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Is 'Sport' no more than 'Bread and Circuses'?







In Philosophical Investigations, Ludwig Wittgenstein 
refers us to the ‘game’ of Ring a Round the Rosy. His point is that no one wins in this game. For the children just keep going round and round in circles and then all fall down.

I was caused to think of the nature of the ‘game’ recently when I played an important tennis match (that is important to me). I came away afterwards feeling I had made some dubious line calls that favoured me. The problem was all it made me feel was, in English public school parlance ‘an absolute rotter’. Indeed if there was such an organisation as ‘Dubious Line Calls Anonymous’ I would have got myself along there, pronto.

However upon research into studies done  it was revealed that in competition, aspiring young players, the Federer’s of the future, invariably call the ball ‘Out’ (to their own advantage) when the ball is marginally in, or even sizably in.

Does sport then engender fairness, or is it from the inception of the Ancient Olympics (776 BC); just a device, a discourse,  by those in power keep the populace quiet?  Indeed is ‘Sport’ no more than ‘Bread and Circuses’?

* "Bread and Circuses" (or bread and games) (from Lating panem et circenses) is a metaphor for a superficial means of appeasement. The phrase is used to describe the mere satisfaction of the immediate, shallow requirements of a populace; it also connotes the triviality and frivolity that is popular culture.



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