Bread and Circuses

Decimus Iunius Iuvenalis, more commonly known in English as Juvenal, was a roman poet associated with the quote; "give them bread and circuses and they will never revolt" referring to the appeasement of the roman people with entertainment as a means to distract from the growing unrest and dissatisfaction with the state of the empire. You may ask what relevance this has to the world of today, and I would say quite a lot actually. Not unlike the Roman empire, the people of today love distractions. We all love to have something to occupy our time with that gives us a break from the stress that we all are forced to deal with in our lives, and while that is certainly understandable, I've always believed that there is a certain point when this becomes problematic. I'd say that point is when the entertainment becomes the focus of our lives. The reason I wanted to discuss this in the first place is that, as I'm sure you may be aware, football is back. It's one of the most important times of the year for many people, and I personally know plenty of folks that await and partake in the spectacle of the sport religiously. The second each season ends, the minute by minute countdown clock until they can next vigorously cheer on their team starts and their lives pretty much go on pause. I'm not saying there is anything inherently wrong with being a sports fan, after all I'm a casual fan myself, but anything in excess is typically problematic. Athletics are wonderful and incredibly entertaining. The spectacle, the excitement, the competition and everything else surrounding the culture makes it no surprise that sports seem to take on an almost religious semblance for some people, but many religions have their problematic adherents don't they? I remember seeing coverage of the events that commenced in Philadelphia after Eagles won the Super Bowl in 2017 and was mesmerized at the sight of so many people relinquishing any semblance of civility in a celebratory revelry ending in all kinds of destruction. To be clear, I'm not just being a bitter Bears fan when pointing this out, after all, many Chicago fans don't seem to be fully aware that 1985 has ended. The point I'm trying to make is that while it's not bad to have pride and be happy about things like this, for anyone to allow themselves to be so fanatic about anything to the degree that they see that kind of behavior as acceptable is inherently problematic. Getting back to the "bread and circuses" lead in that I used, I want to talk about what that quote means in terms of its relevance to modern day society. Sports were absolutely huge in the Roman empire, and they've been huge in pretty much every culture, but in the case of Rome, the distractive aspect of them was employed quite a lot. As the greater problems of society were coming to a boiling point, athletic events were used as a means to quell unrest and pacify the populace, and I think that effect is still in use to this very day. The world has so many problems; war, famine, disease, environmental catastrophes, social unrest, and all other kinds of issues. Again, there's nothing wrong with loving sports, but at the same time, keeping a finger on the pulse of everything else is much more crucial in my mind.