I can’t help notice the gestures of Olympic athletes after they score — a nice shot, a point, a goal, a winning run or swim. Three responses stand out. The loudest, yet least offensive to this writer are responses of Chinese women competing in table tennis and badminton. Several of these otherwise seemingly placid reticent individuals favor blood-curdling screams of 2–3 seconds after winning a point, game, or match. I’m talking loud, no restraint. As surprising as is this departure from our propagandized illusions of Asian inscrutability, it seems like a release of tension more than anything. So I enjoy it.
A quieter response, moderately disturbing, came from a Brazilian footballer (soccer), who repeatedly drew his hand across his throat on each scored goal, indicating his murder of his opponents. Unsurprising given the ethos of sport in the context of a socioeconomic system in which the murder of aboriginals, the biosphere, and impoverished children is routine.
Yet the most disturbing to me is the quietest response, usually soft, non-threatening gestures accompanied by a skyward tilt of the head. Yes folks, it was indeed some sky-being who scored that goal; certainly not the athlete’s training, conditioning, and skill at the sport. It was the lord, no sorry, THE LORD. Yeah him, the all powerful, all knowing one, who favored your human ass at that very moment in history, while presumably dissing your opponents. Pulleese — how folks cling to childhood fairy tales about special cloud-beings seems to me an example of jungian projection of our own narcissism. I might have more interest if they told me to pray to a ponderosa pine or a sitka spruce. Hell, trees are steadfast, community players in ecosystems: Noble, trustworthy entities. By contrast I can hardly fail to be skeptical of whatever it is whose image and likeness is supposedly reflected in humans! Tree sap seems far more dependable than Homo sap.
And that old adage about rendering unto Caesar seems appropriate.