Thomas_More
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In the Middle Ages Christianity, being averse to sexuality, suppressed expressions of the sexual in all art. But unspoken rituals continued, with wrestling among peasants and, for the nobility, who could afford it, shows of armed violence in which knights would fight with swords and lances to win the favour of their chosen ladies.
Activities of all kinds are bound up with the society that produces them.
As industrialism intensified during the 18th and 19th centuries, so 18th century boxing was replaced with the much more lethal gloved boxing of today, with its strict timekeeping, the bell emulating the factory whistle demanding attention on the part of contestants and spectators. The downed fighter has ten seconds in which to rise and take more blows. No more can he rest when he chooses, swig a pint and return to the fight in his own time (which is why the old prizefights often lasted much longer, which shocks us today whose shorter timed fights are so much more lethal.” So, no contact sports allowed in socialism?”
That’s not what is being said. Anything in which both parties are consenting is up to the consenting parties.
Boxing disappeared for centuries. Its reintroduction in late 17th century England is bound up with the birth of nationalism, as a recent biography of Daniel Mendoza shows.
Without nationalism and without money, who knows what there will be by way of consenting mutual battery?
Mating rituals in the animal kingdom involve individual males fighting prior to sexual coupling with females. Also among human natives of Java, where young men box with sharp reeds tied to their knuckles while watched by the young women of the village.
This dynamic has been exploited by boxing in the movies and by modern symbolism such as ring girls (who so annoy feminists) but whose role recognises the sexuality linking boxing to fertility rituals.
Barltrop is an Arthur Cravan-type figure. Arthur Cravan (Fabian Lloyd) was Oscar Wilde’s nephew, born in 1887 and disappeared in 1918 off Mexico (pursued by the British and US authorities as a flamboyant conscientious objector).
Like Barltrop, Cravan “did everything”, saying “I am all things” and refusing to give any one occupation when asked.
He defiantly promoted his uncle Oscar and wrote a preface for “The Soul of Man under Socialism”, a preface very rare and hard to obtain.
Friends with Jack Johnson the boxer (also on the run), the two made off with the purse from their 1916 staged boxing match in Barcelona. Cravan boarded a ship of men fleeing the war to New York, which also had Trotsky on board, with whom he had a fist fight.
When the US entered the war he joined other “slackers” in Mexico.Cravan had become Middleweight Champion of France by the fact no other contenders showed up. A very grainy and very short clip of him boxing in Barcelona can be seen on Youtube. Cravan could have been murdered by Allied authorities. There is even a theory he was the mysterious gringo who turned up during the filming of “The Treasure of the Sierra Madre” and then walked off again into the desert.
Incidentally, “google” Robert Barltrop and a photo of Jack London pops up.
In fact, not all gladiatorial contests were big arena events. The word “sport” was coined in the time of Claudius and referred to unplanned and spontaneous fights on a small scale.
Gladiatorial fights were originally funereal and continued to be part of the funeral rites of senators and VIPs during Roman times, until finally abolished by the more sensitive, cruelty-hating people known as the Vandals.And even more so, stopping the killing of fellow animals; and especially for collecting body parts, for so-called “sport”, and for bogus “medicine”, etc.
Of course, both those who used to be rich louts, and those who were lumpen louts, would be entering socialism with the rest of us, so there will have to be means of restraining such people from causing harm, as they will suddenly see everything as a free-for-all in the worst possible ways.
I mean, we do assume, don’t we, that people establishing the new society, even though it can’t be done until there’s a majority, would be forward-thinking people, who empathise with suffering, hate cruelty and carnage, and want to protect nature.
I hope there will be provisions in place to stop people doing vile and harmful things, like trophy hunting, badger baiting and other such atrocities.
At least all parties involved in boxing, once money has been abolished, would be doing it voluntarily, whereas other animals have no say in what humans do to them.
If socialism permits trophy hunting, I will expect it to also permit me to shoot and kill the hunters. That will be me doing what I will need to do!
Can NATO continue without the US?
Or am I getting ahead of myself? In four years the pendulum could swing right back to another Russian stand-off and a reversal of Trump’s foreign policy.
Again, after an apparently reluctant Germany and rest of the EU was forced by Biden’s USA to break with Russian gas, now the EU is the party moaning about the US stand-off with Russia coming to an end, and would prefer it to continue. What gives?
