What function does Sport serve in our society? Any thoughts, when you think about it, it is kind of strange that we pay athletes millions of dollars to play childrens games. Guys can get lots of money,fame, and chicks for throwing a ball or running fast. I’m not knocking sports I like to play, just intrested in some thoughts on the subject.
Sport as you suggest getting paid - is no longer a sport it is business, very large too.
The sport I do is for health, enjoyment and fitness.
Another form of art. Another form of battle.
its our human nature to always desire something better. better car, better house, better looking girlfriend…
people also always look for someone to worship. in place of religion, they look to celebrities. who else performs godlike feats than our elite sportspeople.
re paying adults millions to play childrens games. thats exactly what we do for actors as well. in the end, they are just playing games of fantasy the same as kids do (cops and robbers, cowboys and indians)
Jesus walked on water … so the bible sais.
Michael Jordan walked on air … Nike and television told as that.
Sport is a continuation of the values of a more traditional society and aristocratic values. The idea that you exercise and learn to prove that you are superior to another individual. Also sports teams have many concepts that ring of a more traditional society, the team is a close knit group where interpersonal relationships are very important.
I like that sport is a kinder brother of war…Kill everyone.
You are one scary person Clemson.
Kill everyone is my motto on the sports field-especially team sports. I have white line fever. Especially like opposition players who dish it out and take it back 
Sports is entertainment and is also enjoyable.
Competition, thrill of the hunt, comradery, survival…all engrained in us from our hunter-gatherer days. These things our in our nature and sports is just another way we express these instincts.
Your are all to abstract. Your words are just empty shells.
I look upon sport in general as an accumulation of all that is low in society, but strive to meet every individual without judgement. They all have their tale to tell and sometimes there are things you just have to do, however low it might seem to others and however much sacrifices it takes.
I suppose at its most basic level, sport evolved as away of proving our genetic superiority to the opposite sex. I can run faster than the other guy, so you’d do well to mate with me so as to have genetically superior off-spring. In the same way, men judged women by their physical abilities to propogate - well-developed breasts, good hip structure. Perhaps not much has changed.
That is what popular-science (is there any other kind today?) and writers (always suckers for an easily writeable subject) will have us believe.
By the way, among more primitive peoples, which according to the same science are better objects for investigation, have you ever seen a well developed breast…? 
The biological purpose of the breast is to suckle the young. If the nipple extends under gentle manipulation, it’s well-developed. It’s an undesirable duty, perhaps, but I implore you to try it.
well if “popular science” is so wrong, do u have a better idea on what its all about? those tits and arse are all there just to make out egos bigger when we brag to our mates?
what would you have us believe?
Let me put it this way:
I spent my childhood and youth with people who are now scientists, and since I am now a student at a university I have daily contact with both professors and budding researchers/scientists.
Now, those people I knew in childhood; their way to becoming a scientist goes like this:
At school they do okay, not exellent, but through hard work they manage to get through. They don’t really have a thorough grasp of the subjects learned, rather they feel like they are always on the brink of not understanding at all, and in desperation opting instead to learn by heart the dates and names and the very wording used in the books and by the teachers. If asked they cannot express a meaning by using their own words in the very least. They have to be spoonfed.
When they then begin their “real” study at a university things are much the same, except now that feeling of desperation for not really grasping a subject becomes a matter of habit, so the feeling slowly ceases.
As the years go by this habit becomes a way of life. The budding scientist gradually learns how to stress certain things and how not to stress certain other things. Besides there is the matter of a social-life, and as we all know that life should be as far removed from studying as possible, right? At least not burdened with such matters as striving to understand your existence etc… That’s what we learn at university anyway. Their outlook then, becomes, as a matter of academic and social survival, rather narrow. Their old idealistic dreams, which kept them going when they where younger, are shattered under the pressure of wast subjects to learn.
Now has the time come when they are actually done with university; now they are real scientists. Experts even! All this time they have never grasped a subject in a whole-hearted way; never ever have their learning flowed into their social-life in any way. Rather have they slowly but surely narrowed down their outlook on the world to the point that it has become so narrow it is easy to master.
In their social circles they are now counted for something, even though away from actual research they are the same half-hearted slobs as ever.
So you see, they spent all these years hardly ever being on top of a subject until they passed their final exam. Then they understood! And they have the papers to prove it too.
What am I trying to say?
I don’t want ordinary people to tell me how the world are constituted, I want extra-ordinary people to do so! Not ordinary people who have crippled their inner-life to the point that they “know it all.”
After all when you want something done that constitutes a physical act you dont cripple yourself to do it. Why should it be so with an act of the mind? To understand something you have to make yourself less than you are? It is said that in mans most sincere strivings he often acts the most comical before the gods.
I don’t regard these people as authorities in ordinary life, why should I do so when it comes to interpreting data?
For the producing of data they are just the right persons though.
Thank you for your time!
I hear what you’re saying - but I think you’re being far too general and negative regarding those in science/research/academia.
There is no doubt that I am generalizing to much, because what really gets my blood boiling is people talking in headlines and using catch-phrases like “the survival of the fittest” while at the same time showing no knowledge of the subject matter.
And no will to use what they preach in their own lifes, choosing to stay in the abstract.
Of course when we are young we are all like that and our elders ought to pray, if they are wise, that life itself sets us straight.
Rule of Life :
There are always Clowns willing to talk about something they nothing about if bigger Clowns are willing to listen.
No top-level heavily qualified sceintist has the time to train full-time as a top level Olympic Athlete simulataneously.
No top-level Olympic Athlete has the time to train full-time as a highly qulaified scientist simulataneously.
Hence: You have
(A) sceintists
(B) athletes
Sure,
Many scientists are amateur or competitive sports people and vice versa - …but both?
Not possible
Hence: You have
(A) scientists
(B) athletes
© scientists who are amateur/competitive athletes
(D) athletes who are amateur/competitive scientists
You are right that to accomplish anything in life we have to make choices, thus narrowing our field of knowledge.
Even so, most times real experts in a field are more broadminded than those striving to become experts and very much more so than those who are dabblers in all sorts.
Furthermore most attacks on science are done by people not really equipped to do so. Personally I choose to attack the personality of the scientists rather than their actual research and mostly I am attacking those in the social-sciences, where so much are open for interpretation.
That is when they can’t hide behind “objectivity”.