2 August

Watch sport now and you’ll have a beautiful window into the culture I post about a lot. The ‘team sports’ culture, really kidult culture, of competing teams battling for status. Not just in sport, in every single area of life. Winning in sport is met by euphoria, from players and fans, loss by apocalyptic dejection, professional athletes and fans silent or crying. All behaviours adults spent generations weeding out of kids, to help them mature into adulthood. You didn’t see Rod Laver collapse in ecstasy on the court when he won, or break into tears and sit with his head in his hands if he lost. Imagine the disgust from the culture of his time, if he’d done that. You used to shake hands politely at the end of a sporting contest, and celebrate a ‘good game’. Not now. Now it’s war. The battle for status, and via that for identity. Kidult culture, team sport is the cultural model. The schoolyard, competing groups/teams. Who even remembers who wins, a year later? Nobody much. Most would struggle to list the last 5 winners of any of our major sporting orgies. These are cultural events, the exercise of our underlying cultural operating system.