case: (Default)
Case ([personal profile] case) wrote in [community profile] fandomsecrets2014-06-12 06:40 pm

[ SECRET POST #2718 ]


⌈ Secret Post #2718 ⌋

Warning: Some secrets are NOT worksafe and may contain SPOILERS.

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[Mayim Bialik]


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[Pacific Rim]











Notes:

Might be another 12 am day. Response time will be slow, sorry.

Secrets Left to Post: 01 pages, 016 secrets from Secret Submission Post #388.
Secrets Not Posted: [ 0 - broken links ], [ 0 - not!secrets ], [ 0 - not!fandom ], [ 0 - too big ], [ 0 - repeat ], [ 1 2 - this is getting spammy now ].
Current Secret Submissions Post: here.
Suggestions, comments, and concerns should go here.
dethtoll: (Default)

Re: playing with balls

[personal profile] dethtoll 2014-06-13 12:34 am (UTC)(link)
Sports are beautiful. Sports are transcendent.

Except this is wholly subjective. All I see are a bunch of guys slamming into each other. So don't sit there and lecture me about how people have different tastes from me just because I say pro sports has no value, because I'm well aware that my view is subjective (and also a minority) -- but if my negative view is subjective, then so is your positive one.
cushlamochree: o malley color (Default)

Re: playing with balls

[personal profile] cushlamochree 2014-06-13 12:53 am (UTC)(link)
I deleted my other reply because I thought I got a little too heated and worked up. I'm sorry about that.

If your argument is just that you don't like sports and you don't think other people should like them, that'd be one thing. But you sure spend a lot of time going over why sports are dumb and totally without value, whereas art is important and intrinsically necessary to human flourishing (which, again, is a view that I agree with). I think there's a tension between that view and the view that the value of art is subjective.

The other part of the problem here is that there's a difference between appreciating something as art and appreciating that something is art. What I mean is that it's one thing that you don't appreciate sports. But it's another thing entirely when someone comes along and says that they do sincerely enjoy sports, and you say that's impossible. Which seems to be your argument. You're rejecting the possibility of someone enjoying sports. You're saying that they have no value because you don't like them. That's what baffles me here, I guess. If you were unable to appreciate the ballet, for instance, would you therefore deny that it had any value? But that's exactly what you're doing with sports.

It's one thing to say that aesthetic appreciation is subjective. And I'm not saying that you have to like sports or see why they're beautiful. But a lot of your argument isn't just that you don't like sports. It's that they should go away entirely, that they're worthless, that no one should like them. I accept that my view of sports is as subjective as yours. But you're making a lot of arguments that look to me like objective or general arguments stemming from that.

Again sorry for deleting my other post.
dethtoll: (Default)

Re: playing with balls

[personal profile] dethtoll 2014-06-13 01:20 am (UTC)(link)
I don't know where you got the idea that I was saying it's impossible to enjoy sports????

I mean, where did I say that? I'll grant that I may have said something that could be read that way, but that's most certainly not what I meant.

To be clear: I accept that other people like sports. I don't think they should at this point in time, because I do not support the aggrandization of sports, which I view as harmful to society in a manner and on a scale that other forms of entertainment are not (something that a few people keep ignoring to cling to false equivalences.) I do not view sports as inherently beautiful, and I do not view sports as beneficial to society in anything more than the most superficial way. I do not view sports as anything other than structured play. It's fine for a backyard, but not for multi-million-dollar stadiums, and people need to stop buying into a harmful system.

For what it's worth, I think South Korea's obsession with Starcraft is pretty fucked up too.

Re: playing with balls

(Anonymous) 2014-06-13 12:06 pm (UTC)(link)
To be fair, you've ignored the posts that tried to address the notion that sports are harmful to society and pointed out ways in which they're not. You're picking the arguments that seem easiest to counter.
cushlamochree: o malley color (Default)

Re: playing with balls

[personal profile] cushlamochree 2014-06-13 07:28 pm (UTC)(link)
Maybe you don't think it's impossible to enjoy sports, but you do seem to think there's something illegitimate or wrong about that enjoyment, that it should go away, that it's a bad enjoyment. This is nearly as bad.

Like, it's one thing to say that sports are not inherently beautiful; this is obviously subjective. But the idea that sports cannot be beneficial to society in anything more than the most superficial way, or that they are nothing more than structured play - I think that these are claims that have to be treated as objective claims. These are matters of fact. The problem is that all the ways in which sports could be beneficial to society, and all the ways in which sports are something more than structured play, stem from the fact that they are enjoyed in that way, and enjoyed legitimately.

And I think this is the reason why it seems to me like you don't accept that other people like sports. Because you accept it as a fact, but you deny every consequence of the fact. If it's fine for some people to enjoy sports and for others not to enjoy sports, if it's true that there is some beauty that some see in sports even if you can't see it, it should follow from this that it does have value, that it is more than structured play. It is more than structured play because some people treat it as more than structured play. It has value because some people see beauty and meaning in it, in the same way that they see beauty and meaning in whatever form of the arts you care to mention. And you're denying those consequences. That's why I say that you think it's impossible to enjoy sport as a spectator - because you don't grant any legitimacy to it or accept the validity of that enjoyment. It's not subjective if you think that someone else's view is wrong and should be ignored. That's not what subjective means. You may not understand the value, but you can see the value that other people place on it.

And the thing is that you can make the argument that we should care less about sports, and that the system as a whole is harmful, and that we shouldn't spend so much money on multi-million dollar stadiums, without making the argument that it's wholly without value. You can say sports is valued too much without saying it has no value. There are plenty of sports fans who do make those arguments. I'd agree with a lot of it myself. But then there's all this other stuff about how kicking a ball around is useless and pointless and we should tear down all the stadiums, or whatever, and that's a different thing. It's frustrating.

Sorry for late reply and all that!