Globalization, Olympism, Sport and Multiculturality - Reality or Necessity

Abstract

By means of our approach, we will try to bring to light the main demands and restrictions that have lain and will continue to lie at the basis of the evolution and of the confrontation, of the purpose and of the goals of the Olympic Movement, of sports in general, and their connection with the problems of mankind from the perspective of globalization. From this perspective, one of the premises of our approach starts from the fact that, by comparison to the past, mankind has reached the wall, this aspect being highlighted by the recent unprecedented population growth and by the inhabitation of the most unexpected Earth areas (recently, we have recorded 7 billion inhabitants). At the same time, given the existing means of communication and transport, namely given the compression of time and space, the human individual has become homo planetarium being present anywhere and anytime, in this way getting to reach the limits of any delimitation that man has ever wanted to know and to experiment professionally, emotionally or affectively. Yet, this phenomenon is nothing new. In 1955, A. Gregg stated, for instance, that “The Earth has cancer, and the cancer is man”; 19 years later, in Mankind at the Turning Point, J. Clifford stated that “suddenly...the world has found itself faced with a series of unprecedented crises... The intensity of the crisis appeared in the world’s global development... can only be solved in a global context". Then, we attained the concept of "organic growth", which later on became, after many transformations, the concept of “sustainable development”, concepts that are still evolving.