That you are not competitive is the worst thing someone can say to you nowadays. Wow, you’re a nobody, you’re nothing. Competitiveness has become the great moral value of our time: it applies equally to companies, people, institutions… It is the great argument used to solemnly justify any outrage. And oh!! of you if you do not accept your guilt if you have failed. You are done
In medicine and psychology, for example, competition is blind, extreme, and has wreaked real havoc. According to various reviews, 85% of scientific articles on these subjects do not contribute anything, they are devoid of value. Of course, they are based on the fiercest rules of competitiveness in an endless battle with thousands and thousands of other articles that also need to be published at any price. “Publish or perish” (publish or perish). This is the rule.
Luckily, there is that other 15% of articles that delve into realities, study new aspects, contribute something to the community…. articles that often have problems being published because, precisely because they are innovative, they question aspects of the status quo and the dominant models. Thus, the famous article on symbiogenesis by Lynn Margulis, which raised very important new perspectives in biology, was rejected by 18 prestigious scientific journals and took many years to be published. Unfortunately, the enormous personal efforts of the researchers and the enormous economic expenses that those 85% of the articles that do not contribute anything entail, remain there. It is sad to think of all that could be done with that time and money.
In life there are obviously many problems, conflicts, difficulties. And of course, competing is an option to take into account and that, in certain contexts, is interesting, even unavoidable. But the ideology that considers that everything is fixed by competing blindly goes against all logic and the slightest observation of reality.
That competitiveness is the great solution to everything is nothing more than a fallacy linked to the dominant social model, which justifies always demanding more and more from those below, also generating great insecurity because they always consider that they are not doing well enough and that they should go further.
The very mathematical studies on game theory, Axelrod’s equations on the famous “prisoner’s dilemma”, show us how, in the long run, competition is not the best strategy to resolve conflicts, which are inevitable in coexistence between humans. In the long run it is more adaptive, more intelligent, to try to find cooperative and innovative solutions than to waste energy fighting and competing blindly. Because, contrary to what the system would have us believe, human beings are not lone wolves and what has allowed our development as a species is, in large part, our ability to collaborate and create.