Organized games fused power with national identity in Greece and Britain

Evidence

In general, common enmity is one of the most powerful means for motivating a number of individuals or groups to cling together. This common enmity is intensified if the common adversary is at the same time the common ruler. In a latent, certainly not in an overt and effective, form, this combination probably occurs everywhere: in some measure, in some respect, the ruler is almost always an adversary. — Georg Simmel, on individuality and social forms_…, 333 (#expands, via linked claim)

This world of sociability, the only one in which a democracy of equals is possible without friction, is an artificial world, made up of beings who have renounced both the objective and the purely personal features of the intensity and extensiveness of life in order to bring about among themselves a pure interaction, free of any disturbing material accent. If we now have the conception that we enter into sociability purely as “human beings,” as that which we really are, lacking all the burdens, the agitations, the inequalities with which real life disturbs the purity of our picture, it is because modern life is overburdened with objective content and material demands. Ridding ourselves of this burden in sociable circles, we believe we return to our natural-personal being and overlook the fact that this personal aspect also does not consist in its full uniqueness and natural completeness, but only in a certain reserve and stylizing of the sociable man. — Georg Simmel, on individuality and social forms_…, 378 (#expands, via linked claim)

Categorization

• XREF: connects to: Competitive team games dominated British education and imperial rule from 1853 to 1914; Family structure mirrors and reproduces national authority in Europe; Thatcherism fused free-market individualism with ethnic nationalism and authoritarian policing (+8 more)

Related

• In social games players perform the very structure of society itself (similarity 0.80)

Broader Connections

• Urban identity games range from high-stakes passing to low-stakes pretending #expands (0.80)
• Shared enmity of a common ruler strongly binds groups together #expands (0.75) — Georg Simmel, on individuality and social forms_…, 333
• Sociability among equals is an artificial stylized game, not a return to natural self #expands (0.75) — Georg Simmel, on individuality and social forms_…, 378
• Competitive team games dominated British education and imperial rule from 1853 to 1914 #corroborates (0.70)
• Family structure mirrors and reproduces national authority in Europe #expands (0.55)
• Thatcherism fused free-market individualism with ethnic nationalism and authoritarian policing #expands (0.50)
• Thatcherism fused authoritarian state power with free-market neoliberalism #expands (0.50)
• Racially conscious working-class nationalism emerged from English class formation #expands (0.50) — Cedric J. Robinson, Black Marxism_ The Making of the Black…, 234
• Nation-state formation generates founding myths that legitimate ruling-class orders #expands (0.50)