Olympic Torch Protests

I can't help but find all the fuss and protest surrounding the Olympic torch intriguing, if not outright validating.

What were the Olympics? What was their purpose? What have they become?

The first recorded games were held in 776 b.c.e. (although scholars have suggested dates for the first games ranging from 884 - 704 b.c.e.) - the games continued to be celebrated until 393 c.e.

As noted in Wkipedia:

The Olympics were of fundamental religious importance, contests alternating with sacrifices and ceremonies honouring both Zeus (whose colossal statue stood at Olympia), and Pelops, divine hero and mythical king of Olympia famous for his legendary chariot race, in whose honour the games were held.

Upon winning the games, the victor would have not only the prestige of being in first place but would also be presented with a crown of olive leaves. The olive branch is a sign of hope and peace.

The original games being held within Greece, the competition was never between rival countries, but rather, between rival athletes - and although the games were considered a celebration of the achievements of the human body, the ritual importance of the games and the olive branch crown suggest a greater importance being placed on the greatness (i.e. - the hope which compels continually towards the attainment of peace) which can potentially be attained through the joyful marriage of human will and divine grace.

It has not been until the revival of modern times that the Olympics have become a stage upon which the ugliness of nationalism has strutted about, seizing achievement from the athlete in order to beautify itself.

The modern Olympics has an interesting history of serving as another sort of international stage - one for boycott and protest. The "Olympics" entry in Wikipedia has some interesting information regarding this - I find the following to be very interesting in light of the recent torch-ceremony controversy:

Also in 1976, due to pressure from the People's Republic of China (PRC), Canada told the team from the Republic of China (Taiwan) that it could not compete at the Montreal Summer Olympics under the name "Republic of China" despite a compromise that would have allowed Taiwan to use the ROC flag and anthem. The Republic of China refused and as a result did not participate again until 1984, when it returned under the name "Chinese Taipei" and used a special flag.

So when the Mao Tse-tung and the communists drove the socialists off of mainland Asia onto the island known as Taiwan, the People's Republic of China considered "those people" unfit to refer to themselves as a "Chinese Republic" and they were refused entry to the "stadion" (Greek: "Στάδιον") by the entire global community until the ROC finally yielded to changing their name two Olypiads later. Tibet, on the other hand, 1) not identifying with the ideological precepts of communism, 2) having had a period of autonomous self-rule (however short-lived), 3) being ethnically distinct from the Han ethnic majority of China, and 4) speaking a language having stronger resemblance to Sanskrit than to either Mandarin or Cantonese, is being subjected to the iron fist of Chinese tyranny, and the media decries those around the world protesting the Olympics and disturbing the torch run as "detracting for the glory of the athletes and the games." [ed. note: quotes indicate a generalized, hypothetical yet typical speech of perceived public and media attention, not reference to the Wikipedia entry.]

A shady and checkered history indeed. Let's not forget the infamous "Nazi" Olympics of 1936, which rather than serving to commemorate the greatness (i.e. - the hope which compels continually towards the attainment of peace) which can potentially be attained through the joyful marriage of human will and divine grace, commemorated NAZI ideology and served as a backdrop for NAZI propoganda. The most brilliant achievement of those games was attained by Luz Long, a German track and field star who, having given advice to fellow long-jumper and fellow human being Jesse Owens (a black American), ensured that Owens would win the gold medal, rather than himself. Although no "proper" Olympic medal was awarded to Long to commemorate his shining victory over the numinous shadow of fascist ideology, he "was posthumously awarded the Pierre de Coubertin medal."

The salute delivered by German athletes during those games contrasts sharply with those delivered by Tommie Smith and John Carlos at the 1968 Olympics in Mexico City. I highly recommend checking the Wikipedia entry for the 1968 Olympics Black Power Salute:

IOC president Avery Brundage deemed a domestic political statement unfit for the apolitical, international forum the Olympic Games was supposed to be...A spokesperson for the organization said it was "a deliberate and violent breach of the fundamental principles of the Olympic spirit."

What does it mean to make a political statement? What does it mean to make a humanist statement? Slavery, lynching, rape, abduction, exploitation - these are humanist concerns. They become "political" when they are sanctioned by the State. That slavery, lynching, rape, abduction, exploitation have been sanctioned by the United States of America in various degrees ranging from legislative positivism (legality of slavery) to the outright conspiratorial (intentional non-treatment of black syphilis patients as a "scientific" experiment - an episode which went without apology from the U.S. government to the black community until President William J. Clinton) certainly renders the protest of such concerns "political," yet that by no means negates their relevance to the idea of humanism which we have come to consider to constitute "the fundamental principles of the Olympic spirit." Which is to say, humanist protest remains so even after becoming political.

Smith later said "If I win, I am American, not a black American. But if I did something bad, then they would say I am a Negro. We are black and we are proud of being black. Black America will understand what we did tonight."

Let's pause for a moment and consider why it is that the Olympics are such a conducive medium for the distasteful anti-humanism of nation-statism (as well as it's uglier brother, fascism) yet non-conducive as a medium for the athletes who, as individuals, take a stand for the unique and undimishable value of the experience of human existence (humanism)?

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Did you pause?

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Other items of note:

The leadership of IOC president Juan Antonio Samaranch especially has been strongly criticised. Under his presidency, the Olympic Movement made great progress, but has been seen as autocratic and corrupt. Samaranch's ties with Franco's regime in Spain and his long term as a president (21 years, until he was 81 years old) have also been points of critique.

A BBC documentary aired in August 2004, entitled Panorama: "Buying the Games", investigated the taking of bribes in the bidding process for the 2012 Summer Olympics. The documentary claimed it is possible to bribe IOC members into voting for a particular candidate city.

It (the Olympic Movement) was accused of homophobia in 1982 when it successfully sued the Gay Olympics, an event now known as the Gay Games, to ban it from using the term "olympics" in its name.

Other links of note:
Olympic Project for Human Rights.

Dan Millman, "winner of the 1964 World Trampoline Championship in London" though not being an Olympian, was nonetheless an athlete of exception. Here are links to his Wikipedia entry and his personal site.

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To say the least, I feel as though the modern Olympic games bear no relation whatsoever to the historical origin of the games (outside all considerations of athletics, of course). Rather, the games have come to embody not merely nationalism, nor fascism, but the supremacy of the State over the will of the individual, in the same Orwellian inversion by which tyranny prances about, all tarted-up, donning the garb of liberty and sleazy make-up, remaining nothing but a whore, that "political manipulation of language, by obfuscation, e.g. WAR IS PEACE...Using language to obfuscate meaning or to reduce and eliminate ideas and their meanings that are deemed dangerous to its authority." What has come to matter more than the achievement of the athlete, than the joint participation of so many diverse nations of the world, than the greatness (i.e. - the hope which compels continually towards the attainment of peace) which can potentially be attained through the joyful marriage of human will and divine grace - is the salute to the flags of nations, a ritual embracing perhaps the most intrinsic, pervasive human quality and its correlative tendency: Fear and the submission thereof. If I am reading the historical dialectic correctly, than the outward phenomenon of protest against the progress of the torch is in essence a protest against the globally-united State apparatus of fear. I have not yet fully renounced the making of politic statements. Nevertheless, if I had already done so, I would continue to write what I am about to write, as it would not constitute a political statement, but a humanist one: I am in full support of the "Peaceful Warriors," be they on the streets on London, be they on the streets of Paris, be they on the streets of San Francisco, be they on the streets of New York, Washington DC, Chicago, Mexico City, Lhasa, be they upon the winner's blocks of the 1968 Olympics, be they upon the bricks of the Square of the Gate of Heavenly Peace (otherwise known as Tiananmen Square, 天安门广场).

Let's expand the boycott and have done with this militaristic nonsense of medals altogether. Rather, let's make ourselves worthy of the olive-crown of hope and peace, thereby re-gaining the true essence of what it means to be an "Olympian" - may we all walk as "gods" upon the earth - as individuated embodiments of peace, light, and love.

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I now provide a closing statement - written February 23, 2006:

One often hears talk of the world - that great nations have produced a great people, a great language, law, philosophy, literature, art, music, cuisine - all those things absent-mindedly aggregated to produce our vague notion of culture.

Yet just as one cannot suggest that the scoundrels and villains of a great nation are somehow greater than those of a nation of lesser calibre, it cannot be said that a great nation is capable of producing a great people. On the contrary, quite the opposite is true: It is the greatness of individuals which constitutes the apparent greatness of a nation.

Exceptional & extraordinary ones take birth, live and die the world over. If it can be said that a society is great, it must necessarily be on account of its capacity to allow greatness to be sown, to take root, to bud, blossom and flourish. Is the soil dark and rich? Or is it salty, bitter and pallid? Is the blue sky clear? Or hung heavy with jaundiced haze? Does it take to cloud and bestow its nourishing rain-bounty? Or miserly withhold its blessing? Is the environment amenable and generous, or populated by ravagers and rapists?

Society, by its very nature, inclines itself not towards Eden: Rather, let it not be said that a society is great - let it be known that it must necessarily be that those individuals of greatness, those exceptional and extraordinary ones - are able to manifest their greatness in spite of the adversities necessarily set against them by society. So simple for the children of the earth to be as gods! So extraordinary for the children of modernity!

Christopher