Often touted as the thing that regulates Capitalism and prevents monopolies (ummm, Amazon.com?).
Often brings out the worst in people (ever get in a fight over Monopoly the board game?).
Often said to teach our children how to play fair (but check out the parents on the sidelines!).
As a retired Ecologist and Evolutionary Biologist, I learned about competition as the thing that creates new species. It’s sort of why or how the whole evolution and natural selection thing is important.
To compete, a resource must be limited. Food. A cave. YouTube viewers attention. How many friggin’ pairs of shoes a person can buy.
If a resource is limited, one of the competing species won’t get any of that resource and could die as a result.
And death is like the worst possible form of losing, unlike any of the examples I mention above.
So, because life is so incredibly awesome (I’m looking at you, DNA), flexible and plastic species can acclimatize, acclimate, adjust, and (eventually) adapt** to use another resource. THUS REDUCING the competition or even making it go away.
So in THAT ONE RESPECT competition is cool. When it works like that it provides a mechanism to initiate some of the ultimate in cool aspects of being biological. We have the machinery to respond to environmental conditions.
HOWEVER, most competition ends in one party losing (and one party winning, of course, I guess it depends on who you are as to whether you think it’s good or bad. But that’s selfish and narcissistic, isn’t it?) and that’s why I don’t like it.
In a capitalistic sense, the party that loses doesn’t DESERVE to be in business for whatever reasons. Because it couldn’t COMPETE. It wasn’t GOOD ENOUGH. Eff that mess.
Once you introduce artificial advantages like skin color, gender, height, age, etc. to the competitive mix it becomes pretty unfair.
And, sure, life isn’t fair.
BUT
And here’s the hugest but ever.
As much as competition is a naturally occurring element of evolution and biology, so is CHANGE and DIVERSITY.
Inherent to the very existence of competition is the idea that environmental conditions CHANGE. That’s why we have the capacity to ADAPT** (and acclimatize, etc.). Because the one guarantee in life is that things will change. Isn’t it cool that evolution selected for mechanisms that help us deal with this?
Otherwise, all the nematodes would have died and that would have been the end of biology.
But that didn’t happen.
So one BIG PURPOSE of competition is to LEAD TO CHANGE. To FACILITATE it.
When resources become scarce, individuals (species) compete for them.
One species, or both, CHANGES (they are doing this anyway) in response. Sometimes, new species are formed. Competition STOPS. Everyone lives.
The new organisms bring NEW features in their novel phenotypes that might save the world one day. Or at least offer something new to the biological realm.
Cool! Wings!!
Cool! A circulatory system that oxygenates my blood!
Cool! A brain that can invent cartoons!
See what I mean?
So. If we adore competition because it eliminates one of the two competitors we are missing the point entirely.
Losing is the same as winning.
Without one there isn’t the other.
Original post can be found here: https://chrisburcher.com/2022/02/16/preview-kew-episode-85-journaling-and-accountability/
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**NOTE: These words and their definitions are important in that most everyone misuses the word ‘adapt’. As written, think about a time component for these terms. acclimatize is like moving from direct sun to the shade when it gets too hot. Acclimate is what your body then wild, cools down. Adjust is like shifting in your seat when your leg falls asleep. ADAPT is an evolutionary term that happens over multiple generations as a finch species learns to eat an alternative food source and their beak eventually changes shape.