Competition vs Aggression

Competition vs Aggression

Is competition a gateway to aggression? I think probably it is one gateway, if control is not developed.

Many people think competition is the greats thing. Bill Gates for one. Others think as I do, like the Quakers, Mennonites, and similar pacifist groups, that competition is the gateway to aggression as they stimulate similar emotions, and those emotions, passions need to be tempered with reason, and that sadly does not always happen. As a result we see aggression occurring, especially when one is not fair, the opponent may express this through violence. This is common in youth, and it is a struggle for coaches, especially when dangerous weapons are in play such as in archery. Life is not fair, and everyone needs to learn that. Many cannot handle success or loss. They are both a problem.

We see hazing occurring in school sports teams, and while that may seem OK, both sides learn that violence is OK. Not good learning for either the hazer, or the hazed. Once again we see competition as the gateway to aggression. There are some who are aggressive that say it is survival of the fittest, but as we see in the US, a gun makes the weak willed dangerous. Not a safe situation. As old Colt said, I created an equalizer.

US nationalism is going to excess and has caused aggression against it's neighbours and the world. In the north of Pakistan, the US has caused somewhere north of 125,000,000,000$ damage in bombing and war raids, killed 75,000, displaced 2,000,000 and the Taliban are as strong as ever. US has provided about 1,300,000,000 in aid, that the US also directs the spends in developing and backing the Pakistan Army. Some infrastructure will remain after the army no longer needs it, but it is built for the army, not the civilian use. And this, the US calls aid. How can they rational expect cooperation? More aggression.

On a human level, addiction has a physical component, and a psychological component, when combined, the human has no reasonable chance of defeating while using. That is the problem, one must get clean and lose the desire to use, before they can have a chance of recovery. They also must never use again, if they wish to stay clean. That is the problem for food addicts, we must eat to live. And to that problem, modern science and the medical profession has no real answer. They say that used as directed, opioids are not a problem, but once addicted, we lose the ability to not use, so the medical people say it is not our problem. They do not take reality into account. This is passive aggression, institutionalized. Addiction is real. And it is the competition, elimination of competition is aggression. It is that I am the best attitude that causes aggression and unreality.

So as we go through a life with failures, we need to keep our spirits up, depression is also real. We need psychological support, too know we are right. Life is unsatisfactory, our thinking is the cause, the solution is to change our thinking. It is not the situation that cause us strife, but our thinking about the situation.Religions provide a thinking for you; Buddhist and Stoics* provide a logical alternative way of thinking. In the end we realize that much of the common wisdom is just wrong; we need to unlearn, and relearn the right thinking in this overpopulated world where every one is selling, many are selling bullshit. We each are on our own; but there is logic to guide us through this restructuring.

  

   

 * also include several other early Greek schools in this case.

added: https://www.bbc.com/news/world-46301059
"They believe peace is achieved by dismissing concepts of ownership, competition, vanity and greed."