Quote:
Originally Posted by stephenb
Time to wind down the Olympics or make them hold it in one permanent location - say Greece for example.
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Don't you think the poor Greeks have got enough problems at the moment.
They certainly don't need to be hosting drunken yobs from the antipodes every 4 years...
A large part of the problems I think stems from the extremity of effort required to be competitive. Harking back to the original Olympics (circa 776 BC), a lot of what was being celebrated then was the
balance of disciplines required to live a rich and fulfilling life (which admittedly back then did demand quite a few martial skills). Virtually everyone was a farmer soldier engineer actor singer carpenter. Specialization has its advantages, of course (cue Adam Smith in the pin factory), but the dedication required to be the absolute best in the world at any one thing now demands a deranging focus on a minuscule aspect of life, to the detriment of the civilizing whole. This "It's first or it's fked" mentality is just unhealthy, and of course it is largely the corrupting influence of money that pushes it to the extreme. All these elite athletes can see that it's the gold that sets in motion the gravy train of sponsorship deals.