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I’m not going to argue that competition is always a good thing or that it is always better than cooperation. But I will argue that competition has a vital role: 1) It is highly motivating, 2) it teaches us important lessons about life and 3) it serves to uncover true excellence.
The first thing to say in defense of competition is that it motivates us as few other things can. Competing with others pushes us to achieve more than we would otherwise achieve. The drive to prove oneself leads us to get up early, to work late, and to spend a few extra minutes in order to ensure that our work, whatever it is, is absolutely our best.
Competing with others allows us to discover what we are capable of. When we look in awe at what others have done, and do, we get a glimpse of our own potential. The first man to run a sub 4 minute mile would not have done so had he not seen someone else run a near 4 minute mile first. Competing pushes us to look further, to see if there is not one extra inch, not one extra ounce, not one extra effort that we could eke out beyond what we formerly thought was our very best.
Competition also teaches us important lessons about life. We learn to be good losers. We learn about disappointment and failure and how to respond. We learn to be more humble, more realistic about our own abilities. We learn both that there is a time to persevere and a time to think about redirecting our efforts. Competition can also teach us how to be good winners. Competition teaches that being the best is temporary and based more on luck than we’d like to think during the short time we are on top. This helps us to be compassionate and humble. We achieve our best when we are closely matched to high achieving peers and we find ourselves rooting for them as well as for us, because the journey to excellence is too lonely and difficult to face alone.
Finally, competition uncovers true excellence by identifying excellent performance and those who excel. The remarkable nature of a given performance and performer is only fully appreciated through comparison. When we discover a peer in any worthy human endeavor who is not incrementally better than, but substantially superior to his peers, this is something for all of us to celebrate and enjoy. We do not benefit by encouraging everyone to be neither best nor worst in music, art, athletics, mathematics, and textile construction. We need our friends and neighbors to excel in each of these categories so that they can share with us in those areas where we ourselves are lacking. When we compete against friends who have greater gifts or determination than we, we learn something about excellence in the endeavor in which our friend excels. Competing in that endeavor leaves us not just with skills honed through striving but also with a new ability to appreciate the meaning and importance of our friend’s success.
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3 Responses to “In Defense of Competition”
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Everyone who plays in Anna’s soccer league gets a trophy… so recently Katie metioned part of her desire to start soccer is to work toward something and earn a trophy like Anna’s. I let her in on the dirtly little secret and also pointed out that although she didn’t get a trophy for Honor Choir, she actually earned her spot.
Last year they didn’t want us to declare a best video for our youth group’s film fest. Everyone knew which was the best anyway. But why not give credit where it is due? So I came up with goofy awards for each film.
Ours was best anyway. ; )-
I think it is a mistake to equate a quest for excellence with competition. I’m not opposed to competition, per se, but I do think that cooperation is frequently underrated and competition is just assumed to be worthwhile. The fact is that cooperation and the struggle for excellence often go hand-in-hand and competition often brings out the worst in people.
Before I complete my argument, I need to mention two things:
1. I am a very competitive person. I’m neither proud nor ashamed of that fact, but I do try to keep my tendency to be competitive in check because I think it is quite frequently a bad thing.
2. A lot of my thinking surrounding competition comes from a book I read as a freshman in college called “No Contest” by Alfie Kohn. It’s one of the texts that I still own.
The problem with competition is that in order for me to win, someone has to lose. While we could come up with a number of situations that fit that description, I would argue that most situations fail to fit that definition. If we take sport and contest out of the mix, then I would argue that very few situations require you to lose for me to win. As a Christian, I don’t believe that the only way for me to achieve salvation is at the expense of another. In fact, I believe that salvation is only achieved cooperatively.
I appreciate the time you put into your post, so I would like to address each of your three points individually:
1. Competition is highly motivating.
There is no question that this is true for many people (myself included). I would argue that this is a result of socialization and that it isn’t necessarily good. I think it is far better to be motivated to do our best work than to be motivated to do better work than someone else. Keep in mind that I am not arguing against measurement. I think measurement is important. I even think that we should be able to say (as in Sharon’s example above) that one video was the best video. I think that as a society, however, we should teach our children to strive for excellence for the sake of excellence, not so that we can say, “I’m the best” or even “I’m better than you.”
2. It teaches important lessons about life.
I think you made the best case for cooperation when in support of this point you wrote, “We achieve our best when we are closely matched to high achieving peers and we find ourselves rooting for them as well as for us, because the journey to excellence is too lonely and difficult to face alone.” I agree with most of this. (The only thing I disagree with is that the road to excellence is lonely. On the contrary, I think the road to excellence is one of the least lonely places to be. I don’t see a lot of exceptionally talented lonely people.). Rather than rooting for our high achieving peers, people who are competitive tend to root for themselves at the expense of their peers. I think it is important to distinguish between structural competition and individual competitiveness. Some things are structurally competitive — sports, spelling bees, etc. It is impossible and undesirable to remove competition from these events (both football teams can’t win, only one person will win the bee). I don’t believe that these events are inherently bad. I do believe, however, that these types of events foster individual competitiveness, or the desire to best your peers, and I think that desire is usually a negative thing.
3. Competition serves to uncover true excellence.
I think measurement uncovers true excellence, not competition. Additionally, most of the bad behavior I have witnessed has been the result of individual competitiveness. I believe that the first person to crack the 4 minute mile barrier did it to achieve something great, not to best his peer. It would be sad if I’m wrong because that accomplishment would mean much less when it was bested by someone else. I think that achievement should stand on its own as a great accomplishment even though it has since been surpassed many times.
In business school, I regularly heard about how competition drives companies to be better, faster, and cheaper. We are all familiar with the dangers of monopolies that take advantage of no competition to overcharge and under-perform. I believe there are circumstances where competition is both necessary and fun. Who would want to watch a football game where neither team won or where both teams cooperated to score alternating touchdowns? I would classify most of these scenarios as structurally competitive and put them in a separate class. I believe that it is important to avoid letting these structurally competitive scenarios drive us to becoming individually competitive. I think we should look for ways to cooperate with our peers while striving for personal excellence. To steal a line from Stephen Covey, we should “Think Win-Win”. It may sound trite, but it has served me well in business.
In honor of this discussion, and noting your example of breaking the 4-minute mile, I’d like to recommend The Perfect Mile, by Neal Bascomb. It tells the story of the three men who raced (themselves and each other) to make it there first. It is a very good read. And I am not a runner.