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:
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.
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