Opiates of the People Are Good!

I was reading the comments section of an online article about soccer and the World Cup the other day and someone wrote that religion isn't the opiate of the masses, sports are. And I thought to myself, You say that like it's a bad thing! Marx, of course, made the famous statement about religion, and henceforth it has been quoted ad nauseam by those wanting to sound knowing. His thinking was that if the regular people weren't distracted and pacified by religion -- with it's assurances of a better world beyond and it's frequent emphasis on focusing on the good you can do for your neighbor -- that they would naturally come to see that what was needed was amass uprising against the powerful in society and an enactment of communist principles, including the abolition of private property and business, along with any sort of personal achievement that might raise yourself above others. Two problems here: The first is that a lot of people don't want what you are selling and second, since it's impossible to reach consensus among great masses of people, the Communist leadership needs to take control and rule by dictating, claiming to speak for "the people." So you end up with a situation where people have no autonomy, no agency, and no say in government. And on top of that, you have no religion or sports! Fun.

So let's imagine the United States if people were no longer "pacified" by sports or religion, a world where everybody was politically engaged. Woke, if you will, to the conditions and systems that oppress them. Well, a large number of people would be some combination of pissed off, cynical, or suspicious of their fellow citizens. After all, now that we know that everyone is getting a raw deal, the first thing to do is identify those responsible for the unacceptable state of affairs. And it's always the other guy. Did you ever notice how both conservatives and liberals always quote Orwell's social critiques as somehow confirming "their" side and not the other? No, it's best that relatively small numbers of people embrace politics as their mission and way of life. Some people are comfortable leading their lives in a highly partisan way, and someone has to put competing options for policy out there.But today, contra Marx, I see the extent to which strict partisanship and black and white thinking have seeped down into the masses as a bit of a tragedy really. Indeed, polling numbers show increased levels of disapproval on questions of whether they would marry someone of another political party, or approve if a family member did. Don't people understand that there are positive values that people can agree on that aren't defined by politics?

So what about sports and religion themselves? Far from being an opiate for most people they are sources of positive benefits ranging from pleasure to meaning-making to belonging. The World Cup has been competing in Boston over the last couple weeks and it's a marvel, really, at least for someone like me who isn't a huge soccer fan, to see so many nationalities joyfully sharing civic space. And the competion itself? Rather than seeing at as a way to harden national differences and encourage jingoism - something I have always worried about -- I now see it as more of a healthy sublimation of the violent and tribalist aspects of our genetic inheritance. This is how E. O. Wilson saw it. Of course, sports engagement is a double-edged sword. On the one hand it is a source of character building -- learning how to lose gracefully or how to discipline oneself in pursuit of a goal are essential -- yet we know that, for example, many parents go absolutely batshit crazy at their kids' sporting events, so . . . .  But ultimately, if opiates can make you forget yourself for a while, so too can sports. And that's a good thing.

Religion is also something that has mixed effects, yet it's something that it's hard to see "us" doing without. I don't agree with those who say that most of our problems would be solved if we had no religion in the world. And I say this as someone who isn't religious in a strict sense. The downside of religion is it's tribalism, but that's not necessary to faith. One can be fully invested in one's own faith, while taking a pluralistic and creative view of the fact of many different religious faith and practice in the world. The upsides include religion's great capacity as a meaning-maker in life, and the meaning it provides is for a great many people far more important than the meaning provided by totalistic political involvement of the sort envisioned by Marx. Many of us just feel it makes sense that we are participants in a living cosmos that extends beyond the physical world as we know it. Religious people also do all sorts of charity and relief work locally and globally, usually something that is more or less apolitical like feeding the hungry and the poor, or offering medical services. But those of the communist or socialist persuasion even find problems here, saying they are letting the government off the hook and papering over the problems with capitalism. To which I say, Why shouldn't they. Making a concrete difference in the here and now is more valuable than speculation about what politics may or may not bring.