I can't bring myself to. The Olympics lost something when competition stopped being about self-mastery. If you look at the ancient Olympic Games or maybe even just several decades ago, competition wasn’t just “who runs fastest.” It was embedded in religion, civic honor, and virtue. Excellence includes discipline and character. There was a seriousness to it...
The modern Olympics branding, broadcasting, social media, and the Olympic Village basically being treated like a giant adult summer (winter) camp. I know people say the sex, the substance use, etc... is just stress relief or “they’re adults, who cares.”
But to me, sex isn’t recreational stress relief. It’s powerful. It shapes you. So, when the highest level of competition, something that should represent extreme focus and self-command, is surrounded by that kind of culture, it feels off. Debauched.
I guess the heart of the matter is how competition is viewed: Is it sacred or is it a spectacle? What is elite sport actually for?
I cannot really cheer for team USA because I know a majority of these athletes do not represent these things. Though I can see and recognize achievement, it doesn’t inspire loyalty or emotional investment for me because the underlying values are absent.
Great post. I guess the Olympic Village antics are mostly out in the open now, versus the 2000s where mainstream news ran articles about Shaun White asking out Sasha Cohen and getting turned down (how innocent).
Seeing the Israelis in the comp kind of ties that whole theme together too, as they are basically symbols of state-enforced debauchery and excess now. They commit ethnic cleansing and flaunt their right to participate, making a mockery out of the moral order that they themselves imposed on us. Their culture, the self-proclaimed gay capital of the world where hostages get plastic surgery because they felt undesired by their captors, is basically the apex and the source of modern hedonism.
All that being said, Alysa Liu is such a cutie and I'm so into her. I even forgive the weird lip ring.