Where would the world be without competition? Some people think that competition is bad, that everyone is equal and competition makes it look like some people are better than others. It hurts people’s feelings. The truth is some people are more talented than other people. Competition is a good thing; it is part of our DNA. It has always been around. It is part of the drive to survive and has led to many good things. Competition also helps people become better, by their wanting to be better than others. Competition is what drives people. Where would the world be without the people who are driven to succeed and be superior to those around them? Competition is what separates the winners from the losers. Some people say it is wrong to define people in such a way, but if everyone was a winner then what would motivate people to great things? Should we try to eliminate competition from the lives of our children so their poor little feelings don’t get hurt? Absolutely not! It is how they learn to get better, and what has made this country great. It is true that competitiveness can have some negatives, but to say that it is a bad thing is just not true.
Is everyone equal, or are some people more talented than others? Jon Entine of Forbes.com talks about the fact that people of African descent have dominated the running events of the past seven Olympics. People descended from West Africa are the world’s greatest sprinters, while east African runners are the world’s greatest long distance runners, and that’s a fact. Just look at the Olympic results. Jon Entine says in his article “Running is a natural laboratory of sports. It’s empirically driven. No softheaded sociological mumbo jumbo allowed.” Basically what he is saying is that these African runners are the best in the world, no matter how much everyone is equal the liberals want to spew. Competition helps people establish a place in the world. It is the engine for natural selection; it is what drives the human race to keep improving. Some characteristics are inborn rather than learned. We as a race are fundamentally competitive. No one thought as a kid that they wanted to get second place when they were racing their friend. No they wanted to beat their friend and show that they were better. It has always been that way and it always will be that way. There has to be a winner, and there has to be a loser. Losing gives people motivation to get better.
Nowadays there is a lot of people that try to keep their children out of competitive sports because they think it is harmful for kids to think that they are a loser. This is the exact opposite of what it should be. Losing teaches children to work for something, to get better and beat that child who might have more raw natural talent than they do. Fifty years ago, not everyone who tried out made the team. Some people weren’t good enough, so they didn’t make the team. So they worked at it and came back next year instead of crying that their feelings were hurt because they weren’t good enough. A perfect example of this is the one and only Michael Jordan. He didn’t make the cut for the basketball team when he was in high school. Did he go cry about it and say competitive basketball is bad because those kids are better than me and that’s not fair? No, he learned from it, worked even harder, made the team and eventually became the greatest basketball player of all time. Examples like this are examples of what makes our country great. In Brian Edward Norris’s essay “The concept of competition with special reference to physical education and sport”, he says that winning and losing are inalienable parts of life; it is logically impossible to avoid competition and amounts to a denial of both standards of excellence in education and of inevitable human passions and aggression. What he means is that it is impossible to eliminate competition, and impractical because we need it to survive, for country’s to thrive they must compete to be better than other countries just like to thrive in life you must compete to better than your peers.
There are many positive things we have in life due to very competitive people, or“Alpha Males”. In the article “Alpha Male Syndrome” by Kate Ludeman and Eddie Erlandson, they discuss many of the traits which define the people that drive today’s competitive markets. In their article they define an Alpha as “a person tending to assume a dominant role in social or professional situations, or thought to possess the qualities and confidence for leadership”. Basically people who take charge and call the shots. These people are extremely motivated and never stop working for what they want. They have the abilities to motivate those around them and get things done. The author’s state in their article that the world needs these people we could not do without their brave leadership, their focus on goals, their willingness to take responsibility and all around just take charge attitudes. Some historical examples of these people are George Washington, Winston Churchill, Rockefeller, Carnegie, and J.P. Morgan. Some Alphas are world leaders, some Alphas are monsters of industry. But all Alphas have an impact on our world, and the thing that drives them to do so is competition, the desire to be excellent. So when people say that competition is a bad thing, that it is harmful to people, they are wrong. Competition is what made the world what it is today, and the good must be taken with the bad for the sake of progress.
Is there really such thing as winners and losers, or does everyone deserve the same amount of credit for just showing up and trying? Of course they do not! That is why there are grades in school, Valedictorians, starters on sports teams! The thing about losing is that it can be taken two different ways it can motivate someone or it can be their downfall. In “On Winning” by Tom Brady, he talks about what winning means to him. But he wasn’t always a winner. Tom Brady, one of the premier quarterbacks in the NFL wasn’t always a winner. He was drafted 199th in the sixth round, and wasn’t even the Patriots unanimous choice. He wasn’t a starter, he was Bledsoe’s backup. The scouts said he had a bad arm, was too slow, and would never be anything more than a backup. Then Bledsoe got injured, and the rest is history. Since that day he has won three Super bowls, and multiple other honors. He went from a nobody, a loser, to one of the most successful quarterbacks in the NFL. He didn’t get there by giving up when he was a backup and running crying to a hippy commune where everybody is equal and nobody is a winner or a loser. He sucked it up, worked hard, and when he got his chance to prove himself he took it and hasn’t looked back since.
Some people argue that competition brings out the dark sides of people, and in some people it does. In Norris’s essay, he says people like this say in competitive environments the undesirable traits such as intimidation, aggression, fighting, intent to injure, bad language and cheating emerge. While this is true, they are necessary evils, and are overshadowed by the benefits of competition. The pros outweigh the cons. It teaches children teamwork, leadership, how to work for a goal, build friendships, and experience the thrill that only competition can offer. These far outweigh the negatives, and are far more common than the negative traits of competition.
Competition has made the world what it is, and made this country the great nation it is. It is in the human DNA to compete and always driven our race to become better. If people’s feelings get hurt in the endeavor for improvement then so be it, it’s a necessary evil. The liberals who are inventing games for kids where there are no winners and no losers are not doing those children a favor or our nation a favor. What they are doing is creating a generation of soft, weak people that will let this nation down. We need the men and women that have been made better by the fires of competition, that have been beaten and gotten back up, dusted themselves off and made themselves better. That is why we need competition, and why it is such a good thing.
Works Cited
Entine, Jon. "The DNA Olympics -- Jamaicans Win Sprinting 'Genetic Lottery' -- and Why We Should All Care." Forbes. Forbes Magazine, 12 Aug. 2012. Web. 25 Nov. 2012. <http://www.forbes.com/sites/jonentine/2012/08/12/the-dna-olympics-jamaicans-win-sprinting-genetic-lottery-and-why-we-should-all-care/3/>.
Norris, B. E. (1994). The concept of competition with special reference to physical education and sport. Concordia University (Canada)). ProQuest Dissertations and Theses, , 93-93 p. Retrieved from http://search.proquest.com/docview/304143176?accountid=14709. (304143176).
Rogash, Jim. "Top Ten NFL Drft Steals." Msn.foxsports.com. Fox, 10 Mar. 2011. Web. 25 Nov. 2012. < http://msn.foxsports.com/nfl/lists/Top-10-NFL-Draft-steals-all-time-022411#tab=photo-title=Tom+Brady%252C+QB%252C+New+England+Patriots&photo=28479110>.