Competition for beginners

If competing against outsiders who don’t belong among us is the only way to pull a group together, and if the human race needs to pull together to save the future, my money is on an alien invasion as the sensible solution.

I can’t say that I remember school sports very fondly. I was never a perfect specimen of boyhood and always got chosen last or next to last. My understanding of the process at the time was that two teams were selected, they competed for control of a ball, one team lost and the other won. The winning team then heaped scorn and derision on the losing team and both teams left the field happy. Teachers and other responsible adults described this activity as healthy and natural aggression.

One of my friends had a different take on the matter though, and summed it up elegantly from my point of view. “What do I need another ball for? I’ve got two already.” I went on to become a reasonably good swimmer, but couldn’t be bothered to go to the effort of winning races. The relaxing repetition of laps was quite enough to keep me happy.

The need to win is with us at birth, and competition comes naturally as we grow. Proof positive is the manner in which my daughter and her little friends savage each other over possession of a single wooden block, in spite of the fact that the floor is littered with enough toys to keep a tree full of monkeys busy for a week. I didn’t teach them the particularly vicious raking blows that leave both of them dazed, battered and in tears, although I do silently cheer my daughter on.

Competition is mixed up with a theoretical genetic trait that tells us we need to secure resources now and in future for our own group, be it our family, gathering of friends, sports team, suburb, town, country or like-minded believers. I’m not sure that I entirely approve. Although I would be a fool to deny the existence of the trait, it has led the human race into ongoing conflict with no end in sight.

The Greek philosopher Heraclitus said something along the lines of ‘you can’t cross the same river twice’. In the absence of any context to that statement, I think what he meant was that although the river is always the same, the contents are always different. In this context, the nature of competition remains exactly the same, it’s just the competitors that change from time to time.

Competition has always been about some form of resource, be it space, reproductive, food or even something as abstract as respect which probably translates into possession of some or other material resource anyway.

At present the population numbers are climbing almost exponentially and resources are not showing much sign of increasing. Apparently the weather will get worse as well, making it all the more difficult. Expect hurricanes, floods, droughts, heat waves and landslides in your neighbourhood soon, if weather theorists on Discovery and in Hollywood are to be believed. So we’ll not only be competing more intensely with each other: we’ll also be competing with nature.

Perhaps the forces of nature will take care of the competition for that hard-to-come-by can of beans or puddle of potable water, but perhaps we’ll be the ones competing for it. It’s a bleak scenario.

Maybe we should look at ways to redefine competition. If competing against outsiders who don’t belong among us is the only way to pull a group together, and if the human race needs to pull together to save the future, my money is on an alien invasion as the sensible solution. Those scary green critters from up there could certainly give us all pause for thought. Perhaps we could also blame them for global warming and unfavourable exchange rates while we’re at it. We could ration everything.

On the other hand, even if aliens did invade, everyone would rush out to hire the complete X-Files on DVD with extended footage and the directors’ commentaries, blame it on government conspiracy, and nothing would be settled.

There is one other solution however. We could try to compete with ourselves as individuals. We might try to use less, save resources for others and just do better in general. It’s weird but it just may work.