We are taught to compete at a young age, through innocent channels of games and play. Can you think of any games or activities that are collaborative rather than competitive? Meaning that there are no winners or losers, where the objective is not to be “better than” but simply to be “better”.
Just a thought, but if we were taught as children to collaborate rather than compete, wouldn’t we work together to solve problems rather than work so hard to crush each other (the competition)? If the underlying objective of the activities we engage in as children was one of nurturing group success and shared reward rather than personal achievement and gain, would our adult “common sense” not push us to question the devastating consequence of placing competition at the center of our survival, the way it is now? Would we ever accept the logic of patenting technology or intellectual property rights, the way we do now? Would we rationalize the dumping of millions of tons of food every year, while millions go hungry for the sake of regulating market prices / profit margins of competing entities, as happens in our present reality?
Would we be so calm and accepting in the face of the world that is presented to us in its current unfair and unkind form? Would we not, in this alternate non-competitive scenario, simply look to a friend (or several) and start figuring out a way to tackle any seemingly impossible task together, the way we’ve “always” done, since we were little kids playing? Wouldn’t we be used to approaching each activity and task, as we were taught and as was modeled by adults, using the range of our different skills, abilities, and capacities to create suitable group solutions that result in a shared win?
Dare to live a different dream… this is only one.