Stadiums are amongst the largest, most open and community-centred buildings of our time. A stadium is one of the few buildings where tens of thousands of people can come together for a single purpose, or to view a single event.

Barack Obama’s recent address at the DNC presents a good allegory through which we can explore the religious aspects of the stadium. Here we have thousands of people coming together in ‘worship’ of a captivating figure; by observing some of the members of the audience and their emotional response to his speech, we see that this was certainly a borderline religious event in and of itself. The choice of a Hellenic themed stage and twilight timing only served to strengthen the ethereal nature of the experience. In our allegory we have Obama acting as both the God figure and the head of the church (the papal authority perhaps). That is, people have come to see him, but they have also come to receive a message, a political/ideological message that they can apply to their own selves and actions and also spread to others. We can see the vote as a parallel of belief, and the grass roots campaigner represents the evangelical nature of the lay christian, at least from a short term perspective. Just to round out the metaphor, the media and campaign team can act as the clergy, although there are of course key differences relating to vested interests and their structure is far from hierarchical.

Such a speech is a rare event, seldom does politics draw the masses in quite the way Obama has done. More generally, stadiums form the stage for sporting events. Club football stadiums especially, seem to be tightly analogous to cathedrals; a building where the local community can come together to worship, in a sense.

I came up with a few explanations for why people are drawn to stadiums to watch sport. Most obviously, people attend in pursuit of a feeling of unity, to be a part of an immense mutual desire to see a team win. Not only does this support the team and the team brand, but it provides a sense of warmth and belonging to the individual supporter. We can see this sense of unity not only through the almost militaristic use of team colours, slogans etc, but through the way a supporter tends to align themselves with one particular club whilst directing animosity towards all overs. This is seen more clearly from a national perspective, and represents a (usually) violence free manifestation of a more general national pride. In the past we would have had a war to relieve some of this national fervour, but now we can express it through international sporting events. The sense of unity in a stadium of people united together is tangible. There’s nothing quite like being with thousands of other people all cheering for the same thing to ignite passion and loyalty (as religious and political organisations well know).

We see a similar idea in churches and cathedrals, a community united towards a common goal of spreading the gospel and glorifying God; here again both the individual and the church (team) benefits and animosity is often directed towards unbelievers. The brand of the team is perhaps the most important ideological figure in the stadium; the team members come and go, but the idea of a club remains. This runs parallel to the gospel message, although ’the team’ is much more vague and fails to promise any sort of divine reward or effect the more general thoughts and actions of the supporter. Interestingly, many churchgoers I know seem to be primarily interested in the benefits of being part of the church community, rather than religion itself. Perhaps in our present day current-life rewards and concerns are often worth more than the eternal ones, even within Christianity.

Stadiums can also compete with the spiritual-architectural power of a cathedral. Take, for example, the Chinese bird’s nest stadium for the Olympics. Not only is it an immense physical construction, but it is positively soaking in ideological significance. A united China, a powerful competent nation, a celebration of sport and unity, a political statement; all these are valid depending on your point of view. Club stadiums flaunt the wealth and prestige of the team, the bigger the stadium the greater the club, the stronger the community (or, more cynically, the richer the chairman). Cathedrals were made magnificent with the clear aim of bringing glory to God, stadiums on the other hand are much more diverse in their ideological aims.

Stadiums provide a location for communal celebration, and I wouldn’t be at all surprised to find that sport fans already outnumber religious people worldwide. Hence the stadium seems to be where at least a portion of our new religious pursuits lie.

I don’t know whether the artist intended to write ‘looser’ or ‘loser’, but I like to imagine he or she spelt it that way on purpose, rather than it just being poor spelling (although this is entirely possible, the graffiti is from Lisbon, Portugal).

I have started dropping it into conversation now and then, if you say it fast enough people don’t catch the last word and it’s interesting to see the different responses you get, whether they interpret it as loser or looser; perhaps when it is ambiguous people are likely to hear the phrase which fits with the philosophy they believe, the christian hears loser, the ardent agnostic hears looser.

At different times in my life, or even from day to day, you could place me into either interpretation. Mostly I believe that you can be more ‘free’ without inflexible dogma, but I also believe in ‘cosmic-objective’ moral truth (as in good and evil are more than bio-evolutionary products); I believe in truth, but my idea of the nature of truth is flexible and constantly being knocked down and rebuilt. A good way to look at it could be “Without a truth you are the loser”, even if that truth is “there is no truth”; the place not to be is that of not caring or not thinking about truth.

As time goes on I find myself less attached to truths I once held dear, especially those of a political or philosophical nature; as I learn more I realise just how limited my knowledge is, I am infinitely ignorant. I have become less eager to subscribe to any ideology or movement or to place myself on the political compass because I don’t want to commit without enough information, but I will never possess enough information. This give me more freedom to criticise and to move between ideas, but also means that I have less constructive ideals of my own to share.

Allegory of the cave 

Imagine prisoners, who have been chained since birth deep inside a cave: not only are their limbs immobilized by the chains; their heads are chained as well, so that their gaze is fixed on a wall.

Behind the prisoners is an enormous fire, and between the fire and the prisoners is a raised walkway, along which statues of various animals, plants, and other things are carried by people. The statues cast shadows on the wall, and the prisoners watch these shadows. When one of the statue-carriers speaks, an echo against the wall causes the prisoners to believe that the words come from the shadows.

The prisoners engage in what appears to us to be a game: naming the shapes as they come by. This, however, is the only reality that they know, even though they are seeing merely shadows of images. They are thus conditioned to judge the quality of one another by their skill in quickly naming the shapes and dislike those who begin to play poorly.

Suppose a prisoner is released and compelled to stand up and turn around. At that moment his eyes will be blinded by the firelight, and the shapes passing will appear less real than their shadows.

Similarly, if he is dragged up out of the cave into the sunlight, his eyes will be so blinded that he will not be able to see anything. At first, he will be able to see darker shapes such as shadows and, only later, brighter and brighter objects.

The last object he would be able to see is the sun, which, in time, he would learn to see as that object which provides the seasons and the courses of the year, presides over all things in the visible region, and is in some way the cause of all these things that he has seen.

Once enlightened, so to speak, the freed prisoner would not want to return to the cave to free "his fellow bondsmen," but would be compelled to do so. Another problem lies in the other prisoners not wanting to be freed: descending back into the cave would require that the freed prisoner's eyes adjust again, and for a time, he would be one of the ones identifying shapes on the wall. His eyes would be swamped by the darkness, and would take time to become acclimated. Therefore, he would not be able to identify shapes on the wall as well as the other prisoners, making it seem as if his being taken to the surface completely ruined his eyesight. (The Republic bk. VII, 516b-c; trans. Paul Shorey).

He then goes on to explain how this enlightened individual would be thought of as crazy, as he has such a different viewpoint now he has seen the bigger picture; but it is his responsibility to stay there in the darkness and lead the people in the cave to the truth, explaining how the philosopher should take this role in his Republic.

I think the freed man represents so many people, or at least many people believe they are the freed man. From religious people sharing their eternal truths, to politicians building societies from their enlightened ideals; academics publishing their discoveries to parents raising their children; philosophers (as in Plato's case) building ideas to editors writing papers. All these people have other motives as well, some of them probably more significant, but all of them share at least a spark of Plato's idea.

Everyone can gain some sort of enlightenment, maybe not to be a leader, maybe not to find the truth, but to have something to share no-one else has, an individual's unique perspective.

"Better to be the poor servant of a poor master, and to endure anything, rather than think as they do and live after their manner"

This is having a massive effect on me, the most obvious of which is frustration. The main reason I have kept away from these topics in the past is because of the frustration and despair I knew I would feel from finding out about these things. It is true that as you learn more, you have more to (potentially) make you miserable, however I think it is far more important for me to be performing what I feel is my social responsibility (for want of a better phrase) than building my own personal happiness. Noam Chomsky in this interview manages to reconcile all his knowledge about the horrors of (certain aspects of) US foreign policy with an enthusiastic optimism that democracy and the general public are going to solve these problems; that the western propaganda system is already starting to fall apart. I admire (and am encouraged by) his optimism, but I find it so hard to see all the problems in the world that are maintained by mass apathy ever being solved through anything short of a psychological revolution.

I'm still glad I have started on this path though, however much anger and frustration it brings me I know it is the right thing to do, and hopefully the work I have ahead of me will have some fruit in the future. I'm planning to keep this site fairly separate from any politics, that isn't really my image of what thesimulacra.net is about, but I feel I need to communicate some of this feeling as it is making up a greater and greater part of myself. Here's a few links in case you are interested in what I have been looking into, but aside from these there won't be too much direct political discussion on the site:

The Power of Nightmares
Why We Fight
The Mayfair Set
Manufacturing Consent

http://www.caat.org.uk/
http://www.democracynow.org/
http://www.cnduk.org/
http://www.thecornerhouse.org.uk/
http://www.amnesty.org/
http://www.fairtrade.org.uk/
http://www.worldchanging.com/
http://www.controlarms.org/​