I've been watching the X-Games a little bit recently and have been intrigued by this: competition while seeking the benefit of one's competitor.
It's like competition gone right: using yourself and the other to make progress.
In other words, me winning is not as important as having someone, anyone, completing a double 720 ollie grab super grind flip thing that's totally the rad sick nasty, brah.
And I love it.
Can this attitude carry over into other areas of life (business and politics, most notably)? It's so hard to revel in the success of another, but why is that? Well, we are all certainly insecure (when was the last time you didn't want to feel cool - by some standard?). Social Comparison Theory (wikipedia) would tell us that we find our identity in relation to others. My hypothesis is that a lot of the competitive spirit in us comes from the fact that everyday in school as we develope into our selves, our "success" is tied to our grades, and our grades are merely a measuring stick as to how we compare to our peers. Grades are a completely arbitrary standard.
We don't measure success by the means, but by the ends. I'm not sure this is ideal. One sports team practices longer and harder than another team who wins, but the losing coach still gets fired. Or, a salesman makes more calls than another who got one fortuitously large account, we look at their bottom lines to declare the former a worse salesman. I just have a hard time accepting these win/lose parameters as standards of "success." Naturally, someone HAS to win the game. Someone WILL sell more widgets. So how can an inevitable reality be used to judge someone's performance, especially when their performance does not completely affect the outcome (the best pitch in the world can still be hit as a homerun... this doesn't make the pitch bad). I'm not really sure of a better standard, per se, except that the means are important, and maybe more important than the ends.
This is another reason why art is so cool. Competition doesn't set the standard for assessing the quality of what has been created by the artist. My song can be evaluated independently of your song. Our same businesses often can't, though. And we both can't be elected to the same office.
So let's make business, politics, and sports more like art. The only way I can think of right now on how to do that is to love each other - seek the best for the other while doing your thing. Take conversation over arguments and common goals over agendas. Who knew that flipping dirt bikes in mid-air would one day be judged for style?
Thoughts?
-Brody
1 comments:
Price gouging - wrong, good, necessary? At the onset, one might rage with emotion at the thought of a Mississippi resident paying a 200% inflated price for a life-saving gas generator. However, a noble peace prize economist would explain that price gouging is a necessary good - for generators would not make it to Mississippi, if there was not enough financial incentive for Bob's Hardware in Ohio, to pack up 10 generators and drive them down there.
In the same, way, sport and business, are bettered, more advanced by performaced-based competition. And, although not from the onset, so it art. Music is judged on sound quality, pitch, and numerous other standards of "excellence." Photography by the rule of 3's. Sketch by the use of contrast. And art as a whole, by its ability to portray reality, or non-reality, in a manner that is palliative to the mind and senses. Oh-no, art is not an vaccuum for competition, rather it just plays by a different set of "rules."
Returning to competition-fueled advancement, is there value to such an process? It betterment good? And if so what kind? What is God's thought on competition or advacement? Does his commandment to Adam to rule the earth and create dominion over it condemn or condone competition/advancement. Is grace, art? No. Grace is competition.
Grace is an objective solution, to a problem created by prescribed law, defined by true boundaries, solved in time and space, for the purpose of increasing the glory and reverence of one being. God. God is in competition to receive most glory. And He will win.
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