I think the question of performance enhancing drugs in sports comes down to: what are you seeking to reward? Whether you then allow drugs in is then a consequence of how you answer that question.
My kneejerk belief is that victory, medals, acclaim in sports is primarily meant to be rewarding sustained effort and a competitor's discipline under pressure. This reward in theory at least cancels out natural talent, because the zero-sum nature of getting to the big leagues means that all the talented players will be competing together anyway: the guy who can crush the 100 metres out of his local high school is now competing with a bunch of other guys who crushed the 100 metres at their local high schools as well, so discipline in theory will out.
However, I think this heuristic starts to break down as you make the stakes of winning and losing higher. To wit, the "professional amateur" nature of sports where players are paid literally millions of dollars just for playing, where it becomes an entirely alternate path to some other vocation in the real world.
Above a certain level of pay, what we actually start rewarding in sports is the athlete specialising himself rather than sustained effort and discipline. This pattern follows all the way back to the ancient Greek Olympic games: competitors in those Olympics were well-compensated and even back then critics said that compensation was making young men focus on athletics and not on war or scholarly pursuits.
That is why it's now worth contemplating whether performance enhancing drugs should be allowed. If what you are rewarding is the athlete's specialisation, a drug that helps in that specialisation logically should be allowed as a way to boost his performance, further his specialisation. From the point of view of it being an "ethical" decision, you can certainly make the argument that it is, because the athlete has "skin in the game": they take the consequences of ingesting these drugs into their systems knowing that there are such risks. But as said, that only becomes ethical if you flat-out acknowledge that what is being rewarded is the athlete's specialisation of himself, not the individual's effort or commitment. Sadly, because sports, like most of the narcissistic West, is more interested in the perception of the sport than the reality, that open acknowledgment is highly unlikely.
My kneejerk belief is that victory, medals, acclaim in sports is primarily meant to be rewarding sustained effort and a competitor's discipline under pressure. This reward in theory at least cancels out natural talent, because the zero-sum nature of getting to the big leagues means that all the talented players will be competing together anyway: the guy who can crush the 100 metres out of his local high school is now competing with a bunch of other guys who crushed the 100 metres at their local high schools as well, so discipline in theory will out.
However, I think this heuristic starts to break down as you make the stakes of winning and losing higher. To wit, the "professional amateur" nature of sports where players are paid literally millions of dollars just for playing, where it becomes an entirely alternate path to some other vocation in the real world.
Above a certain level of pay, what we actually start rewarding in sports is the athlete specialising himself rather than sustained effort and discipline. This pattern follows all the way back to the ancient Greek Olympic games: competitors in those Olympics were well-compensated and even back then critics said that compensation was making young men focus on athletics and not on war or scholarly pursuits.
That is why it's now worth contemplating whether performance enhancing drugs should be allowed. If what you are rewarding is the athlete's specialisation, a drug that helps in that specialisation logically should be allowed as a way to boost his performance, further his specialisation. From the point of view of it being an "ethical" decision, you can certainly make the argument that it is, because the athlete has "skin in the game": they take the consequences of ingesting these drugs into their systems knowing that there are such risks. But as said, that only becomes ethical if you flat-out acknowledge that what is being rewarded is the athlete's specialisation of himself, not the individual's effort or commitment. Sadly, because sports, like most of the narcissistic West, is more interested in the perception of the sport than the reality, that open acknowledgment is highly unlikely.
Remissas, discite, vivet.
God save us from people who mean well. -storm
