Killer Competitiveness (Book Three)
Preface
A Flight Into Folly
This work reflects a theme that lies at the heart of the glory and degradation that is humanity. Nothing better characterizes our existence than incessant struggle. When ice ages come and climates reverse themselves, we invent new methods for protecting our delicate bodies. No social oppression so far has been heavy enough to kill the human will to struggle. Even where deprived of the capability to do battle physically, we have waged the struggle intellectually, emotionally, and spiritually.
Nevertheless, this “will to power” in the service of ennobling aims has as often been perverted and misdirected into violence, war, rape, and the economic and political oppression of others. Indeed, Adolf Hitler entitled the work that inspired his drive to set up a murderous tyranny Mein Kampf-“my struggle,” “my battle.” The call to sacrifice, to do battle with opposing forces, has been the most persuasive call even when in the service of human degradation and destruction. So badly do we want causes worth struggling for that if none appears we will enter into a self-sacrificing effort whose intensity creates the illusion that we are serving a great cause.
What is highest in us is also lowest. We are paradoxes, living contradictions. What is worst about us is our ability and will to avoid facing this contradictory nature, or, upon facing it, to run screaming from the view. Whoever fails to see is wilfully ignorant, but whoever sees and flees is a cowardly fool. We will destroy ourselves and many others in our flight from truth.
That we glorify “free competition” in one part of our lives and roundly condemn it in another is a sign of how important it is. Another sign are the emotions stirred in us at different times for, and against, competition. The very organization that most glorifies competition and condemns communal cooperativeness-a business corporation in the United States, for example-actually contains much collectivism in its competitive life. Competing units, whether they are families, cities, or corporations, must have internal cooperation to survive and prosper in the competitive environment. Similarly, the very organizations that praise collectivism and condemn competition contain much competition in their existence. They use the cattle prod of competitive motives to stimulate the energy of members to contribute to the organization’s well-being. The former Soviet Union may have had a collectivist economy, but it stimulated individual workers to compete for honors within it. Contradictory attitudes towards competition reveal a human paradox and show why we need to understand it. A refusal to come to grips with the origin and outcome of competition may well condemn us to collapse. This is more true, not less, today when on the international level the value of competition appears to have defeated that of cooperativeness.
In the coming chapters, I shall differentiate between inevitable competition and unnecessary “killer” competitiveness. This will include the sketch of a distinction laying the groundwork for understanding how our good impulses turn destructive and anti-human. It also will expose the universality of the destructive power of killer competitiveness that touches human life at all levels-personal, family, civil, national, and international. It will illustrate the reason for this perversion, how it is related to a general lack of meaningfulness in life, and how its end can liberate us to creative existence.
