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I grew up working class and was a boxer. I love Ice Hockey, Football, UFC, NASCAR, Motocross, and heavy metal, but I am also an academic and an intellectual. Many highly educated people have told me so, I just don't have the paper to prove it. I hear ya. I wrestled in high-school, did a lot of BMX biking in my younger years (and still ride a little, even now in my 40's), used to dabble in amateur power-lifting a bit, mountain-bike these days, and used to participate in some brazilian jiu-jitsu / submission wrestling / MMA stuff. I also grew up watching NASCAR and Indy Car racing, and I'm a diehard NFL fan (#PHINSUP!!!) But I'm also a pretty well educated (3 college degrees) guy who listens to both heavy-metal and classical music, reads Nietzsche, Schopenhauer, Foucalt, Wittgenstein, etc. for fun, reads The Economist semi-regularly, etc. I won't use the term "intellectual" to refer to myself, but many of my friends think of me as something of an "intellectual". I just think the whole thing is silly. I'm "working class" in many ways, but I share characteristics, attributes and interests with the intellectuals. So yeah, I would say that this whole "disdain of the working class and working class interests, by intellectuals" me strikes me as pretty stupid. When a kids says, "Hockey. Meh. It is a bunch grown men with sticks chasing a black piece of rubber around a sheet of ice" he is saying in effect "What you love is obtuse and low brow and I don't care how that makes you feel." And that is just rude.* It's also ignorant. There is a lot of wisdom and truth to be learned on the hockey ice, the football field, the wrestling mat, etc. Sport is just a compressed version of life in many ways. |