As I said, sports increase strength (duh), and that was pretty much the purpose of them to begin with (in conjunction w/ "fun," which I shall get to later.) This actually has positive real-life side effects, like increased life-span, being able to work longer, etc. I must emphasize that, since this is the only real way to build strength (unless..I dunno...you take fun in lifting heavy boxes and carrying them around to increase strength, still branching off of weightlifting...), this is a very important aspect of sports. Unfortunately, it is overshadowed by the many other aspects of sports that I shall proceed to mention.

It's where the "fun" factor comes in that really disgusts me. I don't want to sound preachy or anything, but I'm sure most people would agree with me in saying Epicurus had human psychology more or less correct: that humans seek pleasure and avoid pain. While this isn't entirely true, most painful actions are done with

a pleasure-related outcome in mind, so it is pretty rare someone takes pleasure in pain. However, it is just mankind's luck that we find so much "pleasure" in stupid things like the sport mentioned in the first paragraph, or a simple game of tackle-catch combined with tackle-run with some pads thrown in, rather than picking up trash or reading a history book. Mind you, there are people out there who prefer the latter over the former any day, but if most people took the amount of time engaged in sports, and compared it to the amount of time doing something practical, I'm sure they'd find the numbers quite staggering.

So in conclusion, do I hate sports? No. Am I trying to promote them as heretical? No. I, too, am human, and find myself engaging in the activities I so harshly criticized here, but at least I can recognize exactly what I am doing, and exactly what it is doing for me. For their physical benefits, they are the greatest thing mankind has created, for it does just that while keeping you "entertained." Some sports like jogging, swimming, etc. are particularly good, for they have even better real-life benefits (if you are a lifeguard, for example), and they avoid a lot of the pitfalls discussed above. However, for all of the other intrinsic aspects of more mainstr

Some topics in this essay:
, Whenever ESPN, watch sports, people watch sports, build strength, doing physical, people watch, don't realize, exactly doing, increase strength,