To Compete or Not to Complete.....

Yesterday something happened.  I saw something I did not like.  It was someone acting competitively.

Through a series of deep converstations with many people I care deeply about, I have talked about my lack of competitiveness.  So yesterday, I decided to look up the definition of compete.

Compete:   to strive to outdo another for acknowledgment, a prize, supremacy, profit, etc.

I cringed when I saw exactly what the word meant.

I don't know why. I must get excited.  I get these urges to share my revelations with people via facebook.  But I always worry there will be one or two people that just didn't get my purpose.  Rather than taking the time to think about what I'm saying, they jump the gun and try to argue whatever comment I make.

However, I was only met with good response and a good friend made this comment:

Competition is strange, it plays a major roll in our society, permeating economic theory, educational practice, entertainment, and so many other areas. I suppose pragmatically it is an efficient way to bring about productivity, but it does involve a cost in that someone has to loose.  I think that in practice the major antidote to competition is true humility.

I love when people write things back like this.  It is not only well thought out, but it makes me look at the idea of competiteness even more.

So I decided to dig deeper.  I searched with the question, "is competition good or bad" and found this wiki answer:

It depends.  Two political philosophers, Adam Smith and Karl Marx, had differing opinions on this matter.  Adam Smith was the founder of capitalism and believed in what he called "the Invisible Hand". This meant that competition would eventually result in innovation as one group tried to beat the other and would ultimately further society's interests.  Karl Marx is the father of communism and believed that competition, and eventually capitalism, would lead to the exploitation of the working class. Not to mention it causes stress and "arms races" where people would be too obsessed with victory or beating the other person at something. Look up the "tragedy of the commons" from economics.

 

It shocked me.  I didn't realized that if you did not agree with competitiveness that you were lumped into the category of communist.

 

So I did a little more digging on amazon for any books that may discuss competitiveness and found this one:

 

http://www.amazon.com/No-Contest-Case-Against-Competition/dp/0395631254/ref=pd_rhf_p_img_4

 

No Contest:  A Case Against Competition by Alfie Kohn.  After having no luck finding it at any libraries near me, I ordered on amazon.  I can not wait till it gets here so I can read more about this topic!

 

On a broader context, I just saddens me that we accept things because they are what we have done historically.  Isn't anyone interested in finding the more efficient and thoughtful approach to a problem?  When did we decided to just accept that competition is the way to live?

 

After reading the definition of compete...does it really sit well with the reader?  Remember my friend said, the antidote to competitiveness is humility?  Well, how is competition good if it can't even stand alone?  In order to make competition acceptable, we have to be humble also?  Think about it.  You have to be humble (good trait) in order to offset competitiveness (the bad trait).

 

What kind of mixed messages are we sending oir children if one minute we are telling them to share and the next telling them to be better than their schoolmates?  Where is the "i" in team....right? 

 

Our countries model is to grow, expand, compete...but this is at the expense shrinking and destroying other countries.  Aren't we taught that we are all one and that we should help those in need because we are all connected whether we see that connection or not?

 

Is a child really winning if he/she got a "D" in class when everyone else got an "F"?  That child may be competing well, but he/she is not learning.

An Odd Start to the Day

I woke up this morning to the phone beeping.  At 7:30am, I don't get text messages very often, so I got up to check and make sure everything was ok.  "Are you awake? hopefully far away from the water!!".  It was from my sister in San Fran.  Quickly I ran to the window and looked out at the bay bellow.  Nothing unusual.  My next reaction was to check weather.com.  Nothing out of the unusual until Chris pointed out on the webpage the article discussing the earthquake and tsunami that hit Japan.  Within minutes of waking up, I was quickly being shown the horrible devestation that nature could cause.

It humbles you.  At any moment a natural disaster could hit and your whole life could change.

It makes me think about the dreams I have of dealth.  I've had this dream a few times now, most recentely the first night my mom came to visit me.  I'm in an elevator with a random aquintance and the elevator stops working and begins dropping uncontrollably.  The other person in my dream then says "Oooooh no!!!" in a horribly terrified voice.  My death in the dream is that moment everything turns black and I got out of consciousness only to wake up from my dream.

I feel like I think about death more than the average person.  I'm horrified at the idea of dying.  I know its common for people to say that they wouldn't want to live till they were 100...that they wouldn't enjoy their life anymore.  I don't feel that way.  I don't think I would have a problem with living forever as long as those I loved could as well.  I would love to be alive and witness all the changes that this world goes through.  What things we discover and come up with.

Overwhelmed

I just finished reading the chapter "How will we heal ourselves" from the book, Biomimicry and am now feeling completely overwhelmed.  I want to scream to the world...."STOP!"  I wish I had a million hands that could reach out to all the various problems we have created and fix them.  How did we become so content with being ....idle.  Why do we, as a western culture, gorge ourselves on foods that are so awful for us?  Not only do most of these foods lack the nutrition we need, but our overproduction of these monoculture crops are destroying our beautiful natural environment.  We are depending on energy resources that are not only nonrenewable, but are foreign and unreliable.  We are facing a world that will have the highest rate of extinction (by 2025, it is speculated that 1/4 of species will become extinct) and losing the chance to study these species for possible human benefits.   All so we can all over-indulge as a society...while the rest of the world falls apart.  I feel completely frustrated at the lack of knowledge, as a society, that we have about our natural environment.

I know that I sounds horribly dramatic and extreme--two things I tend to avoid, but how can we all just sit here while all these horrible things are happening.  Why isn't the average American being educated about what our footprint is doing to the earth and to the species who live here with us?  Why are we letting greed control the world we live in?  Is that really how we want to be defined?  As a society that was greedy to the point that we destroyed all of our natural resources?

I'm skeptical that government or business will be able to change anything.  I really believe that the only way to make a difference is from the bottom up....from the people.    We have to start educating ourselves.  Start reading.  Start attending lectures and meetings.  Turn of the TV, because Charlie Sheen has nothing to offer you.  And when I talk of change, I look to myself too, because I am just as guilty as the rest of society.  I only hope, that overtime, as I become more knowledge, that I can shape my lifestyle to a more sustainable and healthy one.   This will only come from the commitment to educate myself on issues everyday.  To not  make excuses in order to live lazily.