Goodby Competition
Competition creates more losers than winners, clearly. How can this be acceptable, a world of mostly losers? It seems to be just taken as the way it is and little or no thought is given to it. The concept of competition is flawed. It has inherent flaws that are insurmountable and undesirable. Our world is overwhelmed by the undesirable effects of competition. Are you aware of them? You may not even be aware of the problems with the concept of competition any more than you are aware of the changes in your body over time.
In this country, USA, competition is a central theme of life. In our economic system, competition is central. We even have laws designed to keep the competition in place while doing our best to eliminate the “competition.” We accept the unacceptable as “just business.” We perpetuate the “dog eat dog” nature of our economic system and carry it over into our personal lives. Ruthlessness in business is lauded. Getting it before someone else does is a theme. Winning is paramount. This is the opposite of the way I want to live. I have no need to beat anyone, and I don’t want anyone to be beaten, especially so someone can be a winner.
Think about the concept of “winning.” This area of contemplation is vast and lonely. You will not encounter many others there. As a winner you are a member of a small group, a lonely group. Can you win without making someone a loser? Why would you want to create a loser? Winning is also a measure, to most. It is a comparison. Winning demonstrates that we can do better than another. Why is that important? Consider the need to be better than another or than something. I contend that such a need is founded in unhealthy psychology. If you can do or be better than you were, you have made yourself the loser and the winner, but that doesn’t seem to be competition. Winning sometimes comes with the acquisition of larger amounts of material possessions, more prestige, and more self-confidence. These things are only important in a competitive society, one that makes it possible to enjoy a lonely isolated condition. Working together in peace can make more material possessions available than can be acquired in today’s world. Prestige is a balm for the pain of inferiority, a false feeling. True self-confidence cannot be attained by comparisons or by winning. It has other sources, of which you may yet be unaware, and this article is not about that aspect. Winning is the great achievement in our time, for most, at least many. Winning requires competition and the presence of it in our history must have something to do with what happened.
Then we have our sports. As if there were no other way to play games, competition is the way it is done. We even compete with ourselves. How easily we ignore the agony of defeat and rally around the winners. As if to insure that the people never think for a moment about working together or playing together for mutual benefit, we take competition to its full-dressed formality in sports. Then we hunger for it. We crave it. We live for it. As long as you are the winner, all is well, never mind the loser. This scenario has no denouement. It perpetuates itself, as if it has a place. The winners stand in a world of losers, happy in their accomplishment without realizing that there is an even better happiness to be had, a happiness that comes from being in a world of happy people.
The happiness that can be had by helping others is something to think about. You might like it better than the happiness that comes from winning. Again, the current condition of life on Earth makes winning what it is. We can make life on Earth different. We can work together, instead of against each other. In some twisted sense that only works at this time, we would all be winners, thereby deleting the very word.
We have the world as it is, not necessarily the “world as we know it,” since few actually know the world. If we settle for what we have, the probability of extinction is great. If we can’t rise above our competitive behavior, we will not likely work together, and by working together we can improve the conditions of life. War is a competition. Competition keeps us apart. It set us against one another. Sure, we can form a team, but that is just a taste, a particle, of having togetherness. Competition molds our very psychology, just as any other social interaction, but is it a molding that is for our own good? I think it had its place in the past, but it has become obsolete. We no longer need it. We need collaboration now.
Working together can deliver what we all want. It can mold psychology in a way that will serve us better now. Perhaps there is something beyond that. I hope so. By removing the competition in society, we will see more friendly, virtuous, and loving people. We will remove some of the conditioning that makes many of the horrors that have been endured.
Competition will vanish from this world. It will go the way of burning witches and the flat earth. The human species will look back astonished in disbelief. Say what you will, that people are inexorably compelled to peace and prosperity is obvious to the informed objective analyst. I have already heard the contrary position countless times. Please, don’t subject me to another repetition. Ask yourself who’s cause you further by standing in a position contrary to collaborating, cooperating, and helping; to togetherness, oneness, and family. Regardless of your opinion, your beliefs, your theories, or even you sense of honor, when you stand for something that is contrary to these virtues, you are aiding and abetting a crime against humanity.
There is no changing the nature of competition. It is in itself antagonistic. You may say “friendly competition.” To that I say, you are trying to make something nasty seem more palatable. I am not fooled. Can you make torture seem pretty? You cannot make competition seem pretty either. If beauty is in the eye of the beholder, then the beholder must be considered. Pretty or not, the pain of the people is something I want to eliminate. Therefore, the pain of losing must be eliminated. I want to live in a painless world, a world of fulfilled people. I want to be able to travel throughout the universe. Until we are a benevolent people, it is better that we remain shackled to this planet.