Hooray! Felix Loch went Gold in Sotschi. Are you watching the olympic games in Russia? A friend of mine used to be an olympic athlete. His name is Kofi, and he belonged to world’s best long jumpers. He jumped more than 8 meters. He had the sex appeal of Wesley Snipes and the discretion of Neo (in Matrix). He represented Germany in 2000.
Germany loved him, he was a millenium-star. But did his fans love him because he was polite, handsome, a Lichtenberg-Boy, a success story from ghanaian Immigrants? No, they loved him because he jumped more than the other rest, because he competed with other country’s best long jumpers and was the better competitor. 14 years later, a dozen injuries later, some motivation crisises later, Kofi doesn’t jump in no sandboxes anymore. He is out of the game. He is out of competition. His fans left, they today follow people like Felix Loch, the fittest of olympic world today.
We all grew up with the theory of darwin: Survival of the fittest. Animals compete for food. Compete for habitats. Compete for everything and Darwin said, that the fitter ones survive. And we celebrate the best, the number one. We want to see the next Armstrong. Or does anybody remember the second man on the moon? Survival of the fittest. Everybody against everybody. Same thing with mankind. Everyone is living in competition, women compete for the singles men, men for the singles women, unemployed workers for work, jungle camp participants for votes. Pupils compete for marks and the best fellow students for scholarships and high school graduates for Numerus Clausus. You find competition everywhere, even in the lottery. The more people find the right Lotto combination, the less each person will be awarded. That’s why you will not share your figures with others. And we compete also for our things we post on facebook. Even if people like the things you post, they will push the like button on the post before or after you if that one was funnier, newer, more spectacular and so on. We don’t give likes to everything we like, only to the best ones. Survival of the fittest. Look at your behaviour when standing in a long line at the grocery store. How do you react when you see that a new cash opens in a few seconds? You will run to be the first one in the next line, right? You won’t care about the person before you who waited longer than you. I mean this is just a stupid row in a supermarket, but if we follow the “first come first serve”-rule in other situations in our life I bet you, we become monsters. It doesn’t surprise me that one of the biggest job agencies goes by the name: monster.de
So the conclusion is: Don’t help others as long as it has an impact on your success. Get better, grow, become smarter, learn more, get stronger, run faster and longer distances than your fellow students, friends, colleagues, brothers and sisters, your parents, your kids, your neighbors. Everyone is a potential competitor. Be fitter, because otherwise you will go down in rankings, the others – your competitors – will get the better jobs, the better friends, the better reputation and so on. Be more ego. Well actually that’s what takes place: The economy has become an Ego-Nomy – the law of the egos.
So what is it worth for helping, collaborating and sticking to others, creating associations? Actually there are a lot of networks out there where people obviously don’t compete, you might say. In Germany there is an association for anything. They often go by the name of “Verband Deutscher something”: Verband Deutscher Zahnärzte, Verband Deutscher Reedereien, Verband Deutscher Autovermieter and there is even a Verband Deutscher Verbände. At first sight you might say: People aren’t that bad. They love to gather and collaborate. But look in the constitutions of all these associations. They are not based on peace love and harmony. They mostly are founded to fight others. Associations are based on competition! Read the text of the Verband Deutscher Reedereien (which means shipping). It says: it represents the interests in relation to the top organisations of other branches of the economy. In other words: They compete with other logistic branches. Or look at the BAV (Bundesverband Deutscher Autovermieter): This is not an association of people who believe in car sharing, as it might sound. The BAV is founded by big companies like Deutsche Bahn (flinkster), BMW (DriveNow) and Daimler (car2go) who have copied the idea of car sharing from peer to peer initiatives and now fight the ones, from who they took the idea from: From neighborhood initiatives such as autonetzer or nachbarschaftsauto. The members of BAV somehow are competitors to eachother but there are unified in their fight against noncommercial peer to peer movements (peer to peer means people share their private cars not company cars). Big companies against small companies, german countries against other countries, Hotels against private Apartment rentals. Everybody against everybody. Why do they always want to rival? Because they are taught: Only the fittest can survive in that game.
But they are wrong. The theory, that only the fittest will survive is not a law of nature. This is a law of a man called Charles Darwin. And there are intelligent brains who say something different. Christian Felber is one of them, he is a professional dancer and he founded attac austria and has invented the Welfare-Balance (Gemeinwohlbilanz). In his book “Cooperation instead of Competition” (Kooperation statt Konkurrenz” he shares ten steps with us, that can help the economy to overcome crisis by cooperation instead of competition. In 1997 the american zoologist and Economist editor Matt Ridley wrote about the “origins of virtue” and disproved Darwin. He found out that in some animal populations the survivors were not characterized by beeing mean, strong or cruel. They could survive because they forgive their rivals a few times before they bite back, the winners are the ones who try to stick to others and collaborate with rivals. Thank you Max Krüger for sharing this book with me.
I once was invited to be a member at the Jury team of the Karneval in Berlin. We had the task to pick out the best Car, the best performance, the best whatever with points. We created a ranking. I had to compare a national chinese professional dancers conservatorio who obviously was funded by the Chinese government with local scientists who fight for human rights. without a sponsor. Their car, outfit and performance was terrible but the things the scientists fight for are so noble and important to the society. And I had to compare kids from a Neukölln elementary school (who weren’t gifted at all) with stunning half naked Brazilian belly dancers with beautiful colored costumes, who simply needed no car to perform. I realized that it was not possible to compare them and of course there were groups that impressed me personally more than others but this is not the Superbowl. This is not Olympic Games . This is not Cannes and not Berlinale. This is a people driven festival, it is dependent on the particular enthusiasms of thousands of volunteer workers who organise cars, design waggons and costumes and write choreographs, without getting paid. These people want to say something, they have dressed their voices in colorful springs. When I saw the young arabic Neukölln student from the Neukölln elementary school dancing and jumping, he reminded me a little of the protagonists in the book Arab Boy by Güner Yasemin Balcī. Somehow the Karneval is a political event. When I see this arab boys getting on the streets to show We are here and alive and want to contribute to the cultural landscape of this town, I feel the need to encourage them. But in my jury list there is no category for political importance or so. Just for the quality of car, costumes and so on and that was made in a super amateur way. Basically according to these criterias I had to dissmiss the school, but what signs do I send out to these young people? Nice try, losers, but your competitors were better than you. I decided to give them full points and to the other groups too. Each group – full points. I refused to support this competition by refusing to judge them. My jury colleague, a DJane saw that and said that I cannot do that. She said this is so unfair because there were groups who didn’t train a lot to perform and there were groups who made big efforts and now I give them all the same credit. I defended my strategy: What if they couldn’t train because they have solved other important issues? What if they had to go school, because they were kids. What if they were sick or simply not able to train a lot? Who are we that we can know all these circumstances? She said: We are the jury. We are experts, it doesn’t matter what the truth is, we give points, that’s our job. When she saud that I had to think of Rating agencies like Standard And Poors who does nothing but giving points. Who don’t care about the circumstances and the consequences. She called Shermin Langhoff, the jury president to dissmiss me as a jury member. Shermin came and asked my what the problem is. I explained her, and she nodded and said: Feel free to do what you want to do. I was impressed. I asked her why we in general have this contest? She said that it shall encourage Karneval participants to improve their performance. Alright, this is a kind of motivation tool. Well here are seven experts from the art scene, from the theatre, from dancing and design branches sitting the whole day in a jury cabin concentrated on reducing their creativity in giving points. Aren’t there other possibilities to motivate the groups making better performances with 8 hours of 7 experts? I am sure we would find answers, but nobody dared to ask.
The contest is wrong and that day I decided that I will not join a jury team again. Competition doesn’t lead to better performances, better cars, better costumes at the Karneval. It would be better if these groups share their knowledge, their networks to find good cars, share their tools and help eachother. I could inspire them a lot more with a 8 hours creativity workshop instead of sitting in this highlighted VIP cabin for 8 hours and pretending being god.
Two days later we jury members were invited to a central stage at the Karneval concert to announce the winner of the contest. I saw the arabic boy standing in the audience with his parents and his class. He didn’t know that he never will have a chance to show what he really is capable to do, as long as there are jury teams like us, who define criterias for success that has nothing to do with his reality. We announced all winners in all categories. He waited till the end with his mouth open, and I saw he was still hoping for a wonder. But the wonder didn’t came. He became angry and started to shout at his teacher and complained: But I did everything you said! I even helped out other competitors with our paint and scissors and was nice. Why don’t we get awarded? We have done the best we could. He started crying and then beating other fellow students. Aggression is a child of competition.
If you ask me: Competition is bullshit, it produces losers, where we don’t need heroes (At the Karneval everybody from the audience to the helpers to the performers all are heroes!). It creates pressure where we don’t need growth. Competitionis bullshit. And if you mean, that competition also creates winners, then look at Felix Loch and then at Kofi and then rethink the concept of competition.
Source: http://www.gruenderszene.de/allgemein/autovermieter-verband-privates-carsharing-autonetzer