Missed the Olympics - Again Part 2

I was talking to a friend the other day about the Olympics and the fact that I found it more than a little absurd that the world could spend up to 50 billion dollars on a two week celebration of elite sports while each day hundreds of people were dying in Syria. The person I was chatting to suggested that I was comparing apples to oranges, that there was really very little correlation between how much a country spends on sports as compared to whether or not they contribute to world peace or try to do something to stop people from starving.

I disagree. I think there is a direct link between how much money we spend on assisting those countries who are less able to function well and how much we spend within our country to support what some refer to as our cultural activities.  Clearly a country that can (or its individual citizens can) devote resources to supporting its elite athletes will have less money to devote to its international humanitarian aid . Living in a intergenerational era where reduced taxes are the ideal - there is clearly not enough money to do either well.  I think the question that needs to be addressed is what are our priorities?

 

The argument that is sometimes made (as it certainly was by a number of my students in some of the classes I taught at college) is that we as a country do not have enough money to do everything; that we should focus helping people inside Canada; that people from other parts of the world cannot and should not be our priority.  This argument might have a slight tinge of truth if there was any sign of any political will to deal with the issues of poverty, inequity of education and opportunity or the myriad of other issues that prevents Canadians from achieving their potential. But there are few indications that any political party that is, or has realistic dreams of becoming the ruling party will focus on solving those problems. Instead we accept promises of someone doing something in the future in exchange for promises to make our lives better in the short term.

While I hope I will always be uncomfortable in a world that puts personal satisfaction and comfort ahead of assisting  others, I would find it a bit more tolerable if  people would just be honest. If people could stop pretending that they gave a damn about the children and their families in sub-Saharan Africa or in parts of Central or South America or in the mindless ( and mind boggling)  chaos of the Middle East; if we could just admit that ensuring that the services we deemed to be necessary (like cheap cable and cell phone/internet rates) are the appropriate priorities of the government; that what we really want are more service for us and people like us (and that others pay higher taxes); if we could just admit that we are basically just selfish - it is not that I would be happy, but at least I would understand.

It is the hypocritical responses that drive me to toss and turn each night, of having endless arguments with myself about what needs to be said or done.  It is our seemingly endless capacity to lie to ourselves, to pretend that we are doing all that we can while doing as little as possible that sometimes paralyses  my thoughts.

Supporting elite athletes and eradicating hunger both within Canada and the rest of the world may not be mutually exclusive goals.  But they always will appear so unless we are honest with ourselves and each other.