[HN Gopher] Modern football through the lens of Rene Girard
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Modern football through the lens of Rene Girard
Author : Niklas96
Score : 37 points
Date : 2022-05-27 10:54 UTC (2 days ago)
(HTM) web link (xandfootball.substack.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (xandfootball.substack.com)
| mrxd wrote:
| I suspect that Girard's ideas are a touch more sophisticated than
| "people are sheep". Unfortunately if you see his name in a
| headline, that's usually all that's being said.
| Niklas96 wrote:
| What do you mean?
| dc-programmer wrote:
| I see his name as a heuristic for Thiel adjacent content, which
| is useful for deciding which links to skip
| Bubble_Pop_22 wrote:
| Modern football is the same as old 60s football: Catenaccio wins
| you matches and trophies with the minimum effort and minimal
| financial expense for the board.
|
| "two lines of 5 will always be very hard to penetrate, in
| prehistoric times, in the middle ages and today"
|
| - Josep Guardiola -
| conradfr wrote:
| I was amazed that somebody cared about the thought of Rene Girard
| the ex-player and soccer coach.
|
| That was at this moment I realized I was not as cultured as I
| thought I was.
| AlbertCory wrote:
| > Girard argues that we don't develop our own desires but want
| what others seem to want.
|
| Garbage. I might feel bad that I haven't read Girard, except that
| the author admits he hasn't either.
|
| > Think about it: rituals before, during, and after the game;
| group singing; deep emotional involvement; the use of symbols to
| show that you are part of a certain group. These are all
| religious aspects. Every club has legendary players; heroic
| figures, shaped by immortal memories, admired by everyone at the
| club.
|
| Sorry, Niklas. I've been to Wrigley Field when the Cubs win and
| everyone sings "Go, Cubs, Go." It's different in America, and by
| the way, you're welcome to wear the visiting team's baseball cap
| to a game, too. We know it's just a game.
|
| In the video [1], Girard says:
|
| _I think desire usually is born out of the contemplation of
| someone else who is desiring and who designates to you the object
| he is desiring as desirable._
|
| Sorry, this is barely even a half-truth. Middle schoolers are
| walking down the street not looking where they're going because
| they're staring at their smartphones, and that's where _they_ get
| desire. If they grow up, they learn to think for themselves.
|
| More from the video:
|
| _Peter Robinson [narrator]: Serpent, Eve and apple.
|
| Rene Girard: Serpent in the mimetic theory of desire is a symbol,
| an image, of the mediator. In other words, the one who directs
| the subject towards the bad desire. There are churches who know
| what they are talking about much better than most people think.
| Know that example is the key to bad as well as good behavior, and
| this is nothing but what I call mimetic desire._
|
| ... and this is why people like to make fun of French
| intellectuals.
| [deleted]
| Mulpze15 wrote:
| >It's different in America
|
| Yes. Not sure how it makes his argument weaker. There is a weak
| sense of community in US sports fans, where it is well
| understood that sports teams are first and foremost a
| commercial enterprise.
|
| It is perceived differently in Europe where fans are attached
| to the team fo r other reasons and want to limit the commercial
| impact in the sport, probably for some of the reasons explained
| by the author.
| Niklas96 wrote:
| > Girard argues that we don't develop our own desires but want
| what others seem to want.
|
| What's your point here?
|
| > Think about it: rituals before, during, and after the game;
| group singing; deep emotional involvement; the use of symbols
| to show that you are part of a certain group. These are all
| religious aspects. Every club has legendary players; heroic
| figures, shaped by immortal memories, admired by everyone at
| the club. Sorry, Niklas. I've been to Wrigley Field when the
| Cubs win and everyone sings "Go, Cubs, Go." It's different in
| America, and by the way, you're welcome to wear the visiting
| team's baseball cap to a game, too. We know it's just a game.
|
| I see your point. I think you have to take into account what
| football means for people and that is very different in Europe
| compared to America. In America, I would argue, it's much more
| about entertainment. The development in Europe is similar but
| it didn't use to be that way. Back in the days, these were
| local clubs, founded by local people who only lived for these
| clubs. Wright Thompson's piece explains that much better than I
| could:
| https://www.espn.com/espn/insider/insider/story/_/id/3221804...
|
| > Sorry, this is barely even a half-truth. Middle schoolers are
| walking down the street not looking where they're going because
| they're staring at their smartphones, and that's where they get
| desire. If they grow up, they learn to think for themselves.
|
| That's very true. They stare at their smartphones, see other
| people and get their desires. It might be true that their
| beliefs system changes when they grow up and that they think
| for themselves more often. The tendency to desire what other
| people want, however, doesn't necessarily change. The desires
| might differ, maybe also the extent, but I don't believe that
| the mechanism itself evaporates.
| AlbertCory wrote:
| There's a whole universe of scholarship on the reasons people
| want stuff. If you think about it, anyone trying to sell you
| stuff is _dying_ to figure that out.
|
| "Because other people want it" is, no doubt, ONE of those
| reasons. But the only one? Please.
|
| As for ManU not being the People's Team anymore: the
| explanation for that has more to do with money and the
| structure of professional sports than anything else. I watch
| the Cubs and don't know half those players, either, and it's
| not because of globalization. Maybe Mike Trout will play his
| whole career with the Angels, but most players move around.
| chrisseaton wrote:
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