Mass Man and Mass Games

Noting that "Marx was wrong," David P. Barash suggests, "The opiate of the masses isn't religion, but spectator sports" — The Roar of the Crowd. "What else explains the astounding fact that millions of seemingly intelligent human beings feel that the athletic exertions of total strangers are somehow consequential for themselves?" Mr. Barash makes it clear: "It is not the doughty doing of sports that is so ill-conceived, but the woeful watching, the ridiculous rooting, the silly spectating."

As much was said eight decades ago in Ortega y Gasset's "Revolt of the Masses" (1930), in which spectator sports were identified as one of the phenomena characteristics of the great faceless enemy of the work: The Mass Man. (When I bought the book in California, the female Trotsky-look-a-like behind the counter nodded approvingly and flirted by saying, "Finally someone who gets it.")

Ironic, how we rightfully mock North Korean Mass Games but fail to question our own.

[link via Arts & Letters Daily]