It's the Olympics

I spent last week in the hospital having some of my lower g.i. tract removed. It was a medical emergency; I almost died; and I narrowly escaped gangrene of my intestine.

TMI? I certainly hope so.

But the experience gave me some time to think. Hours and hours, actually, and in my ruminations I was only partially distracted by the television broadcast of the Olympic games out of London. NBC did an excellent job of bringing these games into our homes with only our remote controls to protect us.

Those who know me understand that I am not a sports fan. Never have been. Caveat: Cardinal baseball. But most sporting events, in my view, pale in comparison to watching paint dry as entertainment. So, I am not among the Americans who have been glued to the idiot box night after night in breathless anticipation of flying squirrels or feetless runners or any such thing. And the whole celebrity and hoopla surrounding these games leaves a taste in my mouth.

It occurs to me: is this really valuable ultimately? Millions are spent, so money changes hands, and at least the British economy gets a shot in the arm. But do we really want to send all the messages we are sending in this context? Let's take a look:

We are rewarding young people for devoting a significant part of their young lives training for thousands of man hours to do one small, simple, intrinsically valueless task very, very well. Okay, fine, self-discipline, a work ethic, a dedication to one's own passion, a sense of sportsmanship, fair competition, and the glamor of the world stage are all paradigms and experiences that are valuable to teach, if you can. Plus, there is a chance, while viewing this world stage, that we may come to feel a sense of community with the whole world,  a sense of community, of commonality, of shared humanity.

But from another viewpoint, do we want to send a message that after all these thousands of man hours of training, the athlete can flip around in mid air and plunge into water without making much splash. Then what? Can you get hired doing that? What is the value? What does that skill really get you?

Some athletes, I guess, parlay their medals into lifelong careers. Many, many don't. And after four or eight or 12 years or more of slicing into water splashlessly, what has been given to the world?

I would like to propose a different Olympics. I would like for us to reward our best contributors to the society with medals of gold, silver and bronze for competing and succeeding in feats of strength that include, for instance:

• finding a source of inexhaustible energy that doesn't tear up the planet

• destroying the HIV wherever and however it appears

• eliminating hunger all over the world

• finding a strong and inarguable reason why people should treat each other with fairness and justice — even when there is lots of money and power to be won by brutalizing people

• organizing working class people into a cohesive force that can resist the powers that be in industry — big money that can and will enslave us economically and in every way if it can

• curing cancer, diabetes and heart disease even though there is so much money to be made by somebody if we DON'T cure these diseases

The list goes on and on. 

Can we teach ourselves and our children that real achievement, real excellence may have little or nothing to do with athletics? It may have everything to do with a devotion of thousands of man hours toward math, science, social causes, and the academic disciplines that must be exploited to fix all of our many, many problems planet-wide.

Let's reward those real achievers with two weeks of prime time coverage and a fawning, worshipful audience of billions. Let's create mini-documentaries profiling real cutting edge scientists of a very young age and ask them to explain how their particular discipline stands a chance of improving life on earth.  Let's venerate the contributions of people whose contributions are valuable and leave behind the more questionable idolization of young people who render vertical dives with little splash.