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.'
- Karl Marx, in his
Critique of Hegel’s Philosophy of Right.
But now the opiate is Sport.
2 comments:
Sport, the new religion, so true : robust, physical, agile men (now in the English-speaking West, women, too) engage in a drama to be watched by billions who want to be robust, physical, agile men (women, too), the spectators never getting the truth: watching is never as much fun, as exciting, as doing, as playing. This displaced, disenfranchised reality Marx decried and called alienation is now facilitated and very much created by technology--the lie that watching is as good as doing, that watching is even better than the sensuality of the now, e.g., porn, the celebrity worship, consuming, owning, others' lives, others' bodies, etc. New religions abound.
Currently living in Yorkshire, I have had to suffer the cult of the bicycle recently (if you can call cycling a sport). Tied up with the hipster trend for bikes (nicely demonstrated by a whole row of shops in Leeds with the icon somewhere on the signs/windows), it seems to have no end of acolytes. Ironically, none of these that I know indeed engage in or enjoy cycling. Similarly with football, tennis etc...
Saying that, sport is possibly one of the less objectionable 'opiates' of late.
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