Peacocks, Babies & Other Weapons of Competition – And Why We Need Them
“Strange times are these in which we live when old and young are taught falsehoods in school. And the person that dares to tell the truth is called at once a lunatic and fool” – Plato.
That is precisely the state of our current teaching about competition.
And schools now extend beyond the classrooms of our children to the halls of Ivy League Business schools to the Houses of parliaments that govern our countries. Many leaders in the Personal Development industry preach the “Abundance Mindset” and the evils of the “Scarcity Mindset” with little acknowledgment of their own concerted efforts to win more of your eyeballs or crush their competitors in the marketplace. The fervor with which they promote this makes us wonder if they are even aware of the incongruence or if they are just amazing communicators but disingenuous.
Here's some truth: Competition only exists because it serves a purpose. That derives from Maupertius’s Principle of Least Action, from which it is derived that nothing exists in our Universe if it does not serve a purpose. Further, competition is one of the key driving forces of evolution. Whether or not you agree with the theory that evolution played at least some role in us humans being here and now, you will likely agree that evolution has contributed to changes in human civilization over time.
We are not arguing from a moral viewpoint about our current state being ‘better’ or ‘worse’ over time, but merely that forces have contributed to changes over time and have determined survival over time. The development of progressively more lethal weapons and the development of more efficient food production techniques are both forces that have contributed to a competitive evolutionary survival advantage. So, competition has always been a factor in our lives and always will be.
Competition derives from the old Latin words ‘com’ (together), ‘petere’ (to seek). Two or more sets of people seeking out the same thing. It arises because of some perceived scarcity of resources. That perception is a key driver of our decisions and actions.
Let us examine the role that competition plays in every aspect of our lives:
Mental:
In the example here, we will use mental to include intellectual property creation and dissemination.
By 2020, COVID was here, and it was clear that whether you think the virus was so different from any other infection we have previously faced or that our response to it was so different from any other response we have previously mounted in the face of infection, this virus was going to make a different mark on the world in terms of scope and scale.
There was a global initiative to share certain aspects about the virus and its spread. It is clear now that some countries were selective about what information was shared to preserve their own competitive advantage.
The degree of sharing contrasted with intense and intensely competitive commercial efforts to create and distribute a vaccine. It was through these competitive endeavors that we learned as much as we did as quickly as we did to come up with some of the choices we were afforded. Some companies have profited from these ventures, and several have succumbed as they failed.
It was an awareness of these competitive forces that led the not-for-profit COVAX organizations to develop competing (could not use the proprietary technologies from the commercial producers) products that have distributed over 2 billion doses of vaccine globally. Interestingly, the techniques for vaccine development and production used by the COVAX organizations ‘evolved’ to thrive in the developing world. Those processes effectively out-competed some of the manufacturing processes used by commercial producers in developed countries.
Competition played a key role in both the for-profit and not-for-profit intellectual property developments in COVID.
Vocational:
The customer is the only one with a vote when it comes to which vendor they pick as they determine the distribution of their dollar. As a result, it is a key aspect of a business’s survival and growth to do MORE of BOTH of the following than your competitors:
DO MORE of what matters for the customer
Make what you do, MATTER (get noticed) MORE to the customer
You do these two things more effectively and efficiently than your competitor, and you win to survive another day. You will likely easily now see how this ever-running competition shapes our commercial world.
Because competition and what it takes to survive and thrive in business is a major concern of our clients, we will be writing much more about this over time.
Financial:
In our equity markets, businesses don’t survive or die solely because of the quality or quantity of products they produce. They survive or die based on their ability to compete against and attract capital compared to others.
While it may not at first appear that way, one of the major advantages of financial wealth is that it affords more choices. Achieving financial wealth and freedom is the result of a competition to serve more and save (retain) more than others.
Here is the concept of financial competition viewed another way: Someone else is constantly competing for your dollar. Who wins?
Familial:
In our February 2023 article, we made the statement that ‘all relationships exist by default.’ You and the other party are both staying in the relationship because you don’t have a strategy to do better. Some of you were upset with us…but we have thick skin. Within families and even marriages, competition is healthily alive.
So, individuals leave relationships because the competition won relative to you. The competition might be no other person (i.e., be in a relationship with themselves or alone but not with another person), with another person/persons, or some non-person (yes, we have had friends and clients who were dumped for a gorgeous puppy).
Or they might stay because the competition lost relative to you. What you offer meets more of their needs and their values than what is offered by their other options.
Social:
Each of us is striving to grow our social network and influence. On a global stage, Google knows that money follows eyeballs. And this reflects the intense competition for our attention. Think of the rapid evolution of the advertising industry even over just recent decades. To grow our social network and influence, we, too, as individuals, compete for the attention of others.
A peacock grooms its feathers to attract its hen - in a game of survival of the species. A baby learns that crying helps it compete, and often win, against the soap opera on display on TV or on Facebook, or against a football game, or even against their parent’s desperate need for sleep – in a game of survival of one life.
We have evolved to compete for the attention of and influence over others.
Physical:
Running faster helps the fox catch the rabbit. Running faster helps the rabbit evade the fox. Throughout evolution, physical prowess and the ability to compete in that arena has allowed some species to survive while others have not.
It might be easy to think that physical competition is no longer a marker for survival in our modern world. Until we consider how the accouterments of modern warfare, the extensions, and equivalencies of our physical prowess, frequently determine survival at a crass level. And which of those accouterments we have access to is very much a product of competition. Think of the arms race that rages amongst empty and futile calls for peace.
The competitions of body-builders and beauty contestants are but modern surrogates of ancient rituals (competitions) to select the most masculine or most feminine mate as that, in turn, was a surrogate for the capacity for reproduction and survival of our species or of our genes.
Spiritual:
While the way in which we use the term spirituality is much more expansive than religiosity, we have to look no further than religion to see competition at play here. Religion and competition over conflicting belief systems have been deemed responsible throughout recorded history for more deaths than any other purported reasons.
Of course, religions have been credited or blamed when the real underlying issue was one of concern over scarce resources. But most commonly, the masses were enrolled in ‘religious or belief’ wars over stories about differences in beliefs – and were never told about the perception of scarce resources. As we have related above, as soon as scarcity becomes a consideration, competition becomes the means.
What we have demonstrated is that in each area of life, competition has both costs (drawbacks) and benefits. We have sought herein to break any addictions you might have to a fantasy of living without competition. There is no ‘without competition,’ only ignorance of it. For competition is a pervasive ‘force of nature.’
We will caution you that if you don’t see any competition in any area of your life, it is simply because you are wilfully blind to it. And thereby more susceptible to attack from a competitor. For example, some see no competitor for their physical health until they are attacked by disease. The illness isn’t good or bad; it is merely helping you value your wellness.
What this allows you to do, is to enquire for yourself and in your own lives where you perceive there to be competition.
You can then run a cost-benefit analysis for yourself to bring your own perceptions into balance. If you are run by the commonly taught and publicly schooled paradigm that competition is somehow wrong or bad and should be avoided, you will be severely handicapped in the real world. If you are contrarian and believe that the purpose of competition is so that you win at any cost and fight to the death, higher levels of governance are brought forth to keep you in check. Criminal laws, anti-monopoly laws, and unions have arisen in society to protect those perceived to be at a disadvantage. Competition isn’t good or bad, it is a force of nature, and it is managed as such.
From a neutral, uncharged state, you increase the likelihood of being run by your higher-level executive brain centers, where you can make decisions and plan actions with foresight. This contrasts with the alternative, where you are run by your lower-level brain centers with their animal nature of seeking pleasure/avoiding pain, and where the dominant directors of action are trial and error, which are governed by hindsight. Trial and error are among the highest risk strategies for running a business or a life. And trial and error, in competition against a business or a life run by foresight and planning, has a higher probability of failing.
Many of you have never previously run cost-benefit analyses for your competitors as they show up in your business or life. And we understand that you may find that challenging. Come Join us on Tuesday, March 21, 2023, from 5:00 PM to 6:30 PM US Mountain time so we can help you reap even more fruit from this very rich exercise. Additionally, we will be teaching you a powerful thinking tool that will serve you against your competition in multiple areas of your life.
Join us here.
Until the next perfect time,
Amit Chintan Ramlall
PS…When you join the Chintan Membership Program, you will get a video that Amit made in 2018 when he was first practicing his independent speech for business purposes. In it, he teaches the value of competition to a child with Autism. If you still complain about competition, if you have any doubts about the critical importance of competition, come let him challenge your thinking. See you there!