No, this is not another post about the new funky logo. I don’t like it, I think it doesn’t work, but I admit that they needed to do something different. We don’t need more of the ‘same’ looking logos. This one is different and that is good. It is just differently wrong.
Anyway, the problem I have with 2012 London Olympic Games is different.
The Games (as they are known around here) are becoming a huge excuse for social engineering and the focus seems to be health. According to the organisation, the Games will sort out all medical problems within the UK via an increase in physical exercise. I agree that there seems to be quite a few problems with general health of the UK population, but I am not sure exercise is the solution to all of them. We are all becoming lazy bastards in the developed world, and this is not affecting only the British, so the problems cannot all stem of lack of exercise.
Actually, this is surely not the case. I don’t even believe the average British guy exercises less than other nations. The problem stems from something else, which more exercise may help, but won’t solve it. I can think of a few examples, where the British life style is different from the rest of Europe:
1. Education here is extremely poor for the majority. The focus of the teaching is not about making the individual contribute to society, but to make the individual contribute to himself. This creates a bunch of self-centred bastards that obsessed about their hedonist pleasures.
2. Nobody cooks in the UK. Cooking is seen as uncool amongst the 18 to 40 range, because eating out with friends is much better. The outcome of this is that nobody learns the art of cooking, so when they finally want to cook like Jamie Oliver in those TV shows it is too late and it all feels like too much work.
3. There is a absurd reliance on packaged foods. Nowhere I have been “what is your favourite crisp flavour?’ is a conversation topic!
4. Convenience foods is the sole industry. So much that they have gone full circle, from being bad for you to being good for you to, now, being better than the natural thing. A quick look at the supermarkets and it will let you know that ready meals is serious business here like nowhere.
5. Poor family life also doesn’t help. Over focused society on the independence of the individual sets people on a mission to network with friends and achieve monetary success. In this scenario something has to suffer.
None of these will be solved by the London Olympics and by their extremely patronising campaigns that makes one feel sick – like this video. This is social engineering of the worst kind, not because is ‘social engineering’ but because it won’t have the desired effect. Oh, and by the way, it is not everyone’s Olympics. The Olympics are celebrations of human competition against the clock or against other humans. And, nowadays, a commercial enterprise too. It is a sport competition, for god sake, not an engine for effective social change.
Posted by miguel 
Stochastic Thoughts 
