It is somewhat endearing to see all humanity unite around men running after a ball. It is also fascinating, and a little troubling, to see the passion and the energy that took hold of the soccer-watching majority in this World Cup 2026. Sport events are the modern “bread and circus”, to keep the majority distracted while the ruling minorities tighten the screw to enhance control.
Panem et Circenses
The WC 2026 was “Bread and circus”, or in latin “panem et circences”; what Roman patricians gave to the plebs to keep them distracted and satisfied. As Plutarch and others described, in ancient Rome, ambitious politicians used public banquets, theater tickets, and handouts to buy the favor of the masses, treating the electorate more like children to be bribed than citizens. Emperors used the strategy of "panem et circenses" to maintain their political dominance over the people and keep them sufficiently distracted from politics of the Roman state.
Why should they be distracted? Because public opinion is a force to be reckoned with; for all ruling minorities since time immemorial it has been essential to control and direct it. This is particularly important as the interests of the state, then like now, always differ - and is thus misaligned - with the interests of the people. The powers-that-be, thus, have an interest in keeping the public from focusing on their actions.
Not much has changed in two millennia despite literacy rates close to 100% and despite the fact that the most excited Western fans cheering for their national soccer (or other sports) teams are often middle-class.
The ruled majority never learns deeply about politics, despite the amazing increase in education. Perhaps many people have been taught to “think critically”, but far fewer have learned to think “politically”. The reason for this is that submission to authority, acceptance to be ruled over, and a general disinterestedness in politics are part of human nature. It is not a question of human development, however bad this makes optimists and believers in representative democracy feel.
Surface Thinking and Democracy
Indeed, the majority has neither the interest nor the motivation to deeply focus on politics. Voters implicitly understand that their vote is just a small drop in an ocean of ballots and will make no difference in the election outcome. But they still go through the election ritual and feel that have done their duty as a citizen. Not only do voters lack the interest and motivation, but they also lack the time and the capability of thinking rationally about politics, as James Burnham wrote in his essential work, The Machiavellians (1943):
“The inability of the masses to function scientifically in politics rests primarily on the following factors: the huge size of the mass group, which makes it too unwieldy for the use of scientific techniques; the ignorance, on the part of the masses, of the methods of administration and rule; the necessity, for the masses, of spending most of their energies on the bare making of a living, which leaves little energy or time for gaining more knowledge about politics or carrying out practical political tasks; the lack, in most people, of a sufficient degree of those psychological qualities—ambition, ruthlessness, and so on—that are prerequisites for active political life.”
This is a reflection of the human being’s incorrigible surface thinking, unless compelled to go deeper out of direct self-interest. This is all the more true when individuals get absorbed in crowds. Sometimes the concept of “collective intelligence” is appealed to in order to describe the “wisdom of crowds”, but it is just as true that the lowest common denominator unites a heterogeneous crowd. All skilled politicians know this - the larger the crowd the simpler and the more general must be the political message.
This is a heavy indictment of representative democracy itself, and suggests that Jean-Jacques Rousseau was right when he said that the people should just vote for their Legislator, expressing the supposed “General Will”, and then leave the affairs of state to the Him. Between elections, as Rousseau wrote in the Social Contract (1762), the “individual is a slave, he is nothing”, and must “obey docilely under the yoke of public felicity”.
Not Even Caring for Oneself
The bread and circus of WC 2026 shows the masses care with more passion what happens in a soccer game than what happens to fellow human beings. The “collective human consciousness” sometimes seems to involve just the most primitive emotions, like those triggered by sports. The woes of mankind, which lay just beyond the horizon of the soccer-watching majority, are often just an afterthought, if that.
Yet, the suffering of mankind is not hidden, despite MSM attempts to dampen it, in Gaza, in Ukraine, in Iran, and elsewhere. But the attention that the distracted majority reserves to the WC 2026 fails to replicate in such matters of life and death. Currently, the EU parliament just extended Chat Control of Europeans private messages, but few Europeans actually seem to care. Ukraine will fall, with the disastrous consequences this will entail for Europe. Energy prices will keep going up, since the US cannot accept peace with Iran. None of this can yet shake off the hypnotizing effect of the “beautiful game” in 2026. A dramatic political and economic shift is currently taking place in the world, yet this is apparently less important than whether the ball goes into the net for the national team.
Perhaps it is cynically obvious that more attention is given to sports than to the suffering of foreigners. But the soccer-watching majority doesn’t even seem to care if their own standards of living are impacted negatively. Despite the nefarious effects of exacerbated statism and crony capitalism in most societies in the West, the soccer-watching majority reacts with much more fervour to the national team’s success than to the consequences of these corrupt and bloated political systems on their own lives. Property rights violations - inflation, taxation, nationalization - lead to an upward movement of wealth - from the ruled majority to the ruling minority. None of these realities seem to register much among the soccer-watching majorities.
The Solution Is Freedom
If representative democracy cannot work properly and human nature is flawed and fixed, the only solution is a reduction of the power of the state. This is a difficult task with a soccer-watching majority that is almost politically unconscious. At a minimum, the growth of state power needs to end and the state’s intervention in society should be culled. This cannot be done just through elections; it requires an increasing and constant pressure of public opinion on government, legislators, political parties and unelected officials. Unfortunately, the soccer-watching majority may only get around to putting such pressure on the ruling minority if it becomes convinced that this minority is responsable for a serious economic crisis.
The proposal for less state power means more freedom. It consists in the following well-known steps towards a freer society: deregulation, decentralization, and privatization of the functions of the State. In other words, as many sectors of the economy as possible should be freed from state involvement (deregulation), as many political decisions and initiatives as possible should take place locally (decentralization, subsidiarity), and as much activity and responsibility as possible should be removed from the public sector and subjected to competition (privatization). This is only way to improve the current political situation in the West, despite bread and circus events like World Cup 2026.
No comments:
Post a Comment