Mentally Damaging Little Kids

[SupahEwok]

If one doesn't compete then there is no drive to improve

False.

You don't need to want to get one over on somebody else in order to improve yourself. I'm currently self-studying to bump up my resume while waiting on the market for my profession to open up. One can say that I'm competing with all those who are also looking for a job, but that isn't what's driving me, it's a need for myself to feel validated and like I'm making progress instead of just laying around, and also getting some fundamentals I expected to learn on the job (such as working with CAD) out of the way to get a better start when the job comes.

Humans don't need to compete with each other. It's ahistorical, or at least a-anthropological since it predates recorded history. It's believed that hunter-gatherer tribes did little competition between tribes; wars could happen, but were exceptional and probably flared in times of desperate need. Most of the time, there was ample space for tribes to have their own territory, and since they were migratory to chase food sources, tribes could not accumulate more resources than they could carry; without constraints of space and limitations on what one could own, there was no need for battles between tribes. There's some archaeological evidence of wounds from tools (human caused, in other words), but rarer than you'd expect if all human existence had been one long conflict of competition. War and competition only picked up at the advent of agricultural society, because all of a sudden land suitable for agriculture was scarce and getting claimed up, and people settling down meant they could accumulate stuff for other people to want.

War and competition is not an inherent part of our nature. Consumption is; we used to hunt down animals and plants to consume to perpetuate our lives. One could say, then, that we competed with nature. But we have absolute no need to compete with each other, if we've developed a system whereby everybody has access to the resources they needed, and we quit having such a fucking hard-on for private property and wealth accumulation. Our species existed in a time where those conditions were true, and I argue that the struggle of proof for whether settling down for agriculture was "worth it" only exists in the struggle to return to those conditions, with the luxuries of our modern world to boot. Incidentally, that's the end goal of socialist philosophy.

Incidentally, I feel like my greatest sins are both Sloth and Pride, and I'm really not sure if there's a sin that is my weakest, since I don't regard myself as a very good or notable human being.

 

[Specter Von Baren]

False.

You don't need to want to get one over on somebody else in order to improve yourself. I'm currently self-studying to bump up my resume while waiting on the market for my profession to open up. One can say that I'm competing with all those who are also looking for a job, but that isn't what's driving me, it's a need for myself to feel validated and like I'm making progress instead of just laying around, and also getting some fundamentals I expected to learn on the job (such as working with CAD) out of the way to get a better start when the job comes.

Where do you derive your need to feel validated?

 

[Trunkage]

It would be more correct to say that the "pretty people on Twitter" are children.

Sorry, I meant petty.

Also, I feel like that’s an insult to children

 

[Trunkage]

One of the reasons you don't help a baby bird hatch from its egg is because the very act of forcing itself out of the egg gives it the strength and will to live. Similarly, competition, while it can cause the worst in us to come out, is also a method for measuring oneself and seeing where they need to improve.

To put it another way, a question I like to ask of people is which of the seven deadly sins they are most and least guilty of. The reason I ask this is because it can give you an idea of them and how they see themselves. And the thing is, you learn a strength from what they say is a weakness and vice versa. Someone that says they are guilty of Sloth might also be more relaxed and less prone to anger, someone that is most guilty of Pride may also be very capable even if they overestimate it.

Competitiveness is not taught, it is inherent in all animals. Humans are different in that we only compete with each other since we have no natural predators. If one doesn't compete then there is no drive to improve but if they do compete but haven't been taught how to do it morally then they can become nasty and vicious.

As with all things in life. Going too hard one way leads to problems, everything is about balancing carefully on a ball.

I’ve met some Olympic athletes. Generally, to them, competition is the worst thing you can focus on. Yes you have competition days but it is such a small part of their routine. You focusing on others will destroy you, rather than help. If your, during your race, you are too busy looking at someone else lane, you are never going tl

Also, your analogy of the egg has little to do with Competition. That’s self mastery. Which IS something athletes want to focus on. Betting yourself is a great goal. Some people call it competing against yourself...and if that type of analogy helps you master a skill, awesome. But it not the same.

So, not all competition is bad. But it’s like a healthy diet, it needs to be taken in moderation. Having it all the time is like having chocolate all the time, bad for your health

 

[Specter Von Baren]

I’ve met some Olympic athletes. Generally, to them, competition is the worst thing you can focus on. Yes you have competition days but it is such a small part of their routine. You focusing on others will destroy you, rather than help. If your, during your race, you are too busy looking at someone else lane, you are never going tl

If they aren't competing then why are they training?

 

[thebobmaster]

If they aren't competing then why are they training?

Probably to see how well they can do. From what I understand, a fair chunk of professional athletes are driven to compete with themselves more than anyone else. Their goal is to beat their previous attempts, to do better than they have before. There's a reason that McKayla Maroney's displeased face at getting a silver medal went memetic: because 95% of athletes would have been ECSTATIC to be getting a silver medal.

 

[Specter Von Baren]

Probably to see how well they can do. From what I understand, a fair chunk of professional athletes are driven to compete with themselves more than anyone else. Their goal is to beat their previous attempts, to do better than they have before. There's a reason that McKayla Maroney's displeased face at getting a silver medal went memetic: because 95% of athletes would have been ECSTATIC to be getting a silver medal.

Then why go to the Olympics if it's just about personal competition?

 

[Trunkage]

If they aren't competing then why are they training?

Did I say competition should be non-existent or done in moderation? Have the Olympics as one goal may be important to athletes. It shouldn’t be the ONLY goal

edit: shouldn’t might not be the right word here. As far as I’ve talked to sport psychologists, usually competition doesn’t keeps people driven. It’s due to external/ internal reward systems. For example, young children aren’t great at developing goal or feeling rewarded at achieving success of challenges. Thus, they need more external praise from authority figures. As you get older, you should develop internal reward systems. These are longer Self-sustaining. Relying on one chance every few months to prove how good you are (competitions) is less frequent than day to day desiring to better your PB. Your more likely to succeed with more occurrences of challenges. Also the challenges won’t be as high a leap

 

[SupahEwok]

Where do you derive your need to feel validated?

From the need to feel like existence means anything instead of being the ultimate cosmic joke.

 

[Agema]

If one doesn't compete then there is no drive to improve...

There is: it's simply an internal locus rather than external. You can simply want to be better at something for your own pleasure, without having to care whether you are better than anyone else. You'll not only improve your own success but probably be a happier person, too.

My experience in academia with students is that there are extremely varying responses to competitiveness. A lot of my students are medical students, and in our medical education system medical students end up being ranked when they qualify, which means we introduce them to ranking early on. Some of them find it unpleasant, and plenty of them who find it unpleasant are high performers - it's not just the ones who struggle and come far down. They don't see their achievement as a competition, and they don't like the idea of it as a competition. In a worst case scenario, it's even a negative motivator. Never mind that it is to some degree contrary to the principles of teamwork and mutual support and respect that we try to teach the students.

Competitiveness can motivate success, but it can also damage teamwork and drive cheating. I hear tales of incidents in medical schools where students were put into teams and set against each other on projects. Some teams would do things like draw out all copies of a key text from the library just so other teams could not access them - also making them unavailable to students on other courses. One team in a university went onto Wikipedia start of the day, altered a load of relevant pages to inaccurate information to mislead other teams, and then amended them back at the end of the day - thus potentially negatively impacting people across the whole world. This is not only shitty, but the teams diverted time they could have spent excelling to disrupting their competitors instead. In a more general sense, some medical school students say they think other students deliberately undermine or mislead them - although that could of course just be other forms of human shittiness than excessive competitiveness.

I agree that competitiveness exists in humanity to some degree, and that when harnessed effectively it can be powerful, but it comes with caveats that it can also easily be toxic, both to the person who feels it (unhappiness, envy, etc.) and to the people around them who they may attempt to damage. Thus I think a task of adulthood is to manage things like this: to try to recognise where competitiveness is useful and where it is becomes a problem, and to try to adapt how one thinks and behaves to favour the former over the latter. Much of this consideration to move towards healthy competitiveness should start in childhood.

 

[MrCalavera]

Then why go to the Olympics if it's just about personal competition?

https://www.google.pl/amp/s/www.cnbc.com/amp/2018/02/23/heres-how-much-olympic-athletes-earn-in-12-different-countries.html

 

[Specter Von Baren]

From the need to feel like existence means anything instead of being the ultimate cosmic joke.

And why does improving yourself give you that feeling?

https://www.google.pl/amp/s/www.cnbc.com/amp/2018/02/23/heres-how-much-olympic-athletes-earn-in-12-different-countries.html

So it is not in fact just personal competition then?

There is: it's simply an internal locus rather than external. You can simply want to be better at something for your own pleasure, without having to care whether you are better than anyone else. You'll not only improve your own success but probably be a happier person, too.

In my experience, and from what I've seen of my generation, this doesn't give nearly as much motivation as we theorize it does when there's no financial or social reason to better oneself.

I agree that competitiveness exists in humanity to some degree, and that when harnessed effectively it can be powerful, but it comes with caveats that it can also easily be toxic, both to the person who feels it (unhappiness, envy, etc.) and to the people around them who they may attempt to damage. Thus I think a task of adulthood is to manage things like this: to try to recognise where competitiveness is useful and where it is becomes a problem, and to try to adapt how one thinks and behaves to favour the former over the latter. Much of this consideration to move towards healthy competitiveness should start in childhood.

Exactly. As with all things there's a balance that's required to reap the full benefits.

 

[SupahEwok]

And why does improving yourself give you that feeling?

You've had 1 Socrates question already, make a point.

 

[MrCalavera]

So it is not in fact just personal competition then?

So "competition" doesn't need to be a factor at all then?

 

[Agema]

In my experience, and from what I've seen of my generation, this doesn't give nearly as much motivation as we theorize it does when there's no financial or social reason to better oneself.

I could suggest that this is understandable having spent decades since the 1980s ("Greed is good") moving towards a more consumerist society that increasingly measures value in money and fame rather than any number of other things such personal virtues. Take a look at the president, for instance: truly a representative of the age.

I think self-improvement is also something that requires time, effort and reflection. But work rarely gives us time and space (reflection is not conspicuously and measurably productive), and leisure time is seductively easy and pleasing to fill up with the masses of entertainment available. I fucking hate stuff like "Eat, Pray, Love" where some overprivileged nit gets to faff around for ages 'finding themselves' on their vast cushion of wealth because the idea of being able to really stop and take stock of our lives is so attractive, and yet so divorced from the reality most of us face under constant pressure to pay the bills and get stuff done.

 

[Specter Von Baren]

You've had 1 Socrates question already, make a point.

Hahahahahaha!

Well then, I would postulate that you got the feeling that bettering yourself will give you validation from the values you were taught as a kid, by your parents and/or society. But, why would they teach you these values? I believe it is because our forefathers went through trials and tribulations and had to compete with others in society to earn their way in life and so they saw the value in those experiences, even if they weren't always ones that made them feel good, in how it shaped their sense of right and wrong and worth. Teaching these values to the next generation is meant to give them a head start so that they don't have to take quite so many bumps and bruises to come to the same conclusion. Agema put it more eloquently than me though, but what he said is essentially how I feel on this.

So "competition" doesn't need to be a factor at all then?

But.... it is a factor.

I could suggest that this is understandable having spent decades since the 1980s ("Greed is good") moving towards a more consumerist society that increasingly measures value in money and fame rather than any number of other things such personal virtues. Take a look at the president, for instance: truly a representative of the age.

I think self-improvement is also something that requires time, effort and reflection. But work rarely gives us time and space (reflection is not conspicuously and measurably productive), and leisure time is seductively easy and pleasing to fill up with the masses of entertainment available. I fucking hate stuff like "Eat, Pray, Love" where some overprivileged nit gets to faff around for ages 'finding themselves' on their vast cushion of wealth because the idea of being able to really stop and take stock of our lives is so attractive, and yet so divorced from the reality most of us face under constant pressure to pay the bills and get stuff done.

I sometimes wonder if we aren't soon going to end up in a world like that of Ratchet & Clank (The original trilogy at least) where everyone lives in a real life parody of consumerist society.

 

[MrCalavera]

But.... it is a factor.

But it isn't the only one.

 

[Specter Von Baren]

But it isn't the only one.

My point was never that it was the only one.

 

[Trunkage]

My point was never that it was the only one.

I would say that if the wording of ‘competing with yourself’ works for you - great. You do you. Some people are obsessed with competition and I don’t want to stop them If they think it’s going to bring success. I steer clear of competition so it does work for me, hence me using my terminology

I remember hearing a talk by Greg Paige, CEO of the company who owns Lays chips (probably a decade ago now, so I don’t know if he still is.). He was talking about innovation. Someone asked him a question about his competition he said something to theeffect of - ‘why would I be bothering worrying about them, I’m serving our customers not busy worrying about them.’ There was also a moment where he was discussing safety regulations in the US. A person asked about regulations hurting a businesses. He replied to the effect of ‘Safety regulations are basic. A minimum standard. We aren’t going for minimum, because we care about the safety of our customers.’ It showed me how economics is pretty much just making crap up to justify The myths are Capitalism. Like the lie that everything needs to be a competition. Another example is the survival of the fittest concept. What some people don’t get is that COOPERATION and taking care of each other are traits that we selectively bred to improve the human race. Survival of the fittest doesn’t mean putting humans against each other to improve society. It using those traits that proved useful to society and competition, while making some things possible, is bad to use in most instances. Eg. Most wars are just competitions taken to extremes.

 

[Specter Von Baren]

I would say that if the wording of ‘competing with yourself’ works for you - great. You do you. Some people are obsessed with competition and I don’t want to stop them If they think it’s going to bring success. I steer clear of competition so it does work for me, hence me using my terminology.

I remember hearing a talk by Greg Paige, CEO of the company who owns Lays chips (probably a decade ago now, so I don’t know if he still is.). He was talking about innovation. Someone asked him a question about his competition he said something to theeffect of - ‘why would I be bothering worrying about them, I’m serving our customers not busy worrying about them.’

Why do they spend money on marketing their chips if they aren't worried about competition? How did the company get to that point without trying to make their chips better than what other people are making? It doesn't mean the only reason someone does something is just to "be better" someone that only does what they do for that reason has problems, but you need a certain amount of drive to prove to others that you're worth their time, investment and attention because there's a whole bunch of other people trying to do the same thing you are.

There was also a moment where he was discussing safety regulations in the US. A person asked about regulations hurting a businesses. He replied to the effect of ‘Safety regulations are basic. A minimum standard. We aren’t going for minimum, because we care about the safety of our customers.’ It showed me how economics is pretty much just making crap up to justify The myths are Capitalism.

Read more. If that's what you think is the only reason for economics then read more. Don't be a socialist sheep. You don't have to like capitalism, there's plenty to hate about it, but if you think the entire basis of our current society, economy and even the way we live our day to day lives is an illuminati like myth that goes all the way down to the basic ways humans interact with each other then I'm sorry but your studying has gone grossly awry.

Like the lie that everything needs to be a competition. Another example is the survival of the fittest concept. What some people don’t get is that COOPERATION and taking care of each other are traits that we selectively bred to improve the human race. Survival of the fittest doesn’t mean putting humans against each other to improve society. It using those traits that proved useful to society and competition, while making some things possible, is bad to use in most instances. Eg. Most wars are just competitions taken to extremes.

I have no problem with cooperation, I much prefer it. My problem is with the idea of removing competition, competitive spirit, because it just comes back but without any of the rules and regulations our forefathers gave us to temper it.