Jaylen Brown: "Sports is a Mechanism of Control in America"

 
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Baron Von Humongous
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PostPosted: Wed Jan 10, 2018 3:17 pm    Post subject: Jaylen Brown: "Sports is a Mechanism of Control in America"

Jaylen Brown is a cool, thoughtful, polymath of a dude (even if he is a Celtic):
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“That’s the reality because sports is a mechanism of control. If people didn’t have sports they would be a lot more disappointed with their role in society. There would be a lot more anger or stress about the injustice of poverty and hunger. Sports is a way to channel our energy into something positive. Without sports who knows what half of these kids would be doing?"

Brown’s readiness to talk about politics and culture might account for the surreal suggestion in 2016 that he was “too smart” for the NBA. From the outside, ‘smart’ seemed a euphemism for ‘troublesome’. What did Brown think when, as a teenager, he heard words unlikely to be used in conjunction with a white athlete? “It was hinting at something very problematic within society. It bothered me but I was so focused on getting to where I was going I never dissected it or pointed it out to anybody.

“But I disagree that an athlete can’t be intelligent. Some people think that, in basketball, we have a bunch of masculine adults who don’t know how to control themselves. They’re feeble-minded and can’t engage or articulate ideas. That’s a narrative they keep trying to paint. We’re trying to change it because that statement definitely has a racist undertone.”

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tox
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PostPosted: Wed Jan 10, 2018 3:57 pm    Post subject:

Yeah, I hate to say it but I really like Jaylen. Since I read up on him when he was a prospect at Cal, he's always seemed like a really interesting, smart guy.
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PostPosted: Wed Jan 10, 2018 4:24 pm    Post subject:

Exactly right. Sports (and alcohol and even television and movies) are just ways to distract people from the economic realities of life.

Jaylen's a smart guy.
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saetarubia
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PostPosted: Wed Jan 10, 2018 7:44 pm    Post subject:

He's right. Same in most countries actually.
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yinoma2001
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PostPosted: Wed Jan 10, 2018 8:47 pm    Post subject:

He’s a smart guy. I can totally see him quitting basketball early and becoming a philosophy PHD.
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PostPosted: Thu Jan 11, 2018 9:44 am    Post subject:

Sports are viewer pastimes for many folks and a participatory activity for some as well. It's not the same thing for everyone.

I think Brown is inaccurate in the sense that he tries to portray sports businesses as some means of societal control. In the sense that control is exerted on people in a marketplace, sports are not unique.

There are global entities and local ones which act with intention to directly benefit in the sale of sports as a consumer item or a spectator event. That's different than saying they intend to be a cultural salve. There's no connection to an evil invisible empire controlling the masses through sports, at least not any more than is seen in the intention to profit in the sale of every non-essential item in most people's lives: toys, liquor, fast cars, RV equipment, camping gear, cell phones.
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PostPosted: Fri Jan 12, 2018 11:15 am    Post subject:

Bread and Circuses...
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PostPosted: Fri Jan 12, 2018 1:26 pm    Post subject:

I'm not exactly certain that I understand Jaylen's point about how sports controls. Is he speaking about the individual athletes or us as a society?
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Day
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PostPosted: Fri Jan 12, 2018 1:34 pm    Post subject:

Gimme_the_rock wrote:
I'm not exactly certain that I understand Jaylen's point about how sports controls. Is he speaking about the individual athletes or us as a society?

tldr = sports are one of the many forms of entertainment that people use to distract themselves from the hard realities of human life.

I think this speaks more to the incredibly low intellectual standard we hold athletes to that a quote from him like that makes everyone think he's super intelligent and could get a PHD in philosophy LOL
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PostPosted: Fri Jan 12, 2018 1:45 pm    Post subject:

Day wrote:
I think this speaks more to the incredibly low intellectual standard we hold athletes to that a quote from him like that makes everyone think he's super intelligent and could get a PHD in philosophy LOL
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PostPosted: Fri Jan 12, 2018 1:56 pm    Post subject:

Day wrote:
Gimme_the_rock wrote:
I'm not exactly certain that I understand Jaylen's point about how sports controls. Is he speaking about the individual athletes or us as a society?

tldr = sports are one of the many forms of entertainment that people use to distract themselves from the hard realities of human life.

I think this speaks more to the incredibly low intellectual standard we hold athletes to that a quote from him like that makes everyone think he's super intelligent and could get a PHD in philosophy LOL


Heh heh...
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PostPosted: Mon Jan 15, 2018 1:06 am    Post subject:

You can deconstruct it even further. Most everything that humans engage in is just a distraction from the fact that we are all being killed and nature is the culprit.
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Baron Von Humongous
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PostPosted: Mon Jan 15, 2018 1:03 pm    Post subject:

Day wrote:
Gimme_the_rock wrote:
I'm not exactly certain that I understand Jaylen's point about how sports controls. Is he speaking about the individual athletes or us as a society?

tldr = sports are one of the many forms of entertainment that people use to distract themselves from the hard realities of human life.

I think this speaks more to the incredibly low intellectual standard we hold athletes to that a quote from him like that makes everyone think he's super intelligent and could get a PHD in philosophy LOL

He's 21 years old. Part of being a smart (and not very smart) 21 year old is the confidence in knowing that you have things all figured out that other, typically older folks are foolishly still fighting over.

Like many leftists young and old, he's echoing a common sentiment that sports is the pablum of manufacturing consent. A familiar voice:
Quote:
CHOMSKY: Well, let me give an example. When I'm driving, I sometimes turn on the radio and I find very often that what I'm listening to is a discussion of sports. These are telephone conversations. People call in and have long and intricate discussions, and it's plain that quite a high degree of thought and analysis is going into that. People know a tremendous amount. They know all sorts of complicated details and enter into far-reaching discussion about whether the coach made the right decision yesterday and so on. These are ordinary people, not professionals, who are applying their intelligence and analytic skills in these areas and accumulating quite a lot of knowledge and, for all I know, understanding. On the other hand, when I hear people talk about, say, international affairs or domestic problems, it's at a level of superficiality that's beyond belief.

In part, this reaction may be due to my own areas of interest, but I think it's quite accurate, basically. And I think that this concentration on such topics as sports makes a certain degree of sense. The way the system is set up, there is virtually nothing people can do anyway, without a degree of organization that's far beyond anything that exists now, to influence the real world. They might as well live in a fantasy world, and that's in fact what they do. I'm sure they are using their common sense and intellectual skills, but in an area which has no meaning and probably thrives because it has no meaning, as a displacement from the serious problems which one cannot influence and affect because the power happens to lie elsewhere.

Whether you buy it or not, some respected thinkers out there make a living engaging with the role of sports in late capitalist culture. They undoubtedly do so with more nuance and depth, but they've read a lot more in the field than any 21 year old has, and they're also not being interviewed by The Guardian in pursuit of clickbait headlines.

Beyond that, I do find it interesting that you've gone out of your way to impugn the intelligence of a black athlete after an article in which he notes, "Some people think that, in basketball, we have a bunch of masculine adults who don’t know how to control themselves. They’re feeble-minded and can’t engage or articulate ideas. That’s a narrative they keep trying to paint. We’re trying to change it because that statement definitely has a racist undertone.”
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PostPosted: Mon Jan 15, 2018 1:37 pm    Post subject:

While he appears to be a serious young man, his statement that sports is a mechanism of control seems shallow to me. It is simply human nature to find outlets like sports and other forms of entertainment. Nothing nefarious needs to be taking place.
I do agree that the talk of him being too smart for the NBA has more than a little racism baked in.
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PostPosted: Mon Jan 15, 2018 2:03 pm    Post subject:

Sports is a way for people to get their shot of tribal combat, without actually involving themselves in tribal combat (yeah this one has research behind it).

Evolutionary urges and all, we used to use those urges to kill each other, a lot.

Just watch how people congregate in their tribe, how on edge people are against outside influences (being a fan of another team is used as pejorative, and yes it looks the same for other teams), come to the defense of the leaders (Kobe....), it's also why we value things like enforcers and tough guys etc etc.

Your team is your tribe, and the games are your war, there's quite a bit of research on this, and i'm sure the professionals can enunciate it better.
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PostPosted: Mon Jan 15, 2018 2:52 pm    Post subject:

Why are people acting like this guy just discovered fire or something?

People are supposed to be able to comprehend the confines of their own reality

It's called (and I am going to use a big word here) intelligence.

Why is it the exception and not the rule?

SMH
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