Is Competition Healthy?
Lately, I’ve been asking myself “Is competition healthy?” and I suppose I mean is it always healthy? This is a short exploration of why this question has been on my mind lately and what conclusions, if any, I’ve drawn from this consideration.
1. It’s not every time we achieve something that we do at the sacrifice of someone else having that achievement. If we learn how to cook a new dish, it does not mean that someone then lost the chance to do the same thing. So what happens when there are only a few spots, or one spot, and you just so happen to get it? How do you feel when you don’t get it?
2. While listening to the story “550: Three Miles” on This American Life, I found myself asking “what are possible repercussions to losing out on a great opportunity that puts you head to head against others who, just like you, deserve the prize?” For some people, competition pushes them to work harder to reach their goals by helping them expand beyond what they think are their limitations; let’s call this motivation. However, for others, competition can be a downward spiral to abandoning one’s goals altogether, ending in depression because the expectation that those who work hard also play hard has proven to be not always the case.
3. Marketing guru Seth Godin says “When you have competition, it’s the pack that decides what’s going to happen next, you’re merely trying to get (or stay) in front.” He then says that competing with one’s self should be the real goal and is much more difficult to do. I imagine that challenging one’s self to become better than one’s self is the original intent of competition to begin with, but truly when competing with others the idea is to be better than the next person. But how can you figure out where you were if, instead of gauging your own progress against yourself, you are gauging your process against dozen, sometimes thousands of other people? Who were you when you began and who will you be in the end? The loss of agency works well for businesses that rely on nonstop work to reach profit margins. As long as you do well in their eyes, which means topping the charts over everyone else, then you are reaching your goals. But aren’t those goals really theirs?
4. Perhaps this ability to get lost in the scuffle in the workplace translate over into real life? There are some benefits of competition, surely, especially when working as a team to make things happen. But, eventually, competition mode has to turn off, allowing us to be individuals who have certain abilities, hobbies, and or visions for which we want to be accountable, and only to ourselves should we be held accountable and compared. If on the basketball court someone against whom you frequently play is a master three-point shooter, then a way to be inspired by that is not to say “I want to shoot three-pointers as good or better than that person,” rather “I want to shoot three-pointers better than I currently do.” It is one thing to be inspired by someone else to be greater, it’s another thing to think someone else is better and the apex of your own possible skill set.
5. But I do feel invigorated when I am competing in something I truly care about and I am not sure if it is because I am naturally competitive or have been trained by society to be that way. I know I do some of my best work in the frame of competition and have grown from many experiences where I saw myself competing with other writers. What feels awful about this is the idea fed to us that there isn’t room for all of us, which isn’t wholly true. Sure, there may not be enough jobs for everyone within a specific field or enough grant money to go around, but how much of this is more so the fact that those opportunities have not been created? When a large pot of prize money is involved, is it wrong to argue that the money could be split in more ways (six $100,000 prizes made into twelve $50,000 prizes or into twenty four $25,000 prizes). It sometimes feels as though the field is nourished by keeping others from having success, excusing these large pots of money as a means of “supporting artists so that they do not have to worry about anything for a year.” But, surely, even this can be made more even, no?
6. Prestige, then, seems to play a large part in the creation and sustainability of competitions, as though the higher-seeming the stakes the better the appearance of the institutions that create the competitions. What does it say about our communities when what drives prestige is not the quality of work that is done (in this case to support people from various occupations/skill sets), rather the cash flow that is created to purposely support only a handful of workers, artists, students, etc in their daily lives? What is it about exclusion that is so seductive, such that we all invest in it even when it disregards us?
7. I could continue, but I will end with yet another thought, this one about Capitalism: It’s no secret that our market is based on capitalist principles and is arguably still a capitalist society, but I think it is important to understand that economic thinking does not necessarily or necessarily have to translate into our everyday lives, making every move we make into a financial gesticulation, a performance driven by anxiety to be better than the next person instead of investing fully into enriching activities and practices that make our daily lives healthier. When waking up and going to sleep are managed like bank accounts, what do we lose as human?
Glappitnova unites influencers and talent from different industries through storytelling, performances, classes, and events for one crazy 8 day experience in Chicago.The opinions expressed here by Glappitnova.com contributors are their own, not those of Glappitnova.com.
~Phillip
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