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Is Our Competitive Spirit Helping or Hurting America?
BENEATH THE SPIN • ERIC L. WATTREE
We accept a lot of so-called truisms simply because we’ve been told that they’re true all of our lives. Take competition for example. From the day we start school most Americans are taught that our competitive spirit is what makes America great. But is that really true? Is competition really the most productive model for promoting human progress? I don’t think so. While recently discussing this issue one gentleman said the following:
“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’ve heard this argument a million times, but we have absolutely no evidence that any of the things mentioned above are a result of competition. Neither do we have any evidence that suggests that competition is a more powerful motivator than the simple pursuit of excellence. The fact is, competition caters to the very worst in human nature – selfishness, hostility, and greed. Competition is only truly productive when we compete against our last best personal effort.
It’s more likely, therefore, that human accomplishment has actually 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 instead of the nations of the world spending trillions of dollars in global competition, that money was being used 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 – and that’s essentially what competition is – is counterintuitive. The fact is, our tendency to be competitive rather than cooperative is man’s primary dysfunction.
It would be interesting to see the results of an experiment where they took two footballs teams and trained one in the traditional way, and trained each member of the other team to focus on nothing but improving on their last best effort. I’m virtually certain that the latter team would prevail if all other things were equal.
And consider what life would be like if as a society we rewarded ourselves on character and intellect instead of how many “things” we could accumulate; if we rewarded our young people for creativity and scholarship instead of how often they could get a ball to go through a hoop; if teachers and scientists were the superstars in our society instead of self-absorbed dysfunctionals. Try to imagine the benefits to our 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 of the immediate benefits of such a society would be a more informed citizenry. We would also neutralize the negative impact that money is having on our political system, because no matter how much money a corporation spent they wouldn’t be able to pull the wool over our eyes by appealing to our emotions over our intellect. We would also have far less crime, since there would be no motive to obtain “things” to gain stature in society. And since character would be the coin of the realm, it would promote family values, because a father who abandoned his children would lose stature in the community. In such a society he would be looked upon with the kind of disdain that we currently look upon shiftless bums.
Another positive impact that such a philosophy would have on our politics would be, in a society that valued character over wealth a politician wouldn’t be assessed based on his longevity or on his ability to obstruct the opposing party. He or she would only be able to gain stature by what he was able to accomplish during his time in office. And the kind of destructive rhetoric that Limbaugh, Beck, and Palin engage in would be nonexistent. Instead of Democrats and Republicans arguing over what’s wrong with one another, each party would be engaged in showing how and why their respective positions would be more beneficial to the people. The fact is, with corporate profit removed from our 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 some group or organization that we use as an extension of ourselves. That’s why people like Dick Cheney, Limbaugh, and Beck are so fixated on the concept of American Exceptionalism, race, and “us against them.” You can literally draw a profile of these kind of individuals. The lower their feelings of self-worth, the greater their need to feel a part of something “special” – a race, team, country, etc. They try to use it as an extension of themselves.
That’s also why people of this ilk hate Barack Obama so intensely. Obama’s character and natural intellect is a direct challenge to their delusions of grandeur, so they’ve dedicated their lives to trying to prove that he’s just as flawed as they are.
Thus, in our misguided attempt to find personal self-esteem, we’ve collectively incorporated competition into our body politic, a flaw in our character that has become a direct threat to human survival. The only thing competition is good for is administering to our delusion of grandeur. And no matter how often we claim to be the best, or how loudly we proclaim American exceptionalism, both our collective and individual inner-selves will always know who we really are beneath our strutting veneer – just another group of flawed individuals, though, a little more arrogant than most.
Eric L. Wattree
http://wattree.blogspot.com/
Ewattree@Gmail.com
Citizens Against Reckless Middle-Class Abuse (CARMA)
Religious bigotry: It’s not that I hate everyone who doesn’t look, think, and act like me – it’s just that God does.
Short URL: http://www.veteranstoday.com/?p=81477
Posted by Eric L. Wattree on Feb 18 2011, With 0 Reads, Filed under Politics. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0. Both comments and pings are currently closed.
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I haven’t said this to you often Eric, but well said!
Thank you, Penumbra.
I’m glad you liked it.
You know, Mr. Wattree, I have seen societies where market competition was eliminated. I am talking of the Soviet Union and its satellites. No matter how the ruling party tried to stimulate people to excel, they didn’t.
The same was true of the earliest settlements in New England. The people brought from England were supposed to work together on plantations which did not belong to them and the result was famine and deaths. But as soon as the land has become individual property the colonies began to be incredibly productive. You can read about it in “How Capitalism Saved America” by DiLorenzo.
I am not a proponent of “greed is good” credo but human nature is dual: it seems to be a combination of competitiveness+individualism and altruism+cooperation. In some cultures or races one dominates or the other (Nordics vs. East Asians, respectively).
The current cult of greed and money is an obvious pathology but the cure is not removing competitiveness or private property. Yes, some exceptional individuals are being driven by an inner need to create and work regardless of reward but most people are not like that.
We should be careful not to jump from one extremism to another. It never ends well.
Your statements like “The only thing competition is good for is administering to our delusion of grandeur.” sound tremendously but to me this is not a sound of truth.
Hass,
I’m not suggesting that we change the system. I’m a capitalist. I’m simply suggesting that we change our approach to capitalism. As a society we should start rewarding character and personal achievement over hording. We could do that and still reward competition and achievement. But the competition should be against one’s last best effort, similar to the way a track star competes against his own fastest time, or a golfer competes against his best score. That kind of competition can be just as fulfilling as competing for the bragging rights of saying, “I’m better than you” – and not nearly as childish, or counterproductive when extended to the business community.
Dear Eric,
I can only agree with you that celebrating hoarding of wealth is despicable in and of itself, but HOW make society reward achievement of hard work, great mind and good character?
You mention competing against oneself. Sure, but this is usually being done in order to beat other guys later! As I said in my comment, the people who create for the pleasure of creating are rare and far between.
I know a few such people. They are usually geniuses or artists. Most people are not like them.
Hass,
People are not more creative because society doesn’t reward creativity like it does Hoarding. After all, it’s not the corporate giants who are the most innovative, it the workers who they invest in. Thus, if we started rewarding that behavior, and made it more”cool” to creat than to hoard, people would change their behavior.
With very few exceptions, everything we do, we do to elevate our stature in the community. So if the only way a teenage boy could be popular with teenage girls was by developing his character and becoming more creative, the boys would fall in line – and the same is true of adults.
Social scientists have known for decades that not only man, but most other species of animals will replicate behavior that is reinforced. If the girls stopped Catering to the footbal team and started flocking to the academics, football would die off in a season or two. So all society has to do to completely turn itself around is start rewarding excellence over brawn.
And by the way, the primary function of sports is to create an “us against them” social mindset, and prepare us to sacrifice ourselves in war. We’re being manipulated. Ask Pat Tilman and the other 4000 American troops who were sacrificed for Halliburton and Exxon in Iraq.
Of course we are manipulated.
Various societies in the past valued different behaviours the most. In Sparta it was courage and fearlessness in battle. Among most Jews in diaspora it happens to be loyalty to Israel, social upward mobility and team playing for the Community and for Israel. In earlier times, it was the in-depth knowledge of Talmud that got you the best bride.
I happen to live in a society in Northern Europe which still values professionalism and hard work no less than ammassing wealth.
So, I agree completely with you on principle. What I want to hear is whether you have a realistic proposal HOW to change things in the US?
Yes I do, Hass.
We can write about the concept until it becomes a part of the political dialogue, then promote it through the pop culture. As I mentioned earlier, we simply have to make it “cool” to embrace enlightenment.
Question is: who is “We” and how much influence do “We” have?
Those role models and ideals of Sparta and Jewish society I mentioned developed spontaneously throughout hundreds of years.
On the other side – this “greed is good” ethos has been promoted actively by mainly Hollywood propagandists. Why – is anybody’s guess. One can get some idea from the writings of (why search far away?) JB Campbell here in VT.
A conspiratorial mind could infer that CFR and it’s friends wanted Americans and other Westerners to shed all higher human traits and become lone wolves to one another.
How can “We” compete with this all-powerful propaganda juggernaut?
Hass,
Societal mores are modified all the time. We simply go about changing our attitude toward greed in the same we changed our attitude toward gender, race, and sexuality. It’s really not a huge undertaking, especially now that we have access to the internet and mass media. And when I say “we” I’m referring to those of us who hold this belief.
Well, it’s going to be uphill battle, I’m afraid.
At least under present circum(size)stances (excuse my French).
But I’m with you on this, and have been all my life.
I figured you were. You’re just an independent thinker and not one accustomed to jumping on bandwagons without closely examining the facts. My goal is to create a society filled with people like you.
Fantastic article. Thanks Eric,