June 27, 2008
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The Olympics
I have never been much impressed with the Olympics. On the one hand, it is wonderful that nations can gather peacefully and “play games” together… but not really. They play against one another; they play to win, to beat their fellow nations in games based on the (often enhanced) ability of their athletes.
I do not like the Olympics. What should be a competition to draw nations together is used more as a wedge to drive them apart. Particularly the upcoming games in China. EVERYONE knows that China is in the wrong for having taken and kept Tibet. The Tibetan people do not want them. They have driven the Dalai Lama out into the world and he has said that maybe he will not choose to come back for another incarnation. While the fact that he is in exile has meant the wider world is exposed even more to his teachings than before, I wish he could go home. It’s a terrible thing to be denied access to your home. And while according to Buddhist teachings, it is important not to form attachments, it is still comforting to be allowed to go home when you wish to. Home is where all your memories live. And while home may be where the heart is, there is still that essence of familiarity that is lacking in any place other than one’s birthplace. The only reason the games will be held in China is because everyone is afraid of offending the Chinese government. They have violated and continue to violate so many human rights issues, that the Games should never have been allowed to go to China. The Chinese government will never change its ways if the other governments don’t penalize them for their offenses.
The Olympic games are a joke in any event. So much pressure is put on the athletes that they can end up doing terrible things to their bodies in the name of winning. I am all for excellence, but there’s a fine line between excellence and psychosis. These athletes push themselves too hard and the temptation to cheat is too much. It’s not fair to put that much pressure on people to succeed as an act of patriotism. Not only that, we as a race focus too much on physical excellence… what about games to scintillate the intellect? New games should be devised to showcase cerebral excellence along side physical displays.
The Olympics need to be overhauled. While some games should remain to allow athletes to showcase their personal abilities and earn medals, the games should be altered to force nations to work together for the win. The only thing that comes between people everywhere is the perception that we are in some way different from one another. If Olympic athletes were forced to cooperate with one another in order to compete, it would go a long way towards forging a sense of brotherhood which is severely lacking in the current games. Borders and politics only perpetuate the illusion that we are not one race. If the Olympics are meant to bring us together, then they must be altered to do so.
June 27th
The Sun Dance is performed by many Plains Indian tribes to honor the summer sun. A special crow totem may be adorned with feathers. Held by the relative of a victim of murder, it will indicate the identity of the killer.
The Initium Aestatis was the Roman festival of the beginning of summer. It honored Aestas, the tutelary goddess of summer.
Julian the Blessed, champion of pagan religions, died in 363. An excellent book about his life just came out recently called The Last Pagan.
Rain today meant rainy weather for the next seven weeks.
On this date in the year 1956, prolific Wiccan author Scott Cunningham was born in Royal Oak, Michigan. He was initiated into Wicca in 1973 and the Ancient Pictish Gaelic Way in 1981.
Comments (8)
I can see where you are coming from
Some countries put a lot of pressure on their atheletes. They get special treatment from their government and some of them look cloned. It just doesn’t seem like excellence to me. I was a competition swimmer in the 70′s and we had pressure just for the area meets. I didn’t like how uptight I was becoming as I was a very young swimmer with talent and was getting a bit of a swollen head. They would baby me before a meet and I was relieved when my folks quit the club to build a cabin in the mountains. I still love to swim (water dog that I am), but for joy not trying to win. I am a fan of the Dalai Lama and my last car had a bumper sticker that said: Free Tibet! I’m grateful for the internet as I see it doing more healing and making a more global community than anything thing else. I hold this thought.
i never really liked watching the olympics so i can’t exactly say im boycotting it for the tibetan cause but i will not watch it in any case. i really like the dhalia lama. i think he’s pretty cool and funny at times
@Jaynebug -
I read Dalai Lama’s books and find them inspirational even today. Apparently, there are contradictions surrounding the Dalai Lama in reality. You can read about it at the following article.
i’m a contra, too! http://www.disinfo.com/archive/pages/dossier/id393/pg1/
@Wes_Gumbo - Thank you for this information. Alas, even when I think I know, I know nothing at at.
@Wes_Gumbo - This is really interesting. I’m going through the “more information” links right now. I knew that Tibet was a serf-state, but not that they practiced actual slavery. Some might quibble that serfdom is slavery, but I’d like to know how this slavery worked in Tibet. Are the writers of such articles using the word slave as a synonym of serf, or are/were there actual slaves, bought and sold, in Tibet? What was the nature of slavery in Tibet? Was it like American slavery or more like Grecian slavery? Did the people themselves feel enslaved? And if so, why do they continue to fight against the Chinese if they’ve been “freed?” Do they even want the Dalai Lama back? I mean, has anyone bothered to go in and ask the common people what they want? It seems to me, and the articles seem to support, that nothing has really changed for the people under Chinese control. So if the Chinese are treating them the same as the Tibetan government did, why don’t the Tibetans welcome the Chinese? That’s what doesn’t jive for me. If the Tibetan people were really so oppressed as that, why did they not revolt against the Tibetan government but continue to fight against the Chinese?
I hate politics… nothing’s ever quite what they tell you it is. :-/
I still don’t believe China should host the Olympics regardless of the Tibet issue.They’re still guilty of violating various human rights within their own country.
I used to love the image of a Shangri-la Tibet, Dalai Lama’s books and the movie “7 years in Tibet”. Later to find that the mountaineer Heinrich Harrer in his autobiography “7 years in Tibet” was in fact a Nazi. I was so intrigued and started my search on the net. There are so much information about Tibet and Dalai Lama. A lot of them are bias. You need to do a lot of filtering. But the more you look, the more facts you will find. I don’t want to make a judgment but there are facts that I can’t deny. If you are interested, here are some links to get you started.
http://www.youtube.com/watchv=tr46ApMFXzk&feature=related
http://dir.salon.com/story/news/feature/1998/07/13/news/
http://www.workers.org/ww/tibet1204.htmlhttp://www.slate.com/id/3456/
http://www.slate.com/id/3456/
http://english.pravda.ru/opinion/columnists/104872-foolishnesschinatibet-0
http://www.newspiritualbible.com/index2.html
http://newschecker.blogspot.com/search?q=Dalai+Lama%2C+A+Hero+in+the+Western+World
I definitely see where you are coming from. I can’t believe that the Olympic committee decided to have the Olympics in Beijing this year. It just doesn’t seem right!