Opinion: The Olympics
I recently read a post on the Olympics on Richard Swinburne’s blog in which he asks about why we should want to watch people “throw stuff or run fast” and why the Olympics is so concerned with physical attribution and not mental. What particularly seems to annoy him is that the closest mental equivalent is the Nobel prize, which is awarded for a lifetime’s work, and not a minute’s running.
Now I’m not the biggest fan of sports in the world: I don’t play any, I don’t watch any, and I hated P.E. As far as I’m concerned, most sports are an unnecessary expenditure of energy and exposure to injury. I mean, surely there’s better things you could do with the energy devoted to, say, playing football, such as join a Lifeboat rescue team, or work as a voluntary fireman, even just build or make something for your home or as a gift. But I can’t say I entirely agree with Mr. Swinburne’s points.
For a start, I think the Olympics is important, not least because of the tradition and the unity it provides. Think about it, what other ceremonies have been running for over a hundred years, with heritage stretching far further back, in which the whole world takes part and religion is nowhere to be found? There aren’t many, are there?
Furthermore, think about where else there is an (almost) level playing field on which anyone can compete. I say ‘almost’ because I can’t see there ever being a human-devised system which is perfectly fair for everyone, but the Olympics is about as close it gets: while the smaller, poorer countries are obviously at a disadvantage in their ability to train and send a top athlete, at least they don’t have to worry about how big their army is, how mineral-rich they are, what religion they follow, what language they speak, because it just comes down to single human beings competing.
Even the aforementioned Nobel prize can’t claim that: if you come from, say, Kenya you’ll struggle to gain the education for a prize in Literature or Chemistry, and, even if you did manage to acquire sufficient education and time to do something great, whose going to publish your Swahili novel, where are you going to get a chemistry set from? But you can damn sure do some exercise and have at least a chance of reaching the Oympics, and that is no less of an achievement, for, however difficult winning a Nobel prize is, it takes no less application and determination than winning an Olympic gold…otherwise everyone would do it.
From another perspective, although I can see why it would be boring to watch people “throw stuff or run fast” (I rarely watch more than twenty minutes of the Olympics when I do put it on), I do think it’s interesting to find out exactly what the human body is capable of when it really applies itself. In fact, yes, I’m going to say it: It can be inspirational to see a human run 100 metres in 9.79 seconds. We are an amazing species, and the Olympics celebrates this just as much as the Nobel prize does.
Tags: Acheivement, Human, Nobel Prize, Olympics, Richard Swinburne, Sports
