@enhydra lutris

There is, of course, a major categorical difference between playing actively and recreationally at team sports — and being a spectator (and speculator) of team sports. The later is a degenerate and empty process that devalues humanity and the self by monetizing and polarizing the game. In the West the sport is transformed into a socially toxic system that becomes the paradigm for every form of social endeavor. Each time this competitive, zero-sum model of winners an losers is used (where ruthless aggressiveness is labeled "individual liberty") it corrupts and undermines the power and purpose of progressive consensus. It steals society's ability and willingness to follow a shared "vision" that leads to a better civilization for all. It becomes the thief of that magical force that humans can muster, which proves that they are greater than the sum of their parts. If we had the natural social instincts to create a vision we could all share, then looming catastrophes like climate change could be surmountable — even though we are past the point of no return.

Again, my focus is only on adult spectators of team sports, where there is no meaningful relationship between the players and the audience.. That's where the psychological damage damage is hardened, and where it clones itself into all parts of the culture. Immediately following 9/11, I began referring to the US as a "sports bar filled with drunks." Because the decisions the US was making were the decisions of belligerent drunken assholes. And the People accepting the these drunken decisions were even greater fools. And their idiot children couldn't wait to enlist. And even now in 2022, every hour on the hour, one of them blows his brains out with his handgun.

(China's practice of "Consensus Vision" in their participatory democracy is one of the reasons that I trust China to pull the world out of its extinction event — which the Western world cannot do. I am profoundly aware of the great sacrifices that China has made, and is making, to save the environmental biome and preserve global biodiversity. I know that Westerners cannot see this, so it is pointless to mention it. However, in another decade, China's vast military will have planted the equivalent of TWO Amazon forests right on top of China's current landscape, which reaches deep into the Gobi Desert to reclaim it. The land and water engineering to make this sustainable is a futuristic marvel, complete with highways made out rigid sponges that act as invisible rivers and waterways carrying captured precipitation where it is most needed. Using shared vision and personal sacrifice, the Chinese stopped what would have now been a devastating population bubble inside their own country, which would have taken food out of people's mouths the world over. Meanwhile, the West condemns China for their one-child policy, and it reviles them for trying to save every single Chinese life they can with their Zero-Covid response to the pandemic.)

Humans have long had the ability to build a utopia for humankind, so that each individual can live a happy and fulfilled life. And the West is plagued with their sociopathic leaders (whom the People favor at each election). The West is determined to destroy China in order to prevent that utopian vision from ever being established.

#4

"team sports" matter mostly by throwing out some ideas, but nothing definitive. I think organized and or professional team sports and arguably adults are the problem with team sports as they exist today. Some factors that popped up in may mind are Money and franchises. If one can build a dedicated fan base, one can flog shit like team pennants, sweatshirts and the like. Also, face it, betting. This can be a curse with respect to individual sports too. Betting on individuals and teams both go way back, possibly forever. Roman chariot races, even between individuals, at the serious level, involved riders riding for teams, known, iirc, as factions. Different factions, regardless of who was riding, had followings and followers.

That's prefacatory to a degree. Way back, childrens sports were tarnished by sponsors, but only to a small degree, but big time by parents. Fathers and sometimes mothers demanding more playing time for their kids, and challenging things like called strikes, fouls, and close put-outs, etc. Maybe they were trying to live vicariously through their kids or maybe they sought bragging rights at the local Legion or Kiwanis hall becauser their kid was batting .350 or something. That whole thing, btw betrays a confusion between performance and statistics, excellence in say hitting isn't increased by good or bad calls, but statistics, of course, are. If you can hit .300 or better, you're pretty damn competent, but NOT if the umpires all work for your dad and give you the benefit of a lot of close calls.

At any rate, back when I was a kid, we all played tons of team sports, quite amicably and one thing stands out in my mind - they were almost all pick-up games. A bunch of kids would gather, choose teams, and play. The teams weren't permanent, nor generally even the positions, though the kid who owned a first baseman's mitt usually got to play first for whatever team he was on 'cause it was specialized, and presumably him too. So Fred might pay on your team on Monday and on the other team on Tuesday and one day he'd play right field and a different day he'd play second. A result was that we'd all play just for fun and have fun doing so, even though it was competitive and each side definitely wanted and tried to win on any given day. So, some factor or factors turned that childhood pastime into today's "team sports" with all of its evils and evil influences. Per se, the existence of teams isn't the evil, it's the parents or owners or sponsors or all of the above.

be well and have a good one.