Is being competitive useful?

In this day and age with identity politics being dominant in media most will say “absolutely not ” and will state that society is unfair and you shouldn’t judge someone’s success on others. However on the other hand those same people will have expectations on themselves based on cultural requirements such as marriage or children or what is appropriate or not. Or more directly they are involved in sports and base their performance on another competitor.

So you may be thinking what is your point? One of the most challenging realisation for anyone is the concept of winners & losers, being successful or not, am I popular or not? Yet forget one of the most valuable human emotions is hope that drives perseverance through challenges or adversity.

But for any of these questions do you truly base them on your opinion or on someone else’s? One of the most destructive society agendas is judging success based on other people’s job title or salary rather than self awareness of where you are according to your own goals. So why do we do it? But before you scream at me saying “I don’t do that!”. Ask yourself what was your reason for challenging your boss for a pay rise or do you frequently compare your sibling or best friends pay rate?

There will also be times of great tragedy or loss. However without the necessity of being competitive you will have less motivation to fulfil your true potential. Most successful innovations across time rose due to the failures of the inventor through trial and error or practice. So what I believe that has gone wrong is the negative association with competition due to the reason of inequality.

It is not competing that is negative but in fact the structural practices in place to render markets uncompetitive. Simply put if a game was played and the rules are set to give advantage to a specific group, is it competition that’s driving inequality or is it the rules that are set? This also applies to commercial and industrial financial practices that become corrupt through conflicts of interest.

Also the media promotes insidious cultural expectations given to you that should be rejected as they do not apply to your personal achievement verses your life goals. The new school policies concepts of rewarding everyone by default during an event or test rather than allowing competition to proceed to reward those that receive the highest marks or achieve the best outcome.

By effectively rewarding those that have not achieved anything just invokes dangerous negative habits to the child and not teaching the child the most valuable lesson in life. That you need to earn your meal through hard work. Surely our task should be to encourage the child to progress to their best potential by pushing discipline and effort, not by saying it’s ok to be last when they haven’t tried at all.

What I find even more revealing is how those that promote non competitive activities will at the same time convey a demeanour of something to prove. I guess they forgot another life lesson, leading by example…