Spectator sports -- purpose and addictive effects

Western intellectuals' views on Spectator sports -- it's purpose and addictive effects

Noam Chomsky on the purpose of "Sports":
"The purpose of sports is to divert people, it's to create a community of people who by some overwhelming sense of irrational loyalty, are focused on insignificant things. Hence, you don't have to worry about them asking questions about serious things that matter to their lives and to their society."

"Sports are designed to occupy the population, and particularly the males of the population. And it's not an accident that you have the big sports, and you have the big entertainment industry, which are mostly male-oriented. This is a way of building up irrational attitudes of submission to authority, and group cohesion behind leadership elements — in fact, it's training in irrational jingoism."

George Orwell: "Serious sport has nothing to do with fair play. It is bound up with hatred,  jealousy, boastfulness, disregard of all rules, and sadistic pleasure in witnessing violence: in other words, it is war minus the shooting."
From Orwell's essay "The Sporting Spirit," published in 1945.

Aldous Huxley: "In regard to propaganda, the early advocates of universal literacy and a free press envisaged only two possibilities: the propaganda might be true, or it might be false. They did not foresee what in fact has happened, above all in our Western capitalist democracies — the development of a vast mass communications industry, concerned in the main neither with the true nor the false, but with the unreal, the more or less totally irrelevant."
From Huxley's book "Brave New World Revisited," published in 1958.

Chris Hedges: "The culture of professional sports is another mechanism to distract us from the realities around us. It does not enhance our lives but instead offers temporary relief from the anxieties and discontent bred by a decaying society."
From Hedges' book "Empire of Illusion: The End of Literacy and the Triumph of Spectacle," published in 2009.

On the similarity between sports fans and other addicts:

Being a sports fan is a complex process that can resemble addiction. The highs and lows of your team's performance can create a cycle of emotional dependency. Expert quotes:

1. "For some, being a sports fan is like a drug. The thrill of victory, the agony of defeat, it all creates a high that keeps them coming back for more."
— George Vecsey, sports columnist for The New York Times

2. "Sports fans experience the same dopamine rush that drug addicts do when they watch their team win. It's a powerful emotional experience that can be highly addictive."
— Dr. Daniel Wann, sports psychology expert, in his research on sports fan behavior

3. "The passion and devotion of sports fans often border on the obsessive, resembling the behaviors seen in addiction."
— Dr. John F. Murray, sports psychologist, in his work on sports psychology and fan behavior