b. The Games: Origins of an Institution
Another of the defining features of modernity that can be traced to a cultural institution developed by the Ancient Greeks is meritocracy. The Pan-Hellenic games, familiar across the globe in their present form as the Modern Olympic Games, represent an embodiment of meritocratic values and practices.
Games were held once every four years in four city-states: Olympia, Pythia, Nemea, and Corinth. They were conducted as open competitions, and any free man or woman from anywhere in the Greek-speaking world could enter to participate as a representative of their city-state, colony, etc.
Participants in the Games could set themselves apart solely by excelling the field in the sporting event in which they had chosen to compete. The criteria for achieving excellence were laid out, and open for all to see. It would appear that all who partook were in agreement that the rules framing the competition were fair; otherwise, it is highly likely that they would not have wasted their time and energy to prepare, travel, and compete. We can also assume that there was some sort of democratic process involved in adopting the rules in the first place, as well as revising them as the Games evolved over time and participants and observers provided feedback.
The winners of the competition were feted and honored for their superhuman achievements with a wreath—which was fashioned from a different plant depending on the location of the Games. In other words, the prize awarded for winning an event consisted solely in the recognition of the excellence demonstrated by a participant. There was no immediate economic benefit or gain to the individual, it was a social function, and honor was the reward.
The Games celebrated a set of values and ideals that they also strove to embody. In a sense, participants whose efforts to excel in the event in which they had chosen to compete earned them the opportunity to distinguish themselves at the Games essentially as torch bearers of those values. Their achievement at the Games was representative of an aspect of the intrinsic worth of the Games to all, and that intrinsic worth was seen in terms of passing the baton of hope to future generations that one’s efforts could bear fruit, and earn the recognition of one’s peers.
From another standpoint, the winners gained the respect of others through the success that they demonstrated one could be achieved by making a sustained effort. The Games established a normative realm of socio-cultural activity through which people were encouraged to establish goals, and strive to achieve those goals. In a sense, people were encouraged to make the effort to establish and live up to their own standards, which would then be built on by future participants.
By and large, it is probably not an exaggeration to say that the motivation to participate was to a substantial degree generated by the values intrinsic to the Games, and not based on some extraneous form of motivation.
The Games brought people together in an event festive yet highly focused, and which had been opened to enable people to compete in a manner dependent on skill more than cunning, for example. Time and space, two of the more readily apprehensible phenomena served as objective criteria against which performance was assessed in many of the events. Objective criteria of evaluation as found at the Games could then be extended and applied in helping to establish a degree of harmony among the various Greek city states, colonies and the like, which were prone to coming into conflict. Because the Games we an open competition that were well attended and based criteria that were objectively assessable to all present, victory could not be earned by deception; victory could only be won on the basis of ability and effort.
One had to make the proper choice of event to compete in according to one’s ability, and then one had to invest a daunting amount of effort to excel the field. Cultivating attributes such as these would help individuals succeed in society, and making choices and making effort represent matters people have to cope with on a regular basis throughout life. If we are to maintain a degree of cohesion in society as we pursue our several interests, we have to learn to recognize the capacity to make the right choices and then make the effort to follow through in ourselves and others. And individuals who do make the proper choices and the requisite effort must receive due recognition if the glue of meritocracy is to continue to hold people together. The Games represent one horizon in which all of the above become possible.
By bringing together people from far and wide throughout the Greek-speaking world, the Games also therefore served as a means to check hubris from being generated to excess on the part of individuals, or in any of the city states that sent representatives to participate. The honors garnered at the games had resonance throughout the Greek-speaking world and beyond, making the Games a periodic event that periodically punctuated a timeless and shared tradition in a historical continuum that united the plurality of participants and their respective places of origin. The Games enabled people to associate and interact freely in an open atmosphere of good will, taking part in a cultural activity that all in attendance could understand and appreciate. The Games served to open a horizon which emphasized the fact that people could interact civilly in terms of culture activities they valued and shared in common, rather than live in fear of mutually unintelligible aspects of difference which separated them.
It also bears mention that the Games were held in honor of Zeus, Apollo, or Poseidon—depending on the location. Therefore, as social functions having a religious dimension in the background, it may be postulated that the polytheism practiced by the Ancient Greeks contributed to the formation of pluralistic societies in which tolerance of different religions among inhabitants became feasible. The Games represent a shared horizon that opened the possibility for civil and open interaction among people who had aspects of mutual different in their respective backgrounds. Not only did the Games prefigure a prototype of civil pluralistic social intercourse, they created a common periodically revisited site that generated tangible results readily apprehensible to all present, and held out the promise for future progress.
Moreover, though the Games had a quasi-religious resonance, it should be emphasized that they were not a hollow ritualistic reenactment of mythological origins designed to perpetuate the status of priest castes of the respective cults of Poseidon, Apollo, and Zeus. They embodied a collective effort to periodically open a horizon in which individuals could gain recognition in light of their achievements.
