Posted: Jan 10, 2014 1:38 pm
Agrippina wrote:trubble76 wrote:Agrippina wrote:trubble76 wrote:
I can offer you some examples if you like. When NASA wanted to encourage private companies and individuals to design various items, it created a competition. I think everyone could see the value of competition there.
In a sporting setting, it encourages people to set ambitious targets and to put their full effort into achieving them. It gets people back on to the proverbial horse, it teaches people that they can push themselves to their limits and achieve incredible things that benefit them personally and their social group as a whole. More than that, life on Earth is dependent on the ability of competition to promote achievement and reward success. Human sports are not quite as brutal as nature though, we don't kill the losers.
If you don't like my examples, I'd bet google can offer a virtually endless list of how competition helps in any field imaginable.
It's not that I don't like them, I just don't understand why people have to compete. Why can't we all just share the pie?
Well, I'm no anthropologist but humans seem to be pretty competitive by nature to me, as well as most of the rest of the animals too. Maybe there is a species somewhere that can co-operate for everything and still get all the same benefits but on our planet we compete for any number of reasons, the main one being that it works. The better at competing your are, the more you get what you want.
Maybe that's why I don't get what I want. I just walk away from conflict mostly,, unless I'm feeling vulnerable, then I get angry and mean.
I humbly suggest that friendly competition is likely to be more productive.
You do everything on your own do you?
Yes, I do. At school in the first week, I used to get textbooks handed out to me, take them home and work all the way through them, immediately. I never participated in group activities because I can't work with other people. I do as much as possible on my own, because working with other people causes fights.
Well, my point really is that you don't actually do everything on your own, for a start you live in a social group, as you have already told us. All of us are social animals, except the few extremes, to a varying extent. I don't know whether a world devoid of competition would be a good place or a bad place but I do know that on this world competition can bring out the best and the worst in people. I think the net gain is overwhelmingly positive though, my own experience of sport and competition is positive despite me devoting only a small amount of my time and energy to it.
I don't know. I can't be bothered to compete. If I'm not chosen, I just shrug and say, "whatever."
I know I live in a social group, but I'm not terribly good at it. Mostly they do their stuff and I do mine. I don't join in many group activities happily.
Okay, you fall towards one end of the spectrum, for most humans sports are really helpful in terms of fitness and health and in terms of relationships too. Learning to get along with different people is a really useful skill. For most of us, life is a team sport, so to speak.
Well competition can help individuals too. For example, I sometimes play golf. When I do I sometimes compete against the course, which means I set myself a target and try to reach it. Sometimes I play two balls, playing A against B. Simple competitions like that can lead to significant gains, if not in performance, then in enjoyment. Why is this such a problem for you to grasp? I don't see why you are so personally involved in denouncing sport and all it achieves. I know you don't like sport but surely it's possible to dislike it and still recognise it has benefits for other people?
I mentioned that I fancied the idea of golf. Just because it's played against yourself really. But then you have to socialise with the people you play with and they cheat, or pick fights about where you placed the ball, and so on. I gave up after a couple of games. My best game was with my nephew who was a great golfer. We each played our own game, trying to beat our own distances, and I enjoyed that. It's when other people got involved that I had to stop playing.
You don't have to socialise at all, you can play golf on your own. Many people choose to socialise because people generally enjoy socialising but it is not compulsory at all.
Not on our courses, they want at least two people, or so I was told when I tried to do that.
Weird, I have never come across that rule before and I've played on a lot of different courses, and in different countries too, although not in RSA.
I like walking. I walk at least 2 kilometres a day, with my dog, now but otherwise my DH and I go for long walks together, and we enjoy that. I do get the health benefits of exercise, to a degree. It's the hysteria around sport and the fanatical worship of it that I don't get. But as I explained above, that's my way of looking at the world.
Well, I agree that sometimes sports lovers can go over the top but that is actually a miniscule percentage of all sports. We have bigger problems in this world than people that enjoy sport too much, that fanaticism (which does exist, though not in me, for the record) is a symptom of too much passion and joy, it's hardly worth condemning too much, is it?
I suppose.
I've successfully avoided it mostly, for most of my adult life, I guess I can continue doing that as trying to stop it invading my home is a battle I'm not going to win.
Yes, you and your home were not the objects of my discussion, I only want to argue that despite the occasional downside, sport is very beneficial to most people, and to the societies in which they live. I know many people that do not enjoy sports, they are welcome to continue not enjoying anything they like. I hope that they can see why so many people around they world find sports so worthy of their time and energy though.