As it happens - I told my wife that my refusal to accept the herd mentality of the Watchtower Society probably had something to do with my lack of interest in the Olympics. I also resent the 9.4 billion pounds sterling the event is costing our bankrupt UK . Then an article in this Sundays Daily Mail newspaper echoed my feelings.
“Join the smiley Cult of the Five Circles? Sorry, but I have a democratic right to be bored (and I'm exercising it while I still can)
Enthusiasm is compulsory only in totalitarian dictatorships. Anywhere else, we are free to be keen if we want to, and bored if we want to.
So I wish people would stop telling me that I should enjoy the Olympics, or be proud of them, or think that they will in some way benefit this country.
But they won’t stop telling me. Hardly a day goes by without another previously independent mind surrendering to this pseudo-religion of obligatory smiles.
And that makes me suspicious. What is this strange cult? In the end, the Olympics is nothing more than a large athletics meeting.
Before Hitler and Dr Goebbels made it into a torch-lit and grandiose spectacle, you could be in the same city as the Games and barely notice.
Are we really that interested? And if we are, are we interested for good reasons? Personally, I find it very odd that large crowds have turned out in the street to see a glorified pilot light carried about in a large cheese-grater.”
PUBLISHED: 22:52 , 28 July 2012