Our national flower is the concrete cloverleaf.
Lewis MumfordRead
Sport in the sense of a mass-spectacle, with death to add to the underlying excitement, comes into existence when a population has been drilled and regimented and depressed to such an extent that it needs at least a vicarious participation in difficult feats of strength or skill or heroism in order to sustain its waning life-sense.
Interpretation
What this quote means
This quote suggests that mass sports spectacles exist as a response to societal oppression, serving as a vicarious outlet for the public's desire for excitement and vitality.
Lewis Mumford's quote reflects on the relationship between society's conditions and the nature of sports as a mass spectacle. He argues that when a population is subjected to rigorous societal constraints and feels a decline in their spirit or vitality, they turn to sports as a means of escape and excitement. The reference to 'death' highlights the extreme nature of the entertainment sought, suggesting that in an oppressive environment, people may embrace the thrill derived from risky or heroic feats as a way to invigorate their dull existence.
Themes
SportSpectacleSocietyExcitementVicariousHeroism
In practice
Example use cases
During a speech on the impact of culture on society, one might reference this quote to illustrate the role of sports in providing excitement for oppressed populations.
More from Lewis Mumford
All quotes →Neither democracy nor effective representation is possible until each participant in the group...devotes a measurable part of his life to furthering its existence.
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Moment to moment, it turns out, is not God's conception, or nature's. It is man conversing with himself about and through a piece of machinery he created."We effectively became "time-keepers, and then time-savers, and now time-servers" with the invention of the clock."
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By his very success in inventing labor-saving devices, modern man has manufactured an abyss of boredom that only the privileged classes in earlier civilizations have ever fathomed.
Lewis MumfordRead
The right to have access to every building in the city by private motorcar in an age when everyone possesses such a vehicle is actually the right to destroy the city.
Lewis MumfordRead
The very people who shudder over the cruelty of the hunter are apt to forget that slaughter, in the grimmest sense of the word, is a process they entrust daily to the butcher; and that unlike the game of the forests, even the dumbest creatures of the slaughterhouse know what is in store for them.
Lewis MumfordRead
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