The outcome of any serious research can only be to make two questions grow where only one grew before.
Thorstein VeblenRead
The addiction to sports, therefore, in a peculiar degree marks an arrested development in man's moral nature.
Interpretation
The quote suggests that a strong obsession with sports reflects an immaturity in moral development.
Thorstein Veblen implies that when individuals become excessively invested in sports, it signifies a stagnation in their ethical growth. Instead of nurturing deeper moral values, the fixation on athletic competition can divert attention from more profound societal issues, indicating a level of developmental delay in understanding and engaging with the complexities of human nature.
In practice
Discussing the impact of sports culture in a school assembly.
The outcome of any serious research can only be to make two questions grow where only one grew before.
Conspicuous consumption of valuable goods is a means of reputability to the gentleman of leisure.
In order to stand well in the eyes of the community, it is necessary to come up to a certain, somewhat indefinite, conventional standard of wealth.
With the exception of the instinct of self-preservation, the propensity for emulation is probably the strongest and most alert and persistent of the economic motives proper.
The basis on which good repute in any highly organized industrial community ultimately rests is pecuniary strength; and the means of showing pecuniary strength, and so of gaining or retaining a good name, are leisure and a conspicuous consumption of goods.
In itself and in its consequences the life of leisure is beautiful and ennobling in all civilised men's eyes.
I think it is very beautiful for the poor to accept their lot, to share it with the passion of Christ. I think the world is being much helped by the suffering of the poor people.
We each appear to hold within ourselves a range of divergent views as to our native qualities.. And amid such uncertainty, we typically turn to the wider world to settle the question of our significance.. we seem beholden to affections of others to endure ourselves.
I was seen in earlier years by family members and people of authority as somebody wasting his time. I had trouble with the restrictions of conformity. It made me edgy.
There is not room for Death, Nor atom that his might could render void: Thou - Thou art Being and Breath, And what Thou art may never be destroyed.
Everything in excess is opposed to nature.
Magic is the mysteries into which not everyone is so lucky, or unlucky, as to be initiated. It can be affected by belief, the whims of the unseen, harsh language. And it is not. Supposed. To make. Sense. In fact, I think it's coolest when it doesn't.
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