Thursday, January 4, 2007
In the beginning I thought it was a strange phrase because for me there is no reason for playing volleyball or running or working out other than the fact that its a rush to do well and it's a great way to release aggression. But those are reasons in themselves for why sports were created. Most people if not everyone has a competitive drive, whether it's in sports or academics or whatever the case may be. Everyone as a need to excel at something. And I think that's the reason sports began because those that did not have the yearning to excel in academics and felt a need to compete did it physically.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
1 comment:
Hi Brittani,
Yes, the "release" that sport offers is Dewey's starting point for arguing the value of sport, though he doesn't specifically think it's the "aggressive" impulse, mainly because he thinks all impulses or drives are mixtures of things and we analyse them into different sorts of drives afterwards.
Freud had a word for basic impulses being channelled into cultural activity: "sublimation", though I don't know whether he talked about sport in this way. People sometimes talk about "sublimation" in a negative way, as if to "sublimate" an instinct is to repress and distort it, but Freud clearly saw it as a positive, creative process.
What would happen if you couldn't play sport? Have you ever not been able to play?
Post a Comment