Tao Te Ching
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Competition
From a point of view within the Western, capitalist society, Lao Tzu’s conclusive critique of competition may seem strange and radical. Cultural anthropologists, however, going back as far as Herodotus, point out two main trends in our social evolution. One of these include strong, militaristic and domineering social hierarchies. Often dedicated to warfare, they torture their enemies, don’t hug their children, use alcohol as a form of sacrament, dominate women, and don’t permit premarital sex. Within the second trend, people hug their children, let their teenagers have sex, don’t have strong hierarchies, accept sexual equality, and use some kind of mind-altering substance as the sacrament instead of alcohol. In the first, pecking-order competition is fierce, often violent and full of hate. In the second, collaboration, sharing, non-competitiveness, and equality predominate. Both approaches have survived through the ages and vividly display today in America’s Republican and Democratic parties. Optimistically, the current transformation from an alcohol to marijuana-based culture will shift this balance.
Quotes (87)
“The gods love to thwart whatever is greater than the rest. They do not suffer pride in anyone but themselves.”
“When an archer is shooting for nothing, he has all his skill… But the prize divides him… He thinks more of winning than of shooting – the need to win drains him of power.”
“Each denying what the other affirms and affirming what the other denies brings us only confusion.”
“Everyone wants to be first, while I alone want to be last, which means to endure the world’s disgrace.”
“If someone can conquer others, it is only by using force. If someone can conquer their own desires, no one in the world can compete with them. Hence we call them strong.”
“Sages… treat the people as if they were their children. Thus, the whole world wants them for their leaders. The people never grow tired of them because sages don’t struggle against them. Everyone struggles against something but no one struggles against those who don’t struggle against anything.”
“A horse never runs so fast as when he has other horses to catch up and outpace.”
“the life of every man is short and yours is almost finished while you do not respect yourself but allow your happiness to depend upon others”
“The nature of water is to stay low, to not struggle, and to take on the shape of its container. Thus nothing is weaker. Yet despite such weakness it can bore through rocks. Rocks, however, cannot wear down water.”
“The heat of a candle flame can’t compete with the heat of the sun… When you grasp this, then all things will be your teacher.”
“Those who work mainly for the welfare of others are like clever people furthering their own interests;
But those who work only for their own interests are like honest people working to help others get ahead.”
“Take someone who doesn't keep score, who's not looking to be richer, or afraid of losing, who has not the slightest interest evenin his own personality: he's free.”
“Any thought that you are better or less than another man
Quickly breaks the wine glass.”
“What the wise choose is what everyone else hates. Who is going to compete with them?”
“In the nature of man we find three main causes of conflict: competition, diffidence, and the lust for approval.”
“Never compete. Every competition damages your reputation… people of goodwill are always at peace and those of good reputation are of goodwill.”
“The establishment of any new manufacture, of any new branch of commerce, or any new practice in agriculture, is always a speculation, from which the projector promises himself extraordinary profits... If the project succeeds, they [the profits] are commonly at first very high. When the trade or practice becomes thoroughly established and well known, the competition reduces them to the level of other trades.”
“Seek not the favor of the multitude; it is seldom got by honest and lawful means. But seek the testimony of the few; and number not voices, but weigh them.”
“competitiveness and desire for power are the beginnings of beckoning disaster in business and social relations.”
“When a man can do better than everyone else in the same walk, he does not make any very painful exertions to outdo himself. The progress of improvement ceases nearly at the point where competition ends.”
“Our life is not really a mutual helpfulness; but rather, it's fair competition cloaked under due laws of war; it's a mutual hostility.”
“a State which dwarfs its men… will find that with small men no great thing can really be accomplished.”
“As long as justice and injustice have not terminated their ever renewing fight for ascendancy in the affairs of mankind, human beings must be willing, when need is, to do battle for the one against the other.”
“To sum up: the more productive capital grows, the more it extends the division of labour and the application of machinery; the more the division of labour and the application of machinery extend, the more does competition extend among the workers, the more do their wages shrink together... the more he works, the more he competes against his fellow workmen, the more he compels them to compete against him, and to offer themselves on the same wretched conditions as he does so that, in the last analysis, he competes against himself as a member of the working class.”
“It is competition that is ruining us. Competition is division, disunion, every man for himself, every man against his brother. the remedy must be in association, cooperation, self-sacrifice for the sake of one another.”
“The whole history of mankind—since the dissolution of primitive tribal society that held land in common—has been a history of class struggles, contests between exploiting and exploited, ruling and oppressed classes and has now reached a stage where emancipation cannot be achieved without once and for all emancipating society at large from all exploitation, oppression, class distinctions and class struggles.”
“Competition is the most extreme expression of that war of all against all which dominates modern middle-class society.”
“How happy is the little stone
That rambles in the road alone,
And doesn't care about careers,
And exigencies never fears.”
“Deer-stalking would be a very fine sport if only the deer had guns.”
“It is no wonder he wins every game. He has never done a thing in his life except play games”
“A woman can defend her virtue from men much more easily than she can protect her reputation from women.”
“Sacredness of human life! The world has never believed it! It has been with life that we settled our quarrels, won wives, gold and land, defended ideas, imposed religions. We have held that a death toll was a necessary part of every human achievement, whether sport, war or industry. A moment's rage over the horror of it, and we sink into indifference.”
“Religious fanaticism, unlimited competition, and war are the murderers of freedom. Though they win victories, we now know that they end in suicide.”
“The competitor to be feared is one who never bothers about you at all but goes on making his own business better all the time.”
“We need an enlightened education to bring to emphasize ideas of cooperation and solidarity rather than values of competition and indifference. A vision of an interdependent and connected world can be at the heart of what we pass on to future generations. This way, we may understand how interdependency and cooperation can remedy contemporary ills”
“Life is nothing but a competition to be the criminal rather than the victim.”
“I hated all competition, and if someone played a game too competitively I turned my back on the game. Thereafter I remained second in the class, and found this considerably more enjoyable.”
“The crippling of individuals I consider the worst evil of capitalism. Our whole educational systems suffers from this evil. An exaggerated competitive attitude is inculcated into the student, who is trained to worship acquisitive success as a preparation for his future career.”
“The universe... is always emptying, always full; the more it yields, the more it holds.”
“Competition has been shown to be useful up to a certain point and no further, but cooperation, which is the thing we must strive for today, begins where competition leaves off.”
“Spare me the political events and power struggles, as the whole earth is my homeland and all men are my fellow countrymen.”
“the natural inequality of men was producing a new degree of comfort and luxury for the strong, and a new routine of hard and disciplined labor for the rest. The theme was struck on which history would strum its myriad variations.”
“Industrial competition among corporations and individuals has strengthened the profit motive and other individualistic instincts, and has broken down moral restraints in the conduct of business.”
“Throughout life, we are taught to compare ourselves with another; yet when I compare myself with another I am destroying myself.”
“Sister is probably the most competitive relationship within the family, but once the sisters are grown, it becomes the strongest relationship.”
“The very process of living is a continual interplay between the individual and his environment, often taking the form of a struggle resulting in injury or disease.”
“When evil is allowed to compete with good, evil has an emotional populist appeal that wins out unless good men and women stand as a vanguard against abuse.”
“If, however, economic ambitions are good servants, they are bad masters.”
“The way to keep up is to be ahead. (Start with the 'other' man's ignorance–not his knowledge.)”
“I think that Gandhi's way, a methodless method, acting with a non-winning, non-opposing state of mind, is akin to natural farming.”
“If you do something too good, then, after a while, if you don't watch it, you start showing off, and then you're not as good any more.”
“I'm not afraid to compete. It's just the opposite. I'm afraid I will compete... Just because I'm so horribly conditioned to accept everybody else's values, and just because I like applause and people to rave about me, doesn't make it right. I'm ashamed of it. I'm sick of it.”
“We are at war with ourselves, with the environment, and with others. It is a matter of overcoming the old ways of thinking and the old premises of being, including our economic and political structures. The old competitive market economy and the old political parties, representing special selfish interests, will give way to a co-operative global community.”
“We destroy the love of learning… by encouraging and compelling them to work for petty and contemptible rewards… A's on report cards, or honor rolls, or dean's lists, or Phi Beta Kappa keys, in short, for the ignoble satisfaction of feeling that they are better than someone else.”
“Leaders must encourage their organizations to dance to forms of music yet to be heard.”
“Anytime you find someone more successful than you are, especially when you're both engaged in the same business - you know they're doing something that you aren't.”
“This last poem is self-reflexive, wrapping it all up tight in the first verse, then opening out again to praise the undestructive, uncompetitive generosity of the spirit that walks on the Way.”
“All weapons are designed to affect others without affecting ourselves... meant not to win contests but to end them. Killers are not victors; they are unopposed competitors”
“It helps to remember that our spiritual practice is not about accomplishing anything—not about winning or losing—but about ceasing to struggle and relaxing as it is.”
“trying constantly to attain something higher and greater... completely drunk on competitiveness... everyone is regarded as the enemy... your experiences are so strong that they overpower you, hypnotize you.”
“Arrogant people are so involved with themselves and they are competing so much with others that they won’t even look. When you are fully gentle, without arrogance and without aggression, you see the brilliance of the universe.”
“The first will be last and the last will be first; the times they are a changin’.”
“Instead of getting hard ourselves and trying to compete, women should try and give their best qualities to men - bring them softness, teach them how to cry.”
“Nobody's going to win all the time. On the highway of life you can't always be in the fast lane.”
“Competition gone to extremes becomes conflict... the economic cost of war translates directly into human cost above and beyond that of the dead, wounded, widowed, and orphaned”
“Not only have males evolved to compete for scare female eggs; females have evolved to compete for scare male investment.”
“female reticence left males competing with one another for scarce reproductive opportunities... why males so often have built-in weapons... males not hereditarily equipped for combat with other males have been excluded from sex and their traits have thus been discarded by natural selection.”
“When you compete against everyone else, no one wants to help you. But when you compete against yourself, everyone wants to help you.”
“Rejoicing in the success of others means letting go of competitiveness, jealousy, and envy”
“Humanity now finds itself hosting a high-stakes competition. It is a race between technological progress and societal progress—between our ability to create and destroy, and our ability to govern, manage, and coexist.”
“One who desires victory over others perpetuates a cycle of resistance and violence that only decrease one’s likelihood of survival.”
“Turning away from competition and toward the connections of interdependence can be a conscious act of resistance... we can liberate ourselves from the inner forces that leave us vulnerable to manipulation.”
“Building our society or personal lives on competition means we are building lives of guaranteed dissatisfaction... Competition has yielded some important immediate results in the areas of survival and material development, but we should not let these advantages blind us to the serious disadvantages of competition.”
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