Competition vs Co-operation

One summer, I worked in a boy’s camp in the United States.  During our training we were asked to share, if we want, what changed our life the most, what turned our path towards where we are right now. I hope you can’t imagine the horror stories my fellow camp counsellors told us. So, I thought I would share mine with them. And while I could share some of my own less fairytale-like stories, I, the always positive and optimistic guy I am (yeah, sure ;), shared the following story: What changed my life was a piece of wood with six strings on it and some electronics in her belly (a guitar, obviously) that my parents gave me (I meant, the baby Jesus) for Christmas when I was 16. Or rather what it represented, Music. I remember clearly the moment when music first touched me (not inappropriately, well… maybe a little inappropriately :). It was a few years earlier. I was 14 or 15. I was in my father’s office at home, and he showed me a video on YouTube of a concert called Music for Montserrat. On the stage there were a few ugly looking not too young British gentlemen, namely Eric Clapton, Sting, Phil Collins, Elton John, a few others and the best of all, if there is such a thing, Mark Knopfler. To this day, if someone told me that I could only listen to the music of these gentlemen I would be more than fine with it. The biggest shock wasn’t the genius of them, though, but what they were doing.

Imagine, the five most talented runners in the world showing up! Now, let’s ask them to show the best THEY can do! What will happen is: they get in a line and start running towards another line. What will be their maximum achievement? It’s easy. The time needed for the fastest one to get to the finish line. Putting it a different way: the maximum of the best one among them.

Okay, let’s invite the world’s five most talented musicians! The aforementioned British gentlemen are perfect for this test. Now, let’s ask them to show the best THEY can do as well! What will happen in this case? They will start jamming like there is no tomorrow. And even I will throw my panties on stage (yes, I am a man :). So, what will be their max? The maximum of their combined genius. And that is, ladies and gentlemen, why I became a musician and not an athlete (among many other things).

Let me show you what I mean! Imagine that we asked both groups not to show their best in their own fields, but to build ladders to reach a little flower on a cliff face! By the first method what we get is 5 ladders with different heights, 2m, 3m, 2,5m, 5m and 4,5m. The height we can reach is the height of the highest ladder, 5m. Not even talking about how the highest ladder will be just higher than the second one and no one will be interested that beyond that there are some even nicer flowers. What about the second method? In this case we get one giant ladder, the different highs adding up, so a 17m ladder. Not talking about how no one gives the first f*ck where the lowest flower is, they go as high as they can and pick the most beautiful flower they reach.

I had the great blessing to take part in many art projects and found it overwhelmingly uplifting to work with talented people to achieve “great success”. I feel sorry for everyone who never had the luck to be part of a creating process where anyone who has any connection to it is FOR it. Call me the all-time loser, but every time I took part in any competition, I felt that I would lose either way. If I lost, I lost by everyone’s book, but when I won something, I also felt bad for the others. I took part in something, and I could not celebrate my achievements with the other participants, because it was at their expense. I even moderately feel sick when I see opposing sportsmen celebrating with each other and then a few minutes later, they start cursing one another, when the other is out of earshot. No, you are not there to share a great time. You are there to defeat each other. And ladies and gentlemen, no one, no f*cking one likes to be defeated. There are also some of us who hate defeating others. It must have something to do with self-evaluation. I do know my worth whether I lose or win, so I don’t have to prove it, definitely not to someone's detriment. And still, no one with the right mind would claim artists to be more egoistic than sportsmen. So even if you read the latest ego-building book of some “Marketing Jesus” who has mucus as a backbone and you are not just some nine to five nobody anymore, you are still taking part in a race where you can lose or end up alone. Because even if you run so much faster than anyone that you can’t even see them behind, what is it good for? To end up completely alone at the finish line at an unknown place that you didn’t really choose yourself and you can’t even come up with a good reason why it’s good for you. It is just ahead of everyone. Lonely, ain’t it, Scrooge? It is almost poetic to see people give up their dreams and big passions to be “productive” and “successful”, to run faster, jump higher, to beat the others to “it” and when they are there, they force themselves to agree that it was indeed worth it. “I wanted to be a musician, but you must grow up. Am I right? And my job pays well enough that I could buy a 70s Gibson Les Paul and it looks so damn great on my wall.” You bet, it f*cking stays there as well. But he could buy it and now he “knows” it is way better to buy a Gibson made in Tennessee than to actually play on some scrap wood from Vietnam. Pity...

But what I am talking about is not some sort of socialist dream. I only want to refute a theory that seems to protect a flawed method so much that it does not flinch when offending all of humanity by setting it up as heartless, unimaginative, juvenile, clueless and barbaric. That statement is: “There can be no progress without competition.”

Now, it is true that the United States needed the Soviets to send a satellite, a dog, a man and a woman into space first or to land a spacecraft on the moon first to finally land humans on the moon and call themselves the winners of the, by my own book all so pointless, space race, and fifty years later without the smallest sign of modesty still give movie titles like “First Man”. So, yes, competition can inspire progress. BUT! Who, with a right mind, would think about space travel before flight.  And it is much harder to sell that the Wright brothers flew first just so they could beat well… whoever... to it. Who was the competition of Galileo in building a telescope or who was it to Newton in writing down the basic laws of physics? Not talking about the nameless heroes whose inventions are crucial, but we don’t even connect a name to them, like crop rotation or some sh*t. And what about the arts, philosophy, theology, education, psychology, a big portion of the sciences, for sure mathematics... So, yes, progress mostly comes hand-in-hand with competition... in technology... in the last 200 years… in the Western World… But to me it’s far from being enough to bind the two together.

Especially because I am someone who can, in fact, live without an electric scooter or an electric car, a vape, a smartwatch, probably even without a smartphone and for f*cking sure without a smart home. (I much rather live with all the dumb variants of those things, but with smart people.) And when competition creates the idiotic, uncontrolled “progress” that destroys everything natural and healthy only to replace it with cheap plastic pleasure, I get f*cking furious. I am not a tree hugger by any means and Greta Thunberg angers me just as much as she would any other cultured European men, but when I can’t have a campfire in the forest anymore, a piece of me (one of the most important ones) already died in the name of “progress”. So, take your electric scooter and shove it up your…

I face a huge problem here. To me, it is unquestionably clear why we are stuck in this trap, but by pointing it out I would put myself into an impossible situation. How could one talk about humility in an egocentric world? We are like the barbarous crowds in those crazy Black Friday videos, storming the shops, fighting one another, acting in a way, even some animals would look at with pity and for what? For worthless plastic “joys”. But we breathe this in from our first breath. Why wouldn’t we trample over each other to be first in anything? Just to be first… :(

In my opinion: The difference between competition and co-operation is simple. It is the difference between the best option and best solution, between good enough and perfection. I can imagine Pope Julius II talking to Michelangelo about the Sistine Chapel: “Look, Mikey! The bloody Krauts and Cheese Eating Surrender Monkeys are building beautiful churches. We have to make a better one. I mean… I would never do it otherwise. Who the hell wants painted ceilings? But we have to do one better than them, am I right?”

Would we really just sit on our a$$es if jealousy wasn’t there to drive us? I think not. So, go and do something great with some great people! If you don’t know what just yet, check out our “Dialogue” page!

Godspeed, Brothers and Sisters!