Alright, it’s hard sometimes to keep a thought de-evolving from contemplative to just being an outright rant. And yeah, its laziness to allow it to happen. The Socratic method is a good tool to combat this slippery slope, but today I will embrace a rant to hit a passion of mine: the role of competition.
So in knowing a rant is around the corner, let’s talk about food. For the weekend brunch, I found a delightful recipe for Spanish Omelette by happenstance on the food network one day. This is my second time making it. The savory squishiness of the fried onions and potatoes compete with the umami of the just undercooked eggs – ah, competition is good!
Secret Ingredient: The plate used to flip the omelette!
Music accompaniment: Wait Wait Don’t Tell Me
Now to my rant – competition is the basis for the success of life and humanity, and sadly is also the source of some of our greatest catastrophes. But disconcertingly, competition has gotten an increasingly bad rap – I see it slowly being excised from all parts of our western society.
My girls soccer teams don’t keep score. Kids don’t get grades anymore until they are older. Public employees aren’t assessed against their peers. This slow degradation of societal health from the excising of competition is yet another sign of too much luxury in our society.
Go to Vietnam right now, and people are scrappy. They have to pay for their education post-primary, and are fighting to make a buck anywhere they can. Old eastern communist societies are more competitive, more capitalistic than the old west societies. This honing of the fittest leads to an inevitable conclusion of the weak hoarding their advantages with flabbiness, and the strong gaining strength daily through cunning, adaptation and drive.
When you take out competition from a whole generation, the effect is long lasting for generations. So today, I beg you, add a little more competition back in your life, as if it was a little exercise run. For competition is exercise for the spirit.
