Fun Without Winning or Losing

So my very first book, written back when the Earth's crust was still cooling, is called No Contest: The Case Against Competition, and in it, I began by debunking the claim that competition is just part of human nature.

There's nothing we can do about it.

I pulled from evidence from evolutionary biology, from cross-cultural anthropology, from early childhood education to demonstrate that we compete because we're raised that way, not because we're born that way.

And then I went on to talk about the extent to which beliefs that competition is, uh, desirable don't really stand up to close inspection based on logic and evidence that, um, competition gets in the way of our doing our best work and learning.

It actually hampers excellence much far from being something that's necessary for us to do our best, that everyone loses in the race to win, uh, including the people who win the contests.

And I went on to talk about how it doesn't build character.

It's actually destructive to self-esteem.

It gets in the way of our psychological development.

It, it impedes our relationships, where we end up envying winners and being contemptuous of losers and being suspicious of just about everybody, because even if you're not my rival today, you could become one tomorrow.

And so never mind the aggression and the cheating and so on.

It, it, it really undermines this sense that we can connect with each other in various ways.

And all of this, I argued, was not just a function of doing competition excessively or badly, but is built into the idea of competition, which is, by definition, mutually exclusive goal attainment.

It means we could set things up so that I do something and you do something, and what we do is independent of each other.

Your success has no bearing on mine at all.

Or second possibility, we set things up cooperatively so that your success is necessary for my success and vice versa.

We, we sink or swim together.

And then the third possibility is competition, where I succeed only if you fail.

We are at cross-purposes.

It's not about success at all, it's about, it's about winning.

And there's a lot of evidence suggesting that competition is not just ineffective, but, but counterproductive in many ways, at school, at work, in the family, in other environments.

So why is it that we assume that if competition takes place during the weekend, and it's called a game, that it becomes suddenly benign, innocuous, necessary for having fun? I discovered, though, that I could give a two-hour talk on competition And never even mention games.

And that's partly because my priority wasn't what happened on the playing field.

If I could persuade people that workplaces and classrooms would do better by becoming cooperative, or at least less competitive, or not competitive at all, that would be fine.

That would be a huge step forward.

And even people who are open to reviewing the evidence about that, about, about schools and workplaces, nevertheless maintain this kind of curious, perverse attachment to the idea that recreation still has to be competitive.