I think it is important to have competition early and often in life because learning how to win and lose is an important life lesson. Getting lazy because of a win or quitting because of a loss will severely impact someone for their entire life.
The idea of winners and losers comes from social darwinism, which is just another justification for people to keep wealth to themselves and not pay taxes "because it helps the weak".
The reality is that we truly don't know what motivates people to work or to innovate. That's why equality (not egalitarianism) is important.
> Getting lazy because of a win or quitting because of a loss will severely impact someone for their entire life.
Well if you look into society, that happens all the time. And even when it doesn't happen, people still put social filters on each others because of that belief. It's becoming a club of people which believe in "strong motivation".
> I think it is important to have competition early and often in life because learning how to win and lose is an important life lesson.
What kind of life lesson is that ? On what sort philosophy does it stand on? That sounds like a motivational religion.
The life lesson I got from it was that winning leads to social exclusion, from both peers and teachers. So yes, I learned to not (openly) compete any more.
This may get downvoted but don't shoot the messenger. You can't "hate" something that just "is".
You can, and you should. Civilization itself is based on the idea that what "just is" can be utterly fucked up and should be fixed.
Malaria just is. And luckily, some people will not settle.
Because I'm an unemployed man on welfare.
I think that at some point, if there is more competition than cooperation, a lot of people will get alienated, and that won't always be a good thing. I mean trade in general feels more like competition than cooperation.
I agree that competition yields benefits thanks since the economy manages itself, but it also has huge costs. I mean I don't like society for its competition, I like it for its cooperation. If I'd really like competition, I'd live as a hermit. And to be honest, if society become less and less cooperative as a whole, what's the point of it ?
I agree partially here. People who show greatest reluctance also sometimes compete crazy for the right kind of reward or circumstance.
Humans or for that part, animals that are social, have a very interesting compete-cooperate dynamic. The compete part also is how we choose our leaders, in cooperate team/group.
Seriously? The inherent drive in men to compete/take risks is why people advocate for "leveling the playing field" when it comes to pay, promotions, etc.
That's interesting, and seems a bit contrarian. If you felt like elaborating, I'd feel like listening.
See: any competitive activity. Which gender generally dominates a competition?
Recognize the quote?
Girls performed worse in the non-competitive setting.
That said: I disagree that individual competition brings out the worst in people. It can certainly do that - but applied properly, it can also improve attention, creativity, and other indicators of task-based performance.
Also, life/society as we currently understand it does contain aspects of competition, often in subtle ways. A person might decide between multiple potential mates; a prospective employee might negotiate their starting offer; a student might organize a club to help distinguish themselves from thousands of other graduates. Whenever I buy food or clothes or whatever, I need to buy it from someone (not being a diehard homesteader), so there are multiple vendors competing for my attention and custom. We might be able to do without some of this, but a lot of it is driven by limits on resources (material, population, etc.)
(You might also be interested in the New Games Movement, one of the many weird outcroppings of hippie-era counterculture: they sought to build a corpus of games that highlighted cooperation over competition. The movement died a somewhat predictable death, but its games live on - if you've ever played any of the circle games popular with camps, youth groups, and teachers, you've probably played something that has its roots in the New Games Movement.)
(Last diversion: game-theoretic dilemmas are also really interesting, since most of them revolve around cases in which individual optimal strategies lead to worse overall strategies. See also: bystander effect / volunteer dilemma, tragedy of the commons.)
Actually I come from a family of people who either hide during the war (jewish/polish origins), or suffered from it. Maybe you'd also label it as "didn't have to struggle too much at life".
Eitherway, I don't think society was built to reflect the state of nature and competition. If you think struggle is good, I think you have some skewed belief of "life" in general. I don't have such belief.
Also comparing people and rabbits is really ridiculous. Even behavior psychologist and sociologists don't go that far.
So left vs right is a war between heritable different gene expression proteins on the most basic level. Different ideas and perceptions are only a byproduct of the effect these proteins cause.
And there's nothing inherently wrong with this expression. I'm just acknowledging that we are fundamentally different on the cell level and nothing can make us agree. Doesn't mean my expression is better than yours. These are just different evolutionary adaptations in animals that humans are part of. I have example of rabbits because they have furthered your type of "lifestyle" to more discernable level.
Also your eugenics argument is completely strawman, as is expected from you.
When will your book come out ?
If I'm literally competing to earn a living, or if it ends up in praising winners and blaming losers, it won't be enjoyable, and I'd rather not play at all. Having humility also means that when you win, you also congratulate losers for playing.
I agree that we need to compete on some aspects, like technology, science, construction methods, and business in general. But competing between individuals brings out the worst in people. And that's where exclusion starts: if you keep slapping people's self esteem by telling them that life and society is a game of winners and losers, you'll end up with less and less people ready to take part in it.
Overall, I sense that men avoid competition much more than women do. Or maybe it's the political climate that does. I don't really know.