Competition's overrated

Learning how to cooperate is way more important

There is hardly a need to point out to what extent the concept of competition is rooted in our culture. It is commonly taken to underlie some of the most fundamental theories that shape modern thinking, such as the theory of evolution and the economic theory of the marketplace. This view is however mistaken. It may be true that in some parts of nature competition is the most fundamental driving force. However the fundamental force that has shaped us uniquely as humans and that is underlying human prosperity is cooperation rather than competition. What makes us what we are and what has brought us to the dominant place we have come to occupy in the world is mostly our ability to cooperate. We are essentially social cooperative creatures.

This fact is unfortunately not well enough understood and appreciated in popular culture (it is well known to contemporary evolutionary scientists), and this misunderstanding influences the way we educate our children. We give the idea of competition a far more prominent role than it's due. This happens in schools, sports, and in games and other activities that children engage in. This attitude is then carried with them into adulthood and results in a misguided set of values and a very much reduced quality of life and capacity for happiness and contentment. Focusing on cooperation brings many deeply rooted positive human feelings to the fore, such as a sense of belonging, usefulness, comradely, etc., and almost no negative feelings. Focusing on competition tends to produce, along with some positive feelings, many negative feelings, such as fear, jealousy, worry, and alienation.

The logic of competition is cruel and simple. There could be only very few at the top, and the great majority are thereby condemned to dissatisfaction. But even for the few at the top life is not as good as it seems. Like the game of “king of the hill”, a new challenger and competitor can appear at any time, robbing them of peace of mind. And who can they go and share their achievement with, without creating jealousy and unhappiness around them? The competitor is condemned to an essentially lonely, dissatisfied and worrisome life. In a cooperative situation, on the other hand, achievement could be truly celebrated together with others, and the individual gains a sense of security, contentment, and peace of mind in their belonging to a larger group.

Let’s take a closer look at games and activities where children play ‘against’ each other, as opposed to ‘with’ each other. In such games and activities there would be a winner and a loser, and in many such activities, one winner and many losers. In the latter situation (one winner and many losers) the inevitable result of the game or activity is general unhappiness since it is bound to result in many unhappy losers and only one presumably happy winner. But even that happiness of the winners can never be complete because they are always aware of the sadness of the losers, and this is an uncomfortable and alienating feeling which is bound to exist at some level of their psyche, marring their contentment. The sadness of the loser, on the other hand, is deep and complete. Thus, any way you look at it, there just cannot be a wholesome positive outcome to a competitive game or activity. If the purpose of a game or activity is to have fun, develop relationships and be a positive experience, competitive games and activities are very poor choices.

In addition, in a very important sense, competitive games cannot be considered to be real play. One of the essential and important characteristics of play is the fact that it is relatively ‘worry free’, that is, it is a kind of activity which can be very creative and stimulating, but does not carry in it any consequences that could be considered by the child as serious or significant. It is pure ‘play’. This is not true in the case of competitive games, for the consequences of losing a game are serious enough in the world of the child, serious enough to rob it from the free and liberating feeling of pure play which is so important to the child’s mental well-being. To the extent, therefore, that real playtime is important to children's mental health and development, which is probably very much the case, competitive games do not serve that purpose.

I would therefore recommend eliminating all competitive games and activities from children's lives. This applies to all games and activities that have individual winners and losers. Games and activities that have a losing and a winning team occupy a middle position because they are both competitive, between teams, and cooperative, within a team. But the best would be to find games and activities of pure cooperation. It may seem that there are many more possibilities of competitive games and activities and very few purely cooperative ones. This may be a result of the over competitive-environment we live in. In my experience, once children are stirred away from activities that involve winning and losing they naturally come up with a great variety of interesting and stimulating games and activities that do not involve competition. Also in most cases a cooperative variant of a traditionally competitive game could be found in a way that maintains all the excitement and fun of the game but eliminates the competition. It is really just a matter of setting our mind to it (it could also be an interesting challenge for the children, which are not just great players - but also great inventors of games). These kinds of activities are ultimately more satisfying in a more wholesome way, and they contribute to building great and lasting relationships between them. Hopefully this attitude will carry on to adulthood and contribute to a better world.