Let’s make a deal: With a late assist by pro-life Democrats, healthcare reform squeaks by 
Click to Print
Include Comments
Competition means winners!
America is The Great Reality Show. We are the land of competition. We spend all day in competition. We come home at night and watch competition. We go to sleep and dream about one day being in a televised competition ourselves. But we sometimes feel bad about this. Policy analyst Daniel Akst says competition is good, and it gets a bad rap. So before you go feeling bad about the dangers of economic competition, in particular, he says to remember these points:
- “It used to be worse. Think of the Roman gladiators!”
- “Life is not as competitive as the media might have us believe. It’s important to remember that our cultural elites live with so much competitive anxiety that their lives simply aren’t representative.”
- “It’s our nature. This is probably not a great argument for anything, but it’s worth noting that competition is at least as natural to us as cooperation.”
- “Competition is – dare we admit it? – good for us. The desire to win was surely one of the things that motivated Branch Rickey to break baseball’s color barrier by bringing an African-American ballplayer to the Dodgers.”
#3 is the scariest argument, though. Lots of bad things are a part of our natures, too. Violence, for example. But he’s right, in the main.
Topic: Culture, WorldMagBlog
Keywords: economics
You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.
back to top16 Comments to “Competition means winners!”
It is certainly the nature of boys – they turn everything into a competition.
Report comment to moderator
Interesting. Here’s a sort of related question. Is the reason we are more obsessed with competition becasue in our education / school system we are taught and told to avoid it? To seek eqaulity and and “everybody” wins sort of way of life? I was, and while it turned me off to competition entirely I have seen it boost other’s interest in competing.
Report comment to moderator
It depends on the object of the competition. Competing over a parking space is sad. Competing to better your business and make more money that your rivals is good.
Report comment to moderator
I think our current culture of “niceness” is hideously bad for boys. Don’t compete, don’t hurt anyone, don’t hunt….
Men have a tendency to compete. Women do it more subtly (and sometimes more viciously). But men’s competition isn’t the sort where one person wins and one loses and they’re enemies forever after. (My mom said it was easier to raise boys than girls for that very reason–boys fight hard and then they’re friends. Girls fight and the friendship is over forever.)
I think a big part of the reason for our fear of competition is that women don’t understand or respect the things that men value; today’s women want emasculated men. In my experience, for instance, few women are willing to say, “I can’t stand the thought of hunting, but he likes it, and it’s a man thing.” Women want to say it’s gross and violent and somehow a character flaw that men like it. They may or may not tolerate it, but they won’t respect it. (I hate it when I see a mother forbid toy guns to her sons, with a husband who won’t override the veto.) But men were meant to be providers, and competition with the elements is part of how they were created. I don’t ever want to go hunting, but I’d rather have a man who liked hunting than a man who gave a womanly shudder at the thought. The same thing with competition–it’s a natural thing, as long as it isn’t done with cruelty or vengeance.
Report comment to moderator
Cheryl,
I am one of those moms who don’t like to buy her boys toy guns. I’m ok with the boys using sticks for guns though. Guns, are, in my opinion, not meant to be toys. My husband loves guns and has a little collection. The boys all have their own real guns. They have gone through hunter safety training and have participated in 4-H shooting clubs. So, I’m definitely not opposed to guns, but it makes me very nervous to see them pointing toy guns at each other.
Report comment to moderator
“…but I’d rather have a man who liked hunting than a man who gave a womanly shudder at the thought…”
Is it ok if he gives a manly shudder?
Report comment to moderator
#5 Theselittleones,
I agree. We lived in Michigan for six years, where hunting was very popular – and not just among men. We knew at least three couples who hunted together. But the most avid hunter we knew, with three boys who he played rough with and taught to be tough, would never let kids point even a toy gun at another person. He had taught the older two boys to shoot at tin cans in the backyard (they were about 8 and 10, I think). But they knew from the time they could first pick up even a toy gun that it was just for hunting animals, never to point at a person even in fun.
Report comment to moderator
Cheryl D – I will quibble on one point: women only say the want ‘emasculated men’ (they won’t use that term though, they’ll say evolved or sensitive or some such thing).
Once they get one of these pathetic creatures, they are happy with him. He’s the ‘nice guy’ that they just want to be friends with “but don’t like that way”. And then they are confused when they are attracted to heels.
Report comment to moderator
Goethe spent his career wrestling with this concept. You’d think the Wilson Quarterly could have inserted an allusion to a writer who was a rock star on American campuses during the first Gilded Age of high capitalism.
Competition is to striving as crack is to wine and the laurel wreath!
I had a hard-driven meat axe of a boss once upon a time who spent all his downtime in luxurious inebriation. His purpose in life was to retire and do nothing. Brutal competition was the means by which he hoped to cease from striving. But, if you ever cease from striving, if you only decide to cease from striving, the Devil takes your soul.
Competition is deadly to the soul because it’s a contract with routine for more of the same, faster. Competition is acceptance of what is rather than invention of what isn’t. Competiton is industry, not endeavor. Faust acquires massive wealth and power, but it doesn’t save him and draw him onward to eternity.
Report comment to moderator
Goethe would have disagreed with #1. He surveyed the past and future and found all times to be the best of times and the worst of times. He would have agreed with #2 (elites are defined by their striving) and with #3 (not striving is denaturing). He would have found #4 inadequate (striving is not just good for us, but the grounds for absolution for what is bad about us — Wer strebt, irrt.).
Report comment to moderator
Scroopy,
You couldn’t make it as a llama. All we want to do is sleep, put on the feedbag, drink, mate and spit at whatever we want, not necessarily in that order
Report comment to moderator
VS – That’s funny, but a good point, too.
I don’t think my hubby would enjoy hunting, but he’s definitely a manly man.
Report comment to moderator
We watched this past Sunday’s Extreme Makeover: Home Edition. (My daughter wanted to see it cuz Miley Cyrus made an appearance.)
It was so heart-warming & inspiring. The father of the family is a Marine who lost a leg in Iraq, in his 2nd tour of duty, & is raising his 4 kids alone, after his wife left.
This obviously “manly man”, who is proud to have served his country & claimed he would throw himself on a grenade to save a fellow Marine, teared up a lot during this show. (So did my husband. And me, too.)
I said to my husband, “So much for the saying that real men don’t cry.”
Report comment to moderator
These Little Ones:
That makes sense. My sister’s sons have toy guns, but the rules of warfare apply: you don’t point them at a noncombatant, a woman, etc. It’s the “Ew, guns are violent” mind-set I hate. Plus I think the idea of guns as defense is a good one (the cops and robbers routine). But I see too many women who go out of their way to say, “Guns are bad” when they talk to little boys, and I can’t stomach that.
Report comment to moderator
Do you throw up a lot, Cheryl D?
Report comment to moderator
Do you not know that those who run in a race all run, but only one receives the prize? Run in such a way that you may win. Everyone who competes in the games exercises self control in all things. They then do it to receive a perishable wreath, but we an imperishable. 1 Coirinthians 9:24-25
Seems to me that a by-product of competition is self control. Not a bad thing.
On the gun issue, I object to toy guns because guns are not toys, and should not be treated as such. But teaching the proper way to handle a gun? I’m all for it.
Report comment to moderator
back to topJoin The Conversation
You need to be a registered user of WORLDonTheWeb.com to "join the conversation."
If you are not a member yet, what are you waiting for? Register / Login Now!