DARWIN’S DOPE:
An Essay On Human Nature And The Origins Of Competition
By Eric Ting
By renovating an institution twenty-five centuries old, we wanted you again to become devotees of the religion of sport as envisioned by our great forebears. In the modern world, so full of challenging prospects yet so beset by the perils of decline, the Olympic movement can become a school as much of high and pure moral principles as of endurance and physical energy.
- Pierre Coubertin,
Founder of the modern Olympic Games
The body hurtles across the track. Ten meters. Twenty. Fifty. Racing against itself, against others, against time. In under ten seconds, a system of 206 bones, over 600 muscles, 6 quarts of blood, seventy thousand miles of blood vessels, 100 billion neurons, reflexes, joints, tendons, sweat, will stretch itself across a finish line in great wide loping strides; and the stadium will fill with an indescribable roar.
The roar will contain within it a celebration of the human capacity to achieve almost superhuman acts, an admiration for the rigor and commitment and life given over to training the body, to conquering its imperfections. And it will rain down upon the victor like some aural ticker tape.
The human race has celebrated its athletes since ancient Greece. The word athlete comes from the Greek āthleǐn - "to contend for a prize." At the very least, the athlete is seen as a role model; at the most excessive, a god. Whole mythologies are constructed around them; and when they fall, it is often from some Icarus-like height.
But from where does all this admiration for feats of incalculable skill and ability (and subsequent disillusionment and anger when those feats prove in doubt) derive?
The modern athlete is often defined by his or her achievements. Barry Bonds hits his 762nd home run. Lance Armstrong wins his 7th consecutive Tour de France. Marion Jones wins five gold medals in the 2000 Summer Olympics.
At the time each of these feats was considered the pinnacle of human athletic achievement. Each of them have since been discolored by rumors (or outright confessions) of drug enhancement. Which begs the question, what drives them to it?
Citius, Altius, Fortius. (from Latin, translated as "Swifter, Higher, Stronger.")
- The motto of the modern Olympics
The most important thing in the Olympic Games is not to win but to take part, just as the most important thing in life is not the triumph but the struggle. The essential thing is not to have conquered but to have fought well.
- The creed of the Modern Olympics
At the heart of all athletic accomplishment is the competition. When Pierre Coubertin decided in 1894 to reinvent the ancient Olympics for the modern times, he viewed it as an opportunity to promote international understanding through the power of sports. In fact, the Latin root for the verb "to compete" is competere which means "to seek together" or "to strive together."
Over the course of the next century, the Olympic Games came to be synonymous with sportsmanship and diplomacy, and for many to this day exist as the ultimate expression of the modern athlete.
But to understand the role of competition in human society, we should reach back to the ancient games.
The earliest written record of the games dates back to 776 BCE when a cook from Elis entered and won the sole event of that Olympics, the stadion race - a run of approximately 210 yards.
While the myths surrounding the origins of the Olympic Games are varied, it is believed that its roots lie in a warrior society that existed following the collapse of the Mycenaean civilization.
As peace eventually took root in ancient Greece, the games evolved in some ways as a substitute for the combat and conquering of the preceding dark ages - an opportunity for the Greeks to bring the glory and honor of the Gods to their hometowns without resorting to violence and bloodshed.
That competition has an air of warfare about it is undeniable. One needs only look to a modern football stadium and the individuals who litter the stands decorated in what can only be described as war paint.
Perhaps one of the most infamous quotes in sports history is attributed to former Vanderbilt and UCLA football coach Henry "Red" Sanders.
While coaching a prep school football team in 1930s Georgia, Coach Sanders is said to have uttered the phrase, "Winning isn't everything; it's the only thing." A brief witticism, it has come to exemplify a "form of unfettered competitiveness that has permeated modern American sports" that many consider to be at the root of the dehumanization of contemporary athletics.
I think sports are degraded by drugs and by artifice, generally. The more adulterated sports become by genetic alteration, the less there is to admire in them. So at the extreme we can imagine a kind of spectacle of bionic athletes - souped up athletes - genetically programmed to hit a home run on every pitch. That would be a kind of spectacle, but it wouldn't be a sport. There would be nothing there to admire! Apart from the ingenuity of the genetic scientist who designed this creature.
- Michael Sandel
Harvard Ethicist
Excerpt from Let Me Down Easy
Even the ancient Olympics were tainted by scandals: the first recorded act of cheating was in 388 B.C. "when the boxer Eupolus of Thessaly bribed three opponents to take a dive." Such was the investment in winning at these games that many athletes would "consult fortunetellers and magicians for victory charms and potions . . . as well as curses on their opponents to fail."
"Participation wasn't enough," says University of Texas-Arlington classical history scholar Donald G. Kyle. "They wanted to win so badly, and they feared losing so much. What we're willing to do to win says an awful lot about our societies."
What we're willing to do to win says an awful lot about our societies. And perhaps, even, our species.
An implicit struggle for survival ensues.
- Charles Darwin,
English naturalist
On December 27, 1831, under the command of Captain Robert Fitzroy, the second expedition voyage of the HMS Beagle set sail. Accompanying Captain Fitzroy as his gentleman's companion was a budding young naturalist by the name of Charles Darwin. The planned two-year voyage lasted five, and upon his return Darwin had collected the notes, diagrams, drawings, and seeds of an idea that would change the face of modern science.
Upon the Beagle's return in 1836 and for the next 23 years, Darwin published a series of essays and accounts of his travels through South America and the Galapagos, all the time developing his theory; and on November 24, 1859, On the Origin of Species By Means of Natural Selection was published. In it, Darwin suggested that populations evolve over the course of generations through a process of natural selection. It is a theory simply stated in his introduction:
As many more individuals of each species are born than can possibly survive; and as, consequently, there is a frequently recurring struggle for existence, it follows that any being, if it vary however slightly in any manner profitable to itself, under the complex and sometimes varying conditions of life, will have a better chance of surviving, and thus be naturally selected. From the strong principle of inheritance, any selected variety will tend to propagate its new and modified form.
At the core of his writings was an idea of struggle: that the struggle to survive was incontrovertible and, over time, the need to adapt to changes in the environment contributed to the gradual evolution of the species. He described competition between members of a species as the driving force behind evolution and natural selection - competition for food, for water, for territory, even sunlight. Out of this struggle for essentially limited resources, the certain variations best suited for survival become dominant.
That's why with this whole doping thing, it's ridiculous to say to them, ‘Oh don't do that, you might hurt yourself!' Tell a downhill skier, tell an Austrian gold medalist downhill Olympic skier ‘No you don't want to take a little EPO - you might hurt yourself!' Are you kidding me?
- Sally Jenkins,
Sports Columnist for the Washington Post
Anabolic Steroids. Benzedrine. Blood Doping. Stanozolol. Dianabol. Furazobol. Human Growth Hormone. EPO. These are the victory charms and potions of the modern athlete.
What drives them to it? Just as well ask what drives them to 100-hour a week training regimens, to high carb diets of pasta and an omelet, to sequestering themselves from family and friends for months at a time, to the millions of dollars spent on equipment and coaches and vitamins.
Just as well ask what drives them to go faster, reach higher, be stronger, do more than anyone ever thought the human body capable of.
If competition lies at the very heart of evolution, that there are champions in this world who embrace that very basic element of our nature should not be surprising.
That those very champions should seek - perhaps Quixotically - that which is divine, aspiring to be better than themselves, should not be surprising. That we should celebrate those champions as somehow representing the pinnacle of human achievement, that we should idolize them, immortalize them, should not be surprising.
And in the struggle to survive in this modern age of competition so filled with temptation, is it any surprise that our champions should lose their way?
Look to our nature.
Coubertin, Pierre. "A la jeunesse sportive de toutes les nations." 1927.
The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition. Houghton Mifflin Co. Jan 2008.
The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition. Houghton Mifflin Co. Jan 2008
Hooker, Richard. Ancient Greece: the Age of Pericles: the Athenian Empire. 1999.
Steven J. Overman. "'Winning isn't Everything. It's the Only Thing': The Origin, Attributions and Influence of a Famous Football Quote." Football Studies. Volume 2 Issue 2 (October 1999).
Verrengia, Joseph B. "Ancient Olympics had its own scandals." Associated Press. 28 July 2004.
Desmond, Adrian & James Moore. Darwin. London: Michael Joseph, Penguin Group. 1991.
