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Dec. 19, 2005 - Freedomain Radio - Stefan Molyneux
44:23
20 The State and Sports
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Well, good afternoon!
It is five o'clock, December the 18th.
I'm on my way home.
So, I have had this topic that I've wanted to chat about for a couple of days.
It's a wee bit of a departure, but I think it's an interesting topic, which is the relationship between the state and sports.
It is something that I have had a little bit of experience in.
I mean, I grew up in England.
I was born in Ireland.
I grew up in England.
I spent a little bit of time in Africa with my father.
And so I've been exposed to a wide variety of different sort of sports, sort of motifs or sports environments.
The British one, of course, being the most intense.
When I was in boarding school, when I was very young, of course, sports was You know, a very big thing.
And I've been sort of fascinated by this question of sports.
I myself am lucky enough to be quite athletic.
I've enjoyed a wide variety of sports throughout my life, and currently I'm involved in the manly sport of aerobics and weightlifting.
I don't actually play any organized sports at the moment.
I just don't have time.
But I did meet my wife playing volleyball, and gosh, I played tennis, and soccer, and cricket.
I played baseball.
It's just, you know, I really enjoy exercise and so on.
But there is something that I've never, never in my life understood.
It's something I've never been able to really fully, even partially grasp.
And I'll sort of relate an anecdote that may be of interest to you.
I thought it was kind of funny because this happened when I was very, very young.
I was five years old.
It's one of my earliest memories outside of my home.
And what it was, I was standing on the front steps of the apartment building.
I grew up in a sort of project in England.
A project.
I mean, that sounds a little bit apocalyptic.
It was, you know, not that bad a place or anything, but, you know, it wasn't anything snooty by any stretch.
And I'm standing out front of the building, and England, as you may or may not know, is soccer or football mad.
People lose their entire lives to obsessing about their team.
Because any kind of sports addiction or, let's say, a little too heightened interest in the fates of teams, It's a form of gambling addiction, right?
I mean, it's also a spin-off of religious or mystical convictions, simply because, you know, you're highly emotionally invested in things over which you have no control, like, you know, praying to a god and so on.
So, there's lots of aspects to this kind of fervor that have roots in irrationality.
But, so, England is soccer mad, and I grew up on a little street called Hermitage Road, which was near Crystal Palace.
Near a small section of London called Crown Point.
And, of course, football mania was just rampant, right?
Whose team was the best, and whose players were the best, and who was the... I think four divisions or three divisions, and we were always the bottom of the third division.
I mean, the team that my section of town happened to be represented by was called Crystal Palace.
You know, I think they'd been in the First Division once in the, you know, around the time the Magna Carta was signed and after that the fortunes fell into steady decline and so on.
And so I was standing out front of my apartment building and this kid came up to me.
I guess I was, as I said, five years old or so.
And he's like, West Ham rules!
He shouted at me.
Crystal Palace Sucks, or something.
I mean, I think sucks might be a bit moderate for, I guess, something that was occurring in 1971, but it was, I think, somewhat safe to say that it was fairly negative anyway.
And I said to him, and now this is paraphrasing.
I distinctly remember saying it.
I can't remember the words you used, but it was something like, but so what?
You know, you just, you just, it's an accident.
It's an accident.
You know, and he's like, what are you talking about?
And I said, well, you just, I'm born here, you're born there.
It's an accident.
I know this sounds alarmingly, if not pretentiously, precocious, but I swear that this occurred, and this was my distinct thought, that this guy was, this kid was, you know, powerfully invested in, you know, a complete accident.
of circumstance, you know, that he was gaining self-esteem from, you know, this random, you know, where was he when his mother squatted and dropped him?
Well, he was in West Ham, therefore West Ham is the best, and he can whatever, right, lord it over.
That's sort of one thing that I remember.
Another thing that I recall in my sort of early sense or education about sports and mythology was this A fact that my team, Crystal Palace, was, you know, your team.
I think I went to one soccer game in my life, and it was like 1-1, and it was basically like a slow and painful time at the dentist, because the whole play felt so constipated.
So I went to see this team that was supposed to be my team, or I saw them on TV, I can't remember.
You know, basically a whole bunch of Jamaican fellows came running out on the pitch and, you know, when they were interviewed, you know, had these broad, thick Rasta accents, you know, talking about how happy they were, man, to be representing England, man.
I apologize for my Rasta accent.
I'm far too white to have it work very well.
But, you know, I mean, it did, of course, strike me as somewhat bizarre that You know, these guys who didn't look anything like me, didn't speak anything like me, came from a completely different part of the world, and obviously were not exactly, hadn't exactly been in England for a whole lot of time, were sort of, I was supposed to identify with and, you know, so that was the one thing.
And then the last thing that, once I, I think it was a year or two later, that I understood that the players switched teams.
And, of course, I think it was a year after that that I found out that the coaches switched teams.
And then it all became very confusing to me.
I mean, really, literally, it did become absolutely confusing, because it was like, OK, so I've got this team called Crystal Palace that is supposed to be the be-all and end-all, and I'm supposed to love and worship this team and, you know, get really hung up on whether they win or lose.
Well, what part of the team is it that I'm supposed to identify with?
It's not the players, because they're not anything like me.
They're from a different part of the world and they're new to the country and so on.
It's not the coach, because he's going to come and go.
I think Crystal Palace coaches went with appalling regularity if they were unable to raise their team's fortunes.
It's not the players, even if they're new to the country, if they stick around.
Why?
Because they'll just get traded next year or the year after.
And so I literally would try and figure out what I was committing my allegiance to.
Was it to the sweaters?
Was it to the uniform?
Was it to the mascot?
Not even the guy in the mascot uniform, but the mascot uniform itself, because that was pretty shabby and seemed to be around for a while.
Was it the house that the football club was housed in?
None of it really made any sense, but I certainly couldn't In any way, shape or form, understand how on earth I was supposed to have any kind of sensible allegiance to this, you know, sort of silly made-up club where, you know, members came and went, you know, but it was supposed to be that that's my allegiance, that's my... So, you know, I guess you could say it was sort of innate in me to have this sort of
approach to allegiance, which was, I guess, not habitual or not conventional, or I guess I just didn't take things for granted.
I mean, I would, you know, see these lunatics screaming and waving their arms and jumping up and down and, you know, just going demonically nuts over the fortunes of this team.
And, you know, I guess originally I thought it was sort of like the racetrack, where they had money on it.
And, you know, once I found out that they didn't, I just couldn't understand.
What are you What are you cheering?
I just couldn't figure it out.
It just made no sense to me.
So, you know, I guess it's been a long time that I've mulled over the idea of sports, you know, organized sports, sports where you kind of sit there and watch.
To me, I mean, you know, to be, I guess, somewhat blunt, I understand pornography a little more than I understand watching sports.
Um, you know, watching sports is completely passive.
My understanding is that watching pornography is not exactly passive.
So, at least there's some benefit to pornography.
But, you know, sitting there and watching other people exercise, you know, it just... And it's not like it's beautiful.
I mean, the occasional sport like figure skating or whatever or, you know, gymnastic, that sort of...
For me, like the queasy, gutted, lump-in-the-throat look at especially those little girl gymnasts.
It's just like, oh man, they just look like they're so frail and they're just gonna get hammered in some ugly way on that bar.
And I don't find that too pleasant to watch.
But, you know, certain kinds of figure skating or whatever, you know, quite, quite aesthetically pleasing and so on.
But, you know, hockey, I mean, it's not exactly the ballet.
You know, football, I mean, it's just lunatic.
It's just watching these, you know, pumped up, steroided, you know, These eight monsters just, you know, lunging at each other and, you know, like eight minutes of play in two and a half hours.
I mean, boy, that's just like watching somebody do their taxes.
So...
I guess I've had a fair amount of time to think about this stuff, as I'm sure you're aware, and to try and figure out why on earth people would, like, what is the adaptive nature of this?
Why do people have any sort of interest in this?
Why are people interested in watching other people, you know, perform athletic, like, do something athletic when, you know, you could be out, you know, having a run or, you know, going for a swim or playing on some sport.
Why would you watch other people do it?
Well, you know, it's not because these people are just good at what they do.
You know, I mean, my accountant is great at what he does, but I don't watch him do it.
You know, so that's not the criteria at all.
It's not because you have money riding on it, because a lot of people don't.
Bet.
On sports.
It's not because you have any particular cultural or emotional identification.
Well, cultural identification with the team because, you know, they can be a bunch of Jamaicans fresh off the boat and, you know, they're suddenly supposed to glide straight into your collective unconscious and represent you in the larger sphere of things.
So, you know, the question is why?
Well, I think one of the clues about sports is that it is enormously subsidized.
I mean, the subsidies that rain down on the sports world are just staggering.
Now, I'm not saying that every amateur athlete in the world has, you know, a Ferrari and, you know, a big swimming pool in the backyard.
I mean, I know that athletes don't do very well financially.
You know, they get by on $15k a year or $20k a year or $12k a year or, you know, maybe even less.
But I've got to tell you, there's a huge difference.
Between 15k a year, which you can conceivably live on.
I mean, I know when I was a student I rented a room in an apartment with, you know, five other people in a house with five other people.
I was paying $250, $275 a month. And you can live on $1,000 a month.
You can live on even $800 a month, even in Toronto.
This was like right downtown.
So, there's a huge difference between something like $15,000 or $12,000 a year and $0 a year, right?
Because $0 a year means you've got to get a full-time job and, you know, $15,000 a year, you're living somewhat aesthetically but you're living and that's, you know, obviously a fairly big difference between, you know, $0 and $15,000 is a big difference, $15,000 and $30,000, not so much.
So, I guess, yeah, the one is a difference in kind, the other is a difference in degree.
So, you know, they get enough to get by and, you know, the sports facilities are incredibly subsidized, right?
I mean, skating was free when I was a kid or very cheap and, you know, swimming was free and the gym was all available and sports fields were available and subsidized and, you know, you could get a pretty good subsidy which meant it was either free or very cheap to, you know, participate in sports from a sort of playing standpoint.
And, you know, stadiums are unbelievably subsidized.
I mean, there's a massive, massive tax transfer from basically people who aren't interested in sports to people who are.
So, you know, that's another one.
Professional teams are incredibly subsidized.
You know, the Olympics are subsidized.
I mean, it just goes on and on.
So, of course, the question is, why?
Why, you know, is this all so subsidized?
And I think there's an interesting answer to it.
I mean, like a lot of my theories, I really haven't had a lot of time to test it empirically.
And I've got to tell you, I'm not even sure that I could.
But I will tell you what makes sense logically, and then you can see if it sort of makes sense to you.
Well, the interesting thing about teams is that they are all, in fact, equal.
In a sort of fundamental sense, right?
This is not, you know, a battle... The Super Bowl is not a battle of good versus evil, right?
This is not Ragnarok.
This is not, you know, the rapture of the sports leagues.
This is just, you know, a bunch of overpaid... Well, overpaid, you know, it's free market except that they're subsidized, so I think I can safely say overpaid, overmedicated thugs, you know, pounding at each other.
And, you know, even if you don't take that, even if it's not like a balletic You know, if it's a balletic interpretation of human conflict or whatever, however you want to call it, you know, one team is not different from another team at all.
You know, they may have better athletes, they may have different uniforms, but you know, fundamentally, there's absolutely no difference.
It's not like one of them represents, you know, the good guys and one represents the bad guys.
It's not like, you know, the fate of the free world rests on who wins, you know, which particular trophy and so on.
So fundamentally, there is no difference between the teams.
However, Sports subsidies and the whole approach that the state, and particularly state education, has to sports is irrational localized allegiance, or irrational localized preference.
That, my friends, is a very important aspect of training people in how to view the state.
I know, I know.
Maybe it seems like a reach, but you know, bear with me.
I think I can make a decent case for this.
So, if what is closest to you, geographically, is best for no reason.
And you were taught this over and over and over again.
I mean, I remember in my junior high school and high school in Don Mills, Ontario, I mean, we even had a school song that, of course, absolutely nobody knew the, you know, the words and the music to, except maybe like one teacher who was 200 years old.
But, you know, even at that level that, you know, your junior high school was the best junior high school and then the, you know, the high school which was right next to it was the best and now better than the junior high school that you were at, you know, just one term before.
I mean, so, what, you know, what subsidized sports and what this kind of sports, you know, sports as a whole teaches people is that My local team is better, is more valuable, is a higher order of excellence.
Even if it's not objective, right?
I mean, my team, the team that I was growing up with in England, they sucked.
I mean, they were just terrible.
I mean, they could barely pass the ball.
And, you know, but I was supposed to love them because they were local.
So it didn't have anything to do with the quality of the team because then sports wouldn't make any sense, right?
You'd just wait to see who won and then say that you followed that team.
And so, you know, and of course in England you had these ridiculous things where people on one side of the street would support one team and people on the other side of the street would support other team who fights and, you know, rivalries and all this sort of nonsense.
But basically what it does is it trains people into believing that what is local Although morally undifferentiated from what is far away, what is local is what you give your crazed, mad, you know, chimpanzee-like imprinted obedience to.
And that is one of the things that the state really likes about sports.
And, you know, why does the state like this about sports?
Well, it's a lot easier to train children, you know, to love a sports team than to love a government, right?
I mean, when you're young, like, really, what do you care about the state, you know?
Or economics.
I mean, you don't care.
I mean, I didn't care.
I mean, I still remember, I guess, in 1980, maybe 1981, you know, I was like, I don't know, what, 14 years old, and I had a summer job, and I remember saying to my mom, gee, I don't understand this whole recession thing, you know.
I don't understand.
I mean, everything's the same.
And she's like, well, that's because I still have my job.
So, you know, I didn't care.
I didn't know.
I mean, I got sort of irritated at the taxes that were taken off.
But, you know, when you're working in a hardware store, you know, as I was, it's not like you, you know, making $2.50 an hour.
It's not like you're giving up, you know, 50% of your income to the government.
So, you know, it doesn't really matter.
I was annoyed at paying taxes on records and, you know, whatever.
But I didn't care.
But I could sort of understand and process teams, right?
Our team, your team, my team, your team, this team, that team.
I could understand that.
I mean, we obviously have pretty deep within our ape-like cortex, we have this understanding of my tribe better than your tribe, right?
Which is obviously a basic biological imperative that You know, we really couldn't survive on our own, not so much because of predators that were non-human in nature, but because of other tribes with, you know, sticks and spears.
Or at the very least, we needed someone to watch over us while we slept.
So we didn't get, like, eaten by lions or something.
So, you know, you had to have some sort of allegiance to your own tribe, and of course, you know, that made sense.
You know, why you automatically had to hate all the other tribes didn't make quite as much sense, but it seems to me it would be something that would be provoked by the leaders, so you'd be good cannon fodder for war.
So, to return to sort of sports, It seems to me that it makes sense that, you know, the purpose of subsidizing sports and making, you know, sports so public and available and, you know, on the sort of CBC, which is the government-run television station up here in Canada, also available and, you know, getting people all pumped up and all that kind of stuff.
It makes perfect sense because they want to teach you that you don't judge things by morality, you judge things by proximity.
You don't even judge them by similarity to yourself, you just judge them like Close equals good.
Far equals bad.
And you're sort of chanting Lord of the Flies type ape creature, you know, without any ability to process values other than, you know, what's closer is better, what's farther is badder.
And that is, you know, a pretty important thing for your government to teach you, right?
So it doesn't matter That we speak a different language from you.
And it doesn't matter that we don't look anything like you.
And it doesn't matter that, you know, we come and go and so on.
Because if you look at the state, I mean, the state is very similar to a sports team.
Right?
I mean, I remember when I was a kid, the people in the government, they sure as heck didn't speak anything like I did, or they didn't, you know, they didn't look anything like I did.
I mean, they were sort of crusty old adults.
And so, and they didn't say anything that made any sense to me.
So, why would I have any allegiance to them?
Right?
So, you know, they want to teach you that what's important is the structure that is proximate to you, that is close to you.
Not who's in it, or what it does, or anything like that, but just the structure.
So, you love the team, even though the coaches change, right?
Which is like the prime ministers, or the presidents.
Even though the players change, or like the congressmen, or, you know, the members of parliament, or whatever.
Even though they don't look like you at all, even though they don't sound like you at all.
In England, this was even more clear because, you know, they've got the whole cockney, you know, fruity British accent, boarding school accent divide.
So, none of that matters.
None of that matters that, you know, the contents of the structure come and go and, you know, they're nothing like you.
What matters is that it's the closest structure to you, right?
So, it's a sports team or, you know, your government.
I mean, your government is not better than anybody else's government.
Governments are all the same, right?
I mean, they're limited by historical rationality and morality.
I mean, there's no difference whatsoever between the government of America and the government of, say, Zimbabwe, except for the fact that the government in America has been restrained due to some leftover historical baggage around the government should not be this dictator.
They're taking time to get to the place where they can do that, but there's certainly absolutely no difference.
Force is force.
Violence is violence.
It's amazing when you hear the debates early on in the foundation of the American society when You know, I'd be like, I'm sorry, I can't lay my index finger on any section of the Constitution that justifies this or that or the other.
I mean, and none of that means anything anymore.
And the Constitution is no longer a living document, but an abstract ghost.
I mean, it's just something that's invoked to talk about without anybody having any clue.
I mean, that they would think about in Cleaching Pinton.
Impeaching Clinton for treating his aides like personal geishas and not Bush for invading without congressional approval.
It's the absolute death of the empire.
The heart is completely rotten and it's just a matter of time without some significant intellectual intervention until it goes the way of Of, you know, any dictatorship in the world.
But, you know, they do want to get you to love, in a morally undifferentiated way, a particular structure based on its proximity to you.
And that is one of the reasons why the state is so, so, so keen on subsidizing sports.
So that you can then... You have the principle within you that, you know, what is closest is better and it doesn't matter who's in it.
It just is the structure that matters.
So, you know, you have to have allegiance to the government.
Even if, you know, some left-winger you despise gets voted in and passes all these laws, well, you still have to respect the law.
You have to respect the government, right?
Even if your team is crap and never win anything, you're still supposed to think they're the best and, you know, give your allegiance to them.
So, you know, this... I won't labor the point, I mean, any more than I've already been laboring it, but I think this aspect of, you know, why sports and the state are so intertwined and why the state subsidized sports is pretty interesting.
And, you know, you will notice, of course, that The subsidies of sports generally increased as the role of religion went down in society, right?
I mean, when religion was very strong, say, you know, in the 1850s in England in particular, with the sort of muscular Christianity and so on.
I mean, sports was always subsidized for the upper classes for reasons that we'll get to in a sec to do with training people for war.
But, you know, when religion was stronger, sports were less subsidized because, you know, the way to worship a morally empty content, the way to get that principle across is to get people to worship a God that doesn't exist.
And, you know, it doesn't matter whether good or evil happens to you, you just have to worship God and so on.
Even if priests are bad, God is good.
Even if everything that happens to you is bad, God is good, right?
So when people could teach people to love the state, regardless of what it did through religion, then they didn't need sports as much.
And then when religion began to fall away, they had to find some other way to inculcate this blind allegiance to amoral power structures.
And, you know, a pretty good way to do it is sports.
It's not perfect, but it's not the end of the world.
So, sort of, that's one aspect of sports that I find quite interesting.
Another aspect that I find quite interesting is this fairly clear and well-documented fact that sports leads to war.
The relationship between sports and war has historically been very, very, very close.
So, for instance, you know, I mean, wrestling evolved out of ritual combat, right?
Where people didn't want to kill each other but still had to resolve disputes without having to resort to something as awful as reason.
So, you know, this is where a lot of sports came out of.
I mean, a lot of the sports are martial in origin, right?
The obvious one like javelin tossing and so on.
But even, you know, more subtle sports.
You know, they have an origin in the martial arts.
And so, you know, the training of one's body for physical combat is one of the reasons why sports was always supported by the state in the past, right?
I mean, you go back to the ancient Greeks and, you know, sports was considered to be one of the... gymnastics, in particular, was one of the key things that the state was supposed to teach you.
And, of course, the reason that it was supposed to teach you sports was sort of twofold.
One was, you know, it trains your body, quickens your reflexes, you know, strengthens your muscles so that you're more likely in a time of martial combat to come out ahead, right?
Versus some anemic city-dwelling couch potato who, you know, can barely lift his short sword, you know, you're pretty much going to take it down every time.
So sports was particularly considered virile and manly and, you know, subsidized by the state so that You know, the people would be well-trained in, you know, not in something as inconsequential as, say, you know, farming or, you know, running a printing press.
I mean, not that there were any back then, but, you know, you wouldn't want them to be trained in anything as silly as moving furniture or anything, you know.
Although that would train their muscles, that doesn't give them the reflexes and the sort of cold-blooded killing edge that they need.
So, you want to make sure that you train them in stuff that, you know, makes them sinewy and quick and strike fast and all this kind of stuff.
So, you know, this glorification of murder.
I mean, because all martial arts are based on murder, right?
I mean, there's just no question.
And all sports, most sports, of course, being based on martial arts are also based on murder.
I mean, it's just a way of desensitizing people to a large degree.
So that's sort of one aspect of it.
And the other aspect of sports that prepares people to war is sort of an offshoot of the first.
Of the first one, which is, you know, my team is better than the enemy team.
And of course, in this instance, the coach is equivalent to the military commander, right?
I mean, this is not any sort of stunning revelation of mine.
I'm sure it's pretty clear to everyone who spent two seconds thought on the subject.
I mean, if anyone has, this might be my obsession, but I don't think it is.
You know, so you sort of... I'm thinking about a rugby game, right, which is, you know, where you sort of line up sort of on each side and I mean, it's like Australian rules football, you know, which is sort of like...
open combat without swords and you know rugby you know no protection there's none of this sort of american you know uh exaggerated padding thing i mean it's just you and and mud and knuckles and bone and you know crashing into people and you know so that is very clear that you know your team your allegiance is to your team and you really can't um you have to have a great deal of passion for it
I mean, one of the things that's true about sports is that, you know, 80% of it, I mean outside of the base physical talent, like 80% of it is mental.
So, I mean, you have to really want to win.
You have to want to win desperately.
And you have to want to, like, endure anything to win.
And you have to want to, you know, I'll play the game with a cracked tibia or whatever.
I'll play the game with a bruised rib.
I'll do whatever it takes to win.
And of course, it's stupid, right?
I mean, it's absolutely stupid and I've never understood these sports games, sports movies or sports anecdotes where it's like, you know, Joe played with a broken collarbone and yay, what a hero.
I mean, what a complete moron.
I mean, unless you're being paid 5 million dollars a year, you know, it's just stupid.
And of course, you don't aim to become a professional athlete any more than you aim to buy a lottery ticket instead of save for your retirement.
I mean, it could happen, but, you know, the odds are so against it as to be ridiculous.
But, you know, you play sports for the enjoyment, for the health, for the benefits, and to some degree for the socializing.
But, you know, you don't damage your body to win.
I mean, because what the hell are you winning?
Ah, you're winning bragging rights.
I mean, of all the second-hand nonsense to get excited about, you know.
Because, I mean, sports stories, like drunk stories, are just ultimately incredibly boring.
But, you know, they're all self-serving and they're all, you know, sort of a depressing, you know, dwelling on the past and past glories and so on.
So, you know, the fact that people are willing to accept these injuries and, you know, just grit their teeth and play on despite, you know, bones sticking out of their shins and all this kind of stuff.
I mean, obviously, this is, you know, a pretty sick mental state to be in because, you know, assuming you're not a professional athlete, you're not getting paid for anything.
You know, you're basically frightened of being called a wimp, and you're frightened of, you know, being called a namby-pamby or a mama's boy for, you know, saying, gee, you know, I'd rather, I'd rather, you know, I'd rather tuck my shinbone back into my skin and go to the hospital than continue playing.
And, of course, the only reason that you can do that, that you feel that it's more important to Continue playing despite injuries, you know, I mean I'm not talking about a bump, but you know something fairly serious which happens quite a bit.
The only reason you're willing to continue playing is you've just developed this completely irrational Fixation upon winning, which means that, you know, where your moral center should be, right?
I mean, we should not be concerned with winning a sports game, but with the good people, right?
Because winning a sports game ain't gonna make us happy for more than 15 minutes.
But, you know, being a good person is a foundation for a lifelong, you know, basking in a sort of joyous bubble bath of moral happiness.
So, you know, the only reason that you'd be obsessed with winning is because you've sort of taken out the moral engine at your core and you have substituted for it, you know, blind social conformity and loyalty to your teammates who are no more moral than the teammates across the way.
You know, and it's sort of as a minor aside about the history of my thinking on this.
Whenever I would see these sports movies as a kid, it was always pretty clear to me that the only reason we want this team to win is because the camera didn't happen to follow the other team.
You know, I mean, so, you know, we're on the Bad News Bears is playing and, oh, we want them to win so badly!
And, you know, I mean, it's all complete crap.
I mean, if the camera had been following the other team, we'd want them to win.
I mean, it just felt so manipulative and just such a load of nonsense.
So people who are willing to overcome physical injury or to just show strength of character by just pushing through and pounding people and taking more hits and possibly injuring themselves quite seriously, if not permanently, these people are considered to be moral and good and all they've done is ripped out their moral apparatus and replaced it with social conformity and a blind allegiance to dominating other people through brute force and skill, which is martial in origin.
So, if you can get people to believe, you know, that my loyalty is to my team, I will accept physical injury in order to make my team win.
Winning is everything.
Well, you know, you've kind of got them eight-tenths of the way they need to be, you know, to just sign up to war and start killing people.
I can't remember who it was, but somebody, and I think it was a 19th century British military leader or statesman, who said, you know, the battle of such and such was won on the playing fields of Eton.
You know, it's one of these, in England at least, it's a pretty famous quote, you know, which says that, you know, the sports in the upper class schools, in the upper class environments, are fundamental to British martial victory.
You know, and to me, it's a pretty telling statement.
It's a lot better than that sort of drippy and self-defeatist and self-destructive muttering of the guy who won the Battle of Trafalgar, saying, Oh, I regret that I have but one life to give for my country!
I mean, please!
It's just too ridiculous for words.
Nelson, Horatio Nelson, that's the guy.
So, these are sort of considerations that I think are very interesting around the world of sports and around, you know, nothing, again, nothing wrong with sports.
Sports are great.
I love sports myself, you know, but it's an enjoyable, you know, activity in terms of, you know, it's a bit of socializing, you have some fun.
I do occasionally get whipped up into the, you know, win or die.
Mentality because you know I have that you know lower maptilian base of my brain Which you know I also respect because it gives me things like temper and resilience and and moral courage So you know but for the most part I recognize that that's this sort of inappropriate for the situation and what would be far more Satisfying is to enjoy myself and test my skill But the reason is sort of to wrap it up the reason that you know sports is so heavily subsidized is the underlying message
Allegiance to a sports team is, you know, this abstract construct called the team.
It's what you have allegiance to, right?
Not how well it does.
In other words, not how effectively the government manages things.
And not who's in it.
In other words, not who happens to have gotten elected.
Not who the coach is, in other words, not who the Prime Minister or the President is, but it's just your allegiance.
And why is it what you should have allegiance to?
Why?
Simply because, you know, you were born there.
Right?
I mean, so if you're born in England, you have allegiance to the British government.
And if you're born in Crystal Palace, you have allegiance to the Crystal Palace team.
I mean, the parallels are too striking to be, you know, just coincidence.
And, you know, everything that the state subsidizes, it subsidizes for its own benefit, as I mentioned in my last chat about.
Health care.
So, I mean, the coincidences between a sports team and, you know, a democratic government or even a non-democratic government for that matter.
I mean, they're just far too striking a set of parallels.
And, you know, the fact that, you know, it's not uncommon for people who have a strong allegiance to a sports team to also be strongly patriotic in general.
You know, these are not... I mean, I've never met anybody Who is interested in the success of a sports team and not also patriotic and vice versa.
But I've met lots of people who have both, right?
I myself have absolutely no atom of patriotism in my body, and I really could care less about sports teams.
Similarly, I know people who are very into the local hockey team, the Toronto Maple Leafs, and they're also very patriotic towards Canada as a whole.
And this sort of person, you know, it goes hand in hand and it's no accident.
You know, if anybody else out there has met any different kind of personality types, feel free to let me know.
But I think this is, you know, I'm not sort of making these things up in terms of these sort of rules or observations or logical inferences that I come up with.
They're based on pretty solid evidence.
And I start with the people in my life that I've known and sort of work from there.
So my country, right or wrong, is very much from my team, win or lose.
The tying in of your emotional energies into morally empty external constructs that you have no power or control over is, I mean, sorry about that mouthful, You know, you can replay it if you want, but basically what I'm trying to say is that if you give up,
You're sort of emotional barometer to a team that you have no power over and you can't control whether they win or lose.
It's a species of gambling, right?
You know, you'll put money on a horse and you have even a little bit more control, because at least you can choose your horse.
You don't just sort of say, well, this is the horse I was born the closest to, so it's the one I've always got to put my money on.
With sports, I mean, you're putting your emotional apparatus entirely at the mercy of this external concept that you have no control over, which is exactly the same as what occurs with the state, right?
I mean, I'm a Republican, I'm a Democrat, I obey my president, I obey my prime minister.
These are all You know, nonsense conceptual ideas that you have absolutely no control over.
I mean, you have no control over the government.
And it's the same thing with religion, right?
I mean, that you're going to say, I'm going to put my entire emotional apparatus over, you know, onto this abstract concept called the deity.
And, you know, if things go well for me, then I'll be very proud.
And if things go badly for me, then I'll be chastened and I'll still want to be, you know, doing right.
And it doesn't matter what happens, I still have to have allegiance.
So I guess it's taking people... And so what it does is not only does it put your entire emotional apparatus at the mercy of things that don't mean anything and are outside of your control, but every ounce of emotional energy that you put into allegiance towards things like, you know, the state or a God or, you know, some sports team is emotional energy that is distinctly not available to you to be a moral person.
I mean, our emotional apparatus is not this infinite well that can just keep gushing and gushing and gushing.
It has its limits.
Its limits are based on you can't love something and its opposite unless you're willing to just lie to yourself and lie to others.
So whatever energy you pour into support your troops or God is good or go Leafs go I mean, this is emotional energy that is simply not available to you when it comes to where you really need emotional energy and emotional support from your neuro-psychological system.
which is when you're being wronged, when there's a moral question at stake, when somebody is undermining you or attacking you, either sort of emotionally or verbally or I guess physically is pretty rare, but when you are facing a really, I guess, an important enemy, not but when you are facing a really, I guess, an important enemy, not the team from the other side of town, but somebody who is saying that I want to create a state-run daycare and force parents to hand over their children
but somebody who is saying that I want to create a state-run daycare and force parents to hand over their children to the state
There's somebody that you need to actually take onto the carpet and take to task, but, you know, hey, you really can't because, you know, you've wasted all of your emotional energy on, you know, running after these stupid abstract concepts that you have no control over And you've tied yourself to this, you know, you've tied your heart to this kite that's blowing around in some random wind, and you don't really have any energy left over.
To deal with what's actually important in life because you've screwed up all of your values by thinking that some sports team or some country or some deity is more important than some other sports team, country or deity.
So I guess in conclusion that's the real purpose behind this.
I mean all the rest of it is nice and juicy and helps.
But, of course, the real purpose, as Thomas Pinchot said, you know, if they can get you asking the wrong questions, they don't care about the answers.
You know, the real question that they're trying to get you to ask is not, you know, what is right and wrong, what is true and false, you know, what is good and evil, but rather, you know, how's my team doing?
And, you know, the more that they can get us to, in a sense, you know, fight amongst ourselves, then, you know, the more that we will be unable to sort of fight them.
I was watching some wife swap the other night, which for those who aren't in North America is not what you think.
It's just, you know, they take some woman and they switch her with some other woman as a wife, you know, for two weeks.
And, you know, this woman who was, you know, this sort of hippy-dippy spiritualist, hypnotherapist chick, Was, you know, in this house of this sort of fundamentalist creepy Christian group.
And, you know, the women are all glaring her down and saying, Sal, you're not a Christian, huh?
You know, and pretty hostile, you know.
Oh, you just believe in some higher power.
Well, I got to tell you, honey, I think you're of the devil.
You know, that kind of stuff.
And, you know, so of course, you know, there's all these divisions being caused and, you know, people not able to get together and people fighting each other and, you know, people sort of jeering other people across the other side of the stadium and, you know, feeling hostile towards immigrants and feeling hostile towards people who speak or look differently and, you know, I mean, good Lord, none of that means anything.
I can't remember the time, the last time that any immigrant who's not in the government did anything even the least remotely harmful.
To me.
You know, what I have to worry about is the people who are in the government who have the guns, right?
Not, you know, people who believe something different than I do or have a different sports team than I do or whatever.
So I hope that this has sort of helped you have a look at, you know, how in my perspective, or in my opinion, the state does sort of utilize sports to, you know, get us to have this sort of irrational localized allegiance, to sort of train us physically and get us used to following orders, and also in particular to sort of divide us up And to, you know, bleed our emotional energy, which should be used for more moral pursuits, off into, you know, just cheering, you know, mindless amoral teams.
And I hope this hasn't completely destroyed your ability to enjoy sports, because I certainly enjoy them, but it's sort of important to look at them, when they're funded by the state, as an apparatus of the state.
And I think that this has been helpful.
Thanks so much for listening again.
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