Saturday, November 21, 2009

Sports as Inherently Western

Inspired by a post by RJ, I came to the conclusion that sports (in the strict sense of the word) is an inherently Western institution. Sports in its modern sense was conceived in Ancient Greece – the bastion of reason and “this-wordliness.” That’s why the first thing Christian fascists did when they took over the Roman Empire was to ban the Olympic Games – that great manifestation of human beauty and pride. When humanism, as opposed to mysticism, came to dominate the Western civilization again in the modern period, it was the Anglo-Saxons, the most rational and libertarian culture that has ever existed, who revived that noble institution and invented most modern sports. 

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

The Christians in the Roman Empire banned the Olympics - what is your source for his? It's pretty interesting.

Reaganx said...

They are believed to have been banned by Christian Emperor Theodosius, though there is no official record. The fact that the ancient Olympics ended when Christianity became the state religion can only be explained in two ways - either there was an official ban or the mentality became so fucked-up that people voluntarily abandoned the Olympics. In both cases Christianity sucks, though the second version is less probable, since I doubt that that tradition could have died out so easily.