Saturday, August 16, 2008

Competing {vs} Lifting

I don't bother to watch the Olympics because of the inherent nationalism it's still framed in; you may imagine that athletes playing for countries in which they live, but were not born in, demonstrate post-nationalistic free-agentry, but even when olympic athletes play on teams against their own nations of origin (e.g., an Afro-American living in China played on the Chinese basketball team against the USA), they're always still on nationally-sponsored & -identified teams. Nationalism still completely packages & defines the Olympics.

William James wrote an idealistic essay - in 1906, well before WW1 - that competitive sport was a moral equivalent of war, that is, a rational substitute; http://www.constitution.org/wj/meow.htm But the International Olympic Committee (founded in 1894) revival of the Olympics couldn't & didn't prevent WW1 from happening. Or WW2. Or any war. Suspending the Olympics during an international war only concedes it.

As you may expect, my interest in competitive sports is zero. I'm an habitually non-competitive thinker/personality, & prefer cooperation as a mode/model of progress: I've always been interested in what we can do together vs what can we do contra each other; only what we can lift together interests me.

Footnote: From age 13-17, I caddied at a 'restricted' country club in Marblehead MA, getting a fair sense of what golf is & isn't: in its 'inner'-game, you're your own 'opponent.' Putting, requiring serious self-discipline, defeats many golfers. I preferred practicing chip-shots from sand-traps up onto the green (a miniscule form of lifting.)

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