Life is full of countdowns: number of hours until the weekend, minutes until the New Year, days until Kansas repeats as National Champs in the NCAA. Fortunately for us students, the “days until the beginning of summer” countdown is nearly over.
My most recent countdown? The 2008 Beijing Olympics.
The atmosphere of the Games is different this time around, though. My normal enthusiasm, knowing it only comes around every four years, has been suppressed this year by all the negative media surrounding the event.
Maybe it’s because I’m older now and understand that the status of the games reflects the social stability of the world. It could be all the protests from various groups leading up to the event. Or maybe my ill feeling is a result of the mandatory drug testing for all athletes before competing because of infractions in previous years.
But, for whatever reason, all the controversy about the event this year has cast a negative light on the tradition as a whole. Since its inception in 1896, the Olympics has been about unity-a chance for countries to set aside differences and engage in healthy competition.
Somewhere along the line, however, the meaning behind the Games changed. What was once “Who prepared the best?” is now “Who cheated the best?” It’s no longer about creating a collective world identity, but about the competition itself and doing whatever it takes to win.
It’s hard to say what should be done about this problem, because who is to blame for this shift in meaning? The media? The Olympic athletes? No. We are all at fault.
The same themes that we have seen in recent Olympics-underhandedness and a win-at-all-costs mentality-are the same themes we encounter on a daily basis in the workplace, schools and, perhaps the most pervasive medium, the media. In turn, young people pick up on our society’s “winning-is-everything” mentality, and you can see how it spreads from there.
This macro-level problem, like so many other problems the world is facing these days (think global warming), needs to be resolved on the micro-level scale. At some point, each individual has to realize that his or her decision to get involved (or not get involved) will affect others. Until we understand the purpose of the Olympic Games, they will continue to be just “a set of competitions,” rather than a unification of diverse people.
I have an idea for another countdown: number of days until the people in our world wake up and facilitate a global effort to fix the problems right on our doorstep. The Olympics would be a good place to start, but the question is: To what day are we counting down?
Dan Hunninghake is a sophomore in the College of Arts and Sciences.
