Does competition help or hurt young people?

Hurt

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by Randy Browne

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Ancient China has a number of sayings about competition. To name just a few (from memory; not claimed to be direct quotes) ....

(1) "Seeking great honor often results in no honor at all".

(2) "The sage seeks only to satisfy the cravings of his belly, and not the insatiable longing of his eyes".

(3) "The wise warrior knows that every victory parade is also a funeral", which can be seen as a metaphor with multiple meanings, including concerns over what military victory (or any form of competition) sets into motion.

It's one thing to teach youngsters that competition is a fact of Nature; it's quite another matter to teach youth to revel and delight in competition, and to seek competition for its own sake. Many adults who encourage competition among youngsters often argue the former to justify the latter, but the latter cannot be justified by the former.

There's nothing wrong with the idea that competition is a part of Nature. The common mistake is in thinking competition is the very essence of Nature; yet, there's far more to Nature than mere competition.

In the wild, two tigers might fight fiercely over food, prey, territory, and whatnot. That's competition, but even in the "animal world", that's not the whole picture. Clearly, there is cooperation within societies of non-humans, ranging from ants, bees, wolves, some large cat species, and even elephants. There is also mutual cooperation for survival between species; bees and flowers are perhaps the most well-known example.

Furthermore, look at the biosystem inside an individual mammal; even mammals like tigers, which have a less clear social structure in comparison with, say, lions and wolves. Blood cells in a tiger carry oxygen to the tiger's brain. The blood cells are not in competition with a (healthy) tiger's brain cells for oxygen; quite the opposite, the blood cells actually give up oxygen "in service" to brain cells and various other parts of the tiger's body. Similarly, the tiger's immune system works mainly by cooperation, not (internal) competition.

Outside the tiger, in the air and open oceans, many single-celled animals compete directly for food; yet the cells inside a tiger's body thrive mainly on cooperation. The fact that the cells in a tiger's body, or even a human body, might not be conscious of their cooperative roles, isn't the issue. When certain cells in a higher life form begin to engage in self-serving, independent growth; a form of competition with other body cells, then a serious biological condition exists, called cancer.

In Nature, the paradoxical role of competition is to develop and maintain cooperation (or God does, if you prefer; I sidestep that debate, as it has no place here). Over long periods of time, less-organized life systems interact, combine, reduce competition, and increase cooperation. Higher life forms and societies of various kinds of life thrive mostly on cooperation. Nature uses competition to slowly build progressively higher levels of cooperation (e.g. human beings first formed tribes, later built villages, later entire nations, etc.). Nature generally limits internal competition to maintaining health of an overall organism or society; not to serve selfish needs of individual life forms, such as arrogant and powerful humans. Even a dominant male in a society of wild mammals won't kill off other males just to keep everything for himself; lions and wolves need a good team to hunt, for example.

Now, as for human society, when cooperation is over-emphasized and individual competition is insufficient, the result is an inflexible, conformist society; its counterpart in "the wild" is the organism that dies off because it cannot adapt to change.

Conversely, in human society, when individual competition is excessive, then individual welfare suffers as well as society; one analogue in Nature is again, the organism suffering from cancer. Excessive competition in our society is thus metaphorically a "cancer", which destroys social cooperation, including respect for the rights and feelings of others.

Realizing for human and non-human society alike, as well as for higher life forms in Nature, that excessive competition is harmful both individually and collectively, the question is how to seek balance? Here again, ancient Chinese wisdom is pertinent, for still again, "The sage seeks only to satisfy the cravings of his belly, and not the insatiable longing of his eyes", and this profound Oriental wisdom is where our society has seriously failed our young.

When our young folks are taught the natural and unavoidable role of competition in their lives, they are learning how to "fill their bellies". Not everybody is equal in ability, nor need be. If we believe that already, then why are so many of us shrieking at that youngster who dropped the ball at their Saturday afternoon game? It's not as though they wanted to fail. Each person will inevitably end up in competition as part of finding that at which he or she can succeed. But our society is far, far past that point.

In ancient Chinese terms, competition in our society has become largely a matter of "the insatiable longing of the eyes" which is illogically defended by the need to "fill one's belly". Pride and vanity in animals perhaps aids their survival; the ancient Chinese at least, felt humanity could do better than that. In our society, we have the expression "keeping up with the Jones family next door", equivalent to the Chinese' "insatiable longing of the eyes". Even in those cases where we have adequate money, food, clothing, and shelter, then far too often, there is still a deep passion for obtaining "more" without any moral or spiritual purpose whatsoever.

Having everybody want to be corporate presidents isn't any more healthy for society than having all drone and worker bees wanting to be the Queen bee would be healthy for a beehive. People of all ages should accept and respect the strengths and weaknesses within themselves and others, but we undermine such thinking by encouraging competition without stressing at least equal importance for a sense of community.

It's one matter if a person feels naturally competitive; that too, is part of Nature. It's even another matter if a person's competitive nature has a noble aim. It always puts a smile on my face to hear a small child or even a teenager outline a completely unworkable plan to make everybody in the world happy; a competitive challenge to some unnamed, evil "they", yet who's to say something good won't eventually come of that? But actually teaching youngsters who are not naturally competitive to feel "the insatiable longing of the eyes"; to teach the desire for power, control, personal possessions, and the like, far beyond what a youth feels by nature, is the mark of a sick society.

For those families with one or more highly competitive youngsters, I think there's a test that one might apply to one's own family to discern whether competition is healthy or not, and that test, would be as follows.

If your son or daughter happens to win an award of some kind, then by all means, commend them. As you discuss their achievement with your youngster, reflect quietly to yourself on the ancient Chinese admonition that "Every victory parade is also a funeral", and say nothing of it yet. Your youngster might voluntarily lament how unfortunate it is that everybody cannot win an award. If something like that happens, then not to worry. You have a wonderful son or daughter, and in time, they might have as much to teach this world, as they have to learn from it.

But if your youngster doesn't express their regard for non-winners on their own, and the conversation is too centered on the "local victory parade", perhaps you could gently mention the matter of how non-winners might feel, to give your youngster cause to reflect. Perhaps you don't want to mention this right away, to avoid "throwing a bucket of water on the victory parade", so how about discussing the feelings of non-winners sometime later? There's no point to rehashing this each and every time your youngster wins an award, but if you can't ever seem to discuss this, you may have a problem. Are you really teaching your youngster that competition is a part of life, or are you unwittingly teaching them to "look out for Old Number One"? They're not the same thing in a good society.

If you truly believe that competition is a part of life and Nature, then by all means, teach your youngster such. But teaching youngsters to focus on being "a winner" is not the same thing, and at best, a half-truth. Again, the larger truth about human competition is, "Every victory parade is also a funeral", and when our society can truly claim to be teaching that ancient Chinese metaphor to our youth on a widespread basis, then, and only then, is competition a good thing. Until that day comes, I shall continue to assert that competition does more harm than good to our youngsters. As things are now, we're mostly just teaching our youth to be arrogant and inconsiderate; current competition among our young is only "healthy" for "winners", far less so for many others.

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