“the despair of all who look on it”
When we choose competition rather than cooperation as our dominant value in the human community, we block the path to a sustainable Global Village. Economist Thomas Piketty in Capital in the 21st Century (2013), predicts that our choice is fraught “with potentially dire consequences for social justice and democratic governance.”[i]
For example, Denmark’s policies (2020) exemplify cooperation and compassion: “Danes pay an extra 19 cents of every dollar in taxes, compared with Americans, but for that they get free health care, free education from kindergarten through college, subsidized high-quality preschool, a very strong social safety net and very low levels of poverty, homelessness, crime and inequality. On the average Danes live two years longer than Americans.”[ii]
Sakyong Mipham Rinpoche says: “When we compete, we are honing the skills of aggression. In abstaining from a competitive state of mind, we are taking confidence in our worthiness as a human being who can cultivate wisdom and compassion. We appreciate others. When they outperform us, we don’t see it as belittlement, but as an opportunity to relax into the outrageous possibility of not being attached to gain [craving] and loss [aversion]. Gain and loss are meaningless preoccupations that we use to foster the illusion of a permanent self.”[iii]
Insight # 87 comes to us from Bayard Hooper (1928-2001). His professional life was largely spent as writer and editor of Time, Life and Discover magazines.
“We have the word of an army of sociologists and psychiatrists that in the name of competition we emasculate worker and manager alike and turn them into gray-faced, status-seeking consumers. In the name of efficiency we are said to ravage rural landscape and city skyline, creating a festering megalopolis which is the despair of all who look on it.”[iv]
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Additional Reading:
- Cooperation & Competition, The ABC’s of Simple Reality, Vol 1
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#87 Cooperation and Competition
[i] Scott, A. O. “The Squeeze on the Middlebrow.” The New York Times. August 3, 2014, p. 1.
[ii] Kristof, Nicholas. “McDonald’s Workers in Denmark Pity Us.” The New York Times. May 10, 2020, p. 7.
[iii] Rinpoche, Sakyong Mipham. “No Real Winners.” Shambhala Sun. Boulder, Colorado, July 2005, p. 14.
[iv] Hooper, Bayard. “The Problems of Having Too Much To Choose From.” Life Magazine. New York: April 21, 1967, p. 73.
