Amongst my current open tabs are some news items I’ve reacted strongly to and have kept open with the intention to write about them. Two that pushed my buttons are about sport and its appurtenances:

From the end of the Olympics — Britain’s “tacky” handover show. Not polished or glitzy enough. Not expensive enough, basically. China’s Titan Sports Daily chided: “Unlike the Chinese custom, which tends not to reveal their weakness to the outsiders, the British seem to like to laugh about their stupidity in a funny way.” I don’t know whether the Brits laughed so much about themselves in the days when Britannia pwned, but one can only wish their latterday, grownup sense of humour on China. Lao Tzu would have understood.

From the alternative reality known as the Australian Olympic Committee — “Let’s beat Britain” at the London games. Australia would aim to finish in the top five in the medal tally, as a country of 20 million people should. Let the taxpayers bring tribute, yea, of silver and gold. No bronze, thanks; this is a serious pissing contest.

My buttons are pushed not because I think too much money is spent on elite sport — although I do think that — but because intense competitiveness worries me. It worries me because it goes beyond the sporting field. It chokes intentions to act for communal benefit before those intentions even begin to become efforts. Competition in itself is not a bad thing at all; it inspires innovation and encourages the hard work without which excellence is rarely achieved. But as a race we seem prone to let our competitive nature get wildly out of hand. The desire to reign supreme, to beat the other guy until he’s bleeding on the ropes, to win — or steal — everything and leave others with nothing, to build wealth for oneself no matter the cost in pollution or poverty for others — it all comes from the same poisonous root. And that root is, I think, fear. In the case of the wealthy and the up-and-coming, a particular register of fear — fear not of being the worst or the smallest, but of not being the best and the greatest. Fear of being laughed at or taken lightly, of losing face.

Opening the Tao te Ching at a random page: “When they have no false self to nourish or defend, they find that greed, hatred, and arrogance vanish by themselves.”

Trying the same thing with The Golden Asse, it opens at the very page where Apuleius, thinking to be turned into a bird, is turned into a donkey instead.

“But you were always a donkey,” said Pooh.
“So I was,” said Eeyore.

I am a donkey.