When I was young, I felt a bit different from my peers, especially my fellow males. I wasn't all that fond of sports, you see. I played baseball and tennis for a while, and even enjoyed them sometimes, but overall I just saw too many things I didn't like about competitive sports. It occurred to my young mind that there were a lot of aspects about them that were hurtful.
As I grew older, I saw it more and more. Fanaticism, for example, really bothered me. The idea that someone would not only cheer for the team they liked, but yell abuses at the opposing team... I saw no sense in this.
But it wasn't just sports, as I was soon to discover. It was any situation that was designed to end with a clearly defined loser. This was the bottom line of competition: someone won and someone lost. Many people believe that this is just "the way of the world" or "human nature." Evidence dictates the contrary, however.
I saw the ill effects of competition everywhere. The playing field, the workplace, the classroom... And while many will argue that competition is good, evidence again shows that it isn't as good as people think, and furthermore that there are far more negative effects than positive.
For years, I kept these thoughts mostly to myself. It wasn't until I was in my thirties that I discovered that, not only wasn't I alone in my thinking, but that many studies have been done on this very subject.
I discovered this one day when I stumbled across a book called No Contest - The Case Against Competition, by Alfie Kohn. This was one of the most amazing books I've ever read, going into far greater detail than I ever could about the subject. Kohn pointed out a multitude of negative effects of competition, many of them subtle, that I'd never really thought of. And he references a mighty impressive collection of studies on the subject.
Competitiveness is ingrained in us from an early age. The typical American elementary school classroom, for example, is loaded with competition at even the most basic level. Take the practice of asking a question of the class, then selecting one student to give the answer. What is the result of this? The selected student feels a little bit special, having been the one chosen. And everyone else feels a little bit rejected. Unless the student gives an incorrect answer, in which case he or she feels embarrassed and possibly stupid, and then the process starts anew, with the child who finally gives the correct answer feeling a tiny bit superior.
But what about the positive aspects of competition? Better results are gained through competition, say its supporters. Competition compels us to do more, do better, so as to beat the other guy. Competition may, indeed, provide better results when compared to working alone on something. But when competition is compared to cooperation, the cooperative effort provides consistently better results.
Let's look at one of the greatest achievements of the 20th century: putting a man on the moon. Quite an undertaking, I'm sure you'll agree. And the USA did it first, beating the USSR to the moon. They'd beaten us at putting a man into orbit around the Earth, so we had to beat them back.
The Space Race, we called it. Surely the competitive effort is what caused us to succeed so fantastically, right?
Maybe.
But imagine for just a moment how things might have gone if we'd worked with the Soviets, rather than against them. We would have avoided making all the mistakes they'd already made, and vice versa. With more minds working on the problem, using each other for ideas and criticism, we would most likely have done a lot better. Together, we could have succeeded in the venture even sooner.
And when all was said and done, there would have been the warm spirit of true teamwork accomplishing a job well done, rather than the hollow, temporary thrill of beating someone else.
Competition, in a way, embodies much of what I feel is wrong with the world in general. We're obsessed with trying to beat the other guy. We don't just want to win, we want to make the other guy lose. We turn everything into a competition, from the smallest things, like the classroom scenario, to the ultimate competition: war.
One day, perhaps, we'll celebrate the victories of cooperative efforts in things that truly matter, and not really give a hoot over who won the Super Bowl. Perhaps in that world, men and women will worry more about helping each other, rather than how they can tear each other down.
Some of us are already living in that world, and it's a mighty nice place to be.