Alfie Kohn - The Case Against Competition

Raising healthy, happy, productive children goes hand in hand with creating a better society. The first step to achieving both is recognizing that our belief in the value of competition is built on myths. There are better ways for our children -- and for us -- to work and play and live.

The title of this conference gave me pause, frankly

because the way I use the word conflict
I don't see much need to move beyond it.

But words pertaining to competition,
aggression, conflict, cooperation and so on

are very difficult to get
straight and sometimes we argue when we

don't mean to argue about the substance.

So for example when students in class

help each other on in a cooperative
fashion

we don't call it cooperation in this
country we call it cheating.

similarly when the word cooperation is
used again in a classroom setting

it is used to mean obedience as in
I want you all to cooperate now which means

do exactly what I tell you.

Words are used in ways that don't always
lend themselves to clarity and that's true

with conflict too.

As far as I'm concerned and what I wanna
try to do in these brief introductory remarks

before going on to

discuss competition and then more
broadly human nature

a phrase by the way that I think should
always appear in quotation marks.

I want to just say a word about conflict.

I don't think there's a problem with
conflict, I don't seek to move beyond it

the question is not will there be
conflict or should there be

the answer to both questions being yes
as far as I'm concerned but rather

will that conflict take place in a
context that is cooperative or competitive?

now I don't think here I fundamentally disagree with Ted Rockwell,

he just uses conflict to mean something
else. It might substitute for

say... controversy or
dissent

or something of that sort. There is a big
difference between these two kinds of

conflict though as I am using the term -

in business meetings and

at dinner parties there are people who
raise objections,

make arguments, disagree in order

so that everyone can be exposed to
another idea which is seen to be

important,

so that people can reach some agreement
that's more informed

or can educate and then there are people
who raise disagreements,

open up controversy - to hear themselves
talk.

Wanna show how clever they are and to
score points - you can smell the difference

between these two kinds of
conflict - you know what I'm talking about:

cooperative conflict seems to make a
lot of sense

that's when people disagree with each
other for a purpose that is productive

or that educates and the long literature of
study showing that this tends to work

better

than either debate or competition on
the one hand

or people all pretending some sort of
magical harmony

and forced consensus exists on the other -
that is the literature that has been

contributed to in large part by David
Johnson -

one of the speakers tomorrow and he will
tell you most likely about

some of the studies to that effect. In
fact you might even say to build on the

last speaker's remarks -

that this is parallel to what Darwin
meant by natural selection.

the phrase survival of the fittest - as
you may know was not coined by Darwin at all

but by Herbert Spencer who corrupted
his thinking

and in fact the idea of survival of the
fittest

is one that does not involve competition
by its nature at all

it merely suggests that creatures that
adapt best

to a changing environment are around to
live and reproduce another day

it does not specify what mechanism is
used

in order to adapt and thus all of the
evidence we just had presented to us

suggested cooperation is the best way
for this amazing concept

of the evolution to take place,
similarly with conflict, it doesn't

specify the mechanism of cooperation

or competition. however that doesn't
mean that I agree with everything that's

always said about the nature of conflict
being desirable.

Sam Kein and I for example I think will
have to agree to disagree about some

points

for example I would never use the words
atheism and barbarism in the same sentence

for another point I think the idea that
things come to us

of themselves so to speak when we
acknowledge our dark side

is a troubling point for two reasons
first

because I think that good things come to
us by human creation after hard work

never by themselves

and second because when we talk about
acknowledging our dark side

we run the risk of being interpreted
correctly or misinterpreted as the case

might be

as suggesting that this stuff is innate,
that this competitive aggressive nasty

nature of ours

is something we were born with and will have
to learn to acknowledge as opposed to

acknowledging

the sense in which those nasty evil
parts of ourselves, the selfishness and

the

competition are in large part social
creations

that if anything we overlook by simply
talking about some individual or

innate nature. so cooperative conflict
and wrestling with ideas I think is fine

but there's a particular kind of
conflict as i've mentioned that I think

especially

disturbing and that is competition.

basically there are two respectable
positions to take on competition in this

country:

one is unqualified endorsement and the
other is qualified endorsement.

unqualified endorsement is the Vince
Lombardi quote: winning isn't everything

it's the only thing

it's a dog eat dog world out there or
perhaps given how early it starts now

with pre-school we should say a
doggy-eat-doggy world out there

and we've got a get kids primed for
as much

canine consumption as possible - very early.

if you can't stand the heat et cetera it's
good for us and and so on

the second position the second camp
suggests -

I feel really silly trailing this tail
around after me but

I don't think there's any real
alternative - no not that one

I guess that's a tale for another day
though, isn't it. the point...

the point I want to make is that the
second position - the only other one - is

one that says something like

competition has gone too far in this
country we push kids too fast and too

hard to be number one

but if we keep things in perspective

and don't get carried away then
competition can be natural and appropriate

and healthy and so on. that used to be my
position

but in writing no contest I went through
more than 400 studies

and slowly I came to a third camp which
may be occupied only by me

at this point and that is as follows:
that competition is not destructive or

counterproductive

in its excess, it is not destructive
because we're doing it the wrong way,

it is destructive by its very nature.

the very phrase "healthy competition" it
seems to me and I think there are good

- though largely unknown data to support this -
the phrase healthy competition

is a contradiction in terms and the
ideal amount of competition

note I do not say - conflict - the ideal
amount of competition in

any environment - the classroom, the
workplace, the family.

the playing field - is NONE.

now I don't expect that most if you will
agree with this,

I didn't myself but I want you to open
to the possibility that

all things that are bad and excess are
not necessarily good in moderation.

That's a surprising concept.

I like to say to audiences who challenge
me on this

you know "hey you don't wanna be
so radical about it, we need some

competition" I say: "you know I agree with
you

I think the same thing is true about
torturing children..."

"we don't want to overdo it but you can't
have none at all now can you?"

the point is that not everything is good
in a middle ground, we love this sort of

reflexive position of let's not overdo
it

but we need SOME. some things are
inherently destructive,

this position has not won me plaudits
all over the country as you can imagine -

I'm alternately called a communist and a
wimp as I

discuss these things, although never
both... but you know

I guess you don't need to be spending
three hundred billion dollars on the

pentagon if the communists... well, you see
what I mean

but it's one or the other...
but the position is one that i think is backed

by research - even though it sounds
radical.

the idea is that competition

no matter what amount it exists in is
always to that extent destructive,

some competitions are worse than others

let me define my terms in good social
science fashion here.

I like to distinguish between what I
call structural and intentional

competition

by structural competition I mean what I
call mutually exclusive goal

attainment which is a fancy social science
expression for

I succeed only if you fail.

There's a stronger version of this in which
I succeed only if MAKE you fail

you see the difference? in the first case
we may be talking about golf or bowling,

I do something you do something I do
something you do something, and at the end of

course we're Americans we have to have a winner

we compare scores but we don't
interfere with each other's performance.

in the stronger version I succeed only if
I make you fail

here we find it in war or TESS?!?!

in which in order for me to do well I have
to actively interfere with how you do it

so a good shot in tennis for example is
one

that you cannot return, that's true by
definition.

the goal, the objective of the activity
is not merely to succeed at the end but

at each moment to interfere with your
success

that doesn't mean all tennis players are
nasty or neurotic

or malicious it means that the rules of the game
the structure so to speak

require us to succeed at the expense of
other people's failure

and that is what I am argueing is
always and by its nature

unnecessary and destructive. and I
distinguish that structural competition

from intentional competition

by which I mean simply the need for one
person to be number one.

here we're talking not about the rules
of the game but about the personality

and why I think it's interesting to
distinguish between the two is simply that

we can have one without the other and
it helps us to clarify matters.

can we have intentional competition
without structural?

you bet! some people may have come in here
today

uhm... with their objective to ask

the cleverest question or to be the
best dressed or something of that sort, be

the funniest

nobody else is trying for that , there
are no trophies being given out,

everyone else just thought they were coming to a
lecture you know they didn't realize it

was a competition as it is

for that individual but even worse you
can have the reverse situation.

I think it's worse. Structural
competition without intentional.

this is something we see every day in
this culture. individuals who are

satisfied with simply doing their best,

having fun, reaching excellence,

but have to do that, have to engage in
those goals in a way to prevents other

people from reaching theirs.

Success and victory which are two
completely different ideas have been

confused

confounded in this society so we can't
understand what it is to do one -

to reach one - without reaching the other.
we have to tease these apart.

I'm all in favor of success and
excellence as I am

conflict in certain situations, the
question is do we have to do it

to the exclusion of other people? I think
the answer to that is clearly no,

and in my book I go through the four
central Myths of competition

which I will summarize very quickly now
because I want to move on to the work

that I'm doing since that book has
come out.

let me do with 3 consequences of
competition

and what has driven me to this surprising
view

that it's not merely batting excess.

first there's the question of
productivity or excellence, success!

This was the trickiest one

to be very honest with you when I began
this project I already accepted that

competition wasn't very good for us
psychologically or for our relationships

with each other

but I bought the party line that you
needed

some competition in order to push
yourself to do your best,

that there was some dialectical
relationship between the two,

and we couldn't dispense with that
competition without there being a

trade-off maybe it was worth it.

well I was wrong. after going through
hundreds of studies in the classroom in

the workplace,

I have become convinced of what I will put into
one bold

and startling proposition: not only is
competition not required for excellence,

its absence is required for excellence.

now most of these studies, all of these studies
really, are available in any good library

but they don't get read and they
certainly don't get talked about in the

public arena

or mentioned in popular publications for
the most part.

we are brought up not only to compete
frantically but to BELIEVE

in competition and it is awfully
threatening to have people come along

and say "you have been deluded",

"you are barking up the wrong tree". this
is not what leads people to do their best.

the johnsons - David and his brother Roger
- have done themselves

scores of studies in the classroom, others
have been done by people like Bob

Slavin at Johns Hopkins University and
many others who have shown

repeatedly that cooperation predicts to
learning -

i'm talking bottom-line hardcore success
for children and adults whenever there's

learning involved -

cooperation predicts that more than does
competition or individualized attainment.

it's true in rural, urban and suburban
schools, it's true for all ages,

it's true for all subject matters, the
only place they found some variation

is that the more complicated the task, is
the worse

competition does. the more cognitive
problem solving and creativity is

required

the worse competition stacks up when
measured against cooperative approaches.

this sort of thing has been found in the
workplace too - both in terms of structural

and intentional.

there've been studies structurally
suggesting that people in

cooperative workplaces -

real-world situations, not some contrived
laboratory setup -

do better when they're working together
and when they're trying to best each other.

As well there have been studies from
University of Texas showing that

personal need

to compete - what I call intentional
competition - gets in the way of success.

I don't wanna bore you with all these
studies now, they're in my book and

others have come out since my book,

but the point is that this -
counterintuitive for us Americans -

finding has been born out again and
again

even when researchers expected to find the reverse.

and one after another you see them
saying "counter to hypothesis"...

why? I think there are three reasons:

the first - and I'm oversimplifying here
because of the limited time available to

me and also cuz sometimes

I get a kick out of oversimplifying -
first

first competition causes anxiety

when you are trying to beat someone and they are trying to beat you

you are distracted from doing the best
job you possibly can because you're

afraid someone else is gonna to step on
your face -

not because they're mean but because
that's what competition by nature requires.

second - cooperation allows people to
share their talents and their skills

and their resources in a way

that competition never does!

this organization was founded by an
astronaut - I've always

I've asked: "Oh yeah, you think we would have gotten to the moon that fast

if we weren't in a race against
the Russians? Well assuming that is a

good goal -

by the way a question that is almost
never asked when you're in a race -

but assuming it is a good goal I think we
would have gotten there an awful lot FASTER

had we been cooperating with the
russians because competition among its

other faults is redundant, it's wasteful, it's duplicative !!!!

They're solving problems we've already solved and vice versa.

only when you're able to share can you
get there faster and more efficiently.

you could share in a competition but
you'd be nuts.

It's irrational - why should I help you if your
success comes at the expense

of mine? You can't do it in a
competitive situation.

and that's the other reason why
competition is so

unproductive, so inefficient because it
doesn't allow for that.

and the third reason is - in a way the
simplest and the most subtle

at the same time: not only is the idea of
success or victory

I'm sorry: success or excellence

completely different from victory
or beating other people

not only are they conceptually different
but in actual life they pull in

opposite directions.

the more I'm focused on getting that
reward

of being number one the less I am
concerned about

what the task itself has to offer - you
remember this kid in school: oh oh oh!

waving her hand wildly, oh oh oh.
teacher finally calls on her...

what was the question again? why? because
she's not thinking about the subject matter

she's thinking about being number one and
those

often are mutually exclusive in practice
the way they feel

in addition to the way the concepts
are in themselves.

now competition in this respect shares
something destructive

with all external or extrinsic rewards.

whether it's not just a
trophy but grades or money -

the more we think of ourselves as working
for that goal

the less are we concerned about the
intrinsic motivation - what's there

in the task itself. not only

are external rewards such as competition
less effective as motivators

but in fact they UNDERMINE intrinsic
motivation.

so that people who used to find something
very interesting in its own right

once they start doing it in a
competitive fashion or for money -

you take away that money or the
competition and they suddenly lost

interest in it.

There's a whole literature in the social
psychology on this and it is very

powerful in contradicting

the ways parents and teachers and
managers have been leading

their organizations or their homes.

people have been systematically
undermining curiosity,

the single most important predictor to
success, in the hope -

in the process of trying to help
it along.

but to tell you a story quick little
anecdote that illustrates that:

There once was an

old man who was taunted by the
neighborhood school children

after they came out of school they would
walk onto his lawn and yell

"Hey ye stupid old bald-headed ugly... and so on"

and he got tired of this pretty fast, so he
came up with a plan

he said if you kids come back tomorrow
and yell those things at me I'll

pay each of you a dollar.

well I thought that was pretty good - they hadn't expected it so they came back even

earlier the next day

and they yelled even louder about how
ugly and stupid he was

and he said: " thank you here's your dollar x4

"if you come back tomorrow kids I can pay
of you a quarter"

well they thought that was still pretty good
so they came back the next day and yelled

even more loudly about how stupid and
ugly he'd pay each of them a quarter

and he said "thank you if you come back
tomorrow I can only pay each of you a penny

They said: "a penny? forget it! "and they never came
back again.

lachen

You see the serious point here??!

He bought off their intrinsic motivation and that's
exactly what competition does

that's the whole idea, that's what he was
trying to do but it's not what teachers and

managers are trying to do and it's exactly
what they're doing anyway.

those are the three reasons I think the
research shows with surprising

uniformity

that competition does not predict to
success. but competition is destructive

in another respect

and this one i think is more... requires
less evidence

and that is that competition does not
build

character - whatever that means - if we mean
by that something like

self-esteem, the evidence is crystal clear
here

I like to say that competition is to
self-esteem as

sugar is to teeth - that's what the evidence
shows.

In any competitive encounter losing is
always possible

and that feels lousy but even when
you win

you gloat for a while, you soar, you're
impossible to live with.

but you come down, in fact you crash down
and you need more of it

in order to get that same feeling - it's
precisely like building up a tolerance

to a drug.

or if I can switch metaphors it's like

drinking salt water when you're thirsty,
the solution is the problem.

the emotional needs that we attempt to
meet through competition are exacerbated

by competition, they make us more
dependent, they make our self-esteem

more contingent " I am good so long as
I beat these people in these activities"

there is no winning there. it is not the
way to solve those emotional problems.

winning doesn't do it and losing doesn't do
it - competition only makes more of itself

and there's lots of evidence suggesting
that cooperative people

are not people lost with some amorphous
pawn

some blob of a group, in fact

people who are distinguished by their
cooperativenis also tend to have

more of an internal sense that they can
control events.

that may seem surprising but the
converse should not seem surprising:

competition does not promote strong good
individualism

in the best sense of that word, it
promos dependency

because competition requires other
people,

it requires that my self-evaluation

is dependent on other people. I need you
to beat

and I need you to watch me beat him that
has nothing to do

with a strong sense of self, despite the
prejudice of

lumping together individualism and
competition. the third thing that competition

does

is it poisons our relationships with
other people.

we are envious of winners - which is
not a pleasant emotion,

we are contemptuous of losers - when you
think about it there's no nastier

epithet in the American lexicon than "loser".

I was suspicious of just about everyone -
hostile toward them - because even if you're

not my rival today

you could be tomorrow so I'm gonna hold
you at a distance from myself,

I'm gonna hold a part of myself in reserve - why should I trust you if your are my

competitor?

it's irrational and all the empirical
evidence suggests just what you would

expect:

people who compete or people in
competitive situations

communicate less effectively, are less
trusting,

are less sensitive to other people's
needs and less able to take their point

of view,

to do perspective taking, kids who are
cooperative

or adults who are cooperative find that those skills all increase

in amazing ways .

people sometimes ask: does competition
cause aggression?

competition IS aggression!

the only question is whether it will
occasionally manifest itself

in outright violent.

It is an againsting process.

We are at loggerheads, we are working at
cross-purposes

and we do it in sports and we do it
in the classroom -

both spelling B's and and and
competitive grading systems -

long after kids forget how to spell
some long word or forget who the 12th

President of the United States

was or... any of the binomial

equations... what we remember is the
fundamental lesson of any competitive

classroom which is

other people are potential obstacle to my

success. That's what we teach in competition.

and no kind of competition - not even the
parent who says

"okay you can get into the pajamas fastest?" no
competition,

not even a nice game of underhand softball
which is more underhanded than we might

suspect.

no competition at work, friendliest
employees

let alone for bonuses, none of this is innocuous, it all

strengthens and reinforces and fortifies this message that ????? sets us against

one another.

the question is not "do we need some
competition?" - the question is

"which kind is worse than the other?" and
that's why I'm

suggesting that we have to work not
merely to change our

individual selves, not merely to go to psychotherapy and look deep within

to find why I'm being competitive,

I'll tell you why you're being
competitive... because you live in a society

that demands it of you every
day of your life

and until we make structural changes it is self-diluding

to talk about the prospect of merely
working from within out -

that's good too - I heartily
recommend to you that you stop yourself

it's like

"why did I interrupt him again?", "why do I feel this need to prove how clever I am

why don't I just sit and listen and
maybe learn something?" that's great

stuff but it's not going to get very far
until we change our recreation and

our education and our workplaces and our
families

so that competition is no longer
required.

that now that's a harder task and we
americans are

very suspicious of any kind of
structural change.

we love to blame individuals: you're poor?

you're just lazy, get a job! you committed
a crime?

you're evil, put you in jail for the rest
of your lives.

kids aren't learning in school? teachers aren't any good, you need more homework, et cetera!

This lets us off the hook very easily
instead of looking at the

deeper social and economic causes of these kinds of

attitudes and these kind of behaviors and
that's what we have to change.

and I'm afraid I have to take issue as
well I'm with my colleague Sam Keen in

terms of changing the competition
between the

Soviet Union and the US so we start
competing about good stuff,

like who can feed kids most. the answer
to competition is not more competition.

any kind of competition even in
something that appears to be relatively

salutary, something felicitous,
something whose goal we all agree on -

is going to fortify those

underpinning structures that say "we have
to see who can be number one"

The genuine alternative to being
number one is not being number two

it's being able to dispense with these self-defeating rankings

altogether,

but a lot of people say: "that's all nice to talk
about -

what charming thought - but competition
is 'just part of human nature' -

it's usually with a shrug like this and a
faintly patronizing smile...

"what a charming thought,
but unfortunately it's just human nature to

be

competitive or aggressive or stubborn or
territorial or lazy or selfish.

notice, it's always the bad stuff. nobody ever
says

"well of course she helped him, it's just human
nature to be generous"

No, you don't say that. which is why
I've moved on from my work on

competition and cooperation to my next
book "the brighter side of human nature"

which will be out in the spring which
deals with issues like altruism and

empathy

and the extent to which this too is a
part - just as real,

just of natural of us. There's a lot of
evidence there that's been

collecting dust in the libraries, let me
talk briefly about

competition as just an inevitable part of
human nature...

wel the first question that occurs to me is: if
it is why do we spend so much boody time

training kids to be that way?

Would't that be redundant? what's the point?

in fact it's not redundant. I was
giving a lecture once in a hotel, I was

riding the elevator down to the basement

and two boys, little boys, in their
swimming trunks got on with her mother

and some towels,

on the way to the pool obviously, and she
looked at them and said: "so who's gonna

jump in the pool fastest?"

and they said: "we both are" and I thought
'how long can they hold out?'

Where does competition come from?

We don't need innate theories, we have
all the evidence we need in the way we

subtely and not so subtely make sure

that it's reproduced from generation to
generation, you heard the evidence about

nature,

we can't appeal to nature in order to
justify why competition exists,

in fact what happens typically and the
reason why despite all of the evidence that

has been around for quite a while that
we just heard -

the reason why we persist in this is
not only watching those exciting nature

documentaries on TV,

which I watched and I thought: well
nature is red and tooth and claw, look at

them going after each other.

You know, it's more telegenic, I'm not suggesting
those things on TV didn't really happen,

it's not like they had highly-paid stunt wolves or something,

I mean, I'm sure it really happened, but
it's not really what's going .... what happens

is that scientists live in this culture
just like you and I do

we take our understanding about social
interaction and project it on to nature

and then read it back from nature to
justify

our own social and cultural practices.
Frederick Engels said that a hundred years

ago and it's no less true today.

So you can't use nature if you look
across cultural

evidence you find the same thing, there
are some cultures without

any competition - zilch - in recreation, in
education and in economics.

Those cultures are sometimes called
rather rudely "primitive cultures" or

as I prefer to call them "non-VCR cultures".

and this doesn't mean

this doesn't mean that we can or should
be like them

what it does mean is that we need
another explanation besides our

dark side or something innate about it
to explain this stuff,

as Erik Fromm pointed out - you know "these
are the primitive cultures if anything

we expect them to be closer to nature".

so if it were in human nature to be
competitive and aggressive they should

be more so not less so.

and that's exactly right. that's exactly
right. even among Western industrialized

countries there is a range of
competitiveness

and I think that's important to
understand. early childhood learning

experiments show the same thing,

experimenters going with kids, teaching
how to cooperate in learning or in games,

they come back - other experimenters
come back - different tasks weeks or months

later

the kids have absorbed it, they like it,
they retain it.

all this is very good evidence against
the idea - by the way an idea I have not

been able to find

a shred of evidence - I've been working on
this topic for about seven years

and I have not found a shred of evidence to support this common assertion,

that competition is just part of human
nature and I went looking for it

in a lot of disciplines. now with agression we find a similar topic,

I'll be very brief about this. the fact is
that aggression isn't

isn't universal either, and even if it
were we cannot conclude from

universality that it's in the genes

that's just a clever and facile and easy
way to explain away things.

certainly there are some parts of the
brain that when stimulated

make people more aggressive or animals,
but that doesn't mean that it is

a matter of self-enclosed organisms
with a

self-contained reservoir of aggressive
energy

that has to be let out somehow, that

notion popularized by Freud and Konrad
Lorenz

has been more decisively refuted than
any other single

old wife's tale I am aware of, with
respect to human behavior, it just

is false. the ideal

of aggression being part of our
nature and thus

unavoidable... makes about as much sense as
saying that because

oxygen blankts the earth and fires need

oxygen that it's in the nature of the
planet for buildings to burn down.

it makes no sense it's a matter of
environmental situations,

even for animals in ways that I won't
get into now,

and the idea that war is just part
of human nature which Donald Granberg may

talk about later - he has done some very
interesting research

on beliefs about this - is even more
absurd. Russo said

"war is not a relation between man and
man but between state

and state, and individuals are enemies
accidentally

that's why all that amazing propaganda
stuff Sam Keen showed us

is necessary. as he points out in
his book

- I think very trenchantly - in "faces on
the enemy" - you need this propaganda because

otherwise we won't be inclined to kill -

there's no innate need for an enemy,
there's a need to understand social and

political

and economic structures and why states
get involved in this sort of process

but even if we move beyond aggression
and beyond competition to look at human

nature more generally

I think we should be very careful about
the way we use that phrase.

Qui bono? Whom does it benefit?

I want you to - if you remember nothing else of
what I say this afternoon I hope you will

remember this -

that human nature arguments

are profoundly conservative arguments
masquerading as realism.

it is a way of silencing dissent - that
is the way human nature arguments have

historically been used

and not by accident - "I like your idea
for changing the way we do things but

unfortunately the way we do things

has been legislated by nature - it's just
the way

life is."

why do we think this? well for one thing it's the easiest assumption available to us

if you look around and you see everybody
around you - you know -

in Chevy Chase, or Alexandria
living in a particular way you say "well

must be human nature to live this way".

for another thing the people turning out
the studies have been trained in terms

of genes and hormones and
neurotransmitters

and as Abe Maslow used to say: "if you give
someone a hammer they'll treat everything

they come across as if it's a nail".

that's exactly what goes on in
nationalist [inaudible].

and the media are partly responsible and
to the extent I write articles

- you know, for popular culture -
I have tried to make a point of

addressing this fact. the Seville
statement

which is quoted in your pamphlet for
this - the 1986 meeting of people from

more than a dozen countries, experts in
all social and natural sciences -

came to a meeting in Seville in 1986 and
concluded that aggression is not an

innate

fixed part of human nature. Did you hear
about that before this?

have you heard about the Seville
statement? I sure as hell hadn't.

That's because nobody in the media was interested in covering it.

one of the organizers of that - David
Adams at the Wesleyan told me -

that when he went to talk to reporters
about the importance of this finding

one of the reporters said to him: "call
us back when you find a gene for war".

That's the bias that we keep getting. Jeff
Goldstein at Temple University says

"if all you know about aggression is what
you see on TV, what you know is

nineteenth-century biology."

that's what we get and that's what we
get among the good

science reporters

who think they have their critical
faculties paralyzed every time they see

the word "neurotransmitter" -

it explains everything! there are many other
complex reasons

I won't get into now, but not only do we
assume there is a

"fixed human nature" we also assume there's a
"bad

human nature". it's a two-step argument.
the first is a kind of crass biological

determinism that you get

from Ann Landers all the way to the head
of the American Psychiatric Association

and the other is the specific belief
that this nature we have is

fundamentally flawed.

you will recognize some of the contributors to
that

in various ideologies - ranging from
orthodox psychoanalysis

to Conrad Lorenz, to the notion of
original sin

for that matter but we see
in another respects too.

One of the nicest points about this
was raised in an article (that)

appeared in Science in 1972 which i
think is just terrific

by Leon Eisenberg. Eisenberg put it very
well,

he said: "to believe that man's
aggressiveness or territoriality

is in the nature of the beast is to
mistake some men

for all men - contemporary society

for all possible societies - and by a
remarkable transformation

to justify what is as what needs must
be.

social repression becomes a response to

rather than a cause of human violence.

pessimism about man serves to maintain
the status quo,

it is a luxury for the affluent, a sop
to the guilt

of the politically inactive, a comfort to those
who continue to enjoy

the amenities of privilege." he said it
better than I can,

this is not only a mistaken belief, but a
politically loaded belief.

the reasons for this - again much too
complex to go onto in much depth -

number one: we're simply exposed to this stuff
a lot.

There was an interesting series of studies
done

by Harvey Hornstein in New York a while
ago,

in which he had subjects exposed to a
radio news report -

what they thought was a radio news
report - about something really

evil and dastardly that had
just been done, robbing some

old lady and mugging her and so on and
others happened to hear

in another experiment about - or rather
another condition at the same experiment -

about those who heard

an act of charity and then what they had
heard accidentally contributed to what

they thought when asked about human
nature!

the people who had heard about the
charitable action in the background

noise

behaved more cooperatively in a game,
expected more cooperation from others,

judged defendant(s) innocent more likely,
recommended a more lenient sentence

and believed that people in general were
more honest and helpful.

I think something else is that it's "cool"
to be cynical.

know you really want to risk, you're all out there with your guts hanging out if you say "I think

there's something good here",

that "empathy is as - that helping is as -
natural as hurting"

Dostoevsky said - one of his characters said -
"the higher the stage of development a

man reaches - the more prone he becomes
the cynicism

if only because of the increasing
complexity on his makeup."

I think a lot of us believe that, to be "cool"
- you know in a sense of fashionable - is

also to be "cool" in the sense of

disdainfully skeptical.

and then there is the false dichotomy.

I think we set up a situation in which
on the one hand are these smiley faced

pollyannas

where everything's lovely and human
nature is terrific and anybody who acts

badly just hasn't gotten in touch with

his or her real nature and so on...

I'll range from Carl Rogers to
Mister Rogers here,

and then on the other hand you've
got the people

- and they are in the majority in this
culture which is why I train most of my

my fire on them - is the people
who say they we're basically "bad" by

nature.

we have to eliminate this false dichotomy,
we have to understand that we're not

denying the real

evil that is done in our society and in
other societies

by affirming that there is more to us
than just the competitiveness

and the aggressiveness and the selfishness -
in other words: it's time

we debunk the debunkers. well these
are very big questions and i feel like by

skipping over on

so much territory I have skipped over
too much, but I will be around for the next

couple of days and would invite

those of you who you don't get a chance to
ask your question now

to do so then. I think the overall
message I am trying to urge with respect

to competition

and the notion of human nature in
general is that not only should we

change but we can.

thank you.

okay well we only have 58 here - pick a
card, any card.

"how would you wanna track meet? What instead?"

I'm not on a crusade for
the abolition of track and field events,

but if you ask me "is there a way for us
to have fun in a way that does not

involve us

trying to triumph over other people?"

I think the answer is yes. if you ask
people do you enjoy playing tennis or

squash, or watching a track meet or the
Olympics or something like that,

people say "yes" but my question is "when
have you ever experienced

a non-competitive recreational alternative?"
most of us haven't.

the first game I ever learned - I
don't know about you - was at a birthday party - it was

called "musical chairs".

X number of players scramble for X -1
chairs.

a prototype of artificial scarcity! stop the
music each time. out,

out, out,out, at the end you got one kid
sitting down [unhappy],

one kid sitting down, smug and triumphant,
everybody else excluded from playing.

"losers", unhappy. that's how you learn to have fun in America.
no wonder we can't think of any better

way to enjoy ourselves than to - [good lord
they're still coming in] -

no no wonder we can't think of any
better way to enjoy ourselves,

we never learned any other way.

there are a loads and loads of cooperative
games and I can point you if you like

to where you can find them as well as
many ways in which we can challenge

ourselves,

feel that sweaty sense of accomplishment, that ecstatic feeling of

transcendence, test our skills and limits
all without competition.

you can try to do better today than you
did yesterday or last week.

I don't call that competition, some people
call it "competing with yourself."

I don't have any objection to that, unless you get carried away with it to the point

you're never enjoying yourself,

but in general that's fine, but the need
to try to struggle against another

person is not necessary

for a good time any more than it is

to be productive or to learn.

Let's see... "aren't some situations inherently

unavoidably - I guess that's supposed to be -
competitive such as a shortage of jobs

for professors et cetera?

how can we structure things so that people in
selective careers

are not locked in a destructive,
competitive motivational structure?"

That's a very important question,

unfortunately we don't have time. (Laughing)

No, there is no easy answer to this.

you know, the first thing to be
said is that the arrangement we have

that looks like a pyramid,

specifically in corporations

and to some extent in terms of our
universities too - I mean,

god did not decree that organizations
have to be shaped like pyramids.

the idea that in order to do well one
must get up into a scarce position, the

number of people available to do these
tasks,

and the number tasks are - excuse
me - are socially

constructed decisions. I live in
Boston where the parking is even worse

than here.

you know, there's one space there's two
cars you look at it and you say

"there's no choice but to compete". well
yes, if you freeze the frame and only look

at that,

but you ask "who decided the number of
parking spaces?

who decided the quality of mass transit?
who made all these decisions that led to

that situation in which you have

two people competing for the same job or
two cars competing for the same

space

and so on. I don't have a recipe and this
goes for business and economic concerns

either,

I don't know how we can in four easy
lessons transform our economic system

into one that's cooperative and productive
and democratic.

I don't know the answer, I'm not
satisfied with my own response any more

than you probably are,

but I know that we haven't even begun to ask
those questions!

the service I perform - if indeed it is a
service - is the very modest one of

saying "let's sweep out the myths that have
been keeping us from asking those

questions"

and that goes for the structure in
the universities as well.

"aside from passive resistance à la
Gandhi and King,

what non-competitive strategies can we
use to alter the behavior

of those obsessed with political control,
those who use violence to compete for

power

as in China?" well I'm not sure why we
should sweep aside Gandhi and King

because I think they have more to tell
us than the specific, localized

strategies that they did give us.

which is to say we can learn a lot from
them and it may be appropriate.

there's a fellow who teaches at Harvard
in southeastern Massachusetts University

named Gene Sharp, I commend to you his
works in telling us about

useful, effective, powerful use of

non-violent resistance.

this is a good example of why conflict
should not be swept out -

there was no one more concerned
about conflict

than Gandhi except perhaps King, they
were engaged in a kind a fight,

they just refused to use violence there.

a controlled, disciplined form of
resistance.

we can alter the behavior of other
people by bringing it to their attention

but also by doing it from the ground up.
that isn't to say I have an easy

solution for what was going on for the
tragedy in China,

or for the - at least equally if not
much greater -

tragedy of soldiers killing
students and children in various US

supported regimes around the world as
well

which is conveniently forgotten on the
talk shows - but in all of those cases I

think we have to be very careful about
saying /

we can't just say "what do I do now? I
need to grab a gun."

but rather how can we raise children so
they don't grow up reproducing the same

ineffective strategies?

it is a tragedy, a tragedy

that people say "you know I agree with
you that competition is destructive but

look, you gotta fit in. you've gotta raise
kids to adapt, to become competitive."

You ask me why competition endures if it's not
human nature -

that's why! but not only are you doing
your child a disservice,

or your students but you're also
perpetuating the same kind of

garbage in the next generation. kids
should be raised and taught to know

what competition is,

but there's a big difference between
engaging in it uncritically

and identifying it and knowing what it's
about so you can choose not to do it.

and that's the attitude we take about
religion in the public schools,

we can teach about religion without
indoctrinating.

the same thing is true here. I'll
make a crazy suggestion: I think the

evidence is so powerful and uniform

on competition that we should teach kids
explicitly about the dangers,

just as we teach about the dangers of
alcohol or drugs or driving

recklessly.

don't only teach them cooperatively,
teach them why you're teaching them

cooperatively.

"Does your tirade..."

- you know I am passionate about this, I
i make no excuse for that -

(applause)

I don't know if you're applauding the question or me but
who cares?

I'm passionate about this and I hope you
don't misinterpret the idea

of this passion for either lack of
empirical support - which is in the book

and I didn't want to bore you with it - or with the sense that, you know, I'm

trying to compete myself!

some people have accused me of that, not
perhaps understanding the difference

between thinking in a passionate way

and trying to wave the banners for
this sort of thing

to get people to change the way they
look at these questions on the one hand,

and wanting to defeat other people
rather than opening up a dialogue on it,

which I hope is what I
wanna do one way or the other.

"Does your tirade suggest that socialist
cultures are more conducive to

fulfillment

than capitalist cultures?" It depends what
socialist cultures

you mean. I gave lectures in Sweden last year and looked

around for a while

and yes I would say that that is a
culture - if you define it as socialist - as

being

far more conducive to human fulfilment
than this one. if you're talking of the

soviet union

I don't regard them as socialist. I don't
think any right thinking person who has read Marx

would,

I think it's a conspiracy between the
leaders of the US and the leaders of the

Soviet Union to call them
"socialists"

each for their own purposes. I have
no sympathy for that,

I'm delighted to the extent of moving
toward more democratization.

But if we're talking about a totalitarian,
grey, unproductive structure - I don't

want that

but you know if you can only see in
black and white it's time to buy a new

TV,

you know, there are other possibilities here.

"Scott Peck in the 'Road less traveled'
claims there is no altruism.

He pulls in seven hundred people per
lecture, please comment."

Donald Trump pulls in fifty thousand
times more dollars than I do - what am I

supposed to say about that?

He claims that there is no... because -
I haven't read Scott Peck, I'll be honest

with you - but if he's claiming that there
is no such thing as altruism...

uh, that seems to me it might implicitly
suggest

that it is an apology. it allows you to
live your life in

relative ease without worrying about
what else is going on, I don't know that Scott Peck

claims this

but anyone who claims that is making a
very sexy saleable message,

that allows one to stroke him or herself
with saying "Yeah I'm doing okay! there's

no reason why I have to help

and let me on the subject of altruism
also note that very destructive is the

way we limit - circumscribe artificially -
the way we

understand that word too, to bring back
full circle to what I was saying about

conflict and so on, and cooperation.

when we hear altruism [inaudible] - that's a
problem...

altruism only means - at least way I look
at it - that I helped you

only to help you, that goes on every day
and to the extent

we cordoned it off to the Saints we allow
ourselves to recline into a life of

self-aggrandizement with a clean conscience.

"I don't have to be altruistic, I can't be like
Mother Theresa with the lepers therefore

I can do whatever the hell I want".

"How can we address the impact of sexual
stereotyping which particularly expects

males to be competitive?"

I have a whole chapter on this in in my book
and

I have to say that one of the things that
troubles me more deeply than anything

else

is the idea that women have been urged
in the last couple of decades to be as

obnoxiously competitive as menn under
the banner of liberation.

I feel that I have as a man an aweful
lot to learn

from some values traditionally
associated with women,

of relationship and cooperation and so on
and it pains me very deeply that

that has been turned around, that
instead of men becoming the students

they're becoming the teachers.

it serves no one's interest and it's not
in my view a

productive response to sexism which
is very real

to become as the people whom we are

trapped by. you know, in a
sentence:

everything that men do is not worth
imitating just as men are doing it.

You know what I mean? In the early part of this century

women said "how how come only men get to smoke,

it's not fair!

And they're right, it isn't fair! Every single
opportunity open to men should be open

to women

but we can't leave it at that. the
question is - you know -

"do I want to go in? where is in?" anyone
on the outside wants that,

you know, and it's very difficult for me,
it's a hard issue

because I am not by any means urging any
kind of a reactionary back to the

- you know - women get back to the
kitchens where you belong - I'm suggesting

that we

only [inaudible] opportunities open to us but
we don't need more competition,

we need less of it, by men as well as
women.

you know now today, to continue with that brief
metaphor, women have lung cancer rates

that are

equal to that of men, congratulations. that's not liberation,

that's not a response to sexism, that's
buying into the structure.

now we address the sexual stereotyping
by making sure

that these norms of cooperation

become the norms to which everyone
aspires, men as well as women.

these are very deep, but there is
zero evidence that any of this stuff

if inborn or in the genes, I have gone
through the literature on sex roles with

respect to aggression,

nurturing and competition pretty
carefully and all the claims are really

unsubstantiated to the effect that we can
shrug it off as being a function of

testosterone.

in one sentence I will tell you that a
lot of studies saying

that testosterone levels and other
hormonal levels

are not merely causes of behavior but
the effects of

behavior, when you change various
organisms like -

like some apes and chimps -

and move them into different dominance
hierarchies, the testosterone level

changes.

biology is not merely the cause, it is
also the reflection

but that unfortunately challenges our
simplistic idea

of determinism.

Last one.

I'm giving into the same temptation to make it a
good one.

alright I see the irony.

"Will you speak

a bit about the role of
challenge [inaudible] competition and/or

cooperation"

Uhm, sure. I'm a big believer in challenge.

the only question I ask - and I'll say this again - is whether challenge has

to exist at some other people's expense.
does it have to be a

zero-sum game? It is competitive

thinking that is responsible not only
for a lot of obnoxious people that we

both know,

but for the potentially most deadly form
of competition

altogether which is the arms race that
that threatens to extinguish all of us.

the assumption that when the soviets
offer us an arms control initiative it's

good for them and

therefore bad for us, is exactly the sort
of thinking that will annihilate us

and merely moving that competition to other
arenas doesn't change the thinking,

we have to do that in other ways and the
way we have to do it in particular

is thinking of challenges that we can
meet - number one - at least

without competition and sometimes that
means working independently,

but number two - more significantly - with
others

because challenges often apply as [INUADIBLE, next speaker] i think is about to tell you

and behavior is often construed and
challenges available to us

understood in terms of us. Not us
versus

them but us. cooperation does not require

simply working together in one group in
order to triumph against

other groups, that's all we know in this
country:

basketball games, international rivalries,

companies, [inaudible] distorted.

a truncated version of cooperation does
not require

intergroup competition. we can understand
challenge without

ever appealing to notions of besting
other people and we can also do it

even better by working with other people
to accomplish mutual goals.

thanks.