Competition Versus Cooperation

A great deal of life has come to rotate around competition, and it has long been that way, but current economic, political and business models have increased competition and reduced ethical behavior.  Competition has its place, but it is greatly exaggerated in the current model of education and there are families, companies and countries that are damaged or even destroyed by unhealthy competition.  And, from the standpoint of success at work as well as success in life, it is the ability to cooperate and collaborate that helps put one on top.  One survey of top companies found that most of the companies look for people who are good at working with others.  Research discovered that unethical individuals are the most successful unless faced with groups of ethical individuals – a case where ethical collaboration defeats unethical competition.  Office politics is a form of competition that often has casualties – even the company itself suffers from such destructive behavior.

Research has shown that highly competitive and pressurized activities for small children have a detrimental effect on their psyche, and there are many examples of the consequences of pressure on the very young, from Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart and Michael Jackson to Bobby Fischer and Adolf Hitler.  It doesn’t matter if it is sports, the arts, games, scores at school, the science fair, etc. – excessive pressure to excel may cause the person to succeed at it but it is usually at the cost of the person’s mental stability, and may affect their physical well-being as well.  There is, in fact, ample evidence that too much pressure to excel can result in severe psychological backlash.

Medical experts have cited the danger of pushing a student, even an adult, back into a game after suffering an injury, especially those involving the head and this, combined with the attitude that “a winner never quits” and “no pain, no gain” have caused serious injuries up to paralysis and death.  Professional athletes, feeling the intense pressure of the competition of their sport, often turn to “doping” to enhance their physical ability, or they will receive an injection of some sort of medication after pressure from their coach, teammates, themselves or others, and continue to play after an injury that should cause them to sit the game out, which can lead to permanent damage that can foreshorten their professional career.  Research into concussions, long thought to have an impact on the brain’s operation for only a relatively short period of time after the injury, has demonstrated that the impact (no pun intended) of concussions can last weeks, months or even years in the worst cases, yet even child athletes are told to “shake it off” and get back into the game.

 It was cooperation that moved humans forward throughout history as a whole, but competition is a subset of that advancement, not the reverse.  In fact, in cases where competition has taken on too much importance, valuable cultures, knowledge and even civilizations have been lost because competition, by definition, has losers, and that is often through war, economic disruption, sabotage, overthrow, espionage, assassinations, etc.  The wrong forms of competition also produce a marketplace in which the best products can founder and disappear while average or even inferior products become commonplace.  Looking at the decline of the quality of products sold to the general public is an easy example; whereas many products used to offer guarantees and warrantees for several years or even a lifetime, it is now normal to see 6 months or even as little as a month or two, with a maximum of 1 year, and many products would last decades (my parents bought box fans from Sears and they still worked fine 30 years later).  Competition, because of its nature, does not necessarily produce the best – it only produces companies which have the right set of qualities to supersede or defeat others like it, even if those qualities are detrimental, unethical and/or destructive, or it may be that a marketing campaign was what caused its success, rather than any real qualities it had.  Years ago, cartridge drives from Zip and Sytech were very popular for making back-ups.  Sytech offered smaller cartridges with much greater storage space and different formats and a competitive price but Zip became the favorite while Sytech went out of business. How many times has the worst politician won by campaigning well?  How many crafty campaigns have made someone look like a saint but, when the person gets to a certain point, the public suddenly realizes that they were hoodwinked?  History is littered with products, companies, families, cities, nations, and so on that were superior in a constructive and empowering sense, but were wiped out by competitors.  There are many other stories wherein a compromise was reached in order to survive, but with detrimental side effects.

Certain types, alphas, are geared towards competing and there is a great deal of pressure and glorification of competition in many societies today.  In certain respects, competition drives us forward – it did pretty well at getting America to move forward with missile research during WWII and space rocket research after that, for example, and caused entire industries to shift from their regular products to the production of products for warfare in a very short period of time (factories during WWII were converted to making war machines within a year).  Of course, that was a very destructive form of competition – war – that had many other destructive spin-offs, such as the McCarthy era, MK-Ultra, and other dangerous and destructive choices.  More and more we are seeing that healthy competition is being replaced with unethical, illegal and even evil practices, and this trend is even glorified in some quarters as the right way to do business.  But, if we look at it, it is in fact a suppression of our ability to empathize and sympathize; the compassionate business model has been replaced by one that places such high value on money and power that people are little more than numbers, and they are trained to accept this reality as a good thing when it is, in fact, a psychopathic disconnect from what we know is right.  This is why large companies and clever individuals, such as Andersen, Halliburton, Black & Root, Enron, Lehman Brothers, Wall Street’s mishandling of dot com stocks and the subsequent stock market crashes between 2000-2013, Jack Abramoff, Bernie Madoff, and Tom Delay, and many more have been able to pull off massive scams – in each case, the victims have been so lacking in critical thinking versus wishful thinking that they were robbed of huge sums of money in some cases, and employees were so brainwashed into accepting this rotten model that they went along with it until the police caught them.

A lot of schools focus a great deal on competition.  Classroom activities often pit individuals, pairs or groups against each other in a variety of situations and subjects.  Physical education is often dominated by competition, but many other subject teachers also use it.  Ranking students by their grades is a form of competition that many parents engage in, and the students often become unwilling victims of their parents’ hubris.  Schools in many nations are ranked based on test results of one sort or another, although some countries rarely do this, such as Finland, and there is even ranking of entire nations on many different indexes, for which some countries strive hard to rank high or improve their rank (legally or illegally).  There are so many forms of competition present in school, even in pre-primary, that one might think that competing is the most productive way of getting things done.

To be sure, competition can help produce champions.  Yet, what is the ultimate cost when we are so focused on competing with each other that we stop looking at each other as people with needs that must also be met and challenges that must be overcome, when friends fight with each other over politicians they don’t even know, or sports teams they don’t even benefit from, when rivalries are formed between schools and cities that turn bitter and angry and lead to destructive behavior, and when entire regions, ethnic, religious, national and cultures become so angry at each other due to real or imagined competition that they resort to violence when, in reality, they could live in harmony if they would talk, find common ground and set aside their differences for the benefit of all?  The philosopy “divide and conquer” has become so omnipresent that many people don’t even realize that competition can be and is routinely used to achieve that goal.  A nation divided by petty rivalries at all levels is a nation that is divided and difficult to rally to a common cause, especially when you add in propaganda and other types of misinformation.  A world rife with this is a world that will forever fill the coffers of industries like those that make devices for murder and war at the expense of the masses.

People - to one degree or another – like or dislike various types of competition.  This means that, in any classroom, there will be students who will be turned off by any sort of competition and, in fact, some will simply give up rather than having to face losing – even if they might win – even when it is “high stakes”.  Therefore, activities that rely heavily on competition are only going to effectively help a certain percentage of the class.  Activities where competition is replaced by enjoyable exercises and stimulating challenges will get a better response, and activities where competition is couched within collaboration and cooperation will also do well.  The hardest part of this will be to get the alphas to work within this framework, so it is important to give them responsibilities that make them feel like they are achieving but without becoming a “threat” to classmates by being too dominant.  Likewise, the shyest students need to be encouraged to participate, especially those who do not feel competent within the subject being worked on.  Collaboration between stronger and weaker students, if orchestrated correctly, creates a supportive environment which helps the struggling students and allows the other students to develop leadership skills.  If, at the end, everyone somehow wins to one degree or another, or is given appreciation for what they DID achieve (instead of falsely awarding students so no one is sad), it helps to build courage and self-confidence.  It also creates a great opportunity for the teachers to observe and give highly relevant support to those who need it, as well as ensure that everyone is active and doesn’t give up because they are discouraged.  This last thing is incredibly important because group project-based actions, for children or adults, can become dominated by one or two people, with some of the rest following along while the other who may have a good contribution have been shut out of the dialog and usually end up giving up rather than having to deal with the “rival faction” – especially a hostile one.  It is important to teach students at a young age to work well in teams and handle projects fairly and equally so that, later in life, they will be successful with projects at work and relationships at home.  Every child needs to be able to express themselves as well as listen to (not hear) and carefully consider what every other child is saying without making knee-jerk decisions or rude remarks; if this is planted in them, they will grow up to be highly effective in working in a team, especially of like-minded individuals. Cooperative efforts allow each person to be part of something larger than themselves and to, through real effort, be successful within that context even if they’re the weakest member of the team.

Competition which is regulated appropriately can be highly productive, rewarding and ensure high-quality results but, when the rules are too lax or are corrupted, when certain individuals unfairly dominate the situation by domineering behavior, cheating or worse or, when the wrong things are prioritized (such as profit instead of quality), it short-changes most of the rest of the people involved and leaves other people of exceptional ability who were in the winner’s circle (or sometimes not first place) feeling like losers.  If 50,000 try to get into a competition and the first stage eliminates 49,000, those thousand are not all necessarily exceptional or even above average.  But, when the second (and ensuing) stage employs high standards and reduces the contestants to 100, you can be fairly sure that most or all of them have great potential and should be considered as such, and when the next stage reduces the participants to only 20, you’re looking at very talented people, none of whom should think of themselves as losers or be told they are.  When you get to the top 10 in a truly high quality competition, you are looking at amazing individuals, all of whom are winners, but not all of them can play the long game, so to get that close is, in itself, a testimony to their abilities, to their quality, and they should be recognized for that.

Many companies now seek people who are strongly oriented towards teamwork, and can do so effectively.  To ensure optimum results, students need to be taught how to think critically, calmly and logically debate, problem-solve, prioritize, identify alternative solutions, determine how different parts of a plan can be made to fit together when they seem incompatible, and how to plan in detail, schedule and execute, among other skills.