The Reason I Did Not Watch The Olympics
Because, the Olympics don’t seem to me to be about individual athletes—about humans, any more. Because when an athlete wins, he usually wraps a flag around himself and gives away his own individuality in a violent act of division.
Perhaps if the system of athletes ‘representing’ certain nations is abolished, I will watch again some day, but I don’t think that day is near. Man’s great Quest, the quest for freedom, is so far away from peoples’ minds, yet nothing less than a global revolution in thought is required to set us free.
Down with flags and the disease called nationalism! Isn’t it time we all become citizens of the world?
“As human beings living in this monstrously ugly world, let us ask ourselves, can this society, based on competition, brutality and fear, come to an end? Not as an intellectual conception, not as a hope, but as an actual fact, so that the mind is made fresh, new and innocent and can bring about a different world altogether? It can only happen, I think, if each one of us recognises the central fact that we, as individuals, as human beings, in whatever part of the world we happen to live or whatever culture we happen to belong to, are totally responsible for the whole state of the world.
We are each one of us responsible for every war because of the aggressiveness of our own lives, because of our nationalism, our selfishness, our gods, our prejudices, our ideals, all of which divide us.”
— Jiddu Krishnamurti, Freedom From The Known, Chapter 1, 1969.
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1 On Wednesday 27 August 2008 at 15:50 GMT thus spake BKG:
What about when some competitions/sports feature multiple athletes from the same country? For example the men’s sprinting. Or even the women’s doubles ping pong (the final was between two Chinese teams). If the athletes were only competing for their countries what would be their motivation to compete in these cases? Also the mutual and deep respect athletes from different nations show each other during the competition also belie a respect and understanding that a lot of the sports are about individual excellence rather than national glory.