I cannot help but be a bit sick when I think about sports. I am not, by any stretch of the imagination, a sports hater. I quite like sports. I am a die-hard fan of several college football teams, and follow along with all of the major sports leagues. But what I am acutely aware of is that I would like it just as much if it were not as good. I like college football better than the NFL, and frankly I liked high school football better than I like any other sports. I follow the NBA, but I know quite well I would also enjoy people playing pick-up in the park. Just because players are “better” inside the game does not mean that they are better as a source of entertainment. I used to play Magic: the Gathering, and would of course always play the best combinations of cards, but I thought it was much more enjoyable to play in the past, in large part because the cards were less powerful.
Society is stuck in a lot of traps like this, and we don’t even really realize we are. There are entire professions and industries whose existence is entirely zero sum, and waste the ambition and effort of millions. Sports, fashion, politics, musicians, entertainment – all of these are things which hijack our interest in social status. We treat athletes as heroes, but why? What have they ever done for society? We celebrate someone who can run faster than anyone else, but what would happen if they disappeared? They would be replaced by someone who can run just a little bit slower – what has the viewer missed out on? It is not speed alone which determines the interest in a track meet – if that were the case, we would all prefer horses, or cars, or perhaps rocket ships. They contribute nothing, and in their consumption of resources, make the whole world worse off.
This is a great misplacement of where our social credit should go to. There are many jobs whose monetary returns are not at all commensurate to the good which they do. The scientist who makes a breakthrough in the creation of a new vaccine can capture only a tiny fraction of the good which they have done for the world. There is no doubt that there are not enough of them. And yet, we find that our culture rewards being the best at skills which produce no marginal benefit.
If you talk to kids about what they want to do when they grow up, these days, an answer you will hear a lot is “Youtuber”. It’s hardly surprising – children watch a lot of Youtube. In another day, they might have said they want to be on television. It’s all a waste, though! Someone succeeding in making a bit of content just a little bit better than everyone else is like a crab trying to escape a bucket by grabbing on to another crab.
It is not so bad if someone should go into sports because they are of little intelligence, and would amount to nothing if it were not for their body. But we should regard every person of intelligence, who could have done something which would actually improve the world, who goes into sports as a shameful tragedy.
To my mind, “culture” is how we push people toward actions, even when we cannot directly mandate that they do them. A good culture is one where actions which are privately beneficial but socially harmful are discouraged; a bad culture is one where they are tolerated or celebrated. I cannot pretend to know what it would take to swim against the tides of social status. But we should do our best to use culture against it.
It seems to me that we should have more depictions of scientists, and other productive people. I am not referring to the naturalists, stamp collectors in picturesque locations, who so dominate the market for these depictions. Their jobs have been worthless since the 1800s. Rather, we should depict people working and striving toward producing things, and overcoming specific challenges.
We should also regard working in a job not likely to produce positive externalities as shameful beyond belief. Preferably we would commit ourselves to disowning a child who does so, and in disassociating ourselves from friends and family who fall off the path of doing good to others, although I think many people would find it difficult to go through with such a thing. I don’t think I could do so myself, but it will come through to how I will raise my children. I think there must be an expectation that you are able to do great things, that it is good to do great things, and that we will do great things.