Since my last diatribe about bigness, I've been examining the various curses our fair republic has been and is being exposed to, not least of which is the Rick Santorum brand of Americanism. Actually, Santorum isn't that far off the general righward schizophrenia of the Republican base - anti-intellectual, anti-analysis, pro-Jesus and Israel, anti-abortion (which is pro-life), pro-death penalty (which is anti-life), pro-gun (which, as the NRA so often states is pro-America) and, above all, pro-tax breaks for those making over $250,000 a year. Anyone who doesn't think this way is somehow subversive.
All this is, in reality, the preface to this diary, which concerns a curse which has also, unlike Mr. Santorum, been a blessing to America. I refer to competition.
Competition, in many ways, built this nation. Capitalism, the deity of the right and one of the pillars of our democracy, is founded on it. Lately, it's changed a lot. Today, there isn't the competition between a couple of family-owned stores with customers getting the benefit. Now we have mega-giants battling to buy enough legislators to weaken consumer protection laws so that prices can be jacked up until the limit of the market is reached. The competition is more about who can spend the most money for lobbyists.
The same kind of competition is seen in our present election campaign. Forget what the candidate stands for. How much money has he got? This is known as the Bribery Competition and is currently as much as part of our culture, albeit more gentlemanly, than in the European Middle Ages, where enough money could buy the Papacy.
Competition in religion (also known as "My God is better than your God") has been, and is, responsible for more deaths than any other cause. Racial competition is, tragically, still alive and well. The Civil War was a battle over human worth, after all. Blacks were deemed inferior and even today some people still think so. The words "better than " implies competition. Have you heard it lately?
Politics used to be about a competition of ideas. Now, it's a competition about who's the most "conservative," the most devout, the most humble or the most willing to preserve the standing of the well-off. Note that there is little or no competition about who's the most intelligent or the most innovative.
We start learning competition shortly after kindergarten. "Plays well with others" vanishes from the adolescent report card. Instead, we stress winning - often at all costs - and colleges boast of the coach who says, "Winning isn't the main thing - it's the only thing." Competition in soccer games are often accompanied by riots wherein supporters of the losing team starts throwing things - including seats - at anyone cheering for the winner. Japanese students, goaded to compete, account for much of that country's high suicide rate.
The problem with our evolved competition is that there is no room for what originally was the main strength of America - the concept of a melting pot, where everyone blended talents for the common good. Today, when someone speaks of the common good, he's just as liable to be branded a socialist as not.
Consider the antonym of competition - cooperation. The lubricant that makes a team work together isn't who can score the most points, but who can do his best to help the team succeed. We need both individual initiative and group effort to succeed as a country. Unfortunately we don't see too much of either one. The latest results of a league investigation revealed that members of the New Orleans Saints were offered ten thousand bucks in cash if they could "knock out" Brett Favre during the 2009 Super Bowl. This is how competition is ruining sports.
So what used to be our blessing has become our curse. Henry Ford made his fortune by turning out a superior product at a low price. He also, unlike most of our would-be presidents, realized that if his workers didn't make a good wage, they couldn't buy his cars. This move pushed Henry ahead of the other car makers and gave America the Model "T," which opened up the country to travel, gave us our highway system and enabled thousands to expand their dreams. What's competition today?
I seriously doubt the welfare of the United States is the prime motivation for modern competition. As a nation of individuals, we have tailored competition so that there has to be a winner and a loser. The win-win philosophy that powered many of our most successful enterprises is dead as a dodo. How many inventions have been smothered because of a fear of competition? How many drugs have not been produced because they wouldn't yield enough profit to enable Company A to beat out Company B? How many people have died because that drug wasn't produced?
Sadly, there's not much hope of exorcising this curse. It's here to stay because nobody seems willing to accept what once was called good manners. One reason I like the game of cricket is that invariably, when someone makes a great catch or hits one out of the park, players from both sides shout, "Well done!"
We'd do well to do the same.