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ambition
a strong drive for
success
to seek after ambitiously or eagerly; to
covet
a cherished
desire; "his ambition is to own his own
business"
an eager, and sometimes an inordinate,
desire for preferment,
honor,
superiority,
power, or the attainment of something
"Keep comparing
yourself to others and
seeing how badly you
can feel about yourself.
It's not
masochistic; it's the
American way." - Meghan Daum
Competition
requires an individual or group
of individuals to
succeed while
another
individual or group of
individuals
fail.
A good example of how
Americans use
competition was found in the
Los Angeles Sheriff's Department in 2007. Used for ‘competitive fun' and as a morale
booster the Los Angeles Sheriff's held one day
competitions. How many people
can you arrest? How many cars can you impound? How many people can you stop and
harass(oops! I meant question)?
Competition is
essentially detrimental to every important aspect of
human social
interactions.
Human
relationships, self-respect, enjoyment of leisure time, and even
productivity all increase when
individuals break out of the
neurotic
pattern of relentless
competition.
Intentional competition is an
individually
narcissistic state of
mind.
Narcissistic
individuals compete to establish
themselves as the most intelligent, the most attractive, or the
wealthiest.
Narcissistic
individuals compete in
school.
Narcissistic
individuals compete in the
work place.
Narcissistic
individuals compete in the
city, in the country,
on the mountains, in the valleys, on the plains and in the foothills.
Narcissistic
individuals compete because they
desire acknowledgement,
recoginition and
do so in an attempt to be viewed as superior to
those they associate with.
"Narcissism can be conceptualized as a self-regulating system, where
self-esteem and enhancement are sought through a
variety of social means with little regard for the
consequences borne by others.
Agentic traits, assertiveness,
extraversion, and self-esteem are all correlated
with narcissism.
Narcissism is associated with
benefits to the individual that are primarily affective and most evident in the
short-term, but the costs of narcissism are paid by others and,
eventually, by the individual as well. The rise in
narcissism may be positive in the
short term for individuals, but negative for other people, for
society, and for the individual in the long term.
College students were 30 % more narcissistic on average in 2006 than in
1980.
Students today have markedly higher and more unrealistic
expectations of success.
More than half of recent high school students (51%) predicted that they
would earn graduate or professional degrees, even though only 9% of 25- to
34-year-old high school graduates actually hold these degrees. In 1976, only
half as many (27%) predicted this outcome. During the same period, the
percentage of high school students who predicted that they would be working in
a professional job by age 30 also increased, from 41% to 63% . In
reality, only 18% of high school graduates ages 25
to 34 in both eras worked at professional jobs." - Jean Twenge
"Large-scale advertising is one
of the main factors in American
society that creates and
maintains a peculiar form of narcissism ideally suited to
consumerism. As such, it
creates artificial needs within people that directly
conflict with their capacity to form a satisfying and sustainable relationship
with the natural
world." - Mary Gomes, and Allen Kanner
Continually striving to increase one's abilities at
doing some particular thing well is not to be confused with
competition. One
place where competition cannot
exist is within oneself.
Throughout history countless
accomplishments have been achieved simply out of an
individual's
desire to achieve something.
Alfie
Kohn, No Contest: The Case Against Competition, believes popular American
concepts of
competition rest on
false assumptions based on American cultural
myth.
This myth is based on a
fundamental misunderstanding of
Charles Darwin's theory of natural selection.
It is falsely believed
that the phrase 'survival of the
fittest' implies an internal struggle among members of a
species from which only the strongest, most
competitive members emerge
victorious. This is incorrect if a species is spread
over a vast area. Survival is dependent upon
many changing environmental factors.
"We've seen the gross misuse of
evolution - under the guise of Social Darwinism and the "survival of the fittest" -
to justify class oppression,
monopolies, and
imperialism." - David P. Barash
Survival of a species or sub species
biologically requires that the species or sub
species retain the ability to produce
surviving offspring who in turn
live to
reproduce. Continued
reproduction is the factor that predicates
success of a species or
sub species.
There is a tendency for groups
of animals and groups of
humans to
cooperate which contributes far
more to reproductive
success within the group than
competitive inclinations of
individuals directed within the
group.
A single violently fierce alpha
male begins a
slaughter with a single or multiple
murder within a family, a tribe or other
small group. Murder within this small
group consumes the group to the point
where there is a question of the continued viability of the group. If the
other males are all wiped out then if
reproduction continues it will be between
close family members.
Incest creates fatal genetic problems for future
generations ending with the family, tribe or small
group dying out.
A good example of this can be
seen recently in history with the experience of
Fletcher Christian and the other
mutineers of the Bounty who settled on Pitcairn
Island.
John Adams was the sole male survivor of the party that had landed just ten
years before.
Raising human offspring
was and is a difficult undertaking. Those who can work effectively with
others in the group are more
likely to be reproductively
successful over time.
In the past endangering one's own
life endangered the
lives of the other members of the
group.
Direct physically confrontational
competition has always been,
and still is, a risky strategy that rarely pays off.
Successful individual
human groups create
an inherited predisposition for cooperation in their offspring.
Cooperation is pervasive
within any successful civilization, successful nation, successful region, successful locality or successful family group. A
lone individual can
succeed only when he or she
cooperates with the larger
social order prevalent in the culture in which he or she resides.
American cultural
conditions are responsible for the pervasive
presence of
competition in
American society.
Children are taught by popular
culture, by the television, by public education, by the actions and by the interests of
their elders to be competitive.
Orson is unable to
solve an arithmetic problem. The
teacher asks him to
think carefully. Orson is still unable to answer the
question as he realizes unwanted attention
is directed at him. The rest of the class responds with a
forest of waving
hands and much sighing. Finally
Erma is called upon and proudly
delivers the correct solution. Orson's
failure has made it possible for
Erma to succeed in being recognized.
To a Zuni,
Hopi, or Dakota native
American, Erma's performance would be
seen as cruel.
As such events do not occur in all cultures
competition is not inevitably
a part of human nature. No human
behavior is understood to
be an innate human trait if any one
culture does not exhibit it.
In cooperative
situations tremendous gain is derived from sharing one's skills in a helpful way with
others. Relationships of trust
and appreciation do more for one's
sense of well-being than the constant struggle to
win.
The original concept of play which
emphasizes process before outcome has become lost in the
competitive nature of American
culture. American
children have lost their
natural and spontaneous
love of play.
Cross cultural
research demonstrates
competition for older
American children is not fun with a simple game.
Two
children sit on
opposite sides of a checker board. A
marker is placed on the middle square and the
children are told that they will take
turns moving the marker one square at a time for a total of 20 moves. If a
child gets the marker to his side of the
board, he will receive a prize. Then the game will be played again (4 times
total), and the other
child will go first.
Four-and-five-year-old, Anglo-American and
Mexican-American children almost universally helped one
another take turns in
winning. That is, the
child who goes second moves the marker
in the direction of the other
child's
goal. Virtually every game ends
with one child getting a prize. These
children had ‘fun' and are happy.
Among seven-to-nine-year-olds the pattern changes completely. Both Anglo-American and Mexican-American children
prevent anyone from
winning 50 to 80 per cent of the
time. These children are not
happy. These children did not have ‘fun'.
Mexican
children seven-to-nine-year-olds with
little or no contact with American
culture manage to
cooperate and earn prizes in a
majority of the games. They had ‘fun' and were happy.
The fourth myth is
that competitive frameworks make for
the highest levels of productivity.The
obvious futility of wasting one's energy preventing another from
winning provides the starting point
for the critique of competition's contribution to
productivity.
In the late 1970s a team of researchers at the University of Texas set out to identify the
personality characteristics that correlated with the highest levels of
professional performance. They reasoned that striving for mastery, a positive
attitude toward work, and
competitiveness would all correlate
positively with achievement.
High levels of
conscious orientation toward mastery of
skills were found among the highest achievers, but
the top achievers showed low levels of competitiveness. To test the result,
many more studies were conducted, each time using a
different sample of subjects - businessmen, college
students, airline reservation agents,
and grade school
students - and each time the same result was found.
Competitiveness consistently correlated
negatively with achievement. Those high in achievement were low in
competitiveness.
American belief in the
benefits of competition has
permeated America's cultural consciousness.
Competition practices have become
an entrenched part of American poplar
culture, American
education, American
business and American politics.
Competition can undermine
individual growth and
development, as well as
human relationships.
"The real alternative to being
number one is not being number two but being
psychologically
free enough to dispense with rankings all
together."- Alfie Kohn, American
author
"Television shows
like American Idol,The Swan and The Bachelor teach us,
things that are merely enjoyed - like singing, looking your best, falling in
love - are piteously
wasted. You have to make them into
contests." - Meghan Daum
autistic = a tendency to view life in terms of one's own needs and
desires
"Cultural paterns operate socially only in concrete situations where
inter-personal and inter-group relations are
actually taking place. Here, we may distinguish autistic behavior as an
exclusively intra-personal function, from social
behavior involving inter-personal and inter-group relations." - Eric Trist
"Just win, baby" is the credo for our
corporatist society, so we shouldn't be surprised to see athletes,
politicians,
businessmen,
religious leaders and even students use and
abuse every weapon at their disposal to
achieve their goals. If we don't like the results, we have to
speak up, vote for and
put our hearts, minds and energy into better
government, law and
order, honesty and fairness." - Hal
Rothberg At the core of every massive
corporate unraveling, whether it
is Sunbeam,
Enron,
WorldCom,
Global Crossing,
Tyco,
Adelphia,
Long-Term Capital
Management, Kmart,
Schwinn,
Motorola, Rubbermaid,
Quaker Oats,
Iridium,
Conseco,
Johnson & Johnson or the
Helmsley Hotels, sits a
hypercompetitiveness manager or
CEO.
"At a minimum, those whose
competitiveness makes their reach
exceed their grasp are ineffective and unethical; at a maximum they are
downright detrimental to society." - Barbara
Kellerman, research director
for the Center for Public Leadership at Harvard's John E Kennedy School of
Government
Those who are
hypercompetitive often
think "their self-worth is contingent on
winning," says John Tauer, a
professor of psychology at the University
of St. Thomas in St. Paul, Minnesota, who has studied achievement and
internal motivation. "When they start any
activity, their first thought is, ‘I need to
win.' "
"The
take-no-prisoners competitors can be
very successful much more rapidly than win-win
competitors, mainly because they are obsessed, single-track and totally focused
on their own desired result," says Denis
Waitley, former chairman of psychology for
the U.S. Olympic Committee's Sports Medicine
Council.
Hypercompetitors when asked to imagine an Earth without
competition foresee a general
collapse of the moral order. Some truly
believe we would
cease to exist were it not for
competition.
The gist of this
category of
competition is
self-aggrandizement, at the
expense of others. This is a
narcissistic
behavior.
Hypercompetitiveness individuals
typically may succeed in many parts of their lives,
but interpersonal, especially intimate, relations
are often deeply troubled.
Hypercompetitors ignore feedback effects.
Hypercompetitors lack both insight
and empathy.
A
2002 study in the Journal of Social and Clinical Psychology examined
romantic relationships of
hypercompetitive
individuals and found these
individuals reported lower
levels of honest communication with
the partner, greater infliction of pain on him or her, stronger
feelings of
possessiveness, higher levels of
mistrust, stronger needs to control their partner,
lower ability to understand their partners
perspective, and higher levels of
conflict.
"The more secure you are in your own
self and your own abilities, the more you
know yourself, the less you
feel you need to prove something to
others."- Richard Ryckman, psychologist
University of Maine.
boys behaving badly
"There are few social sanctions - as contrasted
with legal or financial ones - for bad behavior. Executives who have served
jail time are back on television and are still
celebreties. More to the point, they aren’t
shunned by their colleagues. The prevailing mood seems to be, as long as people
retain enough wealth, they can buy their way back by
donating time and money. If we are serious about enforcing norms,
then there have to be real sanctions." - Jeffrey Pfeffer, Professor of
Organizational Behavior at the Graduate School of Business, Stanford
University.The CEO of Whole Foods market,
John Mackey, made anonymous internet forum postings disparaging Wild Oats
market from 1999 to 2006 with the intent to drive down the value of Wild Oats. John Mackey posted comments stating
the company "has no value and no future" and that management "clearly doesn't
know what it is doing." Whole Foods made a
hostile takeover bid in February
2007. The postings came to light due to a Federal
Trade Commission lawsuit over monopoly issues.
Ambition is a tricky devil.
Envy and
greed is the result of too much ambition.
Sloth is the result of too little
ambition.
See Frances Bacon
See
Confucious
See
American aristocracy |
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