I have memories of 15 summer Olympics! Hazy the further back I go, in fact, I think the very first one in 1956, was only on radio, we didn’t have a TV.
Leaving aside the heroic efforts of the athletes, which should always be the core essence of why these sorts of events are held, my enduring memories of Olympics past were often about the less than stellar attitudes of national governments, religious groups, and the general prejudice of ordinary people when it came to showing respect to countries and athletes who were not of ‘their’ kind.
It seemed also that elements of the press deliberately went out of their way to report in biased ways, and probably government officials were right in there with them, for the high-profile Olympics were regarded as a God-given opportunity to get in as many politically and religiously motivated digs as they could.
Were several generations of world social development stunted by the display of such ignorance and stupidity? Wars were endorsed by poorly informed populations, reinforced, it seems in retrospect, by negative reporting of Olympics, always a touch paper for nasty attitudes. Were the media being used, or were they, like everyone else, taking their cue from the harsh political opinions of the day? There was no quick way to check information in those grim years from the middle of the twentieth century. Once ill-conceived remarks were said, there was plenty of time to let them sink in.
What we heard in the news was what we thought back then; but gradually, as the years have slipped by, we have all witnessed and participated in an extraordinary revolution in communication technology, which seems to be reflecting a much more tolerant and informed attitude at the 2012 Olympic Games.
Yes, the little back room squabbles and wars go on, but thankfully there aren’t the same opportunities to score big political points, indirectly spouted through the mouths of commentators, coaches, players and fans. Way back when, no one was immune from the hurtful effects of propaganda; through our ignorance we simply allowed misrepresentation to occur. Now, however, we don’t have to accept second-hand information, we can Google it, call folks in the know, become much more personally aware of actualities, and as a result can more genuinely appreciate what the peoples of the world are all about.
My greatest desire is to witness the establishment of BIG GG, Global Governance, a high level of world administration that will take as its mandate, for starters, the protection of the air, water, atmospheres and land resources of this tiny planet. National agendas can’t cut too much more ice; world populations, developed as well as emerging, teeter on the edge of enormous difficulties if those natural essentials do not remain pristine for all time.
In developing new Global Laws, there is a strong need to express, in the clearest legal terms, what constitute serious crimes against the planet. We know crimes are being committed, we see the results of it on TV daily, and read about the incredible carnage in the newspapers, perpetrated on the slimmest of excuses. We know that greed and unscrupulous behaviour will be stopped by nothing less than laws which can transcend private interests, and be enforceable throughout the world.
The Olympics are a clear window into the condition of the human soul. What we take away from each Olympic Games, overall, advises us about who and what we are at this point in human history. From now on, through the explosion of communication, we can see for ourselves the areas of good progress and continued intransigence in our social development. We are aware that with hard work and persistence, something that athletes live with every day of their lives, there is room to greatly improve the human score card in the very near future.
tetralogia 