Loosely Connected Thoughts On The Olympics

[poliphilo]

1. Once every four years we take the temperature of planet Earth.

Every nation turns up. Every nation is watching. 

It's too big an event for governments to control, though- God knows- they try.

Interesting things- horrible and inspiring- will happen in spite of the wishes of government.


2. All governments are horrid. Some are more horrid than others. 

The Chinese government is almost certainly less horrid than it was in the days of Chairman Mao.

There's no way the governments of the USA and the UK can lecture China about Tibet while they still have troops in Iraq, etc, etc...

The Beijing Olympics has opened China up to the rest of world. This is almost certainly a good thing.


3. My Radio Times contains a guide to the Olympics. In every event it gives me the name of a "Brit to Watch". What a ugly phrase! What an ugly idea!

How lovely if it were all about youth, beauty, speed, strength, grace- but it's not. It's mainly about nationalism.

Those American athletes turning up in Beijing wearing face masks- what rank bad manners!

Flags and national anthems should be banned and athletes should compete as individuals. Fat chance!


4. The Bird's Nest stadium is really pretty. 

This icon of the new China was designed by Swiss architects. 

Lots of homes were demolished to free up the site. The displaced people say they have received no compensation. 

Ach- the moral complexity...

Comments

[jackiejj.livejournal.com]

And rice farmers nearby were told not to grow rice for awhile, due to the need for water in Bejing, which uses much water and will need more for the olympics tourists.

I think the US team wearing masks is being provocative and tacky.

As for nationalism, our reptilian brains are still in control. "It's us against them," said Carl Sagan, "right down to the amoeba." I guess we'll have to be patient until we evolve. It was pointed out on a science program I saw that, if the period of time that life has been on earth could be condensed to a single year, then invertebrate life appeared in January and not until November did vertebrate life, in the form of fish with backbones, appear. Humans, of course, came even after that. We are still very young, but unfortunately we are primitive and violent and too smart--we know how to smelt and blow things up.

If Jesus wants to come back, now might be a good time.

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

But if he did, we'd put him right back there on the cross.

Or else ignore him as a crank.

We're very primitive beasts, aren't we?

[jackiejj.livejournal.com]

It amazes me that we reptilian brains, born in the eleventh hour on earth, have somehow managed to land a probe on Titan, Saturn's moon, and discover its ethane seas.

If we are so primitive and so young and yet do so much, maybe there is still hope for us.

If not, if there is sentient life everywhere (which is my hope), then we will fade and something else somewhere else will still evolve.

Maybe part of my own primitive makeup makes me yearn for a goal--Teilhard's Omega Point will do in the long view of things--but Evolve! Seems to be the message of the universe.

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

I'm sure there are other civilisations out there. And I wouldn't be at all surprised if they were monitoring us.

Michael Newton suggests that planet Earth is one of the more interesting places in the universe. I don't find that hard to believe.

I think we are evolving- and doing so very fast. We've gone from the Ptomelaic universe and the invention of printing to space travel and the Internet in something like half a Millennium. Yes, we're primitive, but we also have this quite amazing ability to learn.

[jackiejj.livejournal.com]

I've begun to wish that telepathy might be next for us in our evolution, and perhaps an opening to other dimensions, because we are so isolated in our own heads. Maybe that's part of the early reptilian us-against-them place where we are. Wouldn't it be wonderful if the Noosphere would be available to our minds, and we would be less alone?

Why not? Who knows anything about this stuff?

IF Jesus did come here to try to explain things, then what he said was mostly that we don't have a clue about the invisible and more significant realm--kingdom--all around us.

Maybe that's our next frontier, and much much more interesting than Mars.

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

I'm not sure about telepathy. I was watching this episode of STTNG the other day where this poor telepath was suffering terribly from all the voices in his head.

Who knows what comes next- maybe something utterly unexpected. First Contact, for example.

[jackiejj.livejournal.com]

I am totally in with First Contact.

As long as it happens to somebody else.