Friends, according to Reuters, with the Olympics close at hand, there is a great kerfuffle going on about a swim suit made by Speedo. It seems it gives the wearer a distinct speed advantage.
Other swimmers who wear suits made by other manufacturers are up in arms and are threatening to break contracts so they too can wear the new super-suits. Rival manufacturers are breaking production records to try to emulate or out do Speedo.
It is, to me, an instructive parable of what is wrong with our world. The original Olympics involved naked athletes simply competing against each other. They used no drugs or steroids or fancy technology. The best man won. The prize wasn’t millions of dollars but a crown of olive leaves. My, how the world has changed. Now it’s win by any means and at any cost even that of damaging an athlete’s health.
I mean, the swimming suit drama could be easily resolved by making all competitors wear identical suits made from the same material. Then the best man or woman would win (depending on whether they were drug cheats or not). But no, the ugly face of capitalism has to intrude, has to turn the Olympics into a marketing opportunity, one where one company seeks to seize the market, create a monopoly.
I mean why doesn’t a competitor to Speedo simply make a suit with a small jet motor in it? Imagine the records that could be broken. Of course, they might have to put up sea walls around the pool to stop spectators being washed away during a race but such is the price of progress.
Progress? The original idealistic intention of the Olympics has been bastardized by capitalism. It applies to clothing, shoes, equipment, the whole thing. Soon, perhaps, competitors will look like Formula One racing cars, their bodies covered with company insignias for things like cigarettes, oil companies, etc.
Then anything approaching idealism in this world has been completely bastardized by capitalism. The main question is not about how useful or necessary something is or whether it has negative implications for consumers or the planet but how much profit can it make. The next problem is to convince the sheeple that they simply can’t live without it (with television, that’s an easy task). The next question is how can we trade it all around the world and how can we corner markets and form monopolies and duopolies and how can we protect our own markets with tariffs while we insist on free trade and no restrictions for other countries, etc? Can you believe that some governments actually use their military to protect their markets and to seize resources from sovereign nations to ensure that potential competitors don’t outdo them. Guess which ones?
Capitalism is a scourge. It encourages all our base instincts (and, boy, are they base!). Unless its immense power is broken, it will bring down our world. Soon.
P.S. The swimming solution? Let’s return to tradition. Make all athletes wear nothing! Yeah.
Well the original Olympics did have some foul play involved, but they did stop wars just so a bunch of people from all these warring city-states could get together and just for a moment forget their differences and fight each other in a world of sports. It was purely individual strength that prevailed. I agree the olympics are tainted and so is every sport by capitalism.
I am currently practicing parkour which is a sport, and to a greater extent a philosophy. It revolves around getting the fastest, most efficient route from point “A” to point “B”. Now at a point in the early 90s Parkour split into free-running (mostly tricks and capitalistic greed) and Parkour which, I personally and many others, are fiercely opposed to any attempt on making a quick buck through this. We share our knowledge for free and it builds communities where capitalism is shut out.
Yet, despite this you can hear the greedy paw of capitalism beating on the door. This comes in the form of charging a fee for lessons or a “meet”. A few videos from groups that charge clearly lack any community aspect it all revolves around ME ME ME! and the almighty dollar.
We need to beat back capitalism from sports!
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Sportsmen or women, My God! what they wont do or say to win.And not satisfied with the ego trip all of that brings, they all want to become millionaires, from flogging ball point pens to air conditioners.
How many times do athletes,and I use that term loosely, have to be caught taking illegal drugs, betting on their own sides to lose,and make abject arses of themselves, before the public wakes up to the con it all is?
In my last work life, I met quite a few of the better known ones,and out of the media lime light, most of them are a pain in the arse..
You know I have a mate, a lovely bloke indeed,when a sportsman gets sprung taking money for a fix,or drugs, it’s hey “They all do it” and of course this make it all just hunky dory.
I bloody despair.
Sports, politics, religion, dumb is just dumb, and the fact is,it aint getting any better.
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Damian, we need to get the greedy, immoral hand of capitalism off everything!
Phill, I remember from my church days the story of J.C. driving the money changers from the temple with a whip.
It seems that those who follow the bible adjust the words contained therein to suit their own greedy or depraved ambitions.
Cheers.
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In 1972 when my [late] cousin won a gold medal in swimming at the Munich Olympics she got into some degree of trouble because she held up her Blinky Bill mascot at the medal ceremony. She hadn’t known, but apparently the mascot was also used as a symbol by some biscuit or confectionery company, and questions were asked about her having compromised her amateur status.
How time have changed!
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It seems that the shot at fame and fortune is enough for athletes to risk a lifetime of illness and early death by drugs. The Olympics have been so badly tainted by drug cheats that nobody can win gold without there being that small suspicion of artificial help.
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Ah, Ninglun, those halcyon, innocent days of Blinky Bill. We’ll never see them again!
Lucy, we live in a world where ‘winners are grinners’ no matter the cost to individuals or the world.
We function now at the level of greedy pigs but at least pigs are not self-destructive or killers of their own kind and they do not harm the environment.
Cheers.
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I am glad that I am not that crazy or driven.
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