There is nothing more exemplary of the American lack of morality than the existence of the football industry. The amount of money, human resources and time spent on a game while we continue to have homelessness, poverty, and starvation across the world is clear enough but I will do my best to strip it all down to the bone. Every single form of religion, philosophy, and ethical thinking would point at the disparity and say there's no way it can exist without the entire society being morally and socially complicit and inept.
The football industry hunts children in poverty to find the best players. There is an entire industry of hunting, and manipulating children to decide their entire life early on, because if you want to make it to the NFL it’s something you’re working at as young as possible. Players are paid millions of dollars, and for anyone it’s a lot of money, but to the talented children with no other options, football is a golden goose. For children in poverty the only real options are fame, or the military where you can hopefully get some college money. So a lot of these players end up committing all of the crimes a poor person would commit. Suddenly, being given the world and will risk it all for drugs, drinking and driving, sexual assualt, domestic violence, etc. All of the activities that a normal American condemns as reprehensible and worthy of taking a person’s freedom away (rather than getting them help) are the same activities that are swept under the rug for football players. We are willing to overlook the crimes of “extraordinary” people, we even expect our gladiators to be given their reward. You have performed well, here is your wine, women, and music, do as you will.
We know that football is a direct analog to the Roman Coliseum, the bread and circuses to distract citizens from paying attention to just how much they’re being taken advantage of by their government. The viewers of this gladiatorial spectacle are wasting a minimum of 3 hours a week to keep up with the Joneses, tracking scores and players all the way down to the college level like they’re prize race horses. All of the time wasted on football is time you could be with your children, your community, reading or learning a new skill or anything towards improving the state of the world. But people would rather continue aiding in their own downfall by tuning out. You tune out to relax and forget about the stress of real life, to be entertained. Except your entertainment is a series of small advertisements hiding the largest ad of all, the propaganda and emotional manipulation of the ruling class.
No matter how smart you are, when you continue to engage this barbaric side of yourself that has a need for violence and the tribalism of teams, that constant engaging of the lower self makes you less capable of thinking outside of the tribalism of teams when it really matters, like politics. The time wasted, the money, energy, and human resources misdirected towards a release of energy that prevents any true political change from the lower class.
If you're starting to get angry and say, “what about other forms of entertainment?” Then you're beginning to see the point. All forms of celebrity are idolatry and hero worship and it's just the start of learning to lick boots. The fact that almost any entertainment industry's resources could be redirected towards noble goals and are not only being used ineffectively but actually being used to create more inequality, and abusive systems is proof that the systems have no desire to effect meaningful change in the world but merely secure their own power. Every form of entertainment is based on hierarchy and power dynamics which are used to bludgeon and abuse everyone involved. You climb higher up the ladder in hopes that you can either escape abuse and/or dish it out, based on your personal proclivities. Which is why everyone is so obsessed with fame, riches, and celebrity, but values that benefit all of humanity are largely ignored. If anything, we have all learned that no good deed goes unpunished so why not thrive to get mine and have everyone else serve me?
The apathy of the normal human being is what allows evil to exist but the envy of normal human beings is what creates inequality. Our institutions give evil a platform; the stick and carrot needed to lead the masses. We all choose to give away your power to celebrities, politicians, athletes, dancers, artists, and every form of fame and riches; people who provide no substantial value. The subliminal desire to be famous, or rich and escape the drudgery of normality is what allows normal people to overlook inequality in hopes that they too can benefit from the system. This is why, on a long enough time line there are no heroes, just good media managers that can hide the worst, until they can't, or no longer want to. You can name hundreds of criminals that are currently being paid millions by the NFL and other sports industries. Of course we shun Weinstein and Spacey but have a harder time committing to the anger when the same actions are committed by Lizzo, Oprah, or Neil Gaiman. It's not that your favorite celebrity is a good person, it's that you haven't heard or chose to ignore the crimes of your favorite celebrity. Just like billionaires; politicians, athletes, and celebrities did not get to where they are by being ethical. They got there by being underhanded, stepping on anyone they can on the way up, and justifying it with the abuses they suffered while telling themselves that when they get on top they will change the system and help others. But they can't, they won't, and they don't.
The reason I reference celebrity worship as idolatry is because it literally is taking your energy away from a divine purpose. When you give away your attention, money, and emotions to these churches of celebrity then you are being drained. Your creativity, your emotions, dreams, and willpower are all being redirected towards a ruling class that quite literally needs your helplessness to survive. They need you to dream to be like them in order to survive. They need ordinary people to not be truly extraordinary because it's not defined by how well you can perform an entertaining feat. Extraordinary is defined by being greater than ordinary, and giving into your most base desires against the will of people below you is what any poor person suddenly given power would do (think about your manager at work). We worship heroes because we hope to one day be as powerful and rich as them. We don't pray for their talent, we pray for their status. It's good to be the king.
Ordinary people are capable of evil, beware of anyone who says they cannot hurt others because they are a victim. This is an excuse you tell yourself at every level of status and it won't go away just because your lot in life improves. If anything you'll become more evil to protect what little status and safety you have garnered. Ordinary people abuse their children, coerce each other into sex, mislead each other into marriages, jobs, projects, investments and every other form of coordination, not with the idea that it's the best for that other person, but it's the best for me. Ordinary people abandon their children to pursue their own dreams of becoming famous. Ordinary people gaslight their kids into never succeeding because they'll be upset if their children are better than them in any way, especially if that means understanding the flaws of their parents. When ordinary people get recognized for an extraordinary talent they don't suddenly become better people, they just have the power to work their trauma out on every one below them.
"Humanity will not be free until the entrails of the last king are used to strangle the last priest. "
The celebrities of every industry are the priests now. The politicians and billionaires are the kings. Your cage is gilded by your heroes and your desire to be like them is why you allow them to accrue all of the wealth and power. There is no excuse for the excesses of entertainment as compared to the lowest rung of human beings. The disparity is a choice executed by everyone by willingly pushing the responsibility off to someone more rich, more famous, more powerful. There is no level high enough for anyone to accept responsibility or hold anyone else around them accountable. The lower on the social ladder the more you are not to be held responsible for your shortcomings (society did it to me, I am a victim who is reacting) once you move up that ladder you can always point to your origin story as a reason why you shouldn’t do better and someone else with more privilege, power, and money should be taking that responsibility, not me. The reason the rich are so unhappy is because past a certain threshold money will not bring you happiness. The more access to fulfill your vices, the more hollow you become, so you need more and more to fulfill you, and it rarely comes in the form of doing good. It usually comes in the form of abusing those around you and still finding that enough is never enough because you know that you are the villain now and there is no redeeming you. This is why every religion and philosophy preaches against wealth. Once you attain it, you will not use it to detsroy the inequality, you will use it to perpetuate it. The sadism and debauchery of the normal person is exaggerated and fulfilled to the celebrity. If I am wrong then why, everywhere we look, do we see greed, excess, and abuse while also living amongst poverty, crime, and entire nations being destroyed, pillaged, with genocide committed against the inhabitants of those lands? It would only take a fraction of the excess wealth to permanently fix the problems of the world but absolutely no one actually wants that world. People want to live in a hierarchy where they know who is above and below them.
There are no good cops, no good armies, no good politicians, no good religions, no good celebrities. There is no one worth your admiration. One bad apple spoils the bunch, if there is one there are many, and the good are outnumbered or allow them to exist. Tolerating evil is perpetuating evil, paying monthly subscription fees to have 24/7 access to that evil makes you complicit. Take your money, take your time, and take your attention away from every form of celebrity and divert it back to your community and watch the power of the elites slowly fade. There are no gods, only monsters.
