Monday, October 18, 2010

The Competitive Edge's Impact on Our Social Nature

This is an excerpt from a book I wrote a few years back.  I find it relevant to the Zeitgeist argument that our monetary system is making us less well (balanced and healthy) collectively and individually.

I read about a research poll done not long ago that indicated that the general level of happiness in America is quite low despite it having great wealth and power. Most people will probably attribute this to materialism in America and how materialism never serves as the buttress to happiness and peace. I think the issue is much deeper than that though.

I reason that many people in America are rather unhappy because of its resolute individualism and its concordant competitiveness. From the time we are young, we are taught that success is being self-reliant, which means, “I don’t need anyone!” Even popular culture serves up an endless collage of people  efuting belonging, or more colloquially, “not taking shit” from any person, organization, or social group. In some ways, this attitude can be healthy, but it is currently out of balance. Being needy is just as unhealthy as being withdrawn into a self-enclosed self-reliance.

We are all interconnected in so many ways that we cannot possibly imagine them all, especially all at once. I drank a bottle of water and threw the container out of the window, which ended up in the Pacific Ocean where it drifted to the great Garbage Patch. It cracked and broke into pieces, which were ingested by fish. The fisherman scooped these fish from the sea and took them to a market. The buyer cut open  he fish to inspect the goods and found the fish full of plastic bits. The buyer did not buy any of the lot; a  purchase was made from a different fisherman. That fish was sold at a gourmet market where Mr.  Moneybags can afford it, and he prepared and ate all of it with the sexy lady he invited to dinner. Tragically, the fish that he bought was tainted with a fatal toxin and it killed Mr. Moneybags and his one-night stand a few hours after eating it. The fisherman knew his catch came from a suspicious source, but he needed the money quickly because gas prices had gone up, and that was causing him to get behind in his mortgage payments. He had left his wife and child for another man (his religious upbringing made it unbearable to be honest with himself), but he still needed to make child-support payments. When the autopsy was performed, the toxin was linked to the fish and the fisherman was put in jail because he could not buy his way out of jail. The payments to his child stopped, and as a result, the young prodigy had to stop her violin lessons. Ultimately, she got a job at the DMV where she treated you like crap because she was in a job she hated and her heart was filled with bitterness.
      
Americans try so hard to escape the bonds of relationship because they are barriers to their success so they end up alone in their rooms wondering why they have become so lonely. We devote our lives to building up a financial security that can take us anywhere we want, but then we have no motivation to go anywhere because we have no one to go with. And if we do go somewhere, we just go there, get a picture and then run to the next monument or tourist attraction. The idea being that we can show our friends all the wonderful places we visited, or simply congratulate ourselves about seeing a famous place. Some even make traveling into a kind of competition. “How many countries have you been to? Only 8…oh, I’ve been to at least 25!” And this is exactly my point. The goal is not to see, to experience, to absorb, or to really learn deeply. Traveling, like true education, has the power to transform a person.
        
The “competitive edge,” as it is piously referred to in American culture, is impairing our ability to feel welcome, accepted, and embraced by others. We are riddled with suspicion, “what does he want from me?” We feel unloved, even if we can name off a list of hundreds of friends. We may have several lovers and still feel “empty.” We often give in to presenting a facade of concrete imperviousness. Surely that is not the reality of human nature so we are left to console ourselves or seek confidential psychotherapy to relieve the stress of being lonely.