August 15, 2008

It is most remarkable that Communist China is hosting the world’s games. While there is much to admire in Chinese history and culture (I hesitate to say, “spirituality”), the story of modern China is a tale of the steady and ruthless progress of a hybrid Marxism, a worldview that has little room for games.

Marxism or Communism is, of course, firmly materialistic, its values centered on what can be produced and enjoyed. The human person is of value only inasmuch as he advances the interests of the state. The human person is a means to an end. Utility is the supreme good.

In its crudest forms, capitalism could be described in almost the same terms. Economic systems judge by standards of productivity, efficiency, and output.

Nothing wrong or even surprising with that. Trouble arises, though, when these are the only standards, when these are the only measures applied to life. When no other values are recognized besides those which better the economy, we face serious problems.

Why is China even hosting the Olympics and why is most everyone else in the world falling over themselves to inflate this event? Economic might. Is there any description of China that does not include words like “economic powerhouse”? The Olympics is a tool for China to continue its long march to the front of the economic line. Everyone else is ceding the stage to them out of deference to the economic influence China wields. The willingness to overlook longstanding human rights violations, skewed economic policies, and gross disregard for the most rudimentary environmental standards is testimony to how much the world is cowed by economic power.

Somehow the reality of “games” does not fit into what China is all about. Playing is very different from working. We try to make them similar by introducing competition and rankings and prizes, but, essentially, playing is a waste of time. Playing is an end to itself. It is not useful. It does not produce anything. It begins to skirt the territory normally reserved for love and laughter, a realm of the spirit that makes materialism seem puny and cheap.

We all need games. W all need to play. One of the blessings of having children is that they want you to play with them. In the usual routine of the workaday world where you’re chasing ambitions or running from worries, taking time to play a game can seem annoyingly not to the point, a distraction, an intrusion, an upsetting of priorities. These are more indications that play is a divine activity.

China’s invitation to the world, “let’s come together to play,” does not fit what China is all about or what, increasingly, the world is all about. As I watch the Olympics, I keep thinking: there are higher values than utility, there is more to life than what you can produce, achievement means more than the gross national product, the human person is an end in itself, not a means or a tool or a cog, the human being is holier in moments of aimless play.

Copyright ©2008. Fred Sneesby. All rights reserved.