Patriotism In The Olympics

When it comes to patriotism produced by an event we instantly think of the Olympic Games, dating back to 776 BC the games come with rich history surrounding mythology, athleticism and of course nationalism. Today the Olympics are an international symbol that almost anyone can refer to. The large event holds the hearts of patriots around the world, whether you're there live to see it all in action or your eyes are most likely glued to any screen you can find, whether that's in a sports bar, stats on google or television at home. Even the people who might not give Olympics an importance or aren't interested in sports hold at least a little pride for their country. They might not watch it, but occasionally will check up on stats and results online.

Hosting the Olympics is an incredible honour for a country and especially the city that hosts it. For the locals whatever sense of patriotism they had has now probably been raised 10 times then what it was before. Any country would hope to be able to host the largest worldwide athletic competition in the world, just imagine what that would do for the country’s economic prosperity, or their tourism sector. Jobs would be piling up in masses and revenue would be accumulated in speeds unimaginable. After all, in an ideal world this kind of major event is bound to be beneficial for a country right? Which country would not want to “sparkle” in the Media’s eyes and attract people from around the world, especially influential people such as pop culture kings and queens. The world is bound to follow their footsteps and give some attention to the hosting

Many people are concerned and they should be. No country, absolutely no country is perfect. There is poverty everywhere, whether its wide out for everyone to see or masked by the countries GDP per capita stats on google. Being human it's only natural for us to get excited about such an opportunity for our respective countries. The pride, the joy they all tend to blind the outcries of people's concerns. Now many will say that these people need to be “grateful” they are getting jobs and recognition for hosting the Olympics, it's such an honour after all. The problem is how we decide to interpret our priority scale. Are solving local problems and spending money on valid issues like Improving the economy for the long run and not just a set of jobs for a couple months or patriotism, pride and overall enjoyment of a fun interactive competition which for once erases serious rivalries and creates fun competition more important. We can choose to lock out the negatives and just roll with it maybe even throw in an argument or two about how beneficial the Olympics are but to what extent can we ignore congestion issues, infrastructure costs, poverty, and environmental concerns. Building one stadium alone costs millions on top of that creating all the sports areas, according to expectation and standard costs massive amounts of money and we haven't even began