“But the most important things in life, the most vital and electric things that enrich the human experience into something greater than anything the most competitive of Darwin’s finches could hope for, are not to be found in competition. Love and companionship, in spite of and through hardship, will not be acquired through a sperm bank sorted by SAT score. The terror and the tenderness of parental love will not be enhanced by private schools charging Ivy-League tuition. The ecstasy and the groundedness of religious devotion cannot be obtained at the expense of another. In fact, each of these can only be obtained by looking beyond the personal immediacy of competition to recognizing ourselves as in relationship, embedded in community.
It is just this community that the competitiveness cult threatens, by driving us to instrumentalize ourselves and our lives.” – Jonathan Coppage, The Cult of Competitiveness
“In business, we need to confront the pressure to become nothing more than instruments of competition, we need culture that helps us find common cause, to express our desire for meaning and purpose, and to share challenges without struggling among ourselves for the spoils.” – An Unexamined Taboo: The Centrality Of Competition
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