When I was studying to become an educator, I had a debate with a professor teaching a course called, "The Sociology of Education." The professor had made a bold confession: she said that most of her energies were expended in the eradication of all types of competition in schools, and in the broader society. Needless to say, I found her goals non-sensical and dangerous, and I let her know it. For at the very least, competition bears three important gifts to life. Those three gifts are humility, adaptability, and a higher standard. If, for instance, a school playground is dominated by one particular athlete, his peers are indeed improved by his high caliber of play. But if a new kid shows up, a young Michael Jordan, then three things happen: the former star competes and, in losing, forms a healthy humility which leads to adapatability wherein the former star accepts the new framework and improves within it; and the entire playground moves upward in ability, as the standard has been raised. Yes, some will choose not to compete for a whole bunch of psychological reasons. Some, in fact, should not compete in the playground at all. Such people should compete in other arenas, like mathematics, business, music, theater. Nonetheless, new and higher standards are only born in a competitive environment. And when new standards are set, most if not all people benefit.
Moreover, there is no competition if there is no challenge to improve, adapt, grow; or exceed expectations. Even if just one person is performing a skill, that person must compete against himself in order to improve. The very exercise in surmounting any challenge is a form of competition against the limitations and obstacles created by that very "challenge."
The motivation for my professor, I am sad to say, was really borne of resentment: she resented that she had to compete and adapt. And she resented being possibly perceived as unequal to the tasks competition sets. With apologies for drifting perhaps too close to an ad hominem attack when I say this, my professor was an undeniably ugly woman, and she was obese. She was undeniably single as well. And she was not the smartest person in the room. With that said, I can assure you she despised me (it was clear) for being male and perhaps a little too smart. And she resented having to compete with me, or with anyone. Why should she not be honored for merely being true to herself, or kind, or a nice person, or for having "tried hard"? Why should she have to compete for male romantic affections with all those pretty females? Does not the love of beauty prove the shallowness of men, and the women who try to appeal such men? And why should she have to compete to have her opinions respected, approved, applauded?
Here's a confession of my own. I was perhaps the best athlete in my six-room elementary school. But when I went to the seven-town middle school, I quickly learned that I was not the best athlete. The bar was raised; there were new standards. My reaction? I quit sports. (Huge regrets, by the way.)
All this to say that competition in general is a good thing. Would not Darwin agree?
How is this connected to economics, particularly the economics of poverty? Perhaps I can answer this by paraphrasing a quote I heard during Martin Scorcese's film, No Direction Home, a documentary on Bob Dylan shown recently on PBS. I believe the quote is from an Allan Ginsberg poem (and search as I have, I cannot find the quote). Ginsberg said something like this: I look forward to the time in America when I can walk into a market and buy groceries on the strength of my good character.
Now I have intimately known this sentiment, but it is an ideal replete with resentment. It in fact drips with resentment. Ginsberg essentially is giving the middle finger to competition; but more importantly he is giving the middle finger to participation. On the surface, Ginsberg appears to be railing against the injustices of the market place: Why do I need money to feed myself? But in reality he is admitting his refusal to generate wealth not only for himself but for others. He wants to be rewarded merely for being human, for being nice or even a busy poet. Why should he have to adapt (he would say "conform") to earn a meal? And why should others who are not poets, but mere money-grabbing capitalists, get to have three meals a day, when he can't get one?
Why am I talking about resentment so much? Because most if not all of the pushes for socio-economic reform in this country since the 1960s (it began much earlier) are born of resentment, even envy; a resentment against competition and participation, and envy of those who have more than an other. It is not about justice in the pure abstract: it is about the perceived injustice by those who jealously protest against the producers of wealth.
Ultimately, the impassioned goal of those who abhor the injustices of the system is not to make everyone rich, and therefore equal; it is to make everyone equal, and therefore poor. In fact, it is a lot like making everyone "average", which is an absurdity. Make everyone on the planet worth a billion dollars, and everyone is worth nothing. Make everyone play basketball as well as Michael Jordan, no better or worse, and the world plunges into monochromatic poverty.
I am currently reading the brilliant and funny non-fiction work by David Brooks, Bobos in Paradise. Brooks makes an interesting note about America's transcendentalist writers (Emerson, Thoreau, Alcott, etc.) who, as intellectuals, chose to embrace simplicity and anti-materialism. I have always found this love of simplicity, a self-embraced poverty, simply infuriating, considering that the transcendentalists all came from wealthy families. It is always easy for the rich to romanticize poverty. But Brooks makes the brilliant observation that when we read the essays by the wealth-producing industrialists who were contemporaries of Emerson and his cohort, we snicker at the ugliness of thought and prose. Brooks wonders how it is that we think the prose of Thoreau, a blue-blood pretending not to be, is somehow more spiritually significant than the words of those visionaries who created an economic infrastructure that benefitted millions.
In closing this chapter (so to speak), let it be noted that Thoreau and Emerson and Ginsberg were only able to be essayists and poets and economic critics precisely because the world was rich enough to underwrite their literary ventures. People in abject poverty do NOT have the leisure to retreat to the forests, or smoke pot in poetry dens in Greenwich Village, all to make a literary name for themselves. Real poverty does not have time or energy for such luxury.
While everyone else was working, producing, and delivering groceries to countless markets, Ginsberg was doing the "real" work of writing poems berating such work.
Ask a rich man to embrace poverty, and you might start a literary movement. Ask a poor man to embrace poverty, and you might start a fight.
Peace.
[The next part begins here.]
Contratimes
©Bill Gnade 2005/Contratimes - All Rights Reserved.
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