NAOS
Well-Known Member
Let’s set aside the idealisms and bromides like ‘sports bring people together’ for just a minute and consider something...
How much of the activism right now—critical and effective activism—is being fueled by the fact that people have been without their usual Entertainment distractions?
That’s kind of an awkward wording... to conceptualize the catalysis of a reaction in terms of a LACK of something isn’t without its challenges. But I think you get my drift: most people have become more dominated by a set of non-stop Entertainment values than they’d like to acknowledge, and these values keep us in a sort of suspension that isn’t conducive to change. In fact, they may very well be directly resistant to change: they have us where they want us; our attention spans are the raw material for their capitalist production.
Bromides like ‘sports bring people together’ we’re authored in a different time, well before the emergence and domination of forms of capital (that rely on our attention span to such a significant degree) that we see today. So let’s be weary of these bromides when we hear them.
I can’t support the return of the NBA, or any other sport, right now. I’d rather the critical mass of our attentions keep circulating through the uncomfortable questions that are confronting us: ongoing racial disparities, coronavirus outbreaks, electoral failures in Georgia and whether or not those predict electoral failures this November, etc.
Please discuss.
How much of the activism right now—critical and effective activism—is being fueled by the fact that people have been without their usual Entertainment distractions?
That’s kind of an awkward wording... to conceptualize the catalysis of a reaction in terms of a LACK of something isn’t without its challenges. But I think you get my drift: most people have become more dominated by a set of non-stop Entertainment values than they’d like to acknowledge, and these values keep us in a sort of suspension that isn’t conducive to change. In fact, they may very well be directly resistant to change: they have us where they want us; our attention spans are the raw material for their capitalist production.
Bromides like ‘sports bring people together’ we’re authored in a different time, well before the emergence and domination of forms of capital (that rely on our attention span to such a significant degree) that we see today. So let’s be weary of these bromides when we hear them.
I can’t support the return of the NBA, or any other sport, right now. I’d rather the critical mass of our attentions keep circulating through the uncomfortable questions that are confronting us: ongoing racial disparities, coronavirus outbreaks, electoral failures in Georgia and whether or not those predict electoral failures this November, etc.
Please discuss.