The System's not Just Broken—It's Fatally Flawed

The System’s not Just Broken—It’s Fatally Flawed

We hear it everywhere: “The educational system’s broken," "The financial system’s broken," and most recently, "The political system’s broken.” The unpleasant truth, though, is that these systems aren’t just broken, because that would mean that they could be repaired; rather, the core principle upon which each is founded has been fatally flawed from the beginning! Each system is part of our larger competitive-based society. The problems we are seeing today are not abnormalities, but are the natural culmination of working from a competitive model. This is simply how a competitive system plays itself out, over the long term.

Obviously, we live in a competitive world. Us versus them. Me versus you. Look how huge sports are today, from Pop Warner to the NFL, etc., etc., etc., plus business, education, relationships, politics, and religion. It’s all about competition, all the time. Life is literally one big contest!

Yes, there are aspects to competition that can be a positive motivation for some people, but for many others, the negative side effects greatly outweigh those positives. We are taught and encouraged to be competitive from our earliest days. And, as hard as it might be to believe, most of the seemingly intractable problems we are facing now can be traced to this competitive mentality. When you have a system that promotes as its central belief what psychologist Alfie Kohn called, “mutually exclusive goal attainment,” i.e., "I can’t win unless you lose" -- well, at some point serious problems will arise. And we're at that point right now.

But don’t worry; we don’t need to eliminate competition altogether, because it has its place. Competition just can’t be the cornerstone of the system. Competition is the advanced part of any sport, subject, or activity, not something that beginners or people who don’t know what they’re doing should engage in. Currently, we throw people who have no skill development into competition, and then we’re puzzled when only a small percentage succeeds. It’s important to understand that in any contest, no matter how poorly the participants perform, someone will always be declared the winner. What does this prove? Only that this competitive system is not about creating excellence, it's about winning. How can we expect people to do well at something when they have no training? Yet we do have that unrealistic expectation, and that’s an enormous part of the problem.

If we look at the results objectively, the competitive system is a failure; nearly 50 percent of the world’s population lives on less than three dollars a day, and 80 percent lives on less than ten dollars a day. According to UNICEF, 22,000 children die each day of hunger and malnutrition. One billion people are illiterate and another billion don’t have access to clean drinking water. Each year hundreds of thousands of people are casualties of violence, abuse, and war. And in this country, how many millions are undereducated? What kind of results are these? Either we are a mediocre, uncaring species, or we need to develop another model that will produce better results.

Many people are working incredibly hard today trying to get ahead and “make it” in this system, but they aren’t succeeding. We'd rather ignore these facts and believe that hard work always pays off. If you are someone who has become successful through hard work and luck (yes, luck also plays an important role), it’s difficult to believe that there are problems with the system. But by its very nature, the competitive system is designed for only a small percentage to succeed. Although most workers religiously support the system, holding out hope that some day it will be their turn to be wealthy, let’s be honest; that rarely happens. In a system based on a competitive model, there’s clearly not enough for everyone to have enough to survive and thrive.

Just because it’s commonly assumed that being competitive with each other is the best way to attain excellence and success doesn’t mean it’s true. The reality is that it’s impossible to achieve our potential by competing against each other. We can attain high levels of performance in a competitive system, but we can’t reach our potential. How can we be our best when our adversary is doing everything in his or her power to keep us from achieving our goal? A competitive-based system, you see, actually prevents us from being our best. Only by working together can we achieve our potential.

Being a winner is seen as the be-all and end-all of existence. People parrot the common refrain, “It doesn’t matter if you win or lose; it's how you play the game,” and while this is a nice sentiment, all we have to do is look around and see that, no matter how hard we try to spin it, it actually does matter if we win or lose. The winners get the lion’s share, while the losers get only crumbs.

Being a winner is great! I’ve never met anyone who likes to lose, but the myriad negative side effects of a system based on a competitive model are evident all around us today. Lying, cheating, stealing, bullying, scamming, fear-mongering, diminished performance and potential, racism, greed, poverty, hunger, environmental degradation, ignorance, and war, to name a few, lead inevitably to the conclusion that the basis of our system is fatally flawed. This competitive foundation is the system’s Achilles heel.

The critical reason why the competitive system is fatally flawed is that its design creates a dynamic by which each generation has to be more competitive than the previous generation, not to achieve excellence, but simply to keep up. Yes, it’s important to strive to be our best, but why do we believe that that goal is best accomplished in a competitive environment? We believe it because we’ve been taught and conditioned to believe it.

Think about this: the underlying philosophy of how we perceive reality makes it necessary for each generation to work harder, to be more competitive in order to surpass the achievements of previous generations. One generation does X, but then the next generation has to do X-plus—and so it goes, generation after generation. While it is good to try and go beyond prior generations, it is the competitive mentality that is problematic.

Sports, politics, and education provide clear examples of this increasing intensiveness and competitiveness. It’s true in all sports, but let’s use soccer to highlight the difference between today and twenty years ago. To play college soccer today, kids have to get on traveling squads at an early age, play year-round, and practice many hours every week, for a minimum of six years. In politics, if you wish to run for state or national office today, you need millions of dollars to have any chance of winning. In education, parents jockey for position to ensure that their kids get into the best preschools. And high school kids who want to attend the most prestigious universities have to work at their studies virtually non-stop; even then, there is no guarantee they will be accepted into their school of choice.

This is the nature of a competitive system. But to function at our peak, it's essential that we have significant amounts of “down time” where we get to relax, goof off, or ponder the bigger questions of existence; few are getting enough of this down time. Today, even if you’re lazy, it takes a lot just to get by.

While this competitive approach has increased performance levels at the high end, it comes at a great cost. The relevant questions are, “How much more competitive can we be? When does the stress of this unrealistic expectation begin producing more negative results than positive results? Have we already reached that point?” The pace and intensity of daily life has accelerated dramatically in the last forty years. This is why we see and experience so much worry, stress, fear, anger, aggression, despair, and aberrant behavior all around us. People are freaking out, both quietly and not so quietly! And with our current system, it's easy to understand why.

A competitive system teaches us, as its not-so-subtle message, that others are against us, are our enemies, and will pose obstacles to our goals. Where did this commonly accepted wisdom, that we need an adversary in order to be our best, come from? Such an approach makes it impossible for us to learn to work together to solve our collective problems. This is our dilemma; instead of being taught to trust each other and see others as partners and allies, with whom we need to cooperate to create a better, more humane world, we’ve been encouraged to fight against and be suspicious of others, try to get the better of them and thereby demonstrate our superiority. What a sad, low level of consciousness!

Although many people feel in their gut that something’s really wrong in our world today, it’s difficult to identify the source. Whether you consider yourself a conservative, a liberal, or a moderate, there’s a real sense of unease. That’s how I’ve been feeling since the 1960s. I spent over forty years trying to understand what’s going on in this crazy world. About ten years ago, the core issue finally came into focus.

Even if you’re doing very well financially, are you fully enjoying your life? Are there times when it’s hard to enjoy all your success when you realize how many people are still suffering? If you’re busy trying to keep your head above the rising tide, or spending all your time trying to out-compete everyone by proving that you are worthy of being Number One, or you just want to bury your head in the sand and ignore what’s going on, please look around. Realize that our world is in big trouble. If one person suffers, we all suffer. We can no longer blame and scapegoat a few “bad apples” or “weak links” for our problems. These are the predictable outcomes created by a competitive system; it’s high time we found a better model.

The mindset created by our highly competitive system is a vital issue for our times, one with profound implications for our long-term survival. Only by working together will we ever realize our potential as a species and solve our collective problems. So, while it’s great to see our team beat the other team and experience the “thrill of victory,” our competitive obsession is actually limiting our performance, potential, compassion, vision, enjoyment, and most importantly, our ability to solve our problems.

I’m sorry if the subject of this article makes some of you uncomfortable, but I believe that if we are going to survive, thrive, and evolve to higher levels of consciousness, where we can finally attain our amazing potential and help everyone have a better life, then we need to talk about changing the foundation of our system. Think how amazing we could be if we were all on the same team! Hard to imagine, no?

Working together to solve our collective problems will be very effective; cooperation is just as natural as competition. In his last book, The Descent of Man, Charles Darwin concluded that the evolution of humankind succeeded, not as he first thought, through a "survival of the fittest" mentality, but through altruism and love, the essential glue that binds human beings together in family and community.

We need to come together to figure how to create an excellence-based, cooperative system, with competition as one aspect. This model will help many more people realize their potential, become more productive members of society, and enjoy their lives more fully. What better outcome could we ask for?

Since we’ve been so deeply programmed to be competitive for such a long time, changing to a cooperative-based system will take a lot of work and several generations to implement. There are no quick fixes to our problems. But if we are to have any chance to create long-term solutions, changing to a cooperative system is essential. It’s not going to be easy at first, but if we “stay the course” with the competitive-based system, it's certain that things will continue to deteriorate. Becoming a society that works together instead of competes against each other is long overdue; we owe that to future generations.

Please take a look at www.evolutionaryeducation.com. If you’d like to lend your support or join my cause, email me at evolutionaryeducation@comcast.net.

Thanks for your time and consideration,

Brent Zeller

Copy Editor: Linda Jay Geldens, LindaJay@aol.com

A Letter to Teachers, Coaches, and Parents

Learning and Competition

As teachers, coaches and parents we all want what’s best for our students and children. My questions to you are: Does putting them into competition before they are prepared help accomplish this goal? Might the premature introduction of competition into the learning process inhibit performance, sow the seeds of stress and performance anxiety, limit long-term potential, and also increase the possibility of developing unhealthy behaviors such as aggression, fear, choking, making excuses, cheating, or quitting?

Competition is an advanced aspect of any subject, sport, or activity, not something to be engaged in by beginners or people who don’t have the fundamental skills. Introducing competition before people are ready for it, no matter how “low key” or “innocent” it seems, creates many problems. It’s been accepted wisdom by competitive people that the best way to prepare children for the real world is to make them compete against each other as soon as possible, but for most, the research proves the contrary.

Until people can demonstrate competence in the physical, mental, and emotional fundamentals, there’s no good reason for injecting competition into academics, sports, or any other activity. From my long involvement in education, the early introduction of competition does far more harm than good. Even for the ones who do well, there are psychological consequences. I know this is blasphemy to many, but the evidence can no longer be ignored. Too few people truly excel in a competitive system.

I grew up as a competitive athlete, being quite successful in the difficult sport of tennis. I graduated from a prestigious college, and have been a professional tennis teacher and coach for 36 years, with well over 25,000 hours of teaching and coaching experience. For the last 25 of those years I’ve had serious reservations about the competitive system that we all live in and many worship.

Eighteen years ago I removed all competition from my tennis program, Effortless Tennis, the results of which prompted me to write, Evolutionary Education: Moving Beyond Our Competitive Compulsion published in 2007. I now understand why so few excel in a competitive system; we educate people by throwing them into competition before they’ve learned any of the fundamental skills. We’ve been conditioned to compete in almost every thing we do, in a “trial by fire” or as I call it, the “throw-the-baby-into-the-deep-end of-the-pool” theory of learning. We rush people into competition, assuming that this approach results in excellence, but for most it’s a recipe for mediocrity and/or failure.

The reason why putting people into competition prematurely is so problematic, is that once competition is introduced into the equation, the goal changes from learning skills to trying to win, or at least trying not to lose. We all know how important it is to be seen as a winner. With their egos and self-esteem on the line, the need to win distracts students from mastering the essential skills required for success. This is a shortsighted approach.

So, to all teachers and coaches, no matter how noble your motives and good your heart, if you are having your students compete before they “own” the skills of your particular subject, sport, or activity, you are limiting their performance and potential, diminishing their enjoyment of the learning process, undermining their self-confidence and psychological health, and denying them the chance to discover the importance of intrinsic motivation. How many of your students actually excel? It’s likely only a small number, most don’t. Is this because you’re a bad teacher or coach, or could it be the system?

Parents too are complicit in this damaging process if they encourage their children to be competitive or put them into competition before they’ve learned the basic skills. If you really want to help your students and children be their best, remove all competition—until they can demonstrate competence in the physical and psychological fundamentals.

What I’m saying is not radical. It’s common sense!

Brent Zeller—www.evolutionaryeducation.com, www.effortlesstennis.com

Evolutionary Education: A Synopsis

Evolutionary Education: Moving Beyond Our Competitive Compulsion

It is commonly accepted wisdom that education is the key to a better future. Yet most people feel that there is a crisis in education. Each person has his or her solutions for this crisis, but I believe that few people have been able or are willing to recognize the underlying core issue with this educational crisis.

In 1988, after twenty years of learning and playing the sport of tennis, and 14 years of teaching it to thousands of students, I had a simple realization: The introduction of competition before we achieve proficiency in the fundamental physical, mental and emotional skills, compromises all aspects of the learning process. Like many realizations, mine was a dawning awareness of a truth dimly intuited for years that in retrospect seemed obvious. Like most people, I had believed in the value of competition without ever questioning it. It was how I had been taught, was all I had ever known, and everyone I knew believed it too. But when my perspective changed, I saw that my experience had been teaching me the opposite of my belief the whole time.

Although there is widespread recognition of the many problems in our educational system, there is little recognition or acknowledgement of what I now see as our educational system’s fatal flaw – the competitive model on which it is based. While people all across the political and educational spectrum agree that our educational system is flawed and propose various, often contradictory, solutions, almost all affirm the value and necessity of competition in the learning process.

Competitive learning is widespread and routine in our educational system. In almost every school, sport, subject and skill, beginning students are thrown prematurely into some form of competition, long before they have even approached basic competence. Competition is often introduced at the very start of a student’s involvement with a subject or activity.
In every subject children are given new material to learn and are often tested and graded the next day. Within a few weeks of practice in academics or sports, long before they have achieved basic proficiency, children find themselves competing against each other for “practice” or for coveted positions. One common result of being thrust into premature competition is that performance anxiety is programmed into our cellular memory.

Our collective faith in the competitive system is conditioned and inherited, not based in objective evidence. The belief that a competitive learning environment is the ideal learning environment doesn’t hold up under scrutiny. It is based on an implausible argument that the pressure and stress of competition, the fear of the consequences of losing, the aggressive striving against others, and the desire for the rewards of winning, somehow focuses attention, ignites motivation, develops strength, builds character, and produces excellence. Yet this belief is built on denial and rationalization, for it ignores the negative impact and consequences of premature competition on a majority of children and adult students.

After my epiphany in 1988, I reexamined my lifelong experience as a student, competitor and teacher. I noticed the now apparent flaws and fallacies of the competitive model, and came to an obvious and logical conclusion: The prevalence of competition in the learning process is the primary reason that most people do not achieve true excellence, mastery, or fulfill their potential in school, sports, music, and almost every other field of learning. The skills developed in a competitive system occur despite rather than because of competition. Competition has motivated a small percentage of people to great accomplishment. But much of that motivation comes from an unhealthy emphasis on winning, fear of losing, and an immature self-esteem derived from defeating others and thereby gaining status. Rather than producing the highest level of skill among the greatest number of people, competition produces a majority of “losers”, and a handful of “winners” of inconsistent ability, unfulfilled potential, and relative immaturity.

After teaching tennis to thousands of students and observing the competitive system for more than forty years, I have found that the competitive approach only works for a small percentage of people, and not necessarily the most talented. Those who “succeed” often do so at great cost to others as well as themselves. Every winner at the top of the heap leaves behind a trail of “losers” and wounded egos. Many “winners” succeed by adopting unhealthy perspectives, behaviors, and strategies that create disharmony and hostility with others, and undermine their own mental and emotional development and wellbeing. Our competitive system’s skewed perspective that “winning is everything”, subtly and often overtly encourages an unbalanced, unhealthy approach.

If we objectively examine the real and alleged benefits of our competitive educational system, we see that it does not live up to its hype. Introducing competition into the learning process is often stressful and counter-productive, causing far more harm than good. For a majority of students a competitive learning environment does not increase motivation, improve performance, or support healthy emotional development. It interferes with concentration and diminishes enjoyment, performance and motivation. It is disruptive to learning and makes achieving excellence and mastery more difficult. Premature competition introduces conflict and performance anxiety into the learning process, while tacitly encouraging cheating and other forms of “poor sportsmanship”. The “doping” scandals in almost every professional sport, and the cheating scandals that occur annually in many colleges, universities, and even high schools, are examples. All these things undermine self-esteem, healthy character development and interpersonal relations.

When competition is introduced into the learning process, learning becomes a contest. The focus and emphasis shift from learning, to winning and the fear of losing or failing. When winning is over-emphasized, and “losing” is demonized, the entire process of learning, playing, performing, etc., is seen through a distorted, anxiety-producing lens. The learning process is contaminated by the desire to win (rather than to learn and achieve excellence) and to be seen as a winner, as well as by fears of losing and being seen as a loser. Yet these unhealthy aspects of the competitive model are often ignored, denied, rationalized, and even made to seem “positives”.

My experience and observation have shown me that the premature introduction of competition into the learning process produces far more negative than positive effects and impedes rather than enhances learning and performance levels. In fact, if competition were a drug, the Food and Drug Administration would ban it for its adverse side effects!
A significant factor in the longevity and dominance of the competitive system is cellular memory, the automatic neural patterning of actions and behaviors into our subconscious, our brain, and every cell in our body. Cellular memory is how we learn and retain information. It is how we are able to function effectively and survive. Whatever we repeat in thought, emotion and action, is etched in our cellular memory and becomes instinctive habit. Cellular memory is what causes us to repeat habitual, non-productive, and even self-destructive behaviors. Over time we all program negative behaviors – I call them, less-than-optimal responses— into our cellular memory. Once actions, behaviors, and emotional responses are etched in our cellular memory, it is difficult to “unlearn” them.

Although at this time there is no scientific link, from my life-long observations of human behavior, I believe that over thousands of years, competitive behavior has been deeply wired into individual and collective cellular memories, into our genes, and passed on from generation to generation. That most people find it difficult to imagine an alternative to competitive behavior shows how deeply programmed this belief has become. Psychologist Alfie Kohn points to this conditioned cellular memory via “socialization” when he writes, “That most of us fail to consider the alternatives to competition is a testament to the effectiveness of our socialization. We have been trained not only to compete but to believe in competition.” And sociologist David Riesman writes, “First we are systematically socialized to compete — and to want to compete — and then the results are cited as evidence of competition’s inevitability.”

Yet we can use this powerful learning tool of cellular memory to repattern old, negative, conditioned habits of thinking and behavior with new, healthy, productive habits.

I do not suggest eliminating competition. I am arguing against its premature introduction into the learning process. I am asking if it is wise and effective to force children into competition while they are learning, before they achieve basic proficiency. Competition can now take its rightful place as an advanced aspect of any activity. Until we have developed essential physical, mental, and emotional skills, we are not ready to compete. Until then, competition interferes with the learning process and diminishes our chances of achieving proficiency, and even emotional maturity.

I’ve heard it argued that if we had to master the fundamentals before competing, it would take years to get to the point where we are ready to compete. This is true. But it only seems like a bad idea from the competitive perspective. The bright side of developing proficiency before competing is that it dramatically increases our development of all-around skills, including physical proficiency, intellectual comprehension, mental concentration, character development, emotional maturity and more.

Today the negative effects of competition shape and define nearly every aspect of modern life, including education, religion, politics, personal and international relations, sports, news, business, and most of popular culture. Many fundamental societal problems arise and are passed on in the way we teach and learn; that introducing competition into every facet of our lives undermines our ability to attain excellence, and perpetuates the very problems that we as individuals and cultures seek so desperately to resolve. The competitive mindset into which we are all indoctrinated prevents us from questioning the validity of the competitive system, or recognizing or acknowledging its devastating effects on individuals and society.

We need to reexamine competition, to see where and when it is useful, and where and when it creates problems. The next evolution in learning will occur in a healthier cooperative model with a skill-to-mastery based focus. Rather than encouraging students to compete with one another for grades, prizes and status, it will facilitate deeper learning, intellectual acuity, emotional maturity, and a genuine self-esteem derived from excellence and mastery. It will raise the overall level of skill, knowledge, and creativity, and allow everyone, from the least to the most talented, to fulfill his or her potential and contribute to the whole.

What I am proposing isn’t theoretical, pie-in-the-sky conjecture. Viable skill-based non-competitive learning programs exist. In the Kumon Method students learn at an individual pace and advance only after mastering each level. Since October of 1992, I have been teaching the highly competitive sport of tennis in a non-competitive/cooperative format that I call Effortless Learning (I started teaching tennis in 1974). As with the Kumon Method, the focus is on mastering the fundamentals at each level before moving to the next. Instead of competing against one another, students help one another to learn through cooperative practice that supports mutual development of essential physical, mental, and emotional skills and greater enjoyment of the game itself. Eighteen years and over twenty thousand hours of on-court observation, with more than a thousand students, has proven to me that a non-competitive learning system makes it easier to master the basics, attain higher levels of skill, and become more balanced and well-rounded human beings in the process. And this approach also increases success in competition.

A non-competitive learning system develops concentration, relaxation, emotional maturity, healthy camaraderie, and fundamental skills. By emphasizing enjoyment of an activity and the learning process for their own sakes, and de-emphasizing the importance of winning, losing, and external rewards, it diminishes negative emotional states and behaviors. Children especially thrive in a non-competitive learning environment, and naturally develop the fundamental skills without the unpleasant stresses and emotions inevitably triggered by premature competition.

It can take time for adults who have internalized the competitive mind-set, due to long-term immersion in it, to stop judging themselves and competing against others as they learn and grow. But I have seen many raised in the competitive system experience a sense of psychological relief in a non-competitive learning environment, as if a huge weight had been lifted from their shoulders. They become able, often for the first time in their lives, to relax in a learning situation and experience the satisfaction and enjoyment of developing skills, competence, and confidence without worrying about winning or losing.
Competition may be part of human nature, but it need not dominate human nature and conduct. By adopting cooperative, non-competitive, skill-to-mastery based models of teaching, learning and living, we can all rise above the limitations of our competitive system and fulfill our greater potential as individuals and as a species.

Brent Zeller
www.evolutionaryeducation.com

Chapter 2—A Competitive Learning System, Part 4, More Drawbacks

Triggers Performance Anxiety
In a competitive society we are often expected or told to “be confident” even before we know what we are doing. It’s good to have confidence in our ability to learn. But how can we be confident, especially in competition, before we’ve really learned the basic skills? True confidence doesn’t come from false bravado, but from hard-earned proficiency and the knowledge that we have the skills necessary to succeed. And whether we’re children or adults, when we haven’t developed these skills, that little voice inside us knows, and tells us, that we don’t know what we’re doing.

Performance anxiety occurs when we’re put into competition before developing a deep inner confidence in our skills and ourselves. If we haven’t adequately developed the necessary physical, mental, and emotional skills in a cooperative environment, it’s almost impossible to develop secure confidence or perform at our highest level in competition. There’s always another contest and even if we won the last one, there’s still someone wanting to beat us in the next one, and the next, and the next. Watch people compete at any level, in any endeavor, and you will often see performance anxiety manifest. Experienced competitors are often better at dealing with or masking their anxiety, but even the best often tighten up or “choke” when the pressure is on.

In general, everyone has some performance anxiety potential, even five- and six-year-olds. It seems to be a natural aspect of the human condition, and it may be connected to our innate fight-or-flight response, hardwired in the limbic brain. But I have come to the conclusion that most of performance anxiety is artificially induced. It only seems natural in a highly competitive culture where nearly everyone is thrust prematurely into competitive situations.
Early experiences of failing or losing under pressure etch the first traces of performance anxiety deep within our emotional cellular memory, and in our subconscious mind. Present performance anxiety is intrinsically related to past experiences of failure in learning or performance situations. And once this anxiety is ingrained in our cellular memory, it often remains as an inhibiting response to perceived pressure long after we stop competing.

Induces Choking
Choking is the ultimate expression of performance anxiety. Sports provide the clearest examples of choking, but it occurs in all areas of life. In 1993, tennis professional Jana Novotna, lost a match she was dominating in the finals at Wimbledon. She was about to ascend to the pinnacle of tennis, when she missed an easy shot. She started thinking about that error and ended up “losing it,” missing shot after shot, including several easy ones. After the match, she was crying on the Duchess of Kent’s shoulder. Novotna was one of the best players in the world at the time, and yet she completely choked and lost all confidence in her skills. This response was the result of previous experiences earlier in her life. (She eventually redeemed herself by winning Wimbledon in 1998.) This is not an atypical example. In fact, it is quite common.

The 2005 U.S. Open Women’s Golf Championships was more of a Greek battlefield than a golf tournament. Annika Sorenstam dramatically blew her chance to win her third major tournament of the year on the way to winning the grand slam (all four majors for the year). No player, man or woman, has ever won all four of golf’s major championships in one year. Having won the first two majors that year, Sorenstam was heavily favored to win this tournament also. But with all the hype around her possibly winning golf’s grand slam, she tightened up and choked it away.

In the same tournament, Paula Creamer and Michelle Wie, two of golf’s new stars, also choked their chances of a title. At the top of the leader board going into the final round – Wie in the lead and Creamer one stroke behind – by the end of the day Creamer had gone eight strokes over par and Wie was eleven over. Lorena Ochoa, in the same tournament, was two strokes out of the lead until, at the last hole, she shot a quadruple bogey eight and dropped far out of contention. In October that same year another top pro golfer, John Daly, about to win a pro tournament in San Francisco, missed two three-foot putts and fell by the wayside. These disastrous chokes are common to professionals in every competitive field. Again, it can be argued that even at the highest levels, more competitions are lost rather than won.

Choking is not due to some mysterious “fatal flaw” in our character, but to patterns etched into our cellular memory through past experiences in competitive situations for which we were truly unprepared. In our culture, we are all put into competition before we have learned the mental and emotional skills to keep us from choking. Put in situations too advanced for our skill level, before we have mastered the fundamentals, we make inevitable critical mistakes that mark us as “losers”. Such common scenarios, repeated over time, program deep inner self-doubts into our cellular memory that often prevent us from performing at our full potential.

Motivates Through External Rewards
To compete, most people require some form of external reward, even if it is only the recognition of being the winner. This starts off innocently enough in children’s games where we are often bribed to compete; offered a soda or some paltry reward if we are the winner. Early on in school, we often compete for a teacher’s gold stars. From there it goes on – the quest for A’s in school, trophies in sports, big bonuses in business, and status in society.

In America it is increasingly difficult to motivate children without offering some external reward. They often want to know what they are going to get before agreeing to do what you ask them to do, having been conditioned to respond this way by virtually every aspect of society. This is prevalent in school, in athletics, and at home. Parents often motivate children to perform tasks, from cleaning their rooms to doing their homework, by offering some form of reward. In my tennis program, some children have asked me what are they going to get if they do what I’m asking. I tell them they’re going to become good tennis players, but that is usually not the answer they’re looking for. This aspect of the competitive system – using external rewards (bribes) as motivation – results in many children losing the ability to motivate themselves simply for the enjoyment of doing the activity itself. They become conditioned to expect external rewards.

This mercenary mentality has also contaminated the world of professional sports. How many professional athletes would put in the countless hours of grueling training and work if there were no giant carrot dangling in front of them? Many athletes are now more consumed with the carrot than with the love of their game. It is arguably the same in almost every competitive industry, from sports, to the arts, to technology and business. When external rewards and punishments become the main motivators in any game or contest, the competitors become mercenaries.

Fosters Overwork
Americans work harder, and longer, with less enjoyment, than citizens in most other developed countries. Many people do become highly successful in our competitive system, often at the expense of a healthy and balanced character and personal life. Successful people must work hard to maintain their lifestyle. Sixty to eighty hour weeks are not uncommon in many top professional echelons. (It takes a lot of effort to make a lot of money and then keep track of it.) Desire for material rewards and prestige, and fear of failure are less-than-optimal motivations. As primary motivations, they don’t produce psychological health or the best long-term results in the development of character.

On the other end of the economic scale, the poor, and increasingly the middle-class, must work as hard, or harder, just to survive, pay for their homes and raise their children. Many work two or three jobs, sixty or more hours a week at minimum wage. Whether rich or poor, most people are constantly on the go, trying to get ahead within our competitive system. The weekly schedule of any family includes one activity after another, from the moment they wake up to the minute they go to bed. Weekends often cram as many fun activities into two days as possible, and frequently include children’s sporting events or performances. There is little time for the downtime so vital for our overall development and well being; the time when we can quietly contemplate the bigger questions of existence and get perspective on our own life or the world at large.

Provokes Conflict
Competition can elicit camaraderie through teamwork, but it also stimulates and provokes conflict. In subtle and not so subtle ways, we are taught to cooperate with and respect the players on our team, and to regard the other side as enemies. Yet even among teammates there is a constant battle to get ahead. We often compete against our teammates for a chance to stand in the lineup or get more playing time. Camaraderie, team spirit, and bonding reside in constant tension with the competitive desire to be number one.

As in war, to see our opponents as human beings is considered weakness. It diminishes the “killer attitude” so highly regarded in competition. This explains why verbal aggression and trash talk are rampant in sports. Look at the common sports vocabulary. We “beat the hell out of,” “crush,” “destroy,” and “kill” our opponents. We call them bums or losers, pussies or faggots, to anger and distract them and lower their self-confidence. Many players frequently taunt their own teammates in the same fashion.

The higher the stakes, the greater the frequency and intensity of such hostile/aggressive behavior. Examples include late hits in football, cheap shots in hockey and basketball, and baseball pitchers purposely trying to hit batters in order to intimidate them. And legendary race car driver, Dale Earnhardt, was called The Intimidator for good reason.

We have all seen reports on the correlation between aggressiveness in athletics being tied to aggressive behavior outside the athletic arena. This behavior is not coincidental. Our competitive system exerts ever-increasing pressure to win on people at higher levels. Where does it end? How many hours can someone work or practice? How much stress can someone endure without cracking? How much needless stress is added by an imbalanced emphasis on winning, and an unhealthy scorn for losing? Perhaps a more cooperative, excellence oriented focus in the early stages of learning would allow us all to accomplish a lot more, with a lot less stress.

Chapter 2—A Competitive Learning System, Part 3, More Drawbacks

Ingrains Inadequate Basic Skills
When we are put into competition too soon, we try everything we can to win, because that’s the goal. But we often forget our basic skills and unconsciously resort to ineffective reactions. This is very apparent in people who start playing competitive tennis before they’ve developed their fundamental physical skills. Almost immediately, the correct form they’ve been practicing degenerates until they look more like they are fending off an attacker than playing tennis. It’s not a pretty sight. Unfortunately, whatever we are doing (and what we are feeling) is being programmed into our cellular memory, to become ingrained habit. Inadequate preparation of basic skills, combined with competition, limits our skill development, and increases the development of bad habits. We may do relatively well initially with inadequate skills, but eventually it works against us.

Ideally we will go back and develop the pieces that we missed. But this doesn’t always happen. Learning a second language provides an apt example here. If we are rushing through the learning process, it is easy to pattern grammatically incorrect sentence structure or inappropriate use of a word into our cellular memory. Someone may be able to understand our meaning, but our statements lose some of their power. Undoing a negative pattern takes far more effort than learning correctly from the start. Inadequate preparation of basic skills is a big problem in most people’s development across all disciplines. Once again, trying to win trumps learning the skills.

Cultivates Winning Without Skill
In every contest there is a winner. In a few cases there is a draw. But being declared a winner doesn’t mean you have developed proper skills or achieved competence, let alone mastery. Participants competing prematurely in any sport or endeavor exhibit more luck than ability, and certainly very little skill. In fact, most contests are lost, not won; they are decided by the loser making too many errors. Yet someone still gets the reward of being called the winner.

Even at the professional level, contests are commonly marred by less-than-optimal play and behavior. (In Chapter 5, I’ll explain why I prefer the term less-than-optimal instead of bad). All too often, even professional athletes play well below their abilities — a baseball or football player dropping an easy catch, a basketball player missing an open shot, a tennis player missing an easy volley, or a soccer or hockey player not scoring a goal on a one-on-one break. At the 2004 French Open Women’s Championships Venus Williams lost a match by making eighty-seven (!) unforced errors out of a total of one hundred points that she lost. Venus is a great tennis player, but her performance that day was pure mediocrity. Her opponent won only thirteen points in the entire match on her own. Yet she “won” the match.

Why do professional athletes tighten up, lose concentration, and miss easy shots that, at their level, they should not miss? In most sports there are situations where events are almost completely within our control. In tennis, it is the serve; we have the ball in our hands. In basketball it is the free throw; no one is blocking our shot. And professionals have been practicing these shots for years, probably tens of thousands of times. Yet even professionals frequently miss in these unchallenged moments. Clearly the problem is between their ears, and ingrained in their cellular memories. To me such incidents illustrate that even top athletes have been limited by premature competition. Their basic psychological skills are underdeveloped.

Produces Low Percentage of Good Players
One of the biggest problems in a competitive system is that far too few players or participants really develop high-level skills or the emotional maturity that true mastery requires. Let me give an example from my own experience. I have been teaching tennis to high-school boys and girls for thirty years. Surprisingly, I have observed that less than 10 percent become genuinely good players. The first reason for this is that most participants play tennis only during the high-school tennis season. Perhaps one-third play a little during the rest of the year. The majority are too busy with other sports, other activities, or schoolwork to find the time to play all year. It is hard to excel at something when you don’t maintain a consistent regimen. But in my experience, the main reason for mediocrity is that these kids are focused on winning before they have acquired the skills to play well. Some play for their school teams for four years, yet remain mediocre. It doesn’t have to be this way. It is the same with many team sports; there are a few stars, and the rest of the players just fill positions.

This tendency toward mediocrity doesn’t just apply to children. I have been teaching and observing adult tennis players for nearly forty years. Most people who play the game for many years don’t improve that much. They tend to plateau and stay at the same level no matter how many years they play. The reason is simple. Most people who play tennis go out on the court, warm up for ten minutes, and start competing. They don’t practice their basic skills; they just play matches. Playing this way ingrains poor physical, mental and emotional habits that limit their potential. They think they are only going to improve by competing, yet they never make much progress, and they don’t understand why. This tendency toward a minority of excellence and a majority of mediocrity occurs in almost every area of endeavor where competition reigns, from school to sports to business to politics.

Beats Down the Naturals
Wanting to do our best is a noble goal. But the side effects of a competitive system significantly diminish our chances of attaining this goal. The people we compete against do everything in their power to keep us from doing our best. They want to beat us. They don’t want us to play our best—unless they still win. This is how the competitive system works.

Some people are naturally gifted; certain abilities come more easily to them. In our competitive system, people with less natural talent are encouraged to do whatever it takes to beat the more naturally talented people. This may include questionable tactics, such as physical or psychological intimidation; or even cheating. When someone has a natural gift, it would be wise to fully support their development as they have the potential to raise the bar to higher levels. But this is not what is promoted in a competitive system. Some of these “naturals” however, also do their best to beat down and lower the confidence of the less talented, thereby hindering them from attaining their potential. Such behavior is subtly and at times overtly encouraged in the competitive system. And it is often interpreted as a sign of having the will or toughness to succeed. But it exacts a tremendous price on both winners and losers, on the naturally talented as well as those less gifted. Ultimately we all miss out through the potential that is never fulfilled, and the shining examples who might have been.

Precludes Relaxed Focus
People do develop focus when thrown prematurely into competition; but it is the focus of a startled rabbit. It’s natural to be scared when we aren’t sure if we know what we are doing, or whether we will be able to perform when it counts. With our ego and self-esteem on the line, our focus is distorted by tension. We go on a high alert, fight-or-flight mode that is not conducive to a relaxed focus or to peak performance. Performance anxiety obstructs the relaxed focus that produces the highest level of skill.

Discourages Physical Fitness
One of the worst side effects of over-emphasizing competition in the learning process is that many people develop an aversion to exercise and athletics. In school, children are at times forced to exercise and compete in ways that are stressful, not fun. Not surprisingly, many develop an aversion to exercise and sports. Physical Education can become a miserable chore for those who don’t do well in competitive environments, especially when they have learned to see themselves as losers from their earliest experiences. I believe this to be a factor in our current epidemic of obesity. Ask most people with a weight problem about their experiences in school physical education programs and organized athletics, and you will hear a litany of tales of woe.

Increases Self-inflicted Injuries
Another liability arising from the premature introduction of competition in sports is that habitual repetition of incorrect physical mechanics increases the chances of injury. An improperly performed mechanical action – a pitch in baseball or a serve in tennis – irritates and stresses muscles and joints. Such an action, repeated over and over, often leads to injury. It is a version of the well-known repetitive stress syndrome. Developing skill requires mastering proper form, which allows our actions to be more efficient and comparatively effortless. When we start competing prematurely, we shift our focus from skill development to winning however we can; and proper form is usually the first casualty.

Competitive sports, especially at higher levels, require exercise and conditioning to excel. At all levels, from recreational to professional, overuse is a significant issue, particularly for less naturally talented players. The only way to make up for a lack of talent is to train harder. And intense training takes its toll on our bodies. We accept as inevitable that our joints are going to break down as we age. But this “natural” event is greatly hastened if we push our bodies too hard. Look at the number of ex-athletes, from ballet dancers to football players, who can barely walk later in life. Pushing ourselves to extremes to compete is detrimental to our health.

Chapter 2—A Competitive Learning System, Part 1

Our social framework is based on competition, so it follows that our educational system is also competitively based. Hardly anyone can imagine sports, education, business, or politics without competition. From a young age, we find that virtually every activity in which we participate includes some form of competition. Whether in school or sports, shortly after we get involved, we face an opponent in one form or another. When we’re graded on a curve, when we take the PSAT to prepare us for the SAT, and even when we are asked to raise our hands if we know the answer, we are competing against other students. Few of us question the competitive approach. We tend to think of it as organic and essential; people must compete to succeed, the logic goes, so they had better get used to the pressures of competition from the start. The problem is not with competition per se, but how and when we go about having people compete.

Premature Competition
Introducing competition into the learning process prematurely — before we master fundamental skills — causes many problems. This is perhaps most obvious in the field of sports, so I will use that arena to illustrate this concept. It is not uncommon to see five-year-olds playing competitive soccer games after two weeks of practice, which as a rule means two one-hour practices. What skill level can be achieved in two hours? Many teams practice very little together once they start playing their weekly game; often their weekly competition is their only practice. This is putting the cart before the horse! These children need to spend non-competitive time running around the field, having fun, kicking the ball to one another, getting fit and coordinated, practicing and developing their skills, and allowing cellular memory to pattern the basics into their body/minds before competition enters the picture.

This competitive approach is common in youth sports. In baseball I’ve seen seven-years-old pitchers who couldn’t throw the ball over the plate, and batters who couldn’t make contact with a slowly pitched ball. Why do we make these kids compete before they’ve learned the basic skills? One of the few sports where competition is postponed until fundamental skills have been developed is gymnastics. This is because gymnastics can be very dangerous, and the consequences of premature competition (before developing fundamental skills) are potentially severe.

Even when children aren’t competing against one another on a conscious level, they are often being pushed to get to the point where they can compete. This so called games-based approach to learning is widespread. Players are supposed to learn their skills while playing competitively. Indeed, some learning is going on during competition, but a lot of it negatively impacts a player’s development. Many skills are not being developed, and many less than optimal habits are being patterned into the physical, mental, and emotional cellular memory.

In the competitive system, winners are lionized; the rest are second-class citizens, often regarded as also-rans, or worse, losers. The world of competition is a jungle. Is it really a good idea to expose children to this jungle before they are prepared physically, mentally, and emotionally? It is hard enough even when they are prepared. The question to ask is whether the competitive system truly produces excellence, or just a set of winners of uncertain ability? With winning such a premium and so strongly desired, it would make sense at the very least to learn the essential skills of an activity before being thrust into competition. But that is not how we are taught.

Many assume that exposing children to competition at an early age prepares them for all the competition they will face throughout life. But as you will see, this is not the case. This is the drop-the-baby-in-the-deep-end-of-the-pool theory of learning. If the “baby” sinks instead of swimming, it is assumed, in the competitive mind-set, not to “have what it takes.” Putting people, especially children, into competition before they have developed effective skills, can be painful, even traumatic. Many will be scarred emotionally. The resulting embarrassment, shame or lowered self-esteem will hold them back in other areas of life, and diminish their chances of achieving their potential.

When a society places so much importance on winning, losing is often experienced as personal failure. We’ve all heard that it doesn’t matter if we win or lose, it’s how we play the game. But these hollow words do not reflect the reality we see all around us, and the message we are “told” in countless ways. The winner gets it all — the praise, the glory, the fame, and the fortune. Even young children can see and feel that it does matter whether we win or lose; and that there are real benefits to winning, and real consequences to losing.

Winning Versus Learning
The competitive approach to learning is widespread in all aspects of education. Children find themselves in a recital or a performance after taking only a few months of music or dance lessons. If children really know and can proficiently play or perform the material, no problem. If not, they are programming performance anxiety into their cellular memory. I know this from personal experience. From starting piano lessons at age six, to playing drums in the band in high school, I was put into performances before I was confident of the material. Those experiences sowed the seeds of a lack of confidence, and performance anxiety. Academically, it’s the same: Children are given material to learn, and then tested and graded before they have really learned that material. What are we really testing and teaching by putting children into competition prematurely? And what are children really learning in this way?

This is the trial by fire or school-of-hard-knocks approach to learning: “We learned the hard way; you have to learn the hard way. Life isn’t fair, life is tough!” Maybe life is tough. Do we need to make it tougher on principle? Maybe we did learn the hard way. Do we have to make learning harder for everyone? How about discovering what may actually be the best way to learn? The school-of-hard-knocks approach does push a small percentage of people to excel, primarily from fear of the consequences of failure, or perhaps an overweening desire to win or to be number one. But most people fail to achieve their potential in a competitive environment. Even those who succeed often pay a steep price, physically, mentally, and emotionally. Yet this is the environment in which we continue to raise and educate our children. What are we passing on?

When learning becomes a contest, the focus shifts from learning skills to winning contests, and to fears of losing. When being a winner is so important, it can’t help taking precedence over developing the skills necessary to achieve excellence. And this is a fundamental problem in our competitive culture.

Positive Effects of a Competitive System
There is no disputing the fact that competition has produced many tangible benefits in people’s lives. It encourages us to work toward goals and develop concentration, perseverance, motivation and ambition. It can help us hone our skills, raise performance levels, strive for excellence, build character, and even foster camaraderie and teamwork while channeling aggression in a less destructive direction. We have seen the benefits of a competitive approach in industry where competing companies, teams and individuals stimulate higher levels of creativity and leap-frog off each other, inventing or designing better and better products and technologies. Such competition has fostered rapid growth and accelerated technological breakthroughs in many fields. A clear example of competition motivating accelerated development is the space race between the United States and the U.S.S.R. back in the 1960’s that resulted in the U.S. sending the first man to the moon.

Yet despite all the benefits of a competitive paradigm, I suggest that our next stage of evolution will enable us to achieve far more benefits through non-competition, which includes a skill-to-mastery based focus, and a higher principle of cooperation.

This chapter focuses mainly on the negative side effects of competition. (The benefits of competition have been actively promoted for centuries, if not millennia. We all know them quite well.) It will show why the premature introduction of competition into the learning process produces far more negative than positive effects. In fact, if competition were a drug, the Food and Drug Administration would ban it for having too many adverse side effects!

Human Nature & the Evolutionary Process, Part 2

Survival of the Fittest?
Because this competitive model has dominated for so long, many people believe that we are aggressive and competitive by nature and nothing can be done to change this behavior. The idea that human nature is inherently competitive received validation in the mid-1800s from the work of Charles Darwin. With his theory of evolution, Darwin presented a vast body of evidence that all life on Earth evolved over millions of years from a few common ancestors. This evolution occurred through a process called natural selection. From his research and observations, Darwin noted that possessing certain traits increased a species chance of survival; a higher percentage of animals with these traits would survive and, through procreation, pass them on genetically to the next generation. For example, when the climate grew significantly colder, animals with thicker fur would survive in disproportionate numbers. In a drought, animals that could survive on less water would endure.

Darwin’s theory promoted the idea of the survival of the fittest. This term is a bit misleading since the individuals possessing traits that increased their chances of survival had nothing to do with developing those traits. The male bird with brighter colors that made him more attractive to females did not control the amount of color in his feathers. The individual members of a species that survived dramatic climate change did not intentionally change their makeup in order to survive. It wasn’t survival of the fittest so much as the good fortune of those whose traits happened to suit the demands of the time.
Inevitably, supporters of a competitive worldview commandeered Darwin’s concept in order to prove that being competitive was natural and superior to all other ways of interacting. This view became known as Social Darwinism. When two animals fight to the death it is easy to conclude that the winner is the stronger, more competitive animal. The twisted logic of Social Darwinism holds that aggressive, competitive individuals are the most suited, and therefore the most deserving, of survival and success in life. Thus competition is viewed as natural and even essential to our progress and development.

Dog-eat-dog competition, seen as human nature, now defines most aspects of business, politics, sports, and even popular culture. It’s the new mode of popular entertainment, from TV’s Survivor, American Idol and The Apprentice, to the slew of programs that reduce “contestants” to the level of aggressive beasts hunting and fighting for survival around the drought-ravaged watering hole. There’s no disputing the potential in almost all species for highly competitive and aggressive behavior. And we human beings are an animal species. But does this prove the inevitability or the superiority, of competitive behavior? On the surface, this can seem to be the case. But if we look more closely, we see that competitive behavior manifests most frequently and intensely when there is a shortage of some necessity, like water, food, shelter, sex or, with the animal called Man, money. Competitive behavior manifests when we are threatened or our survival is at stake, and even when there is an illusory perception of a threat. Nature reveals that when there is no shortage in the necessities of survival, there is less competitive, aggressive behavior. And both animals and man thrive best when they cooperate with one another. This is why most animals form herds, packs and flocks, and why man formed tribes, villages, towns and nations.


Survival of the Luckiest
Sometimes survival of the fittest becomes survival of the luckiest, or even weakest. This was the case for one troop of savanna baboons in Kenya studied by researchers Robert Sapolsky and Lisa Share starting in 1978. Baboons, like chimpanzees and humans, are known to be quite hierarchical and male-dominated, with frequent aggressive interactions. Between 1983 and 1986, the troop’s dominant males, who were observed to be very aggressive, were wiped out by contracting bovine tuberculosis through foraging in the garbage dump at a nearby tourist lodge. The lesser males and the females did not contract the disease because the dominant males prevented them from feeding at the dump. The deaths of the dominant males drastically changed the gender composition of the troop, more than doubling the ratio of females to males, and by 1986 troop behavior had changed dramatically; males were now significantly less aggressive.

Observation of the troop stopped after 1986 and did not start again until 1993. At this time, the same less-aggressive behavior was observed in the troop. This is particularly surprising and enlightening because male baboons leave their birth troop after puberty. Even though there were few adult males from the previous period, the new males showed the less-aggressive behavior of their predecessors. Apparently, the adolescent baboons observing the interactions between the females and the older males of the troop learned that they didn’t have to be as aggressive to get what they needed! The researchers even analyzed blood samples from the troop during this second period of observation and found that the males lacked the distinctive physiological markers of stress normally found in male baboons in other areas.

Another anomaly is the bonobos, a Central African species of Great Ape closely related to chimpanzees and humans. Bonobo behavior is quite different than the average ape or human. Interactions in bonobo society are more egalitarian and peaceful – they typically resolve their differences by grooming one another or having some type of sexual contact. Sounds more civilized to me!

Evolutionary biologist, Dr. Lynn Margulis, has demonstrated that symbiotic relationships are a major driving force in evolution. A symbiotic relationship is one in which two or more dissimilar organisms live together, especially when this association is mutually beneficial. In other words, cooperation is fundamental to the nature of life and the evolutionary process. Margulis and her world-renowned husband, scientist Carl Sagan, concluded in 1996 “Life did not take over the globe by combat, but by networking” (i.e. by cooperation, interaction, and mutual dependence between living organisms).

Non-competitive Individuals and Cooperation
The instinct to survive is part of our human nature, but a survival instinct is different from a competitive instinct. A survival instinct usually becomes competitive when there is a perceived scarcity and others are trying to get what we need. For competitive behavior to truly be an immutable aspect of human nature, everyone would have to be competitive, and this is simply not the case. We all know people in our lives that are not the least bit competitive. Prime examples of people with a cooperative worldview would include Jesus, Mahatma Gandhi, Martin Luther King, Jr., Rumi, Mother Theresa, many spiritual practitioners of many faiths, quite a few members of the helping professions, and members of several indigenous tribes that still survive around the world. As psychologist Alfie Kohn has noted, “The ubiquity of cooperative interactions even in a relatively competitive society is powerful evidence against the generalization that humans are naturally competitive.” Cooperation is every bit as natural as competition.

Evolutionary Education—Intro Part 2

A Common Thread
The problems we face are diverse and complex. Some say they all stem from human laziness, greed, or evil: from inherently flawed human nature. But I have seen too many people display kindness, compassion, and courage to agree with that assessment.

As I examined the negative aspects of human behavior — over aggressiveness, anger, jealousy, fear, intimidation, violence, cheating, lying, and stealing — I kept noticing a common thread tying them together. That thread lies in competitive, aggressive behavior patterns, exacerbated by an innate survival instinct.

Currently, we live in a system predicated on a competitive model of behavior. We are raised to compete against one another from an early age. Unfortunately, this approach takes a serious toll on our psychological health and development, and thereby on our humanity. Competition is the norm for individuals, families, teams, tribes, communities, businesses, states, religions, and nations. In a way, life is one big contest, or a series of contests, marked by a constant jockeying for position in the pecking order. I’m better (smarter, stronger, faster, more beautiful, richer) than you are. My family is better than your family. Our community is better than your community. My school is better than your school. Our business, state, political party, country, or multi-national corporation is better than yours. My God is more powerful than your God. We are the chosen people and you are not!

We have been a competitive species for tens of thousands of years. And while that energy has motivated humanity to great accomplishments, it has also produced many of our darkest moments. Does having been a competitive species for so long mean we will be forever at war? Is this how it’s supposed to be? This seems like a pretty bleak picture. I believe we have a choice; that we don’t have to settle for this outcome.

In my search for answers, I have come to see competitive behavior as something we humans have learned over the course of our evolutionary history. Yes, in early times dangerous conditions forced humans to be more competitive to survive. But as societies developed, we transferred this competitive mentality into religion, commerce, relationships, politics, academics, and sports. Today, certain aspects of this mentality prevent us from fulfilling our greatest aspirations, and literally threaten our world.

Limitations of a Competitive Mindset
I do not advocate the elimination of competition. I do recommend that we examine where, when, and how competition creates problems, and seek healthy alternatives and solutions. Many people who call themselves highly competitive are simply people who have high expectations and a strong desire to succeed. The desire to be successful isn’t, in and of itself, competitive. You can possess high expectations and a strong desire for success, yet not be competitive. We conflate the desire for excellence with the trait of competitiveness, when in truth they are very different.

A competitive mindset has led to great advances for our species, and provided a powerful motivating force for individuals, communities, nations and civilizations, but it is not the be-all and end-all of existence. From my youth, sports have been an integral part of my life. I have participated in, enjoyed (some of the time), and done well (a majority of the time) in thousands of contests. These competitive experiences have taught me many valuable lessons. Whether in sports, academics, business, or the arts, it is exciting and motivating to see people perform at a high level. I have no desire to take that away from anyone.

The problem is that only a small percentage of people succeed in this system, most function at a fraction of their potential. Is that because most people are not that bright or talented or motivated? Are they just mediocre, or lazy? In my experience, this is simply not the case. I have seen first hand how the competitive system itself inhibits development, and thus performance.

I am convinced that the problem is systemic and results in most of us functioning well below our potential. I believe our competitive system, by repeatedly pitting us against each other in often premature and needlessly adversarial contests, destabilizes our confidence and motivation, and limits our ability, our enjoyment, and our overall development. I will show the evidence for these assertions in the following chapters.

Time for a Course Correction
Over the centuries, the competitive mindset has become the dominant model of behavior for a majority of people. I believe it is time to make some healthy changes in this model, which I will discuss later. I am basically an optimist. But as a longtime student of history and current events, I am aware that if we don’t change course soon, life may get ugly, not for just a few, but for most. The crux of the problem inherent in a competitive paradigm is that each generation must be more competitive than the last, not to achieve an absolute standard of excellence, but just to keep up. Each generation must be more competitive! The big question is, how much more competitive can we be? When does the stress of this unrealistic expectation begin producing more negative than positive results? And have we already reached that point?

Many people are uncertain and anxious about their future, and are doing all they can to keep up. Millions don’t get enough to eat on a daily basis. Greed and fear are present at every level from politics to business, to social institutions. Destruction and contamination of vital ecosystems is a planet-wide problem. Ethnic violence and prejudice are rampant around the globe. Our weapons of mass destruction make it possible for us to obliterate ourselves at any moment. I could provide many more such examples of the competitive mindset being out of control, but I am sure you get the point. This is no way to live — for anyone. And yet, it’s the way almost everyone lives.

We need to make major changes. I’m not talking about revolution, but higher evolution. Revolution entails an “us versus them” dynamic – a competitive mindset. In a revolution, one group works to overthrow those in power and take charge themselves. Most revolutions are rooted in anger and turn ugly and violent. Revolutions are examples of how the Darwinian law of the jungle has fueled our evolutionary process as a species. But eventually, our higher evolution will allow us to see that everyone is on the same side, working toward the same goal, and that making life better for everyone makes it better for ourselves.

Again, this book does not propose to banish competition. Rather, it examines the dynamics of competition and the many societal and inter-personal problems it causes. It looks to see if competition in fact produces the best attainable results; to see where and when competition is appropriate and effective, and where it isn’t.

Modern advances in technology have made Earth a very small planet. Whether we like it or not, we are all in this together. And we can all be part of the solutions to our collective problems. As Charles Darwin noted, “The survival or extinction of each organism is determined by that organism’s ability to adapt to its environment.” The same is true for a species. This book is a call for a new adaptation of human behavior in our increasingly changing and challenging environment. Our survival may depend upon it!

Evolutionary Education—Introduction

It’s been nearly 150 years since Charles Darwin wrote On the Origin of Species, and we are still seeking a key to unlock the secrets of the evolution of the human species. To fulfill our potential as a species, it is essential to come to a deeper understanding of the concept of evolution.
One definition of evolution is simply “change over time toward a more highly developed state.” Things do change over time; no one can dispute that! Think of how children evolve in a few years from helpless little beings to people who can do things for themselves. Think of how electronics – cell phones, TV’s, cameras and computers – have evolved within a short time frame. Such changes are examples of evolution. Evolution is a natural fact; it is nothing to be afraid of. Despite the recurrence of old controversies, accepting the reality of evolution doesn’t rule out the existence of a Supreme Being. Belief or nonbelief in God can coexist with the concept of evolution. Whatever our religious beliefs, or lack thereof, it makes sense to understand how the human species has evolved until now — and how, and equally important, where it can evolve as we move forward.

Pieces of the Puzzle
My interest in the evolution of our species arose as I grappled with several key events that took place while growing up in the 1960s. The most important of these were the Civil Rights and women’s movements; the assassinations of President Kennedy, Martin Luther King, Jr., and Bobby Kennedy; the blossoming and decline of the hippie movement; and the horrors of the Vietnam War. Watching these events unfold awakened in me a desire to help make the world a better, more peaceful place to live. I don’t view this as a noble motive. I just didn’t want to live in a world where violence and injustice were a norm that could potentially negatively impact my life. Of course good things were also happening, but the negatives made it hard for me to fully enjoy my life. I simply couldn’t look the other way.
Since then, my life’s goal has been to help make the world, and my own life, significantly better by working to transform destructive behaviors that have defined our species for thousands of years. Unfortunately, the world situation in regards to levels of violence and aggression is not that much different today. Some might say it’s even worse. Technologically, we have advanced exponentially in the last two hundred years. But instinctively, our primal responses are not much different from those of our ancestors who roamed the savannas of Africa thousands of years ago.
Although at times I have been discouraged, somehow I’ve managed to keep my idealism alive and make it through my moments of doubt. We live on an incredible planet. We humans are amazing beings. Our accomplishments over the centuries are awe-inspiring. No one living a thousand years ago could have imagined any of what we take as commonplace today. As a species, our potential is virtually unlimited. But in order to achieve our potential, we need to ask and answer a few questions:

• With so many accomplishments to our credit, why is there still so much suffering in the world?
• With all of the extraordinary insights achieved from ancient spiritual traditions, philosophy and modern psychology, why does man’s inhumanity prevail and produce so much stress, turmoil, despair, and sadness in so many people’s lives?
• Are these realities unavoidable aspects of human nature? Is it simply our fate to possess virtually unlimited potential, yet forever limit that potential by behaving in ways that are petty, cruel, unconscious and self-destructive? Or do we have the ability to change?

I have spent nearly four decades pondering such questions, wondering what I can do – what all of us can do – to help move the evolution of our species forward, and move the world in a more positive direction. My longtime friends have called me a seeker. At some point, I started seeing life as a puzzle, and began looking to see how all the pieces might fit together into a harmonious whole.
Always searching for answers, I have read books, listened to speakers, and shared ideas with those who were willing to engage with me, or guide me. With each book, each speaker, and each intuition, another piece of that puzzle has fallen into place for me. As the pieces came together, it occurred to me that a core issue might underlie the negative aspects of human behavior, and a common thread might link the many manifestations of our suffering.