt it was even more interesting than the actual subject, because there was seriously people claiming that sports culture in general is vapid. It felt like sports should be minimized to a form of exercising, which sounds horrible to me.
My kneejerk reaction is to say that the people claiming this have never played any sports seriously, but I'd rather keep from ad hominems, but I am fairly sure that everyone here enjoys movies, music and other forms of art. Anyone who has done sports knows it can do all the same things that art: feelings of joy and sadness to start with. What it differs with is that it offers physical enjoyment of pushing your body and doing things physically. In this respect it relates to dance the most, which I find a very curious form of art/sports due to it's position as both.
Doing something like this if not for anything else than pleasure is surely not useless?
Sports culture in the other hand is a trickier subject. I've been a part of several clubs in several sports and I've always had great experiences in different cups, playing other teams, interacting with the audience and inside the club itself. I've gained lots from it, maybe most in social confidence due to meeting all sorts of people who I wouldn otherwise have no intention in meeting (I'd class myself outside the typical jock type). The example I have can surely be extended to everywhere.
In global scale, we start to see the problems. Doping, blinding devotion to sports in both players (ruining their future by not studying for example) and fans (the countless fights et al done by fans in stadiums and everywhere) are just a few examples. The thing is though that there's hardly anything that comes even close with unifying people in the same way as sports does. It is a culture, it is a truly global culture and thus is immensely valuable even with it's downsides. It is the same with music really. How many lives have been ruined because of the culture associated with rock music for instance? But how many lives have gained their most memorable moments via it as well?
The main problem is that sports is reduced into a commodity that can be gambled on. This leads to wages of millions for footballers for example, which then leads to the hurrdurr argument of "why is some hairy dude paid millions for kicking a fucking ball", which conveniently ignores that he hairy dude has probably spent his whole training it and is the world's best at what he does. It's capitalism at it's worst I'm afraid, but the sports underneath doesn't really have much to do with it. It's organizations that handle sports cultures (like FIFA) that should keep this in check, but it's not an easy task to be sure.
It's the same with music again, where songs are reduced into sold things engineered to target audiences. Everything is weighed in gold instead of actual enjoyment or value it produces.
tl;dr sports is not an evil entity that has no positive sides and goddammit it sounds like such stereotypical nerdrage against sports in here (I guess a small ad hominem doesnt hurt anybody).
demagogue on 28/7/2012 at 11:45
I think a small subset of sports out there, the part that is also the most publicly visible, does invite a vapid culture around itself... like major football programs (either kind). But the vast majority of sports going on out there, high school or college tennis leagues or cross country running or swim meets or gymnastics, happen without any fanfare and IMO are conducive to all sorts of positive values ... hard work, discipline, teamwork, self pride & confidence...
As for what to do about the colossal sports programs that are over the top, I mean it's a very embedded culture that's crusted around them over the last century and a half... Not sure there's any silver bullet that's just going to make that culture just float away, but obviously there are things the powers-that-be can do to make the problem better and not make it worse... Like make funding more equitable across sports programs, have strong checks & oversight so the major programs don't get any undue special treatment and especially not get away with dodgy practices, etc...
Kuuso on 28/7/2012 at 12:15
I think there's quite a big general culture gap here, because the american system, especially considering universities is mind-boggling. To put in context, where I am not a single university has a sports team that has any kind of considerable presence. They're universities, you study in them, duh. I think the focus on Finn sports education is to integrate normal studies with sports as effortlessly as possible.
Maybe the problems considering sports are heighened in US due to it's specific culture?
SubJeff on 28/7/2012 at 13:02
Wft is "no paedo talk" all about?
This is a great way to stimulate discussion. :thumbdown:
DDL on 28/7/2012 at 14:24
On account of this being a spinoff of a thread about the penn state football child abuse scandal, that was raising interesting questions (some of them about sports) but that also degenerated pretty badly. And then got locked.
BrokenArts on 28/7/2012 at 14:51
Don't remind us. :p I would like to think it won't spiral into a big pile of goo again, we'll see. Carry on.
jay pettitt on 28/7/2012 at 15:03
Sport is anything but useless. Play and good health are both essential for well being.
...But...
If a tiny proportion of the amount of brain cells used obsessively remembering football stats and opinionating about team selection went on learning and problem solving (or even playing and healthing), we'd pretty much have fixed literally everything by now. Disease, poverty, climate... It'd all be fixed. That is unforgivable.
Jason Moyer on 28/7/2012 at 16:35
Quote Posted by demagogue
I think a small subset of sports out there, the part that is also the most publicly visible, does invite a vapid culture around itself... like major football programs (either kind).
The same thing can be said about any mainstream popular entertainment.
Quote Posted by jay pettitt
If a tiny proportion of the amount of brain cells used obsessively remembering football stats and opinionating about team selection went on learning and problem solving (or even playing and healthing), we'd pretty much have fixed literally everything by now. Disease, poverty, climate... It'd all be fixed. That is unforgivable.
You could say the same thing about the brain cells being used by people hopelessly flailing away at guitars and turntables or the brain cells being used to make video games or mods for them.
Trance on 28/7/2012 at 17:26
Quote Posted by Jason Moyer
You could say the same thing about the brain cells being used by people hopelessly flailing away at guitars and turntables or the brain cells being used to make video games or mods for them.
Except those activities fall under the "playing, learning and problem solving" categories he mentioned.
Jason Moyer on 28/7/2012 at 17:45
He used those categories in reference to solving real world problems. I don't see how being terrible at playing a guitar or making a Thief FM is helping solve disease, climate, or poverty problems.
Of course, sports also involve "playing, learning, and problem solving" to roughly the same degree as any other entertainment-oriented hobby.
