June 4th, 2007

I have a confession to make.

It's not anything special; it won't make you sit up in shock and horror. In fact, it is common in so many people (men especially) that I know, am friends with, work with, briefly and singly transact with, and even tangentially encounter.

I, like so many people I know, harbour a spark of competitive fury deep inside. It is an anger that, like a molten core, stays hot inside no matter the conditions on the outside. Pretty much everyone burns with it, and it flares up from time to time like, as I talked about the other day, when we are competing for the same resources.

I realized this when I started to think about the way we compete even for such inanities as the last doughnut, a pair of shoes in the store, a car-length's of space in traffic, or five centimetres of space on the airplane. Yes, aggressive elbow room, pettiness, greed, road rage, cheap tricks, and shameless sprinting to the imaginary finish line are all a face of that burning anxiety and fierce competitiveness that comes from having our required resources challenged and possibly denied—even if said challenge is strictly imaginary.

And because that core burns with the same intensity no matter what we have on the outside, we compete still, even when we compare ourselves to the stunning overwhelmingly large majority on this planet who don't have the same quality, quantity, and variety of food, clothing, and shelter that we have. We strive for more even when we have cars and trucks and houses and back yards with swing-sets for our kids, while others in this world compete for enough food, water, or clothing for themselves and their children. We struggle for next year's model of some electronic gadget while many fight a deadly war just to stay alive.

It doesn't mean we folks with the most are dreadful over-indulgent self-centred over-using hyper-consumerist psychopaths with no single little drop of empathy for others ... it just means that we have an innate core of molten resource-seeking competition for us (and our own). It means that we may have an unbalanced and very sick society, but we are acting only in a Natural way considering the environment we live in.

What I mean is this: We'd compete differently if our environment were different. But we are fat and swollen in our minority luxuries of a temporarily-still-have life.

And still we compete for more.

Read more rants - Top Blogs - Comment on this rant - Email me