Beijing Olympic Mascots: Revisited

When oh when are we going to keep the politics well and truly out of the Olympic games?

Historically, the Greeks used the Olympics as a sustitute for war. Many events were conducted in full armour, and we have holdover events (like the Javelin Throw) that have obviuos military contatations. The purpose of the Olympics, for the Greeks, was not only to honour their Gods, but also to get an idea of exactly what type of fighting materiel each city state could produce. War was seen as intrinsic to Greek life, part of the furniture, if you will. The best way to get a look at the fighting prowess of each group was by looking at their performance in the Olympic games.
In this way, one could sap the will of the smaller Greek states by demonstrating to them, in the most practical manner possible, exactly how their fighting men might perform in a real confrontation….

It is for this reason that women were also banned from participation, as they did not go off to war, and their performance, good, bad or indifferent, was no indication whatsoever of the physical prowess of the human material of the city-state concerned.

Greek warfare was a shoving match, with extended lines of HOPLITES mashing together in a large push. The side with the longer line usually won, so the emphasis was on narrowing the hoplite line by anchoring one or both flanks on a handy terrain feature.

Because of the individualistic nature of the fighting, personal physical strength meant all, and it was to this end that the Olympic games was designed…..to demonstrate the personal physical performance of a city-state’s Hoplites. The all male spectators would go back to their own home having formed an impression, and the psychological carryover to this determined many things, chiefly in state diplomacy.

The modern Olympic games has none of these phychological factors present. A good Olympic team is largely dependant on the amount of cold cash a country is willing to spend on the training and condiditioning of it’s Olympic team. Larger and richer countries have a definate advantage. But, the athletes involved really must do not much more than play sport for a living, which is really not what the modern Olympics was designed for.

It’s now the domain of the professional athlete…..amatuers simply don’t have the time to keep up anymore, and this is historical…..smaller Greek city-states would have come to exactly the same conclusion….

So, where is the politics really present in the modern event?

The answer is really in the minds of journalists and the media that cover this event every four years. Rather than seeing this as a pure channelling of warlike intentions into a different direction, they get carried away by the nationalism of it all, forgetting that this is exactly the OPPOSITE of what the modern Olympic games was supposed to achieve.

When you cheer for your nation’s success, you are doing something that saps your warlike tendencies to “cheer” a sucessful military campaign in the grand old style.

De Courbin would turn in his grave if he could see what the modern Olympic games have been twisted to produce, and the efforts of journalists the integrate this pure sporting festival back into the political sphere of the day.

So, I say to you all…..forget whatever Human rights abuses are present in China. A boycott is against the principles of the modern Olympics, and a waste of the careers of many athletes who have trained hard.

Leave the criticisms of China as a nation to the political journalists, columnists, politicians and writers of the day….

We just want to play sport……It may be a bunch of professionals these days, but the ancient Greeks were just as serious about their warfare as they were about their Sport. Their lives may well have depended on this very factor….

Ours don’t……Just go to Beijing and ENJOY the moment/s.

As for mascots, Australia’s comedy duo H.G. Nelson and Roy Slaven publically threw out notions of an official mascot at the Sydney Olyimpics, and substituted their own “Fatso the Fat Arsed Wombat”.

Maybe satarists of this ilk could do the same for Beijing….A mascot is meaningless commercialism anyway, so who really cares?

Just go to Beijing and play the god-damned game!….

Anything else is pretentious journalism……

Just a modern parralel…

The 1938 Berlin Olyimpics is chiefly remembered for one thing only..

The victory by Jessie Owens in the 100m final.

If pundits of the day were correct, then this one victory by a black sprinter destroyed the myth of the aryan superman….

This victory was seen in a very Greek fashion…..the lesson learnt for the fighting men of a war only 12 months away was lost on both sides of the Atlantic….

Had the Nazi regime sat up and taken notice of this, it may well have made them think twice before unleashing their “blitzkreig” on Europe itself, and it should have given Americans pause for thought as to the fighting qualities of their own afro-american people…

But this basic and essential lesson dissappeared in the mire of journalism.

This is probably the most famous example of the Olyimpic games performing as it was intended, as a demonstration to the MIND of the capabilities of athletes (and therefore, soldiers) in their own national sphere…

The more you poke at the human rights record of China vis-a-vis the intention of the modern Olympic games, the more removed from the original idea it becomes…

KEEP POLITICS OUT OF THE OLYMPIC GAMES…..LEAVE THE POLITICAL SPHERE FOR POLITICIANS….

ATHLETES SIMPLY WAN’T TO PLAY SPORT AND EXCEL IN THEIR OWN FIELD

On a serious note, everything is political, and the games are certainly about as political as things get.

And to try to say that involving politics dilutes the “purity” of the intent of the original games is kind of laughable.

I highly recommend The New Lords of the Rings, if you want to understand why the OOC is pretty much one of the most hypocritical organizations in history. They prey on the hard work and honesty of the athletes. (Whom I do admire for their hard work and talent.)

If you want to purify the Olympics, the first thing to do is take the commercial stakes out of them.

Of course none of this is VERY FUNNY!

sorry Mr. Rayner…capitals will be expunged in the future…

But I still have a point….nobody really gave a darn about Chinese politics for a long time….and now the Olympics have come to town, the issues are suddenly center stage?

China has had a human rights problem for many years…ever since Chiang Kai Shek….and it went on for much of their history….has done since before the Han Dynasty….

African nations practice human rights abuses on a scale that dwarfs most other countries…leaves em’ for dead, in fact…

But I don’t see anybody sugessting that the Olympic team from ZIMBABWE or NAMIBIA or RWANDA or KENYA not turn up….African nations really can’t afford to stage a games, so why should we let them participate at all if it’s such a big issue?

Hi Mark,

First of all, Beijing won the right to host the Olympics because most of the IOC members voted so. I don’t think there was such a deal as you claimed.

Second, even as you said, didn’t the human rights record improve in China over the last decade or last a few years? It is certainly not perfect, but is it worse than, say, 5 years ago?

Third, when you try to punish Chinese government, how can you be sure Chinese people are not hurt? Do you know that most average Chinese people really look forward to it?

Fourth, what benefit can it bring to boycott the Olympics, especially to Chinese people who are supposed to be the “human” in “human right”? Do you really think Chinese government is going to change its Tibetan policy and/or human right policy because it is going to give up Olympics? Knowing how Chinese government propaganda machine works, I see the perfect opportunity for the government to tell the Chinese people how west does not like China anyway and the people should sacrifice more rights to stand together with the government against the conspiracy from the West even more.

China does need to improve its human right. The Chinese government does need to be reminded of that. But please, do something smarter than this.

We like these olympic mascots better

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