For the same reason I dislike the Olympics, of course and I dislike the Olympics for the same reasons I dislike McDonalds and Coca Cola and Nike and all the other rapacious multinational corporations that milk humanity like a herd of cattle while pretending it's a noble endeavour. Hosting this event costs huge amounts of money and it doesn't necessarily repay the investment, at least not to those out of whose hide it comes. With the hordes of foreign visitors being herded away from local vendors selling local food and African products; with long-time venues for those vendors being reserved for large, foreign sponsors, McDonalds and Coke will get the lion's share and the locals will have to forage like jackals for the leavings.
Will South Africa be a better place for South Africans after the noise stops and the clean-up begins? Does history hinge on whether or not a bunch of ball kickers from the Netherlands beat their counterparts from Uruguay and will international relations be more peaceful or tolerant because of anything that happens here? Will any of it matter ten minutes after it's all over? I have a hard time believing that the health or the wealth or the education of South Africans will see a benefit commensurate with all the noise and expense. Even the infernal Vuvuzelas are made in China.
It's true, I have little taste for watching men running around kicking things or for the feral screams of crazed viewers blowing into noisemakers as though anything happening in the arena was of any consequence whatever unless it was to the already huge profits of Nike or the sellers of beer and cigarettes -- or plastic horns. I have a greater distaste for the mass purveyors of opiates, even the real and quiet ones.
Panis et circenses, bread and circuses; it's a tried and true way to calm the animals in the feed lots and holding pens; to pacify the proletarii and the slaves while the emperors and the senators grew fatter. Gooooooooooooooal!
Capt. Fogg,
ReplyDeleteTried to send a comment but it didn't post.
Anyhow, no doubt there's truth in what you say about sports being modern panis et circenses. But there's another angle to consider:
Much of our energy in life goes towards generating significance for what we say and do. That seems to me equally true of the "real-life" things and the openly contrived ones (sports and other kinds of entertainment). Many critiques of sports posit an absolute divide between real life and sports/entertainment, but it doesn't hold up well: in the end, we might say, the "meaning" of everything is contrived -- it matters because we keep saying and acting as if it does.
My favorite treatment of this insight is the gloomy medieval Buddhist monk Yoshida Kenko's Essays in Idleness, Section 137, in which he compares the life process to the before, during, and after of a festival. After all the noise and excitement, one is left with empty streets and nothing but the cleanup work to do. "Life," writes Kenko, "is like that." Kenko was an Eeyore even for a medieval monk, but I've found his writings worthwhile.
Insightful as usual, and the thoughts of zen masters have been my lifelong companions.
ReplyDeleteThe idea of victory however, would bring out the snark in a boddhisatva and there is much in the zen of sweeping the street.
"After enlightenment, chopping wood and carrying water" sez Basho
There's just an endless circle in the pursuit of meaningless conquest, the making of noise, the taking of money from hungry hands, the grotesque nationalism, the greed.
It's the greedy exploitation by our corporate aristocracy and the enthusiastic complicity in the effort to make us all dependent proles that makes me want to spend the rest of my life at Nanzenji or on an empty island or in a cave.
Da, said Brahma to the humans. They understood it as Datta: give, be charitable, be not greedy. But that was long ago and in another country.
Om, shanti om.