success – PurpleSage41

Binary series #2.

Our culture is obsessively competitive. We believe that competition forces people to learn, grow, and succeed.. Without competition, we would all be lazy and disengaged. Competition makes products better and people richer, and rewards excellence. Competition for customers makes prices lower and products and services better. Success is measured by rankings-sports teams, movies, best-selling books, colleges. States compete to rank high if not first for business climate, retirement, or health and wellness. They are often supplemented by lists of the ten worst–SAT scores, longevity, poverty. Parents pressure their children to compete academically, athletically, and in just about anything else that puts their offspring at the head of the pack. Collecting prizes, blue ribbons, t trophies, good grades are important to parents. Getting into the right preschool is the first step in getting your child a head start in the race to succeed. Even play is often competitive, whether it is wining at monopoly or the best score in mini golf. To quote coach Vince Lombardi, “Winning isn’t everything. It’s the only thing.”

A cutthroat society of fierce and endless competition for supposedly scarce rewards (money, promotions, admiration, fame_ s not a nurturing climate in which humans can thrive. It also encourages shortcuts, whether it is steroids for athletes, misleading advertising, false claims, or other devious behaviors that can lead at least to a short-term victory (at the risk of being caught). Competition has a lot going for it as a motivator, but it also casts a big shadow.

So, what is the opposite of competition Collaboration. Working together. Teamwork. (Even if sometimes it leads to teams competing against each other!) Collaboration is also a skill we encourage our children to acquire, starting with helping around the house playing noncompetitive games, acquiring skills like playing a musical instrument or dancing or writing poetry or sewing or woodworking or acting. All of these are noncompetitive and many are collaborative. Collaboration makes it possible to accomplish things that take at least two, as my husband and son0in-law learned when they were building plywood canoes. The teamwork of a writer and an editor can do amazing things, as I learned over the years of writing some seventeen books.

Most nonprofits rely on teamwork, and activities like dance, sports, school projects, can help young people to identify their skills and interests and develop new skills for others with a mentor. Girl schouts, boy scouts, youth sports, sailing, gardening and martial arts are opportunities to learn in a noncompetitive environment. For the adults among us, volunteer work is a great opportunity to develop skills, to use your own skills, and to create something together. Habita for Humanity, food banks, coaching sports, and working with other volunteer organizations offers a rich and rewarding collaborative environment. I have volunteered (for 57 years) with the League of Women Voters and my religious community using and developing my skills in leadership, team building, delegating, facilitating, writing and teaching for the sheer joy of exercising those “muscles” and helping others to exercise theirs.

Like competition, teams have a shadow side. Shirking is the biggest challenge. Schools and colleges are increasing encouraging team projects but the efforts are not evenly distributed. Conflict among team members is another challenge. A temptation to parcel out credit or blame for a final product is discouraging for future tam efforts.
Competition and collaboration should be both/and, not either/or. They are both useful tools, one for building and rewarding individual effort, one fo building and strengthening community and doing the work that cannot be accomplished by a lone wolf. Ours is a society that tilts heavily toward individualistic competition, which carries over into team competitions in sports, politics, business and almost every aspect of life. What role does collaboration play in your life, and how can you encourage it in others?

Do consider sharing this post with a friend, and/or buying my book (kindle or paperback) from amazon, Passionately Moderate: Civic Virtue and Democracy.Do consider sharing this post with a friend, and/or buying my book (kindle or paperback) from amazon, Passionately Moderate: Civic Virtue and Democracy.

Advent begins with hope, which continues as we move into a new year. We can choose our attitude. We can be optimistic, expecting that everything will turn out all right in the end. Yes, there is war in Gaza and Ukraine, and drought and famine and earthquakes and volcanic eruptions and species extinction and rising sea levels and a crisis of democracy here and around the world. Optimists just shrug and are confident that all will be well in the end. No need to do anything different.

Pessimists reach the same conclusion from the opposite perspective. Nothing I do will make any difference. We are headed into a not so brave new world, one where we can’t believe what we hear and see, because of the failings of our institutions and the advent of artificial intelligence. So, let’s eat, and drink, and be merry, for tomorrow, we die.

In between the extremes of unjustified optimism and defeatist pessimism lies the middle path of hope. But not just passive hope. Theologian Joanna Macy insists hope is worth no more than either pessimism or optimism unless it is active hope. What are you going to do to bring about a different, better outcome in 2024?

Some of our aspirations (also sometimes known as New Year’s resolutions) tend to be personal—like the perennial goals of eating better, watching less TV, getting more exercise, spending more time with friends and family, reading one hundred books. Those are fine goals, but notice that they are input goals, not output goals or results. If your aspiration is weight loss, for example, the experts tell us to focus on controlling your intake of food and your hours of exercise, not losing twenty pounds. You can only control inputs, not outcomes.

Your personal hope is a healthy body, mind and spirit. Active hope means identifying actions that we can take that will make those outcomes more likely.

The same advice applies to our hopes for our world, our nation, our communities. Yet, we need for our society—our communities, our nation, our world—the same identification of desired outcomes and actions we can undertake that make those outcomes more likely. My aspirations for the world are peace, justice, democracy, and sustainability. Those may not be your goals, but whatever hopes you have for the world, nation or community, the same advice applies.

Some of my inputs are personal choices that promote those goals—the way I deal with energy use, eating habits and gardening (organically), work for peaceful solutions to conflict in the family and the neighborhood, respect differences of opinion and seek common ground, and the way I stay informed about how my choices impact those aspirational goals so that I can choose more wisely. But they are not enough. I cannot save the world by recycling or other individual acts. They are necessary but not sufficient, as the mathematicians like to say.

Perhaps you are familiar with Marge Piercy’s poem:

“Alone, you can fight,

You can refuse, you can

take what revenge you can

but they roll over you.

But two people fighting

back to back can cut through

a mob, snake-dancing file

Can break a cordon, an army can meet an army.

Two people can keep each other

sane, can give support, conviction,

love, massage, hope, sex.

Three people are a delegation,

a committee, a wedge. With four

you can play bridge and start

an organization….

Google the rest of it! Her point is that we are stronger and more effective in groups than as isolated individuals. Shared aspirations for a better future for ourselves and our children require a community. I would add a second point — Don’t go looking for the World Improvement Society. There are many changes that our world needs, and we can’t tackle them all at once. Find an organization that matches one or two of those aspirational goals, one which also matches your skills, experience, and knowledge (or a willingness to acquire them).

For me, the organizational choices were easy, made long ago. One group is focused, the other more general. My faith community shares all those aspirations and encourages us to work toward one or several of them in partnership with our brothers and sisters in faith. Other community organizations like the Rotary Club or a political party may be a better fit for some readers.

While I contribute financially to a wide range of “do-good” organizations at the local, state and national levels, the organization on which I have focused much of my “save the world” time and effort for the past 55 years is the League of Women Voters. The League of Women Voter matches my skills and experience and is primarily focused on democracy. You may be drawn to the Sierra Club, the ACLU, or some other organization that engages in direct action or lobbies for policy decisions that improve the world we live in.

When it comes to saving the world, what part of that agenda speaks to you, where does your particular passion meet your skills? What organized group of people can best help you channel your effort to making the world a better place both for us and future generations? How can you participate in that work?

Now that’s a New Year’s resolution worth making. Check back with me in 12 months and we will see how much progress we have made on our little piece of the action for a better future.

Tag: success

Competition and/or Cooperation?

The Season of Hope