COMPETITIVENESS:
Here's something by Adi Da on that general subject, and related issues:
In the present (globally expanded) state of civilization, the principal sign of civilization itself is that it has, in the largest number of its sectors, effectively destroyed (or, at least, profoundly minimized) the root-motives, root-practices, and root-virtues of human life in its humanizing (or cooperative, human-scale community) mode-and, indeed, the principal sign of present-time civilization is, in general, that of the absence of cooperative, human-scale (and truly humanizing) community itself.
The motive and practice of competitive individualism is itself the very motive and practice (or method) of egoity itself (or the separate and separative effort of existence). Therefore, civilization, in its present global achievement, is profoundly dissociated from its roots in the relational (or non-separative) virtues and practices inherent in cooperative, human-scale community-and it has (thus) "progressed" from its foundation in the cooperative, human-scale community politic, society, and culture (of cooperation, non-competitiveness, tolerance, positive harmlessness, self-transcendence, and sacred endeavor) to an "advanced" state wherein individual life (and, also, lesser collective life) is devoted to ego-based and ego-serving competitiveness within a thoroughly secularized and materialistic milieu of ends and means.
An ego-based civilization, like any ego-based individual, is suffering, seeking, and indulging in every kind of separate and separative effort toward mere survival and conditional satisfaction. Therefore, just as any individual who has become sunk in the patterns and results of egoity must become reformed (or released from the patterns and results of egoity, and, Ultimately, Most Perfectly Awakened To and In and As the Self-Evidently Divine Truth That Is Reality Itself)-just so, any civilization that has become sunk in the patterns and results of egoity must become likewise reformed (and, Ultimately, likewise Most Perfectly Awakened). And the struggle by individuals and groups to practically re-establish human-scale, cooperative, and truly sacred community living is the necessary and principal revolution (or inherently benign and counter-egoic political, social, and cultural effort) whereby all human beings (even those under the most ordinary and limited circumstances) can, at the practical (political, social, and cultural) human level, purify themselves (and, more and more, even civilization itself) from the negative effects (including, ultimately, the loss of individual and collective integrity) that come (and have now come) with the expansion and universalization of civilization.
Of course, some have, in the present context of civilization, already tried to revolutionize their "civilized" lives by engaging efforts toward human-scale community. Those efforts or experiments have met with varying degrees of practical and human success to date. However, far more is required to achieve cooperative, human-scale, and truly humanizing community than present and past experimenters generally suppose or have supposed. For example, in the present ego-bound context of global civilization, there is a general tendency for community experimenters to try to create community on the basis of the same egoic principles that otherwise characterize the present civilization itself. Thus, present-time community experimenters generally try to create community on the (supposedly egalitarian) basis of the motives of competitive individualism (or egoity itself), even though they also want to establish cooperative principles and cooperative structures. As a result, experimental community efforts often are degraded and defeated by competitiveness, the tendency to pander to egoic preferences and egoic dramatizations (often in the name of egalitarian idealism), and a characteristic fear of (or a rather adolescent rebellion against) authority, hierarchy, and the hierarchical culture of respect (which are necessary to any truly human and cooperative community order).>>>
The Spiritual Community of which I am a part is a functioning cooperative community.
Namaste!
Jim |
