Cultural suicide used to be a popular diagnosis of why things suddenly just quit.
Historians such as Oswald Spengler and Arnold Toynbee cited social cannibalism to explain why once-successful states, institutions, and cultures simply died off.
Their common explanation was that the arrogance of success ensures lethal consequences. Once elites became pampered and arrogant, they feel exempt from their ancestors’ respect for moral and spiritual laws like thrift, moderation, and transcendence.
Take professional sports. Over the last century, professional football, basketball, and baseball were racially integrated and adopted a uniform code of patriotic observance. The three leagues offered fans a pleasant respite from daily barroom politics. As a result, by the 21st century, the NFL, NBA, and MLB had become global multibillion-dollar enterprises.
Then hubris ensued.
The owners, coaches, and players weren’t always racially diverse. But that inconvenient truth did not stop the leagues from hectoring their fans about social activism–even as they no longer honored common patriotic rituals.
All three leagues have suffered terribly during the viral lockdown, as American life mysteriously went on without them. And they have almost ensured that they won’t fully recover when the quarantine ends.
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2 comments:
from the article- "Professional sports, universities, and the motion picture industry all know that what they are doing is bad for business. But they still believe they are rich and powerful, and thus invulnerable. They also are ignorant of history and cannot be persuaded that they are destroying themselves."
Good. Then LET THEM DIE. Professional sports are for stupid people. 99% of movies made since Jaw and Star Wars ruined everything in the 1970s are crap. Most universities are worthless.
Why are we worried about dead wood? The forest cannot grow unless the dead wood burns first.
Their aim is quid pro quo societal extortion. It’s what they do, usually based on contrived circumstance.
The look for the slightest incident to turn into provocation which they can then escalate.
The whole process is deliberately deceitful for those that are willing to believe and act upon the charade.
It is in its basic essence, propaganda for the gullible, intended to incite primal defensive responses and actions.
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