There's a parallel with our relationship to war. It's been centuries since our political leadership led from the front. Instead, they order young men to conflicts in which they share no physical risk themselves, acting for the most part as spectators at a horse race - the only thing they have to lose are their wagers.
With the elite having taken this stance towards warfare, it is perhaps no surprise that watching sports, rather than playing them, has come to the fore. To stand back and observe is what the high status people do, and the rest, as always, emulate them.
Another thought: how much toxicity has the professionalization of every activity resulted in? Sure, professionals do their task to a higher standard, for they do nothing else. But they're unbalanced as human beings. Humans, however, are not really meant to be specialists. Look at the Greeks: mostly they were not professional athletes, or soldiers, or philosophers, or sailors, or artisans: the ideal was to do all these things, and thereby become a fully developed human. Even in our own society, it was not so long ago that almost everyone was an athlete, a musician, an artisan, a marksman, a soldier, a wordsmith, a farmer, and so on. Even scientists were mainly hobbyists and dilettantes. And it was in this era that we made our greatest artistic and scientific advances. But now that everything has become professionalized, we are each of us unbalanced, highly developed in some narrow range of talents while the rest of our capabilities atrophy. Is it an accident that we have become myopic and small of soul in the process?
You may find C.P. Snow's 'The Two Cultures' essay illuminating. I find many people in the medical field are narrow-minded dullards in the true sense. They don't read, they don't paint, they have no interests or hobbies. Truly dull.
In Britain professionals in sport were regarded with distaste because they had to be paid to compete, whereas amateurs were in it for love of competition alone and didn't need to be bribed. This was so strict then one man accepting half-time oranges was black-balled for taking payment in kind!
The monetary factor is central to this. Those who do something for money do not do it for passion, and that starts to show. Our completely fake society is a result of this disordered relationship to life.
One of the big changes in modern war is that casualties are no longer lopsided. In pre-modern war if your side won then practically nobody died. It quite amazing how many battles a Ceaser or Alexander could be in the front lines of and not die.
In addition while nobles did die in battle there was a culture of trying to take them hostage and ransoming them where possible, especially in the medieval era. In the post thirty years war but pre-napoleonic era "limited war" had been perfected so that the scale of war was kept low and officers were mostly safe.
WWI especially basically drilled into the upper classes to just stay away from war. So many of them died in the officer class in that war. Most of the leadership either fought themselves or had sons that fought. In 1912 men would willingly go to their deaths on the Titanic. By WWII anyone who was moved or shamed by White Feathers had died on the Somme.
There is an aspect of man that is OK with risking death if he losses but wants to live if he wins. If both victor and vanquished die en masse its rather demoralizing.
Industrial total warfare is indeed far bloodier. However, that does not excuse the ruling class from the moral necessity to share the risk they demand others take. To stand back when the risk increases is the opposite of nobility, but of course, those who rule now are the opposite of noble in every way.
I'd prefer that leaders think twice about asking other people to take risk rather than have them share in a dubious risk.
While its possible that the prospect of sharing the risk could make a leader more likely to take that risk seriously and re-evaluate their decision making process that led to the risk, its not guaranteed.
Hitler, Stalin, Mao, and many many others all shared risks and led from the front at various points on their lives (WWI, the Tsarist underground, the long march, etc). Even in WWII Stalin's son died on the front line. Ludendorff's son died in his Kaiserschlacht. These experiences didn't make them better leaders or decision makers as far as war goes.
Look I certainly get the jist of the argument. And as far as the actual article goes, I do find rabid sports fandom ridiculous. But it's easy to fall into the trap of thinking that people who lead from the front automatically make better leaders. Sometimes their hardship and loss makes it hard to recognize sunk costs and move on. There is a certain personality type on those that try to use force to resolve conflict that can cause problems if not tempered.
Most of these, including lesser officers, died pretty early on in the conflict. The mad dash to Kiev and early days of the war were indeed a total shitshow for Russia and there were lots of casualties. But for the most part things have calmed down since then.
The only confirmed kills in 2023 are missile attacks on HQs behind the front lines. So they died in the conflict, but it's a stretch to say "from the front". Acknowledging that in a world of long range missiles it's hard to define "the front."
In other words, there was a lot of bravery during the opening battle of maneuver, just as there was in 1914, but eventually the front settled.
The Russian offensive in Bakmuht were composed of digging up dregs from Russias prisons, loading them up with meth, charging them at the Ukranians, and then when they were shot calling in the artillery on the now exposed Ukranian positions. This was done specifically to protect Wagner's highly skilled mercenaries from danger as much as possible.
I don't know how the leadership/officer corp faired relative to enlisted men in the recent Ukranian Banzai charge, but I know that its takes some very aggressive conscription techniques to dig up the bodies for that offensive.
I agree that more should participate in sports than watch them. Recently, this became a much easier rule to follow when pro teams started trying to influence their fans to act woke.
The esports phenomenon takes this voyeurism to a new level. It's a copy of a copy of a copy. The normalization (and monetization!) of watching other people play video games is one of the things that worries me most about Gen Z.
I always thought that people who played the SIMS games were weird. Or any RPG for that matter. It was pointless. I don't want to play a game where I don't do anything. What the hell is the point?
Similarly I've never like watching sports. I like playing, I used to play basketball all the time, but I could never watch it, because it's just boring. Standing on the outside and criticizing the people playing is like women gossiping -- while they sit at home and don't do shit.
Of course I don't play sports as much as I used to, but I did setup my basket ball goal so that me and my two boys can play. It's fun, and we all have a blast. It's much better than sitting inside.
On a related subject, there was a relative of my wife's who married this guy who was a total waste of space. All he did was bounce from job to job, and watch sports all the time. The relative and the waste of space guy had a kid together, and the kid was the same as the dad! No joke, when the kid was around 3 we went to an outdoor adventure place. There were gas powered go-carts racing around the track, and some dudes tossing a baseball. The kid was glued on the two people tossing the ball around! I couldn't believe it. I could see the kid watching the ball -- if there were no go-carts speeding around right behind him. I just thought it was strange that a kid that young would be disinterested in loud go-carts, and focused on WATCHING people throw a ball. If you gave him one, he wouldn't do anything with it.
Nonetheless, people need to get back to interacting PHYSICALLY and playing more. I think you've stumbled on one of the problems we have right now as a society.
Most people suck btw. I'm so tired of being surrounded by COVIDians and degenerate queer-lovers and virtue-signaling race-baiters. Such is the culture in which we live, the minds of millions have been captured.
But i'm old and bitter and cynical. Maybe it's just me.
I have to explain to my kids, this stuff literally all came on within just a few years. All growing up we didn't have this nonsense LGBTQ+ crap shoved in our faces.
And every damn Netflix show has a gay dude or a lesbian in it somewhere, even when it makes no sense with the story. They have to check the box.
It's a problem with MSM, that's for sure. But it's captured the minds of the general public. It's been a 24/7 assault on culture for decades. I can't even go to church without seeing this crap.
Small town high school sports are the last communal ritual left to communities lucky enough to still have them. It’s also the last crumbling redoubt of a merit based male hierarchy for young men to participate in especially one with any physical risk involved.
High School Football was certainly the first and last place I found fraternity and even if it is the fake and gay version of getting the boys of the Fyrd together to see of some Vikings.
Cracking article - I've recently (only this year) joined an MMA gym. I've been going for eight hours a week and it's the best thing I've done since I left childhood. I did a little then but let it fall by the wayside which I really regret. I'm making up for lost time now. I feel like I've come home again.
I have always felt similarly about professional sports. It has always felt a little psyop-y. The fact that millions of people who never play a sport recreationally have quasi-religious devotion to professionals playing that sport. A few nights a week in the lazyboy, beer in one hand, Diet Coke in the other, and professional sportsball on the screen is the picture many sons and daughters and wives have of the head of their house. That is the only interaction with sport that he has, besides his annual golf day with the coworkers. Something seems off about that.
As a modern man, I have spent the majority of my life in para social relationships with athletes and intellectuals.
Interestingly, Substack is becoming a place for truly social “play” like you’re describing. While not physical, it at least has the potential for comradery and wrestling in the abstract.
The formula for controlling the plebs has always been bread and circuses: empty calories and spectator sports. Meat and individual achievement produce the opposite effect.
I was in a small town in Germany for a few weeks one time, and went to a local soccer match, and the way it was just like people in the community showing up and playing made me wish more of that sort of thing happened in the US beyond school age kids and such.
Yes - one of the redeeming things about the English soccer system is that they have many, many tiers of league football - from the Premier League down to local micro clubs. Those lower levels are much closer to the ideal
Oct 8, 2023·edited Oct 8, 2023Liked by Johann Kurtz
In the 70s at his first team the Montreal Expos, today the D.C. Nationals, the baseball plucker Gary Carter made some public effort learning the local language, the practical cultural influence of which was “J’aime le 7UP” teevee ads (Rusty Staub also did same outreach bit, but was from New Orleans & gay). Corporate sports share many of the defects of corporate punk rock and corporate healthcare. Disorienting part for me as Gen X geezer is the Max Headroom-esque merger of pro sports and pro politics, e.g. new California ringer Senator.
There's a parallel with our relationship to war. It's been centuries since our political leadership led from the front. Instead, they order young men to conflicts in which they share no physical risk themselves, acting for the most part as spectators at a horse race - the only thing they have to lose are their wagers.
With the elite having taken this stance towards warfare, it is perhaps no surprise that watching sports, rather than playing them, has come to the fore. To stand back and observe is what the high status people do, and the rest, as always, emulate them.
Another thought: how much toxicity has the professionalization of every activity resulted in? Sure, professionals do their task to a higher standard, for they do nothing else. But they're unbalanced as human beings. Humans, however, are not really meant to be specialists. Look at the Greeks: mostly they were not professional athletes, or soldiers, or philosophers, or sailors, or artisans: the ideal was to do all these things, and thereby become a fully developed human. Even in our own society, it was not so long ago that almost everyone was an athlete, a musician, an artisan, a marksman, a soldier, a wordsmith, a farmer, and so on. Even scientists were mainly hobbyists and dilettantes. And it was in this era that we made our greatest artistic and scientific advances. But now that everything has become professionalized, we are each of us unbalanced, highly developed in some narrow range of talents while the rest of our capabilities atrophy. Is it an accident that we have become myopic and small of soul in the process?
You may find C.P. Snow's 'The Two Cultures' essay illuminating. I find many people in the medical field are narrow-minded dullards in the true sense. They don't read, they don't paint, they have no interests or hobbies. Truly dull.
In Britain professionals in sport were regarded with distaste because they had to be paid to compete, whereas amateurs were in it for love of competition alone and didn't need to be bribed. This was so strict then one man accepting half-time oranges was black-balled for taking payment in kind!
The monetary factor is central to this. Those who do something for money do not do it for passion, and that starts to show. Our completely fake society is a result of this disordered relationship to life.
One of the big changes in modern war is that casualties are no longer lopsided. In pre-modern war if your side won then practically nobody died. It quite amazing how many battles a Ceaser or Alexander could be in the front lines of and not die.
In addition while nobles did die in battle there was a culture of trying to take them hostage and ransoming them where possible, especially in the medieval era. In the post thirty years war but pre-napoleonic era "limited war" had been perfected so that the scale of war was kept low and officers were mostly safe.
WWI especially basically drilled into the upper classes to just stay away from war. So many of them died in the officer class in that war. Most of the leadership either fought themselves or had sons that fought. In 1912 men would willingly go to their deaths on the Titanic. By WWII anyone who was moved or shamed by White Feathers had died on the Somme.
There is an aspect of man that is OK with risking death if he losses but wants to live if he wins. If both victor and vanquished die en masse its rather demoralizing.
Industrial total warfare is indeed far bloodier. However, that does not excuse the ruling class from the moral necessity to share the risk they demand others take. To stand back when the risk increases is the opposite of nobility, but of course, those who rule now are the opposite of noble in every way.
I'd prefer that leaders think twice about asking other people to take risk rather than have them share in a dubious risk.
While its possible that the prospect of sharing the risk could make a leader more likely to take that risk seriously and re-evaluate their decision making process that led to the risk, its not guaranteed.
Hitler, Stalin, Mao, and many many others all shared risks and led from the front at various points on their lives (WWI, the Tsarist underground, the long march, etc). Even in WWII Stalin's son died on the front line. Ludendorff's son died in his Kaiserschlacht. These experiences didn't make them better leaders or decision makers as far as war goes.
Look I certainly get the jist of the argument. And as far as the actual article goes, I do find rabid sports fandom ridiculous. But it's easy to fall into the trap of thinking that people who lead from the front automatically make better leaders. Sometimes their hardship and loss makes it hard to recognize sunk costs and move on. There is a certain personality type on those that try to use force to resolve conflict that can cause problems if not tempered.
FWIW, Russian generals are dieing in Ukraine at a high rate, apparently because they don't shirk the front lines.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Russian_generals_killed_during_the_Russian_invasion_of_Ukraine#:~:text=As%20of%2025%20September%202023,two%20general%20officers%20is%20rare.
Most of these, including lesser officers, died pretty early on in the conflict. The mad dash to Kiev and early days of the war were indeed a total shitshow for Russia and there were lots of casualties. But for the most part things have calmed down since then.
The only confirmed kills in 2023 are missile attacks on HQs behind the front lines. So they died in the conflict, but it's a stretch to say "from the front". Acknowledging that in a world of long range missiles it's hard to define "the front."
In other words, there was a lot of bravery during the opening battle of maneuver, just as there was in 1914, but eventually the front settled.
The Russian offensive in Bakmuht were composed of digging up dregs from Russias prisons, loading them up with meth, charging them at the Ukranians, and then when they were shot calling in the artillery on the now exposed Ukranian positions. This was done specifically to protect Wagner's highly skilled mercenaries from danger as much as possible.
I don't know how the leadership/officer corp faired relative to enlisted men in the recent Ukranian Banzai charge, but I know that its takes some very aggressive conscription techniques to dig up the bodies for that offensive.
This is not surprising, somehow.
This is a very good comment...
I agree that more should participate in sports than watch them. Recently, this became a much easier rule to follow when pro teams started trying to influence their fans to act woke.
Old men start wars, young men fight wars the old men start.
Pro Sportsball is the bread and circuses of clown world: https://yuribezmenov.substack.com/p/root-for-pro-sportsball-kaepernick-pfizer
Fantastic. "unwatchable spectacles of demoralization" is exactly it. Imagine putting another man's name on your back!
The esports phenomenon takes this voyeurism to a new level. It's a copy of a copy of a copy. The normalization (and monetization!) of watching other people play video games is one of the things that worries me most about Gen Z.
Very true - hadn't considered this
I agree 100%.
I always thought that people who played the SIMS games were weird. Or any RPG for that matter. It was pointless. I don't want to play a game where I don't do anything. What the hell is the point?
Similarly I've never like watching sports. I like playing, I used to play basketball all the time, but I could never watch it, because it's just boring. Standing on the outside and criticizing the people playing is like women gossiping -- while they sit at home and don't do shit.
Of course I don't play sports as much as I used to, but I did setup my basket ball goal so that me and my two boys can play. It's fun, and we all have a blast. It's much better than sitting inside.
On a related subject, there was a relative of my wife's who married this guy who was a total waste of space. All he did was bounce from job to job, and watch sports all the time. The relative and the waste of space guy had a kid together, and the kid was the same as the dad! No joke, when the kid was around 3 we went to an outdoor adventure place. There were gas powered go-carts racing around the track, and some dudes tossing a baseball. The kid was glued on the two people tossing the ball around! I couldn't believe it. I could see the kid watching the ball -- if there were no go-carts speeding around right behind him. I just thought it was strange that a kid that young would be disinterested in loud go-carts, and focused on WATCHING people throw a ball. If you gave him one, he wouldn't do anything with it.
Nonetheless, people need to get back to interacting PHYSICALLY and playing more. I think you've stumbled on one of the problems we have right now as a society.
Most people suck btw. I'm so tired of being surrounded by COVIDians and degenerate queer-lovers and virtue-signaling race-baiters. Such is the culture in which we live, the minds of millions have been captured.
But i'm old and bitter and cynical. Maybe it's just me.
I'm not old, but I don't put up with that crap.
I have to explain to my kids, this stuff literally all came on within just a few years. All growing up we didn't have this nonsense LGBTQ+ crap shoved in our faces.
And every damn Netflix show has a gay dude or a lesbian in it somewhere, even when it makes no sense with the story. They have to check the box.
It's a problem with MSM, that's for sure. But it's captured the minds of the general public. It's been a 24/7 assault on culture for decades. I can't even go to church without seeing this crap.
Small town high school sports are the last communal ritual left to communities lucky enough to still have them. It’s also the last crumbling redoubt of a merit based male hierarchy for young men to participate in especially one with any physical risk involved.
High School Football was certainly the first and last place I found fraternity and even if it is the fake and gay version of getting the boys of the Fyrd together to see of some Vikings.
Definitely. Local boys playing for glory alongside lads they've known for their whole lives.
Cracking article - I've recently (only this year) joined an MMA gym. I've been going for eight hours a week and it's the best thing I've done since I left childhood. I did a little then but let it fall by the wayside which I really regret. I'm making up for lost time now. I feel like I've come home again.
Fantastic. I had much the same experience when I first discovered BJJ
I have always felt similarly about professional sports. It has always felt a little psyop-y. The fact that millions of people who never play a sport recreationally have quasi-religious devotion to professionals playing that sport. A few nights a week in the lazyboy, beer in one hand, Diet Coke in the other, and professional sportsball on the screen is the picture many sons and daughters and wives have of the head of their house. That is the only interaction with sport that he has, besides his annual golf day with the coworkers. Something seems off about that.
As a modern man, I have spent the majority of my life in para social relationships with athletes and intellectuals.
Interestingly, Substack is becoming a place for truly social “play” like you’re describing. While not physical, it at least has the potential for comradery and wrestling in the abstract.
Thanks for the read.
And thank you for taking the time to read.
The formula for controlling the plebs has always been bread and circuses: empty calories and spectator sports. Meat and individual achievement produce the opposite effect.
Yeah. It's been this way for a long time. The hyper-monetization of sports at levels which we now see, is particularly toxic to society.
i have been watching hockey every year, even though I know I shouldnt
maybe this is a sign to stop
If you're going to watch, just make sure you're playing it too. Alas, men like you and I don't have the excuse of being old
All of the pro teams took a knee, disrespecting our flag and country..
No patriotic American should watch or support them.
I’m going to start telling boring people they are committing a sin.
Haha
How about this: you can watch sport only if you regularly play yourself
I was in a small town in Germany for a few weeks one time, and went to a local soccer match, and the way it was just like people in the community showing up and playing made me wish more of that sort of thing happened in the US beyond school age kids and such.
Yes - one of the redeeming things about the English soccer system is that they have many, many tiers of league football - from the Premier League down to local micro clubs. Those lower levels are much closer to the ideal
Agree - that's great stuff. Real culture
The bell curve:
Left side:
be an amateur at a sport bc "yay new sport!"
Center:
NBA/NFL/NHL/etc on TV nightly, "the pros do it best", "have you seen Curry?"
Right side:
be an amateur at a sport to "find joy for others and honor for ourselves."
Perfect
In the 70s at his first team the Montreal Expos, today the D.C. Nationals, the baseball plucker Gary Carter made some public effort learning the local language, the practical cultural influence of which was “J’aime le 7UP” teevee ads (Rusty Staub also did same outreach bit, but was from New Orleans & gay). Corporate sports share many of the defects of corporate punk rock and corporate healthcare. Disorienting part for me as Gen X geezer is the Max Headroom-esque merger of pro sports and pro politics, e.g. new California ringer Senator.