Mark Chatterton
Sun,28 Feb 2010
Mark Chatterton
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For the past two weeks, we’ve had the Winter Olympics taking place in Canada. Not as big as the Summer Olympics sure, but still an important world event, where men and women come from all over the world to try and see who is the best at a particular sport. It got me thinking about how much competition there is going on between individuals, teams, businesses and especially countries.
Sport is one form of human activity that dominates many people’s lives. Football, rugby, cricket, golf, baseball and athletics are just some of the sports that are played by people, and watched by millions more around the world. Every state television station around the world has some form of sport being broadcast on its schedules. People love the idea of winning, being the best and gaining the top prize.
The notion of competition isn’t just in sport though; look at the TV schedules for 2010. There seems to be no end of programmes which are based on competition. No sooner have the two big Saturday night shows of 2009 finished - namely the X Factor and Strictly Come Dancing - than we start again with Dancing on Ice on prime time Sunday night TV. It’s a fact of life in the 21st century that TV entertainment is now dominated by competition based shows. For instance, Total Wipe Out, Hole In The Wall, Who Wants to be a Millionaire, National Lottery In It to Win It, Take Me Out, are just some of the TV programmes which dominate Saturday night television – all based on competition. They all seem to have that common theme of being the winner and not the loser. It’s like Survival of the Fittest being pitched as entertainment.
Even in education there’s a lot of competition with League Tables showing which are the “best” schools in a certain area – based on exam results and not on the general happiness of its pupils, or their ability to achieve something in spite of their backgrounds or intelligence. Business too is one area of life where competition is important. Targets that have to be reached, selling more than your competitor, etc, all help to fuel the notion that we are individuals living and working apart from each other, all trying to make ends meet.
But does life have to be like that? The notion that “We are all one”, we are in it together, is surely a better basis to live our lives. The opposite to this is “survival of the fittest”, which means that a few elite win everything, whilst the majority of the people are “losers”. The ultimate of this is war, and we know what war does. When individuals come together as groups, as communities, as societies, helping and supporting everyone else, only then can humanity move forward. If we see ourselves as part of a web, where everyone is joined up to everyone else, then we will be able to progress and achieve great and positive things. Competition maybe entertainment, but is it the best model for humanity? I think not.
competition : humanity : winning : losing : winners : losers :
competition : humanity : winning : losing : winners : losers :
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