[img]583|left|Eric L. Wattree||no_popup[/img]We accept a lot of so-called truisms because we have been told all of our lives they are true.
Take competition.
From the day we start school, Americans are taught competitive spirit is what makes America great.
Is that true? Is competition the most productive model for promoting human progress?
I don't think so. While recently discussing this issue, one gentleman said:
“Personally, I don’t mind competition. It has brought us better roads, better cars, better airplanes, better vacations, better medicines, longer life spans, and in many cases, except for us damaged Vets, better health. I don’t see honest competition as dysfunctional at all. Profiteering is okay also, as long as it is honest and based on productivity, job creation and boosting the human spirit. Why shouldn’t I be motivated by money, a bigger house, a nicer restaurant, to create the next penicillin, the next Salk vaccine, the next aspirin, and all the jobs and opportunities these inventions have provided.”
I have heard this argument a million times.
We have no evidence anything mentioned above resulted from competition. Neither do we have evidence that competition is a more powerful motivator than the pursuit of excellence.
Competition caters to the worst in human nature — selfishness, hostility, greed. Competition is productive only when we compete against our last best effort.
It's more likely, therefore, that human accomplishment has been stifled rather than enhanced by our childish need to be competitive. How much more might we have accomplished if, instead of duplicating their efforts in pursuit of competitive greed, drug companies shared their knowledge in an effort to cure disease?
Or, if the nations who spend trillions in global competition had, instead, used the money in a cooperative effort to enhance the plight of mankind?
The mere thought that man's primary imperative is in pursuit of conflict and greed — essentially that defines competition — is counterintuitive. Our tendency to be competitive rather than cooperative is man's primary dysfunction.
It would be interesting to see an experiment where two footballs teams trained, one in the traditional way, the other where each player were focused only on improving on his last best effort. I'm virtually certain the second team would prevail.
Consider what life would be like if society rewarded us for character and intellect instead of how many “things” we could accumulate; if we rewarded young people for creativity and scholarship instead of how often they could get a ball through a hoop; if teachers and scientists were the superstars instead of self-absorbed dysfunctionals.
How to Make Everything Different
Try to imagine the benefits to society if young men aspired to getting into the best universities with the passion that they currently dream of getting into the NBA or NFL.
One immediate benefit would be a more informed citizenry. We would neutralize the negative impact money causes our political system. No matter how much a corporation spent, it would not be able to pull the wool over our eyes by appealing to our emotions over our intellect.
We would have far less crime since there would be no motive to obtain “things” to gain stature in society. Since character would be the coin of the realm, it would promote family values. A father who abandoned his children would lose stature in the community. He would be looked upon with the disdain we direct toward shiftless bums.
Politics would be another positive impact. By valuing character over wealth, a politician would not be assessed on his longevity or his ability to obstruct the opposing party. He could gain stature by what he accomplished during his time in office. The destructive rhetoric that Limbaugh, Beck and Palin engage in would be nonexistent. Instead of arguing over what’s wrong with one another, each party would show how and why its positions were more beneficial. With corporate profit removed from politics, political differences would be far less pronounced.
Our need to compete is a misguided attempt to raise our personal feelings of self-worth by impressing others with superficial accomplishments, often in connection with a group or organization we use as an extension of ourselves.
That is why people Dick Cheney, Limbaugh and Beck are fixated on the concept of American Exceptionalism, race, and “us against them.” You can draw a profile of these types. The lower their self-worth, the greater their need to feel a part of something “special,” a race, a team, a country.
That is why people of this ilk hate Barack Obama so intensely. Obama's character and natural intellect are a direct challenge to their delusions of grandeur. They dedicate their lives to trying to prove he is as flawed as they are.
In our misguided pursuit of self-esteem, we have incorporated competition into our body politic, a flaw that is a threat to human survival. Competition only is good for ministering to our delusion of grandeur.
No matter how often we claim to be best or how loudly we boast of American exceptionalism, our collective and individual inner-selves always will know who we are beneath our strutting veneer:
Just another group of flawed individuals, more arrogant than most.
Mr. Wattree may be contacted at wattree.blogspot.com or Ewattree@Gmail.com
Religious bigotry: It’s not that I hate everyone who doesn’t look, think, and act like me – it’s just that God does.
