Greek Athletics and the Anti-Christ

Discussion of the nature of Ultimate Reality and the path to Enlightenment.
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Cory Duchesne
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Greek Athletics and the Anti-Christ

Post by Cory Duchesne »

The Greeks did not play sports. Our word play is related to the Greek word pais (child), and there was nothing childish about Greek athletics. The Greek word was Agonia, and our modern derivation, agony, hits closer to their mark. From Homeric times, sports were a deadly serious affair. Poets, philosophers and statesmen placed athletic victories above all other human achievements. "There is no greater glory for a man, no matter how long his life than what he achieves with his hands and feet."

So important was victory in Greek sport that the name of the victor provided the basic system of Greek dating. The serious nature of the sport was equaled by its danger. One inscription from a statue erected at Olympia reads simply, "here he died boxing in the stadium having prayed to Zeus for either the crown or death." The most celebrated hero Arrichion won, but died in victory.

The ultimate disgrace in Greek sport was not injury or even death, but defeat.

In the Olympic Games of ancient Greece you cannot just be beaten and then depart, but first of all, you will be disgraced not only before the people of Athens or Sparta or Nicopolis but before the whole world.

Greeks did not honor good losers, only winners. Pindar, the great lyric poet who celebrated Victorious athletes wrote: "as the losers returned to their mothers no laughter sweet brought them pleasure, but they crept along the backstreets avoiding their enemies bitten by misfortune."

If failure was bitter, victory was sweet indeed. Victors received enduring fame and enormous fortune. Most cities granted winners public honors and allowed them to eat at public expense for the rest of their lives.
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Orenholt
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Re: Greek Athletics and the Anti-Christ

Post by Orenholt »

Ok so what does this have to do with the Anti-Christ?
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Cory Duchesne
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Re: Greek Athletics and the Anti-Christ

Post by Cory Duchesne »

Orenholt wrote:Ok so what does this have to do with the Anti-Christ?
Greek athletics aggrandize the physical body and world in relation to the human audience to the point where men are willing to die in order to get glory from the world. Losing was regarded as the highest disgrace because gaining the world was seen as the highest glory. Greek athletics treat losers poorly similar to the way we trash our poorly performing celebrities. Modern society gets its sustenance from the contempt we feel towards losers, and likewise draws sustenance from winners (the idols).

Christian values see the world as a corpse. It teaches you to see oneself as superior to the world, it reminds you of the hands and feet in your mind, and to abstain from seeking glory. Christian values honors good losers and teaches you how to lose with grace and to show sympathy for the weak.

Greek culture precedes Christian, and I think Nietzsche must have noticed the relation Greek athletics has to Christian culture. A pure christian would take the spirit of Greek Athletics and direct the passion towards the Christian ideals. The agony of Christianity is not the same agony as Greek Athletics, they are poles apart, but they are united by passion and virility.

Kierkegaard was very bold to point out that Socrates himself did not embody the spirit of Christianity, but was merely an accidental nuisance, rather than a deliberate disrupter of his cultures morality.
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Diebert van Rhijn
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Re: Greek Athletics and the Anti-Christ

Post by Diebert van Rhijn »

You sound a lot like Paul here, Cory. Or alternatively Apollonius.
  • Do you not know that in a race all the runners run, but only one gets the prize? Run in such a way as to get the prize. Everyone who competes in the games goes into strict training. They do it to get a crown that will not last, but we do it to get a crown that will last forever. -- 1 Corinthians 9:24-25 (New International Version)
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Cory Duchesne
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Re: Greek Athletics and the Anti-Christ

Post by Cory Duchesne »

Very interesting, thank you, Diebert.


"During the journey we commonly forget its goal. Almost every profession is chosen and commenced as a means to an end but continued as an end in itself. Forgetting our objectives is the most frequent of all acts of stupidity." (Nietzsche)


I think it must be one of the most difficult things, to distinguish between the two category of goals. On the one hand, there are the goals that will grant one a crown forever, and there are the goals that will make the audience feel you've done them a favor, either by earning their admiration or contempt. (being a loser in another persons eyes has it's function).
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