It
seems that here in the United States we compete for everything. This
is certainly the case with politics (managing government) and
business (managing the economy), which arguably have the the largest
direct impact on our lives. Most of us are effectively slaves to the
economy, where we must constantly convince someone that we are better
than other people in order to survive. Lost in this competition are
answers to some fundamental questions:
- What are we ultimately competing for?
- Are the winners really "better" than those they defeat?
- Is the competition worth the cost?
Biologists
would say that most competition can be best understood in
evolutionary terms, as a selection of mates whose offspring have the
best chance of surviving long enough to have offspring. In this case,
the net result of the competition defines its goal: extending the
collective lifetime of our species as long as possible. The term
"better" is more than just a verdict of who wins a
particular competition; it is a value judgment, assessing who
supports a particular value more than others. If the value is "human
life," then the better people are those who do the most to
maximize the amount of human life over time. The cost of the
competition must be weighed against the results to determine if the
competition is worth it, which involves an additional value judgment
used to identify what constitutes a "cost." We can most
simply use the same value (or values) for both costs and benefits;
for example, assessing whether the rules and conditions of a
competition will lead to a net increase or decrease in human life
over most potential outcomes.
From
the perspective of an individual person or organization of people,
the primary value is personal happiness, which is intimately tied to
longevity, physical consumption, and the assistance of related
individuals. Individuals can choose to collaborate or compete, a
choice that is determined by both personal predilection (some of us
are more prone to compete than collaborate) and the availability of
resources (when resources fall below a threshold where everyone can
meet their needs and wants, people will be forced to compete with the
others to get what they need and want, unless collaboration can
increase the amount of resources).
Artificial
competitions, such as those between businesses, manipulate these
variables by imposing goals, rules, and conditions, and often
selecting participants with particular inclinations and abilities,
with the effect of (at least temporarily) increasing happiness for
those who win and those who support the competitions with resources.
Little, if any, consideration may be given to the net gain or loss to
anyone or anything else because the values embodied in a competition
do not extend to them, unless additional values are imposed by an
outside entity which acts on their behalf, or are inherently shared
by the competition's participants who are part of an impacted group.
Political
competition is perhaps the most critical of artificial competitions,
because it determines the leadership of government, whose influence
is derived from its function to enforce and support values common to
a society, especially the the lives of its citizens, by for example
acting as the "outside entity" influencing other
competitions. For societies such as ours that have global impact
through artificial (abstract and technology-driven) means, the
natural large-scale value of human life should be explicitly
discussed and accepted or rejected by all citizens on a routine
basis; and, if accepted, it must be intentionally integrated into the
values that underlie all activities contributing to that impact,
especially the governance of our society and how we choose our
leaders.
Due
to the world's complexity and global proximity to natural resource
limits, those of us with significant influence can no longer follow
our natural proclivity to increase our happiness, with its attendant
and excessive consumption requirements. Humanity has arguably passed
the point where significant additional resources are available, and
some of us are already using technology and wealth to manipulate
institutions like government and business, which enabled our growth,
to facilitate the opposite: competition (with unfair advantage) for
what is already being used by the rest. Together we need to reexamine
the competitions we are participating in, and consciously decide
whether the values they serve are in line with the future we want,
before that future is decided for us.
