Competition - Human Nature?

“Humans have an innate sense of competition”

You hear this all the time – it has become almost axiomatic.
Get into an argument about Capitalism, this and it will be offered as proof that Socialist and Communist systems will always fail, regardless of how they are implemented and administered.
It seems to be (or at least is claimed to be) at the root of war, religious persecution, consumerism, sports, games and no one seems to question whether or not it is true.
People say that humans simply would not have progressed as far as they have if it weren’t for competition.
Leaving the whole issue of what constitutes “progress” aside for now, I don’t accept so readily that:
a.) Intra-species competition is innate in human beings.
b.) Competition drives progression better than cooperation.
c.) Encouraging competition is what is best for society in general.

“Intra-species competition is innate in human beings.”
Is it innate human nature, or is it fostered and cultivated by the social structures we have built?
The best way to determine this, in my opinion, is to observe children.
People will, of course, point to how children love to play games and how children are possessive over their toys and such, but is that really competition at work?
Children, above all, are driven to experience – to learn by exploring, observing and doing. They are just as keen to play a game that is designed to not have any “winners” or “losers”, just because it is their thirst for knowledge and new experience that is being fed.
They don’t care about challenging OTHERS, they care only about challenging THEMSELVES.
They will sit for hours on end and play a one player game, constantly pushing themselves to achieve for the simple sake of accomplishment.
They don’t know how to compete until we teach them to.
As for not wanting to share, that doesn’t seem to me to rooted in anything but a lack of comprehension that the whole world does not exist for their sake alone.
It takes time for children to develop the sense of empathy, simply because the whole world belongs to them and is there for their own purposes.
I have never met a child who has progressed passed that stage and has realized a sense of self and does not revel in helping others – helping Mom and Dad clean, cook, fix things, take out the garbage – that often fades eventually, but whether and how much it fades is entirely dependent upon external influences.
Humans are a relatively weak, slow, inefficient animal whose only claim to fame and ability to adapt to new environments are our intelligence and social cooperation.
If it weren’t for social cooperation, we would have been extinct a very long time ago.

“Competition drives progression better than cooperation.”
While that may ring true in a certain sense, that is only the case because we have built a system that rewards competition.
Think about this for a second…
Take two groups of ten people each and offer a prize to compete against to get some task done within a month.
If you take the group of twenty and have them cooperate to accomplish the same task, doesn’t it stand to reason that sharing resources, knowledge, experience and work would get the task done faster, more thoroughly and more efficiently?
Advances are driven when different groups, different schools, different nations cooperate, share information, share efforts and strive toward a common goal together.

“Encouraging competition is what is best for society in general.”
Encouraging competition encourages selfish, myopic, and short-sighted actions.
I fail to see how that is beneficial to society, community, the human race as a whole, the environment or anything else.

 

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Then perhaps you should look a little deeper into human history. If you do, then you'll see it clearly.

Just because you don't see it is no sign that it hasn't been a driving force behind much of human existence.

Baron Max

 

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I know it has been a driving force, I'm not denying that.

Just because it has been a driving force, doesn't mean it is the only, or even best, option.

 

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Which is all purely subjective and personal opinion. And worse, each instances of "advancement" would have to be viewed separately for each and every option, without any proof of which other way would have worked better.

How can we even talk about this topic in such a way? If you say some way would have been better, and I disagree, who wins? And how do we determine it?

Baron Max

 

I don't post things like this because I care about "winning".
I don't debate and argue to "win".
I share my opinion or perspective on something, in hopes that people will challenge me and force me to challenge myself and beliefs.

I want people to engage me in a way that I will have to either support what I said, reconsider what I said or change my beliefs entirely.

I aim to find common ground with others, or after attempting to find common ground, agree to disagree on a topic.

For me, discussion forums are a place for me to learn from others, possibly teach others, and grow as a person.

It has nothing to do with "winning" any debates.

 

Baron Max,
Refute my points.
Tell me where I went wrong.
Challenge me.

 

Raven


Competition has been observed and studied in children, with siblings and with children in care. Children in care demonstrate the strongest competative traits. why? Need of course.

Children with two parents to look out for and meet their needs and to protect what is theirs, do not need to compete so much and defend what is theirs.
I suppose in this regard, humans raised in a normal family group would thus be less competative than a child for some reason cast out from that family group. This does not however mean that competiveness is less of a norm within a normal setting it just means that the competiveness is more exagerated when outisde that setting.

 

Competition has been observed and studied in children, with siblings and with children in care. Children in care demonstrate the strongest competative traits. why? Need of course. - Actually I've never noticed that children are really that competitive, in fact I'd suggest to you this is merely a perception of adults, what actual examples do you have where a child said they were competing with another? I never really felt like anyone was when I was younger

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Children with two parents to look out for and meet their needs and to protect what is theirs, do not need to compete so much and defend what is theirs.
I suppose in this regard, humans raised in a normal family group would thus be less competative than a child for some reason cast out from that family group. This does not however mean that competiveness is less of a norm within a normal setting it just means that the competiveness is more exagerated when outisde that setting. - Yes I concur goddess ToR :Z

I never competed with anyone because there was no need, what is it a child would compete for? The only thing I compete for even now is being left alone LOL

 

I read this and I thought...yeah, that makes sense, especially if you're an only child. As an only child, I recognised those facets in me, but then immediately after, I remembered that many only children end up being remarkably successful, and now I'm wondering...how common is it for people to become super successful, without the need to compete, or that fighting spirit? I must point out that I'm a relatively successful person that decided to retire at 37 rather than carry on and become a billionaire, as I could have had I put my mind to it. Maybe that proves my point, but you still can't avoid the fact that I did reap success and I was never overtly competitive or defensive..or maybe I was and don't realise it. ToR...what are you doing to me?

 

I'll go you one better. Intra-species competition is innate to all sexually reproducing species. This is what drives evolution. Males compete, females mate with the winners, the species evolves.

Do you have any kids? They compete from the get go. Especially boys, which makes sense considering the selective pressure males are under.

This is absurd. When people cooporate, many become freeloaders and do nothing. Consider the space race. Why did America land on the moon within less than ten years of deciding to do so? To beat the godless commies. Why have we done squat since? Because there's no one competing with us in that arena. Why does science advance so much during wartime? Same deal. Give people a common enemy, and they'll kill themselves to beat that enemy. Ask a bunch of people to work together without the motivation of an enemy, and you'll get a half hearted response from most.

Competition breeds excellence. Lack of competition breeds mediocracy. It is our nature.

Why is service so bad at the DMV or the cable company? No competition. You want the entire country run like the DMV? Get rid of competition and that's what you'll get.

 

WITHOUT reading your essey, I can tell that competition exists pretty much everywhere in the animal world. Actually, the lack of competition is the rare thingy, like manatees.

So since we humans are like animals, it is not a surprize that competition is also strong among humans, the most violent animal.

By the way competition is nature's way to ensure that the strongest survives...Both between species and in-speacies...

 

Good point.
I'll definitely give you that.

No, but I do have four nephews with whom I lived and was partly responsible for raising.
Competition was not innate in them, it developed over time with aspects such as insecurities and when external pressures instilled it in them.

Would it have been poossible without cooperation? Of course not.
By pointing out that people were coerced into cooperation by the "enemy" helps to illustrate my point. It is all social and communal pressure. The "Us" against "Them" mentality has to be created, developed and fostered. Seperation, hatred, fear of those different - none of this is innate. Again, look at kids, take a black kid and a white kid (very young ones, obviously), put them together and they will play contentedly with each other for hours on end.

If we would have cooperated more with Russia and shared knowledge and experience we would have been much better off.
Yes, the public needed the invented "prize" of beating the commies and national pride to get behind it, but do you really think that the scientists who were developing benefitted more from fear, hatred, national pride and competition than they would have from further knowledge and cooperation from Russian scientists?

The public getting behind the efforts and celebrating it is another good example - do you think national pride is innate? It is induced.

First, I think this says less about human nature than it does about the societal structure we have built.
Second, give people a goal that they want to reach, and they will be better prepared to do so with cooperation.

So many fields of science rely heavily on shared knowledge between schools, nations and other entities, without that, we would not be nearly as "advanced" as we are.

I disagree that it is our nature.
Although I do think that that is the result we work towards by fostering competition, rather than cooperation.

Because the job sucks, and it pays shit.
If you have a shitty job with a shitty paycheck in a Capitalist system, your effort will be shitty.

I stopped reading what you had to say right there.

 

Competition isn't nature, it's nonsense. I agree with the above guy!

 

Jesus Christ!

 

competition

wiki

"Consequences of competition
Competition can result in both beneficial and detrimental results. A common view of evolution is that inter-species and intra-species competition is the driving force of adaptation and ultimately, evolution. However, some biologists, most famously Richard Dawkins, prefer to think of evolution in terms of competition between single genes, which have the welfare of the organism 'in mind' only insofar as that welfare furthers their own selfish drives for replication. If this is so, then competition in the context of evolution may not be beneficial to humans. Social darwinists claim that competition also serves as a mechanism for determining the best-suited group, politically, economically, and ecologically; however, this belief is very questionable.

However, competition can also have negative consequences, particularly on the human species. Potential detrimental effects include the injury of other organisms and the drain of valuable resources and energy for competition. In addition, human competition may also require large amounts of money (such as in political elections, international sports competitions, and advertising wars) and can also lead to the compromising of ethical standards in order to gain an advantage in the competition. For example, several athletes have been caught using banned steroids in professional sports in order to boost their own chances of success or victory. Finally, competitive striving can also be harmful for the participants. Examples include athletes that injure themselves because they exceed the physical tolerances of their bodies, and companies that pursue unprofitable paths while engaging in competitive rivalries"





Meanwhile, this question has been posed here:

http://www.online-literature.com/forums/showthread.php?p=287321

 

How could competition not be in our nature?
Maybe the reason it's accepted and not questioned is because our competitive instincts date back to before we were humans, before we were mammals, before we were vertebrates or even animals. Plants compete.
Everything competes, and the reason for that is everything shares a common ancestor that was competitive, and naturally outcompeted anything that wasn't.
Since then all organisms have just been getting more and more competitive, because it tends to "win" and be favoured by natural selection.

Competition and cooperation aren't exclusive from one another, in fact cooperation only came into existence through competition.
If you and I team up we can outcompete that guy.

So I can't agree with "maybe cooperation would be better than competition" because cooperation wouldn't be a concept if it wasn't for competition.

 

Would it be a fair summary to say that a child whose needs are not met will be forced to fight and compete for resources by outside influences?

Ummm... I'm not sure if you agree with me or not.

I've been a member there for a little while, maybe I will post on this thread.
Are you a member? Same username?

I agree that they don't necessarily have to be exclusive.
But I stand that compared, cooperation will get you further than competition.

I can't go along with that.
Simply because the two can be correlated, doesn't necessarily imply that one can't exist without the other.
If I ask you to help me harvest my crops and give you some of those crops, who ae we competing against?

 

Anyone not involved with the harvest.
We're working together to get more food than we could get individually, that gives us an edge over every poor sap struggling to harvest their own crop alone.
We'll be in better condition than them for our efforts, maybe even sharper mentally, so at the next county mixer we'll be able to outcompete them for the girls.
We don't have to be thinking about these things consciously for that basic idea to be driving the behaviour. We will benefit from the cooperation and be better competitors in some way.

 

The fact that ultimately all individuals compete in the struggle of life doesn't mean that competitive behavioural patterns are the norm or natural for a given species.

 

I don't buy it.
I would simply be looking to feed myself - not feed myself at the expense of someone I don't even know.
I would be looking for cooperation from you becaue I would be better prepared to harvest my food than if I were to do it alone - us working together would be able to get more than twice the work done, so we would both benefit - regardless of what they are doing at the farm a few miles down the road.
If we do better together, they don't do any worse as a result, so there is no competition involved.