In the previous post, I showed that the Myth of Competition—the notion that competition is necessary for survival—is a deeply ingrained idea that has developed positive connotations, but that it is, in some respects, a weakness.
Now I want to discuss how competition dulls our faculties and causes us function at a low level.
Focus on Competition Constricts Our Abilities
Because competitiveness has such a positive penumbra, it may seem counterintuitive to say that it actually constricts our faculties. By increasingly focusing our attention on competition, we channel all our capacities into constructing battle plans. We use our intelligence to devise strategies to counter our opponents. We use our strength to overpower them. We use our senses to notice the smallest variations in their activity, in order to anticipate their movements against us. In short, all our faculties become reactive, become dependent on our opponents for their next moves.
Of course, there are aspects of life that require such an attunement to the actions of another. There are times when people are determined to fight with us, and we had better have the ability to keep track of them, sense their movements, outsmart and overpower them.
But to pretend that all, or even most, of life is like that is simply to falsify reality. Unless you live in an active war zone or are held in a torture camp, not even the harshest of environments lacks interludes during which we can let our thoughts run free, let our senses drink in the surroundings, let our bodies loose to dance or sing or run.
Believing overmuch in the Myth of Competition stunts the open-ended exercise of our most inspirational and stimulating abilities—and in doing so cramps the freedom required to be a Creator.
Continuous Competition a Sign of Low-Level Functioning
Continuous engagement in competition is a sign of low-level functioning. When we live all the time in a responsive mode, we begin to function like machines. We don’t ask any longer whether the situation facing us is a combat situation because we have been programmed not to be satisfied until we have a challenge to treat like a competition. We view every life task as a struggle. Are we going to be able to fix that broken toilet or is it going to “beat” us?
When life doesn’t deliver up anything to respond to, we generate more situations that can be treated as competitions, either directly between us and other individuals, or vicariously between two other competitors, one of which we identify with. This is the appeal of all spectator sports.
This is yet another limitation on our faculties—in this case, on our creative powers. Of all the things we could create, we choose to create more competitions, because we have become comfortable within the limits of competition. We become co-creators of our own limitations, unwitting participants in our own low-level functioning.
None of this is to say that all competition is bad. One can choose to engage in competition as an enjoyable way of releasing energy, as a kind of game or dance. And one can choose to engage in competition as a way of developing a skill. The main point here is the ability to choose. One can even choose to engage in it as the only appropriate response to a particular situation—when, for instance, someone else is determined to make you an adversary. As long as the element of choice remains, competition is just one of many activities that can be used to achieve creative ends.
Once competition becomes a necessity, however, and once people begin to see it as the matrix of all human activity, it turns into a straightjacket.
In the next post, I will continue examining the Myth of Competition, showing that competition can inculcate vices and that it is not, as many think, a fundamental feature of living together with other people.
(This is cross-posted from my regular column at The Scott Blog here.)