Some Old Baggage, and Olympics

I have an aversion to witnessing live coverage of the Olympics and in fact any sports coverage overall. I don’t watch sports news with pleasure, although I intellectually consider sport a noble endeavour. My heart always burns up with annoyance that athletes achieve incessant recognition, while others, who are perhaps more deserving, don’t. It is not fair.

So much attention on a national scale is paid to the physical endeavours. In fact growing up, authority figures seemed not to have any value for my particular greatnesses as a creative person—in art, drama, performance, and visualization of elaborate scenarios pertaining to those fields—though they will, patronizingly, allow me to perform when my talent begs for such an outlet of expression: Lip Sync competitions, Scouting for Talent, et cetera, none of which had an artist-development program attached thereto.

What do athletes DO to change the course of history? Can their participation in games stop genocide? Can their world records end hunger? Can their careers and trophies increase the economic robustness of their respective nations? What does the world benefit from ‘the love of the game’? And what do sportsmen really do to encourage their fans to live in peace with fellow men, no matter their nationality or club allegiance? What is the point of sport, besides personal fitness, in the wider world? Is it really responsible in this badly under-evolved world, to simply be a sportsman, uninvolved with intelligently addressing the passions, often life-threatening, galvanized by sport? How do their life-altering (for them) experiences really touch the lives and minds of their average countrymen?

And why is it that they get the chance to represent their countries on a world scale, more than I do, I who do now and have always tried to have a vision that goes beyond the ability to run 100 m in a couple of seconds? How can it be that Olympic sport, which comes around but once every four years, has more of an influence on the world’s psyches than music or drama, which are used to accentuate sporting events worldwide, which people listen to daily and around the clock with super-religious frequency? Why do they get to put on country colours and be told by their country’s leaders that they have made a difference in the world, even be given national money for training and glory, whilst budding original artists, poets and songwriters, Bob Marleys and Miriam Makebas, are scoffed off as wannabes, rather than as a cadre of unique national ambassadors capable of changing mindsets throughout the world?

I am deeply displeased that no one in authority ever seems to notice the unfair disparity of respect accorded to excellence in fields other than sport or academia, but especially to the field of sport.

No one in authority bothered to attempt a campaign demonstrating the equal value that creative endeavours such as drama, literature or art contributed to civilization in a fundamental (not ornamental or decorative) way. It is not fair to be valued less, on a national and international scale, and to be treated as less than someone who is simply better endowed physically, or more inclined to physical exertion than myself. I know that my talent is world-class; but how can I prove it to people busy applauding El Guerrouj or Michael Jordan? So what can I do? Withdraw my eyes, my attention, my conscious and vocal support—just as has been done to me.

At the time of this writing, August 13^th 2008, American actor and comedian Bernie Mac is not yet cold in his grave, having died at age 50, on 9^th August 2008, of complications arising from pneumonia. No one is likely to offer him a posthumous Nobel Peace Prize. Yet I consider Bernie Mac to be a singular agent for genocide prevention and the peace prerogative in his own native country, the United States of America. His situation comedy show, named after himself, was devoted (as far as I could see) to dealing with the question of ethnic identity in the context of human identity in the United States. Not only did it tackle this question in terms of ‘race’ relations but also economic attitudes, appropriate impetus for litigation of one’s neighbours of whatever colour, cultural attitudes to masculinity and femininity, and simple family issues such as fertility and privacy between siblings.

As far as I am concerned Bernie Mac was a kind of new Bill Cosby, for a new generation of young African Americans and Caucasian Americans, showing what wonders could be done with a little humour and both kinds of ethnic identity (wrt black-white dichotomy), not just one, in a free nation, with opportunities for education, affluence, and the emancipation demonstrated by ethnic versatility. It seemed to me he tried to demystify, on television, the 'other'ness of Black Americans to white ones, and vice versa.

No worldwide crowd will congratulate his family for his achievements—and far less the American entertainment industry and economy for facilitating such achievements. They will insist that Bernie Mac was a puppet and goon for American materialism, based on the supposed opulence of his fictitious house; they will say that he was a sellout in some parts of Black America; and yet again they will say that he added no intellectual depth to the persons of his ethnicity in the minds of White Americans looking. But I, as a person who appreciates the rigors of drama, loves story, and is extremely sensitive to racial and simple human inter-group tensions, I know his heroic worth.

Where is his gold medal?

I know they say money makes the world go around, so the reason why Olympics is so big even tho it's just sports, is money-related. But I really don't buy that. How much more money could you make by hosting Olympics for inventors and philosophers, people whose ideas form the currency that informs civilization? It's all about attitude, perception, and again...evolution. The human brain is still very animal, very caveman like. It is much more stimulated by what is visually exciting than by what is abstract. But why do we have to encourage that? No mother would keep lifting her baby knowing that it had to learn to walk. Why do we still encourage masses of our species to keep creeping intellectually? It's great to achieve, to struggle, to win, yes. But why is worldwide acclaim given only consciously to sport???

I always said I wanted to be a dancesport athlete if I would enter Olympics for anything. I won't hold my breath waiting for them to make room for that, never mind that music, more than any javelin throwing or sprint race, has vastly increased in volume and quality over the hundreds of thousands of years since the Olympics came into being. I know that they have their agenda. I'll have mine. Don't expect my life to stop because of the Olympics (as it currently is). Olympics can kiss my brown bubbly ass.

Citizens of The World...and Patriots

Mystic Melange's "On Patriotism" is a well-thought out essay. It makes a great case for not affording patriotism to Trinidad and Tobago, a fairly new nation which only achieved independence from colonial rule in 1962, 46-odd years ago. I am in full agreement with her reasons to not exhibit patriotism , towards Trinidad and Tobago ,in its currently bourgie-practiced form.

However, this essay does NOT make any case whatsoever for choosing the United States of America as a target for her-- or any Trini's-- patriotic energies. The USA is a very old nation which achieved independence from colonial rule hundreds of years ago, and is not necessarily evolving towards a true fruition of its core ideals-- life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness-- but is rather, according to some, truly devolving from it.

There are too many instances in which the United States of America has betrayed the viewpoint and spirit of its Founding Fathers, and thereby, the well-being of not only the world but itself, for me to enumerate here, even as under-informed as I am. But I can cite one:

The separation of Church and State -- something which US policymakers insist many Islamic countries ought to achieve so that they can run their countries properly-- is under continual pressure in US politics. So says Richard Dawkins, atheist author of The Selfish Gene and The God Delusion, in the latter book.

According to Dawkins, increasingly frequent calls by many Christians for legislation against homosexuality, common-law relationships, and abortion, as well as prejudicial attitudes against Islam (imagine if Barack had been a Muslim), show them to be increasingly ignorant of the words of the Tripoli Treaty of 1797, the year the British took over Trinidad and Tobago:

"As the Government of the United States of America is not, in any sense, founded on the Christian religion; as it has in itself no character of enmity against the laws, religion, or tranquillity, of Musselmen; and as the said States never have entered into any war or act of hostility against any Mehomitan nation, it is declared by the parties that no pretext arising from religious opinions shall ever produce an interruption of the harmony existing between the two countries." (bold mine)

Also consider the growing freedom to promote intolerance in (of all places) the United States of America: "In 2004 James Nixon, a twelve year old boy in Ohio, won the right in court to wear a T-shirt to school bearing the words 'Homosexuality is a sin, Islam is a lie, abortion is murder. Some issues are just black and white!' The school told him not to wear the T-shirt-- and the boy's parents sued the school...Their victorious lawsuit was supported by the Alliance Defense Fund of Arizona, whose business it is to 'press the legal battle for religious freedom'."


What I do not understand is why Mystic Melange and others seem to believe that exchanging one hypocritical and decaying society for another larger one is a sort of pseudo-sacrificial virtue worthy of defense. Let me be clear: Trinidad and Tobago is not a land I am currently proud of, even though I too, take pleasure in parang, bake and shark, Shadow, Machel and 3Canal. But by the same token of rational and objective analysis of pros against cons, especially in the practice of principles which benefit the human being, neither is the United States of America a land of which I am proud.

I would far sooner pledge allegience with the one mouth that God gave me to Canada or Switzerland, for at least they do not bandy about grand phrases like "life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness" without truly understanding how universally valuable these things are to the rest of the world or to the rest of their citizens homosexual, atheist, or the like, whatever the US political interests may be therein.

At the very least, they do not encourage complacency among their people towards persons of the outside world. How much has the Canadian Gender Equity Fund done in countries around the world? What is their equivalent in the United States? How many refugees has Switzerland taken in per world conflict since 1939? Do they have an equivalent in the United States?

Has Mystic Melange really studied these things before deciding, common-American-style, that the easiest way is the best, and that it is moral to pledge your allegiance and energy to a country which for all intents and purposes is the biggest political and moral whore the history of mankind has seen given its original closeness to a commitment to the best within man and the best intentions of men for man?

I wish you the best on your journey to truth.