The grand spectacle of the Virtual Reality Olympics has arrived in Tokyo, a digital extravaganza that promises to redefine human achievement. Or, more accurately, to redefine what we are willing to accept as achievement. As the world’s elite athletes strap on their headsets, we are meant to marvel at the blurring of the physical and the digital.
I, for one, am less impressed. This is not the rebirth of the Olympic spirit. It is the final surrender of the body to the machine.
The ancient Greeks, who conceived the Games as a celebration of the flesh, of sweat and sinew, would be horrified. We have traded the sun-baked stadia of Olympia for the pixelated glow of a screen. The marathon is no longer a test of lungs and legs but of reflexes and dexterity.
Victory is determined not by the limits of human endurance but by the cleverness of code. We call this progress. I call it decadence.
Consider the parallels: the late Roman Empire, addicted to bread and circuses, eventually found its circuses to be a digital, virtual affair. The citizens, fed on a diet of CGI chariot races and gladiatorial simulations, forgot what true combat looked like. They forgot the smell of blood and dust.
We are on the same path. Our athletes are now avatars, their triumphs statistical abstractions. The roar of the crowd is a pre-recorded algorithm.
Where is the honour in that? The spectacle is undeniably impressive. The technology is seamless.
But the soul of the Games has been eviscerated. We have replaced the noble struggle of man against his own limitations with the facile joy of a video game. This is not the pinnacle of human civilisation.
It is a symptom of its decline.
