Is Everything Wrestling?
nytimes.com
nytimes.com
You should really watch the video because it's amazing, but the tl;dw is that WWE is a live-filmed TV show with stunts about an over-the-top wrestling league. The world in the league has magic and wizards and all sorts of outlandish fictional elements, but the show we're watching is a sort of meta-show about that world.
With that in mind, politics is taking on a lot of the characteristics of wrestling in that it's this meta show about itself that doesn't really resemble the underlying truth. The big difference though is that the underlying truth in politics is the real-life workings of government, not a magical world of wizards, undead, and feats of strength.
With regards to papering over reality in favor of a preferable narrative–an activity as old as recorded history–I think wrestling actually has a much more honest relationship with fiction and truth than most things.
"Everything is about sex. Except sex. Sex is about power."
This is a fairly major way of partitioning literary analysis. I've seen it called "Watsonian" vs "Doyleist" - you can either take a look at the narrative elements in the story, or at the circumstances facing the author.
Our ancestors used to cultivate their might, overcome deep physical challenge, and express useful skills in sanctified circles.
Wrestling used to mean something profoundly real to human-kind, as it still does for many cultures who haven't taken a plunge into a commercial modernity.
I remember when I was young reading of loud gasps when `Okonkwo threw the Cat` in Things Fall Apart [0], one story's scene that resonates across distant lands, around familiar campfires, and within men's bones.
You'll probably need to solve the hugbox problem before you introduce a primal renaissance to our nerd culture.
And if that holds true, then this one-way media about physical expression, choreographed to maximize drama, surely causes imbalances to healthy and fruitful relief from bottling emotions.
What makes you so angry about the idea that crying is normal and is nothing to be ashamed of?
> The defining characteristic of transition from childhood is cognitive mastery over emotional whim.
Just because adults CAN suppress almost all emotional reactions doesn't mean that we should. Believing that certain emotional reactions should never be expressed, or that expressing them over 'trivialities' is bad, sounds like a very immature view of adulthood in my opinion. Shedding a tear when you are confronted with an image you find beautiful or poignant seems is one of the greatest things about being human. I'm only engaging in this conversation because engaging with my emotions rather than stifling them has been one of the most rewarding challenges of my life and required analyzinh a lot of my own programming. You have no idea what you're missing if you don't try.
Among well-developed, modern wrestling styles, I also like how Folkstyle (called scholastic and collegiate[0]) doesn't reward for big throws, which have big risks, so it has a honed focus on skillful control (without violence).
0: for very good matches, search "NCAA Wrestling Finals"
In other words, a desk space is only as safe (and productive) as the strength of the structure that encloses, maintains, and supplies it.
We've been moving past this "physicality" for at least the last 3,000 years, it's what makes us, well, rational and modern humans. Case in point, the mighty Achilles and Hector both die, while the non-physical Ulysses finally manages to return home to his beloved Penelope. Also see Goliath vs David.
Why not ? It's arguably the most basic of human athletic endeavors (besides walking and running), it's extremely beneficial to your health (nothing exercises every single little muscle in your body - but wrestling does) and depending on where you set your output dial, it's as high output of a sport as is possible.
Further, the popularity of BJJ opens up a lot of venues and increased interest - male and female - all over the country.
Recommended.
Although I usually recommend Judo.
Citation needed.
I used to wonder why people would talk about running in language reminiscent of religion and addiction, until I started feeling the malaise you're describing strongly enough. Unrelatedly, I left my job around the same time (this was about a year ago) and lost the use of their onsite gyms, and started running for the first time since college.
Something was different between my college runs and these newer runs. In college I would bang out 2 or 3 somewhat tedious miles and come home feeling nothing more than satisfied that I had done my required amount of physical activity. I'm not 18 anymore so I've had to be careful about stretching and warming up, but with these new runs, I was up to ten miles within a week and a half. "Getting exercise because it's healthy" is almost incidental to the reason I run now, which has a lot more to do with the feeling of pushing myself as hard and as long as you can.
It's a pretty potent antidote to the general feeling of malaise; it seems that something hardwired pretty deeply in us considers difficult physical activity as worthwhile in and of itself. I'm sure there's more to it (the agrarian-utopianist/yearning for authentic experiences that you're describing), but hard physical activity alone gets you some of the way there, in the same way that you can access some of the surface benefits of meditation without delving into all of its traditional philosophical baggage.
It's not reading (I'm verging on post-literacy myself ) , but one of the Adam Curtis films* has a treatise about an agrarian-utopian communes late '60s. And of course it fell apart.
*"All Watched Over", I think.
I recommend some measure of Dionysian ... exercise - just don't hurt yourself. I have a few beers and play honky tonk music in actual honky tonks ( and somebody else is driving ) . The beers are optional, so I can drive myself, but it's a little less great that way.
what makes it sad?
Because in a non-agrarian-utopian way, we've managed to eliminate food insecurity. I think completely. If we could actually move it all around properly, nobody need starve.
People starve because food is ... inconveniently located.
So I am an Okie. I got an orange every year in my Christmas stocking. Okay, so it's an orange. Only years later did it dawn on me - people didn't have oranges. My parents didn't have oranges. In my lifetime ( or perhaps theirs; don't get too detailed on me ) , this happened.
The sheer mass of human activity behind that symbol is .. terrifying. Throwing it away... I don't know how that works.
My uncles, granduncles all farmed. It like to killed 'em. Now, it's just ... button pushing.
We have no idea what we came from and what is at stake. And that is what makes me sad.
Maybe I'm mis-interpreting you, but isn't that one of the reasons Fight-Club resonated so well with people? Sure, it's story is deeper than "a bunch of guys get together for a friendly fighting session", but that was a big part of the draw behind it.
So, no.
Our ancestors had no choice but to embrace harsh physical challenge. We ain't gotta do that no more. I have ancestors I have met who were like that. They weren't romantic about it. If anything, they were a bit embarrassed by it.
Literally just a few months later then-candidate Bill Clinton appeared on Arsenio Hall and played the saxophone.
Edit: I read the IMDb blurb – ”… five centuries in the future …”. I guess we’re 500 years ahead of schedule.
Whew, real nutcase there. Ah ah. Ahem.