Was that sarcasm?”

Oh, crap! Man, I haven’t revisited this topic in quite some time. What I meant to type was, “Football is a zero-sum game. VERY tribal warfare.”

I was thinking about how tribal warfare is often extremely ritualized to the point of being a zero-sum game instead of a straight fight. I know that tribal pasttimes are often zero-sum. Nothin’ against that!

I meant to remark on how easily football could evolve into a method of conflict resolution that could replace modern warfare with a primitive-civilized hybrid version.

- Chuck

theres a difference between ritual based/organized warfare and the spirit of play and its ability to be timeless, create bonds with people, have an almost telepathic chemistry and always has different outcomes of change, ability and drama/story… also, there is always a WIDE KNOWN tenet to respect your opponent in sports.. just like in band societies, its scorned to show ego and try to coerce power… the team works together.

people who latch on the idea that all ‘organized sports’ are evil are idiots and probably are uncoordinated at best.

ive met numerous people from all walks of life playing sports… from varsity basketball players at playgrounds who developed mutual respect for eachother to older people in rollerhockey leagues.

also, people are people… when they get together for these football games (here at Lambeau it gets NO BETTER anywhere in the league for tailgating) people are friendly, sharing, cooking together, telling stories and generally just living life. if thats an “opiate of the masses” then im not sure what your ultimate goal as an activist is if you dont want to ultimately share, eat food with friends, have a bond and generally just hangout. last time i checked, the !kung do/did the same thing until being forced from their bioregion.

Everything has a good part to it–even in civilization. If it were all bad, it wouldn’t have even lasted this long. Understanding what little good there is in civilization is important for those of us who haven’t managed to escape it entirely just yet, but don’t want to be reduced to joyless, empty shells covered in ashes and sackloth who’ve lost sight of the fact that there’s still some good left in this world.

If it takes a football game, then I’m a fan of football. Whatever it takes to light the spark, to give people a glimpse of what a community–a tribe–is like. Whatever it takes to show them there’s still good in the world, and it’s worth striving for.

2012-2015 could well end up being the time of total economic collapse caused by food shortages, cause the money will be there (yes, all the information on this site has helped form such an opinion!).

And in my continuing evaluation of primitive living and such, one reason for an egalitarian is each individual of the group being important to the group’s survival.

Something like how this thread’s idea uses football to make the point, as a team has to play together to succeed.

The coincidence, or the timeframe?

I was thinking both.

We’ve discussed it here for quite some time

I’ll go back and check the archives.

Thank you

A social club isn’t a bad start. See Ethan Watters’ Urban Tribes. Forming close bonds is as good a place to start as any. I find too many primitivists set their standards at “has to agree with me about civilization.” Not necessarily. Go camping, go hunting, go fishing … then do it more and more often, for longer periods of time. Before you know it, you’ll be halfway there.

Yes, I think this is well put. I’ve hunted, fished, and camped with many people who don’t feel the same as I do about civilization, but after a period of time in the outdoor setting it always amazes me how people start to see how destructive this system is on their own. And, it seems, they’re always much more open to talking about it compared to lets say a couple hours after quittin time.

Yeah, the reason I said 2012-2015 had nothing to do with the Mayan calendar and everything to do with Peak Oil. The two just happen to eerily coincide.

Has anybody extensively written about this?

Curt

perhaps it will take the shit really hitting the proverbial fan to shock people into some kind of action.

This is most definitely will be the likely scenario, except the “kind” of action for most will be too little to late (or they really won’t know what to do). Also, people hit in the ‘face’ with realities that they were oblivious of, typically don’t have the type of skills/determination to succeed through it.

People need to see “the writing on the wall” and at least take some tentative action, simplifying lifestyle & learning some of the knowledge that has been lost by most.

The difficult part is trying to test the water of self-sufficiency, while keeping one foot in our modern civilization. Keeping with the analogies, IF people don’t learn to swim in advance, once “proverbial fan” hits–most will drown, some will tread water desperately & still drown in a short period of time.

~The glass is neither half full, nor half empty, rather it is twice as big as it needs to be.~