The Spirit of Competition

Competition is a slippery idea. In both professional and casual interactions, people often walk a fine line when showing a desire to compete. It can be fun and humorous to have a friendly intensity, but there’s always a tipping point where it becomes uncomfortable for those involved. Competition is one of the most natural things in the world, but needing to play out the act of competition in society muddies the waters.

Consider Sports
Since leisure was invented sometime in the ancient days, we’ve surely had sporting competitions. Their utility was a mix of physical training for wartime, a way to create a vague hierarchy in society, and a mode of both punishment and entertainment.¹Although both go against modern sensibilities, heading to the Colosseum to see a person and/or animal mutually torn to shreds, but able to put up a fight, makes way more sense as an event than public executions. I guess for a certain span of time, the desire for competition paled in comparison to that for retribution and pain. Hm.

These days, sports are discussed in friendlier terms. They are for exercise; to gain experience working with a team²In the case of team sports.; to improve self-reliance and precision³In the case of individual sports.; and still provide entertainment. We tend to maintain the delusion that sports competitions are designed to be in place of warfare. Yet, we don’t resolve international conflicts in the Olympics or soccer pitch. Of course, sports also continue to maintain a societal structure. By the time I went through high school, the “cool jock” trope was mostly dead. However, it can’t be denied that those with physical capabilities⁴Or at least those who appear to have them—you know, hot people. tend to move up in the socioeconomic world. Professional athletes are heroes to kids across the world, and if they find themselves in a popular sport they might even make some money.⁵The titans of finance who own the athletes and the industries to which they belong don’t tend to inspire as many folks. I think that’s probably for the best. I’ll happily admit that sports are not a vehicle for cruel punishment⁶Unless you count teenage umpires/referees being verbally, and sometimes physically, abused by parents. anymore, but I don’t think that’s because of sports.

The move from sports being very openly used for what I take to be negative results — warfare, rigid societal structures, cruelty — to us pretending that sports are a panacea to certain societal woes — warfare, rigid societal structures, cruelty — mirrors our cultural approach to competition overall.

As society becomes increasingly civilized, we wish to pretend our desire for competition has been quelled. We’re not savages after all; we’ve gained restraint. We’re so much more intelligent than those before us. As the saying goes: If they were so smart, why are they all dead?

Of course, our competitive natures haven’t left us. We’ve developed new ways to make competition less obvious. There are more cunning ways to hold competitions behind closed doors, or even hidden in plain sight. Our entire economic system is focused on competition, yet the competitive drive seems likely to be its downfall.

Winners and Losers
Late in high school, I watched a Roger Federer interview. He was asked what it felt like to lose a final match at a huge event. He said that while it hurts, that negative feeling doesn’t compare to the thrill of winning the match. He’s not driven because he hates the feeling of losing and doesn’t want to experience it; he’s driven because he tasted what it’s like to win, and wants to get more of it.

I found that fascinating.

I also admired Roger Federer,⁷I still do! But I used to, too. so I associated this competitive outlook as an overall positive trait. I reasoned that trying to achieve a specific (positive) outcome was inherently better than trying to avoid a different (negative) outcome. I still generally believe this, but there’s a twist.

The other year when I watched The Last Dance on Netflix, I realized how destructive the love of winning could be.

As a sports fanatic, this adjustment to my thinking remained in the world of athletics. Someone inclined to compete, whatever their drive, could have sufficient motivation to be a jerk.

Now, as I’m thinking more broadly about competition, it’s clear that motive to compete is not necessarily the most important aspect of determining how a competitor is viewed, regardless of the arena in which the competition happens. Furthermore, the motive to love winning can be even more dangerous when winning is not a binary property, as it is in sports.

Winning Begets Winning
This is clearest in the realm of finance. Winning means making more money, but there is no upper limit. You don’t even win completely⁸I’ve always loved the meme of “If you make a billion dollars, we give you a medal saying ‘Congratulations, you won capitalism!’ Then all the money you make afterward gets donated.”; it’s a continuous action driving investors to compete — against what, exactly, the economy? — that leads to some very tough for those who choose not to compete, or are forced out of the competition.

Just as winning begets more winning,⁹If you win a major sporting event, you’re more likely to earn more money, have access to better training facilities, and so on. In general, the more resources you have, the more risks you can take; or if you don’t take many risks, your resources tend to grow vaguely exponentially. competition breeds itself. When something devolves into a competition, those who are determined to compete will always beat out those who decide not to. It’s a cultural expectation that we intuitively understand competition, yet those who don’t “understand” it in the common way tend to end up on either side of the bell curve: You’re not given opportunities if you have a lesser desire to compete, and you can guiltlessly hoard opportunity for yourself if you choose to ignore the standards of “friendly” competition.

Within a small, controlled group, this ends up being a self-regulating problem. Friends will accumulate people who wish to compete at a similar level, and naturally cast out those who don’t mesh. However, on the scale of the world economy, for example, these standards of competition must be codified into enforceable laws.¹⁰As you’re well aware regarding the political issue you care about, the words “enforceable” and “law” are both pulling a lot of weight. In addition, my understanding is that Libertarians and/or “true capitalists” (hello Adam Smith) would disagree with this premise, as they think pure competition is itself self-regulating at any scale. I call humbug.

So, Where Are We?
If anything, this post is cathartic¹¹The catharsis inherent to a post, or perhaps the enjoyment I got from writing it, is pretty directly correlated with the number of footnotes., and made me think seriously about how I view competition. I am a competitive person. I really enjoy winning, and I dislike losing. I worked hard when I played baseball to do all I could to help the team, and I spend hours honing my skills in Mario Kart. Yet, a lot of competition that affects the welfare of society¹²Or, entirely disregards societal welfare as the goal we’re trying to achieve, in the case of economic worship. puts a sour taste in my mouth.

It’s important to keep consistent standards for competition. Large entities like companies should not dictate what is acceptable. In general, we should be wary of any competitive situation where winning is not a clearly-defined state, but something that can be in flux and grow. Even worse, letting those who win the game define the rules should be avoided.¹³History informs us this is indeed rarely avoided, but we can keep on hoping that those small victories accumulate into something meaningful before it’s too late.

So go have fun. Enjoy your board games. Argue about rules. Call that egregious violation in table football, and the tiny one in a game of HORSE. But be consistent, and be aware of who you’re playing with. I always beat the student I tutor in tic-tac-toe, but I make sure he learns something from it.

• 1
  Although both go against modern sensibilities, heading to the Colosseum to see a person and/or animal mutually torn to shreds, but able to put up a fight, makes way more sense as an event than public executions. I guess for a certain span of time, the desire for competition paled in comparison to that for retribution and pain. Hm.
• 2
  In the case of team sports.
• 3
  In the case of individual sports.
• 4
  Or at least those who appear to have them—you know, hot people.
• 5
  The titans of finance who own the athletes and the industries to which they belong don’t tend to inspire as many folks. I think that’s probably for the best.
• 6
  Unless you count teenage umpires/referees being verbally, and sometimes physically, abused by parents.
• 7
  I still do! But I used to, too.
• 8
  I’ve always loved the meme of “If you make a billion dollars, we give you a medal saying ‘Congratulations, you won capitalism!’ Then all the money you make afterward gets donated.”
• 9
  If you win a major sporting event, you’re more likely to earn more money, have access to better training facilities, and so on. In general, the more resources you have, the more risks you can take; or if you don’t take many risks, your resources tend to grow vaguely exponentially.
• 10
  As you’re well aware regarding the political issue you care about, the words “enforceable” and “law” are both pulling a lot of weight. In addition, my understanding is that Libertarians and/or “true capitalists” (hello Adam Smith) would disagree with this premise, as they think pure competition is itself self-regulating at any scale. I call humbug.
• 11
  The catharsis inherent to a post, or perhaps the enjoyment I got from writing it, is pretty directly correlated with the number of footnotes.
• 12
  Or, entirely disregards societal welfare as the goal we’re trying to achieve, in the case of economic worship.
• 13
  History informs us this is indeed rarely avoided, but we can keep on hoping that those small victories accumulate into something meaningful before it’s too late.