Thoughts on the breakdancing spectacle at the 2024 Olympics.
By critiquing "ableness", a performer does no longer have to compete via skill.
At that point it becomes a competition about being politically aligned (correct) toward the establishment.
In other words: woke.
Rejecting the idea of objectively measurable performance and skill has been a theme in postmodernism for a century.
If our ideology involves rejecting "ableness" or the idea of agreed-upon achievement rankings, then skill becomes irrelevant and ideological correctness becomes the only "game" hierarchy.
At that point we are asked to compete in ideological purity, not achievement.
This being said, I am not against abstract art and competitions that involve some amount of subjective evaluations. Even abstract art is impacted by aesthetic considerations.
Within every art genre we compare the quality of competing contributions. We rank competing submissions based on creativity, skill, vision, beauty and artistic achievement. We want the most impressive contributions within a genre to rank over the less impressive contributions. In short: meritocracy. Or at least some approximation of it.
Meritocracy is delibarately deconstructed under the banner of postmodernism. While we can debate which of two abstract paintings is more impressive, and while our criteria for a ranking an achievement can differ from person to person, we can only create *meaningful* genres of competition where we agree on the overall ranking criteria.
Every sport and competition requires vocalized and agreed-upon ranking criteria. If those ranking criteria involve ideological purity and not some acknowledged and demonstrable achievement then we have just made political correctness into a sport that trumps all other forms of achievement.
Let there be as many genres of competition as we can imagine, but let's not determine someone's achievement by their alignment to some ideological system. Peers compete against peers.
#Meritocracy #Postmodernism #Sport #Art #Achievement #Competition #Woke
