When you feel that your society cares about you, and that you are accepted whether you "win" or not, competition can be fun and productive for everyone involved. The issue with competition in US society is that the prerequisites that people need *before* they can healthily and fairly compete are not met. For example, what does it mean to compete against someone who has privilege when you do not? They are already ahead. I was born in the Soviet Union. There, competition as a national dialogue was de-emphasized, and even touted as negative. Still, to say that people there met their full potential in life would be far from true. Competition itself is not the issue. When there is caring and compassion, be it on a smaller scale like the family or a larger social scale, competition can be productive.
On Sep 4, 2013 Anja84 wrote:
When you feel that your society cares about you, and that you are accepted whether you "win" or not, competition can be fun and productive for everyone involved. The issue with competition in US society is that the prerequisites that people need *before* they can healthily and fairly compete are not met. For example, what does it mean to compete against someone who has privilege when you do not? They are already ahead. I was born in the Soviet Union. There, competition as a national dialogue was de-emphasized, and even touted as negative. Still, to say that people there met their full potential in life would be far from true. Competition itself is not the issue. When there is caring and compassion, be it on a smaller scale like the family or a larger social scale, competition can be productive.