Why Do We Negatively Compete?

"Competition in biology, ecology, and sociology, is a contest between organisms, animals, individuals, groups, etc., for territory, a niche, or a location of resources, for resources and goods, for prestige, recognition, awards, mates, or group or social status, for leadership; it is the opposite of cooperation. It arises whenever at least two parties strive for a goal which cannot be shared or which is desired individually but not in sharing and cooperation."

Competition occurs naturally and if based on an ethical behavior, it  is highly beneficial for improving one's skills, one's self esteem and ones chances in enhancing his/her (professional, social, academic,...) status.  However, when competition discards ethics and crosses the line from enhancing self performance and self chances to destroying or degrading other people's performance, it definitely falls under the category of negative competition.

Let me explain why do we live in a negatively competing society.  First, I will explain a social phenomena in our culture and relate this phenomena to negative competition.

We actually live in a society where one's good performance is mostly measured relative to the bad performance of others and not according to an absolute measure determined by a system.  For example, if you ask your son/daughter, how did you do on your exam?  He/She says, I got 50 but all the class did not do well.  In this case, most of us will say, Ah OK but you should do better next time.  What  have you done here is that you are teaching your son/daughter that grades are relative and not absolute.  Your answer offered useless flexibility where no delivery can be done on your behalf. If there are factors that justify such low performance, the system will offer flexibility and it should not be on a personal level. What I mean by that, the teacher will most probably be flexible and he/she will take that into consideration. Even though many factors could have been involved that would justify his/her low grade but still you have to send a message that the measure for his/her performance is absolute and not relative.  (I am giving this example but I am not very happy about adopting the grades as a measure of good performance.)

How is this related to negative competition?

Since we are structured in a way that our good performance is relative, we get so busy destroying or undermining other people's achievements in order to show that our performance is better.  Thus instead of investing the energy in the right way, we divert it.   At least, if some do not undermine or destroy others' achievements,  they hide their appreciation for it.

What should we do?

We should do our job by adopting an absolute measure without worrying about others.  We should motivate others and tell them how good they are when they really are.  Don't wait for a downturn to tell somebody about his/her great past achievements, just say the good words for their present achievements.  Brains are structured to transform good words into energy.

The Dilemma of Prejudgment

Prejudgment is the act of reaching a decision or making a conclusion before an evidence is available.  Prejudgment could be an instinctive act originally developed to protect our species by previously predicting what the next step could be and build our move based on that assumption.  For example, our ancestors had to prejudge a wild animal and kill it in order to protect themselves even though that animal might had no intentions to attack.  They also had to prejudge others to protect what they have or else their defense mechanism wouldn't have developed and thus they wouldn't have survived.

However, with the social development that took place rapidly in the last century, humans had to abandon many traits that are not important anymore for their survival.  Laws and regulations protect them and they do not need to develop their defense mechanism on the personal level in directions where the cons are much more than the pros.

In our society though and due to the absence of confidence in the system, people unfortunately still hold onto traits that the civilized world has abandoned. Developing our individual defense mechanism on the judgmental level is still as it was from hundreds of years ago.  For example, if somebody is a suspect in a murder(of course assuming politics is not involved or else people will be highly opinionated); people will conclude the following :

1. Some will say he/she is definitely guilty.
2. Some will say he/she is not; out of trying to be different.
3. Some will say he/she is not; out of being convinced he/she is not.
4. Some and very few will say let us wait for the verdict.  Moreover, many of those as well on the personal level has some sort of a conclusion but they are smarter than others not to share it.

 

At the same time, if people start abandoning this trait, their individual defense mechanism will retreat and this is OK if there is a judiciary system that is well implemented but this is not the case in our culture. 

Plagiarism of the National Anthem; Not so Strange

It is really frustrating that even the national anthem in our country might be plagiarized.

Check the following  link that dates back to 2011.  I know many of you might have seen the video but it will be really amusing for those who haven't.

http://www.nowlebanon.com/BlogDetails.aspx?TID=1400