What's the allure to watching sports?
Quote:
Posted in reply to the post by Dian Hardy (emphasis added):
The Games continue and serve to distract us from the Falling Skies & Humpty Dumpty's empty wall. Is it that millions of people feel so disenfranchised from their one and only precious lives and the Earth, Our Mother, that they'll turn out or tune into a sporting event or millitary flyover to the detriment of other duties to the Common as a citizen? Barry, I know you're a full citizen so what's the draw? I see it as yet another tribal remnant and despair again at our plight. As a kid I didn't just sit around reading books or dressing kittens but loved sports and rough and tumble so I get that part of it. Jes' wondrin'....
What's the allure to watching sports?
When you think about it, it's a rich question with many answers.
To start with, I'd say the distraction factor you mention is valid. It does distract and that's a good thing. I don't agree that you can't be happy until the last person is happy and the last problem is solved. We each need to nurture ourselves so that we can be healthy and help others.
I think the "tribal remnant" is also valid. But I'll leave that to someone else to explore. :waccosun:
I have a very limited interest in sports (unless you count politics as sport, which I do!). The last time I watched the Super Bowl was when Joe Montana was still playing and Bill Walsh was coaching (I counted that as more art than sports!). I've watched several games of the World Series when the Giants were playing since then, and not much else.
I'll tune into the major sporting events when there's a local team playing for a few reasons. The most significant of which, is that it is profound community binding event. There are few (if any?) other occasions when so many people are all tuned into the same live event and paying close attention, riding on the same moment.
The shared joy of a good turn for the home team is as close as we're going to come to a large scale community ecstatic (orgasmic?) experience. It helps bind us together and it feels good to have the shared experience, and helps overcome the illusion that we are separate. The same thing happens at a good live concert, which I vastly prefer over sports.
It's interesting to note that if the source of the shared experience is not live (ie a movie), the group experience still exists among the people in the theater, but I find it much less profound. And it gets even more dilute when people share the same thing but at different times.
There are many other dimensions of the appeal of spectator sports: competition, physical prowess, inspiration, adrenaline rush, and I'm sure many others.
Anybody else care to wax philosophic on the allure of watching sports? :waccosun:
Re: There is no joy in Mudville :(
Some sports are better to watch than others and football can be one of the most entertaining. It's reality T.V. I enjoyed the game and even some of the hype leading up to it, including the debate about gays in the locker room. The 49ers could use some gay DBs next year because the ones the have now don't cover their man very well. I also enjoy watching games in a pub because it's good way to meet people. Sometimes I get in an interesting conversation and I look up and the game is almost over. The Olympics is also great for viewing. What's wrong with spectacle? It can bring people together to share an experience on neutral ground.
Re: There is no joy in Mudville :(
Quote:
Posted in reply to the post by toddywoddy:
Some sports are better to watch than others and football can be one of the most entertaining. It's reality T.V.
years ago, in Chicago watching a hockey game, we spun the theory it's also a self-writing drama. Kinda like the improv going on down the street at Second City, you throw out some characters and a scenario and a storyline emerges. Sometimes it's not much of a story, sometimes it's pretty compelling!
And of course it's not of any cosmic importance. What is, when it really comes to it?
