Competition is what drove architecture forward (people with resources wanted bigger houses, palaces, cathedrals, skyscrapers). Ditto for exploration and navigation - more trade routes and colonies. The space race was actually a race. The expansion of communication networks are profitable as well. I'm glad we have things like the LHC and the ISS which are good examples of moving forward cooperatively, but they're more the exception than the rule.

Can't really reproduce history, though. We've yet to see the extent what humanity can do if they work as one, but most practical and theoretical fields are advanced by competition more than cooperation. Mathematics is a global competition between universities, chemistry is a race to make industry more efficient and profitable, biology requires patents and being first to market to be viable. Physics actually seems cooperative to me, but I'm sure the more practical sub-fields: electronics, structures, energy etc are all driven by competition.

Competition is also at the core of genocidal theories, failing companies, and gutted innovative advances.

My point is not about anecdotal examples. The ones you provided merely prove that mankind can withstand competition to some degree. My point is that you are making a statement which is likely supported by your vision and its bias, but not by any scientific study.

It is interesting to note that a conflicting opinion could be supported by the same logic and different anecdotes.

re Historically, competition is what drives humanity forward

I'd say it was more technology that did it. Chimps both compete and cooperate and don't advance much. It was the invention of writing, printing, electricity and the like that changed things.

I started to believe we're severely underestimating how much progress of technology drives the society. There are convincing arguments that all the things we call social progress - enlightenment, democracy, civil rights, etc. - are results of changing technology landscape. That landscape creates some "stable states" into which the society ends up falling, and those states change with the available technology.