About competition

Sometimes I am highly motivated and other times I am struggling with lack of motivation. 

There was a long period when I suffered from a depletion of motivation last winter. 

One thing I learned from the experience is that humans should compete to become a better person . 

I realised how important competition with fair rules is.

Without competitions in which a fair rule is obeyed, humans become easily destructive in varied ways either to themselves or to others. 

Of course, there is a more fundamental premise, which is that a competition that a person chooses to enter should be a meaningful one for his or her life. 

Life is a battle field for an ordinary and weak person. 

No matter how much one dislikes fights and no matter how much one longs to remain peaceful, there are numerous people who try to attack and control others in various ways so that they can take what they want from others. 

They pursue power that brings them what they want, rather than trying to compete with others under fair rules. 

Due to such selfish and aggressive people, human society has been always filled with frauds, threats, oppression and bullying. 

Power comes from the collective interests of each member of society. 

The more support they succeed in getting from other people, the more powerful they become. 

Usually they are hypocritically ambivalent to manipulate other people to get support. 

They usually criticise the cold strict rules of competition, trying to ignore or dispel them. 

They tend to use the old tactics of arousing hatred among people against a certain target group or person, who is usually the winner of competition, or the one who is in charge of the rules of competition.  

Such a shared hatred becomes a strong emotional asset for them to gain constant support from people. 

Once an emotional framework of hatred is constructed in people's minds, they have only to agitate people whenever they need support.

This way, selfish and ignorant (thus inevitably immoral) public becomes manipulated by such similarly selfish and ignorant (but more aggressive and excellently hypocritical) agitators. 

This is the mechanism that collectivism works in a detrimental way.

And this is the dark and immoral side of collectivism.     

I realised that in some sense, the strictest and unexceptional rules are the most humanistic conditions that can make every ordinary and weak member of society becomes as happy as a capable and powerful member does. 

Attempts to negotiate or compromise interests among people with verbal or written communication, putting aside or displacing rules, mostly end up in nothing but power games. 

Ignoring the reality that human society is more like a battle field than altruistic community leads to the delusion by which we believe we can escape from harsh competition in a wordy communication and friendly talks. 

In an actual society, human language in our daily dialogues and conversations is too often used for framing, judging, attacking and controlling other persons. 

Everyone knows that there is no competition that is not difficult. 

Competition is difficult and harsh, but not because of aggressive attacks from others but because of idleness and weakness of ourselves. 

We are vulnerable to the temptation for attempts to take what we want in an easier way, which is almost always an immoral way too.  

Competition is difficult, but it is moral, and makes us train ourselves, rather than developing skills to attack or control others. 

However, I do not want to insist that we should not tolerate idleness and should be always strong to survive harsh competition. 

That is not what I want to say. 

As I experienced, and as we all experienced, we become sometimes fatally idle, addictive, self-destructive, and so on ...  

because we all are imperfect. 

Because of being imperfect and weak, humans make efforts to be better and to improve themselves. 

I think that the efforts to do the best at the present moment is precious and meaningful enough for one's life, whether the result would be satisfactory or not.   

If you think that a loser in competition is not as worth as a winner is, then you miss the most important truth in life. 

There is still more important thing in life than competition. 

It is the value of ourselves as a creature on earth, which is beyond any human language and human wisdom. 

In a sense, competition is nothing but humans' efforts to find their own values in human society. 

People without the brain may believe that higher popularity or more achievement that they earned proves that they are worthier than other persons are.  

Media only serves such empty heads whose rooms are always ready for rent. 

There is no such thing like higher value or lower value in terms of human's life. 

And value is subjective thing depending on each person's priority in his or her life.     

Nobody can estimate a person's real value. 

A person is like a whole universe. 

We cannot judge a person's life, even a small pigeon's life. 

The most important thing to do in life, and the most precious ability as a human, is very simple.

It is to be grateful for the present. 

© 2017 Min Bae

                                              (image: from the Internet)