What service do Olympic Athletes provide to society?

Michael Phelps really boosted the popularity of swimming in the U.S., a lot more kids are joining swim teams and just learning to swim/exercise. With Americans being disgustingly obese and unhealthy this is a very positive thing.

Aside from that the olympics are entertainment, a very good form and even if it's not necessary to society.. entertainment is important for human happiness. It's fun, it also celebrates human achievement with people setting new world records and it brings countries all over the world together and provides good interaction between people.

They are good for many things including the betterment of the human species through discipline, training, and honor.

These athletes devote their lives to pushing the boundaries of what is humanly possible not for entertainment, but to prove to the world they are the best at what they do.

It doesn't matter if they don't give back in a physical sense, they are doing what none of us can do and we get to live through that and witness them grow and become "gods" of their sport!

All the power to any olympic athlete who has ever qualified, entered, won, or even tried to qualify! You are all stars in my eyes.

So a team loaded with NBA, high dollar players, will have me on the edge of my chair wondering if they can win. Oh yeah. Or the top ranked professional tennis players will beat some amateurs. Sure.

The olympic games are an ode to the human spirit, to know that the only physical limits are from the mind. You are only what you think you are.

If you are think you are better than another, then pay the price - TRAIN UP, with physical and mental discipline, and you will win.

Even if you lost, you would have won, for finally, you knew your limitations - mistakes made, by learning from what the winner did to win. He is only a human just like you, bleed and laugh the same, no higher or lesser being than you.

This is what the Olympics is all about - hope and dreams.

BUT UNFORTUNATELY, it had became a nightmare for some - the way young kids were robbed from their biological parents and put through mental and physical torture, to win medals for the State and then discarded and toss aside, when they fail or get old. Some nations practices this still.

Without families, there would not have been the State. When a State produces robots, it is not a human State, and not fit to join in the community of mankind, to progress and evolve leaving none behind.

Those States have nothing to do with the celebration of the human spirit. Only robots are created in such manner.

The older days were better, where a kid spends only a quarter of his time on trainning, and the other three quarters for education and warmth of love by parents, relatives and friends. It does not make him a lesser being, but it pushes him to want to do more, to bring pride and joy to his loved ones, which matters most of all, and not for the sake of the State.

This is the true motivation that the Olympic games had sought to inspire, but then....medals are worth more to the State, and humans are just merely robots to serve a purpose.

May such horrors and desecration to the human spirit ends, to allow the Olympic games to be truly what it was meant to be by the founders in ancient greece.

The Olympics don't mean anything to me personally because I don't watch them. I imagine that what they do accomplish however is give kids positive role models to look up to. And that's a good thing.

If you look at it that way, the Olympics do a world of good for certain people because it gives them something positive to look at and aspire to. `

Look at the world around you and tell me we don't need more of that.

In answer to the questioned posed by the headline, I suggest they do nothing but promote nationalism.

Surely, the NWO will shortly find a way to reduce that focus and channel the games more toward the commonality of humanity rather than the distinctions.

Plus, the games and players are not evenly matched across the board. Big, wealthy countries have all of the advantage with better funding, facilities, larger pool of athletes than can participate because of personal wealth and leisure time, etc. Basically, it is a stacked deck.

In addition, some countries train their athletes under criminal conditions.