Yet again:

Competition wins!

Serena Williams of the U.S. celebrates her win against Belgium's Justine Henin-Hardenne in their semi-final match on center court at the Wimbledon Tennis Championships in London, July 3, 2003. Williams won the match 6-3 6-2. REUTERS/Ian Hodgson

ur society encourages persons to compete against each other: to waste a lot of energy and resources trying to frustrate others' attempts to frustrate their expenditure of energy and resources to frustrate those others' expenditure of energy and resources.... [Note: This paradigm obviously fits tennis better than, say, pole vaulting, which latter is more a case of parallel redundant effort than direct antagonism.]

Obviously, persons in our society also sometimes cooperate. But we cannot fail to notice that much of that cooperation is in-group (aka "team") cooperation to compete against other groups (aka "teams"): one supra-personal aggregation expending energy and resources trying to frustrate another supra-personal aggregation's expenditure of energy and resources (e.g., football)....

We do not teach persons to carefully consider where they want to compete and where they want to cooperate (in the business world, there are anti-trust laws to discourage some kinds of cooperation, e.g.). Where should we draw the line? Competition may have impeded early research on AIDS, while cooperation may have expedited early research on SARS. To the extent that persons manage the parameters of competition, they are placing cooperation ahead of competition, but sometimes in our society it is an ambivalent form of competitive cooperation which the managers agree on, e.g., competitive labor markets and educational opportunities.[fn.74]

Whenever persons compete, one almost sure bet is that the spirit of competition will win, no matter which particular competitors win or lose. It's like in gambling casinos, where the house always wins, and the house has extensive security and auditing departments to detect and, where possible prevent, else prosecute or at least banish anyone who does not "play according to the house rules".

All competition, except in "lawless areas", is ultimately grounded in cooperation, if only the cooperative efforts of the police (referees, etc. et al.) who make sure nobody wins by methods that the cooperative agreement which founded the competitive arena decided were not appropriate. Generally the police will arrest you if your neighbor wins the lottery and you put a bullet thru their head to claim the prize for yourself, e.g.

Obviously, the competititive "spirit" is exascerbated in circumstances like the new Global Economy, where increasingly large rewards go to a small number of winners and the majority end up with much less than they can live with contentedly. The widespread deprivation thus generated can, however, backfire, if the losers, in dis-spirited discouragement, stop trying to compete, thus effectively ending the "game", or if, figuring they have little to lose, they rebel -- potentially deploying handguns and even more powerful weapons....

A BIG QUESTION IS: How much of our limited energy and resources do we want to sink into the activity of competition, as opposed to activities that aim more directly at substantive goals? Of course sometimes competition can have genuinely constructive results. For instance, if two teams compete to see who can most quickly and economically build 100 units of affordable sunbelt housing that can withstand a 150 mph hurricane, or affordable New England housing that uses very little heating fuel at zero degrees Fahrenheit -- the result in each case will be 200 units of affordable housing. But how much of our competition is like this example?

When should we compete and when should we cooperate? How should we compete and how should we cooperate, to maximize the socially productive results of our exertions, and to make the process itself maximally human[e]ly gratifying for both the particants and also for society in general?

How much competition can we afford? How much losing will we accept as the price for a few -- who usually are not ourselves -- winning? How much of the anxiety which inevitably attends competition do we want to subject ourselves to ("upsets" are always possible!).

There is the obvious sense in which winning is the opposite of losing. But there is a deeper sense in which earning and the secure possession which results from it, is the opposite of both.

Please study picture of Serena Williams at top of this page. Reflect on the emotions to which even winning can lead. Here they are clearly not Luxe, calme et volupté -- or even just basic civility.[fn.73]

We live from the stories we tell ourselves. I am reminded of the old cartoon in which two armies face each other on the battlefield (which is perhaps an ultimate form of competition?). The officer on each side orders his troops: "Ready!" The soldiers on both sides raise their guns. "Aim!" The soldiers on each side point their guns at the soldiers on the other side (their respective competitors). "Fire!" The soldiers on each side turn around and shoot their own officer, thereby ending the war, in which, whichever side might "win", a lot of them on both sides were getting killed and wounded (aka: losing). It's possible.

"The yoga contest seems symbolic of an aggressive campaign... Bikram Choudhury... has waged in the last 18 months to regimentalize Bikram yoga in some 300 studios around the country -- in effect, to develop it into a profitable franchise on the model of Starbucks, a company whose uniformity of product and ambience he praises. "In yoga, where the reigning 2,000-year-old principles are humility, compassion and self-acceptance, competition raises eyebrows. 'The idea of a championship does seem contradictory to the very nature of yoga practice,' said Swami Ramananda, president of the Integral Yoga Institute in New York. 'The goal of yoga is to find or reconnect to the peace within, so that we are not dependent on circumstances around us for peace of mind.'" (Vanessa Grigoriadis, "Controlled Breathing, in the Extreme", NYT Sunday Styles, 06Jul03, p.ST1)

E-mail me your thoughts about competition vs cooperation.   See  gracious serenity in the gentlemanly game of golf (Also: in real-life Inuit seal hunting...). See  good fun turn nasty in an impromptu college baseball game.   Return  to aphorisms about competition. Learn  about competition in Harvard graduate architecture education. Read  about raising staff members' "competitive metabolism" at The New York Times.   Always  ask (esp. about anything people are getting enthusiastic about!): What is this an instance of?   Don't like competing? Try your luck!

Leisure is the basis of culture.

Read  about how competition can be constructive.   Return  to Brad McCormick's home page.

Go to site map. http://www.cloud9.net/~bradmcc/sq/Serenity.html Copyright © 2003-2005 Brad McCormick, Ed.D. bradmcc@cloud9.net 03 June 2006CE (2006-06-03 ISO 8601)

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