Alfie Kohn - The Case Against Competition

To help us get to the bottom of this competition question / conundrum of ours — I’ve sought out the help of an expert on the subject of human behavior & competition: Aflie Kohn.

In this episode, Alfie Kohn and I will be focused on the subject of COMPETITION — at work, at home, in school, and even in sports — and whether it’s actually HURTING us to compete with one another much more than helping us to become better through competing (as most of us were raised to believe; including myself.)

So who’s Alfie Kohn?

Alfie Kohn is the best-selling author of 16 books on human behavior, motivation, and education; has been a frequent guest on Oprah; and is an sought-out speaker on the topics of human behavior, motivation, and competition — and the impact it has on the quality of our lives — as well as the lives of young children and teenagers at school.

So, is competition good or bad? Tune into this episode for the answer… and what you can do to fix it if competing/competition has had a negative impact on your quality of life.

[Aaronsmith]

Competition is a joke. Humanity is joined by our differences which we realize through cooperation with one another. Competitors are selfish and fail to see the bigger picture, they thrive off of deep negative energy and they don't even realize it.

[a.n.]

Hmm.. yep this is the part of Alfie's idea that I'm not too sure about - but my point isn't about whether competitions are good or bad - it's about if most people are grown up enough, psychologically, to not see the other side as enemies. In psychoanalysis, there is a finding that indicates, at the paranoid-schizoid position, one's thought is "I am good and others are bad" (around 3 months), at the depressive position, one can be at peace with "I am good and you are good too" (around infant age 6 months), and when children grow up to around 4 years old, if they are psychologically healthy enough, they will be able to have this idea of "I am good, you are good, the one competing with me is also good" (depends on their relationship with their second parent, most likely their father) - but we do see most people don't have this view that "I can love even the one competing with me", or some even are on previous stages of infantile psychological ages.

Maybe the solution is not erasing competition, but to make sure that people in competition are grown up and healthy enough so that competitions are not damaging to them (e.g. costing energy socially, success-wise, and psychologically) but can be beneficial to them (energising and nurturing to them).

We do see on rare cases that people don't go around undermining others and can be happy with both winning and succeeding - not sure about if on the psychological side they are happy or not though - but the most healthy people do have the capability to not mind competition and it doesn't take a toll on them - ... maybe the most important thing is to have proper parenting so that children can grow up healthy - it's easier to do this than to change the outside world. Healthy children deal with anything mostly without cost of mental energy.

[tumdeax]

16:30 Right on
Most "competitive" people ain't shit when they actually have to invent anything original. In fact, most of them haven't made anything in their whole lives. It seems the competitiveness is overcompensation for their lack of originality and admirable skillsets for amazing productions of their creativity.

[shamanculture]

The military has many cooperative games like obstacles with puzzles and rules using simple objects

[mielledowney]

How do you progress if you don't have drive? How does a business progress if there is no benchmark set?

[moety]

We are to far gone.   We are creatures of habit not reason.  If we don't a framework for these ideas to become reality, where people have little to no choice, most will continue with what is familiar aka habits even if you staple the evidence to their foreheads.

[TheProgressiveParent]

I agree up  until the anti-free market sentiments at the end. The free market is not based on competition it's based on the voluntary (cooperative) exchange of goods and services. That's a marxist view of Capitalism, I do not agree that it matches reality.

[mielledowney]

He must have been the one picked last at school. What a sad guy.