Wednesday #10 - Competitiveness

     Hello Dreamers! We did it! We made it a fifth of the way through the year! Kinda hard to believe that it's already week 10 of 2014... But that's not too important right now, because I want to talk about the competitive mindset, and the competitive spirit.

Competitiveness

     So, being competitive is, basically, at the core of it all, being a human. Naturally, we as humans want to be better than everyone else around us, and we want to maintain this level of relative success. Now, it used to be that being more successful meant having sharper spears, stronger arms, more furs, and more dead mammoth lying around, but much as human society has changed from hunter-gatherer to buy-everything-onlinerers, so has what being more successful (or at least its connotation) has changed. Now, you're successful if you have the most stuff, the greatest quantity of wealth in comparison to the rest of your social group. But is this a good way to try and live your life.

     In short, no. In long, nooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo.

     To be totally honest, this level of competitiveness that our culture hammers into our minds is terrible for us as a society. If Johny and Jimmy are both basing their individual self-worth on each others successes and failure, then neither will be happy or truly successful. But instead of it being just Johny and Jimmy, imagine if it was everybody. When everyone bases how good they are at something off of other peoples performances, no one will ever improve past a finite point, but if you judge your success off of a 0-100 scale, with 100 being perfect, you'll have to infinitely keep improving (which is why I like grading without a curve that with a curve. But I digress), and so will everyone else.

     I realize that being competitive is important, and I'm not totally against it, just dreaming here guys.

     Sorry this post is late, I have a VERY full schedule, so I'll be posting late until the last week of March. But I will still be posting. 

The Road Not Taken

Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,
And sorry I could not travel both
And be one traveler, long I stood
And looked down one as far as I could
To where it bent in the undergrowth;

Then took the other, as just as fair,
And having perhaps the better claim
Because it was grassy and wanted wear,
Though as for that the passing there
Had worn them really about the same,

And both that morning equally lay
In leaves no step had trodden black.
Oh, I kept the first for another day!
Yet knowing how way leads on to way
I doubted if I should ever come back.

I shall be telling this with a sigh
Somewhere ages and ages hence:
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I,
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference.

Robert Frost

"Don't forget to make a blog post." - Claire Schiavone