Saturday, October 02, 2010

Is competition good?

Competition is often touted by evolutionary biologists as the driving force behind adaption and ultimately evolution.  Social darwinists credit it as the mechanism to determine the best-suited group politically, economically and ecologically.  Economists say it allocates productive resources to the most-highly valued uses and encourages efficiency. 

It is essentially how practically all organizations work.  Among countries, companies, sports teams, musicians, universities, departments, professors, students, schools, ...  Often even among organized religions, churches, NGOs, charities, ...

At the same time, it creates rivalries, losers, bad feelings, duplications, wastes, ...

Wouldn’t (A, cooperation) two people working cooperatively and then sharing the results achieve better results overall than (B, competition) each trying to beat the other with the winner taking everything while condemning the other to go without?

Cooperation is hard to achieve because men are selfish.  While competition have been proven to promote efficiency by exploiting men’s inherent selfishness, competition promotes even more selfishness, hence entrenching it.  Ultimately it may lead to men’s final destruction. 

Cooperation, while difficult, is a more lofty and noble objective.  Love is the ultimate driving force of cooperation.  And men are capable of love, particularly with God on their side.  If we can not cooperate in a church, there is probably little hope for the world outside.  If we cannot cooperate in a university, which is supposed to educate our young people on more lofty goals in life, it is also very sad and depressing. 

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