Says turnstep:
No TV. No sports....those things keep the masses amused and distracted from doing "normal" things like learning, exploring, and asking difficult questions of themselves and their surroundings.
I don't think that's true. In Annie Hall there's a great scene in which Woody Allen is at a horrible party inhabited by horrible boring intellectuals; he sneaks off to the bedroom to watch the basketball game. And predictably, someone comes to berate him for watching the basketball game when he could be improving his mind.

Woody has a great speech about how this is a completely different kind of accomplishment, a physical accomplishment, and that the people in the other room are afraid of it because it isn't their kind of accomplishment and they don't understand it.

One of the most wonderful things about sports is that they are universal. Everyone on earth has pretty much the same kind of body; that's why we can have the Olympics. To be uninterested in sports is to be uninterested in the body and what it can do. And of course you know many geeks who are divorced from their own bodies. But that is not a healthy way to be.

Sports are not incompatible with learning, exploring, or asking difficult questions of one's surroundings. Many people shut off their brains when they sit down to watch the football game, but that does not mean that is the only way to do it---lots of people shut off their brains when they use the -w switch too.

--
Mark Dominus
Perl Paraphernalia

In reply to Re: At what rate are YOU progressing? by Dominus
in thread At what rate are YOU progressing? by mothra

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