Ruins

While watching olympic coverage, several things have popped into my head. Pride, concern, intrigue, and enjoyment have all been feelings ellicited by the games. It's just always great to see competition.

One thing that has struck me as silly/odd is the announcers continually jumping on the greek gods bandwagon. The most recent occurance was during the women's mountain biking final. The commentator was talking about the lead rider from Norway and said that she must be praying to all the greek gods that they'll see her through. It may be silly of me to take offence, especially over a perhaps only hypothetical situation, but I know that I'd certainly rather not have someone associate me with or insinuate I might be praying to any mythical gods for strength or success.
It's granted the games are being held in its country of origin, it's granted that they did worship those gods back in the day, but I find it over-indulgent of our announcers to just jump into the mythology as much as they have been.
It gets my head spinning, starts me thinking about benchmarks and similarities between the United States and the Greek and Roman empires. It always strikes me when people delve into a culture of polytheism that went to ruins, giving credit to gods whose temples lay in ruin. I can't help but wonder when the great "western civilization empire's" time will come to a close. There are signs, moral uncertainty, plateaus and oversights, complacency, and human nature's effect with time. I only wish I could lay it all out, my memory and intellect don't serve me quite that well just yet. I need practice, instruction and guidance.
The point remains, based on personal and historical observations.
What is our place in history? Will the current world order stay? If so, for how long? What might replace it? Will there be a transfer of technological, political, and military power? What effect does magnetic, burning fuels, electric, and other somewhat delicate, depletable, or potentially volatile energy and technology mediums have and what might happen if those mediums are taken away? There are a million different questions. Tons of fun discussion...