The Last One Standing

Competition is the act of striving against others or yourself for the purpose of achieving dominance.
It’s a cut throat game of winners and losers. And we’ve all been a little of both. The individual is society and creates it. If you want to change society, change yourself. I cannot say competition is no good without being called a socialist, and even I do not believe its completely bad. Like other subjects it is a relative concept, beyond law. I’ve won and I’ve lost. And in my current relationship with society, I feel as if I’m the last kid picked in dodge ball, but with competition (or should I call it survival?) I will eventually reach some level of tolerability with my lot. Competition, in our culture, is now accepted as a friendly concept. He is the one you invite over for drinks and has a great golf swing. It brings about innovation. It brings misery. That is why I refer to it as a relative concept, there can be no judgment that this is good, this is bad. Most job screener tests ask whether you think healthy competition is good. It’s a silly question, and we know the “right” answer. To even get a job now days you have to betray what you think, your sensible mind. Like that hallmark ethics question about your dying wife/son/dog needing medication to which it becomes necessary to steal. We know the right thing to do, but societal right. Are we being extorted into going against what we think? For we think if we do not put the "right" answer, we will not get the job? To be comfortable in this world, you have to conform to the standards of the culture you're in. We want survival, satisfaction. I want a good wage, no worries about paying bills, but to get what is necessary to survive, we have to betray ourselves.Arm-wrestling with the invisible hand of economics...

...This extension beyond ourselves to power, dominance brings the problems of modern society. “He that fails in his endeavors after wealth or power will not long retain either honesty or courage.”

I was thinking how we express ourselves, how we’ve become to express ourselves due to our conditioning. To say you are good at something perpetuates societal misery.

There is a difference between: knowing you’re good, expressing that you’re good, and not caring if you’re good. If I come across to you and tell you I’ am a good writer, a good athlete, an industrious person, it might be to you that I am implying that I have surpassed you. It stirs envy within you, and hence competition, and misery between us all. Even though you didn’t express it maliciously, you contribute to making society worse. Your gentle rain of pride has created puddles of envy that people step in. Your expressions are also geared toward vanity, setting yourself higher. Your craving to be appreciated. You want others to know how good you are, comment to the effect, and become PR for you. Its for others to decide. Some might say, “God what an asshole.” Others might follow you. And it becomes a sad state, because you read the books but never write them. The leader’s system is good enough for you, you follow under it, but will never know the bliss of freedom under conditioning, under system. You won’t know how joyous and frightening it is to stand alone.

People hate those who make them feel their own inferiority.

Knowing I’m good is more tolerable to others, but quietism is yet just another form of very refined hypocrisy. Not saying anything about how good you are is an expression too. You’re expressing something without saying anything. You don’t have your sword drawn, but everyone can see its on your belt. It is more admirable than the ostentatious prior, and I see it as a progressive step up. We start at the first, then with either humility, wisdom, maturity we move to this state. Hidden pride is tolerable-to others at least. Would that make you cooperative on the outside but competitive in? My pride is still there inside, and I would have to live with this disease. There may be peace outside, and others might admire the mask, but it covers all hell that’s breaking lose inside. I suppose there is a glimmer of hope, because knowing, living with the disease is the only way to be free of it, and through that small window, you might come to…

Not caring if you’re good. The Effortless. Strange Industry. One of the most prevalent quotes that has lodged itself within me is “Effort is the antithesis of grace.” The mark of a great artist is that everything seems to be done without effort. The most elusive of the paths, and you have to walk it alone. Undertaking no activity yet nothing is left undone. Producing and rearing things but not taking possession of it, without taking pride in it. Do what you feel needs to be done, then leave it. Giving up the “desire to force, direct, premeditate, and strangle the outside world within me and outside of me in order to be completely open, responsible, aware, alive.” I think this is the highest state, and not many people reach it before they die. But these are the high born of society, they create no misery that makes society worse. Maybe they cause no harm because they are outside of society, out of system. Ex Stasis. Ready to live, ready to die. I haven’t come to understand it completely, I know something is there, so I’ll keep searching. But like being lost in the woods, when we think we’ve found it, we’ll be either horrified or ecstatic to find out we’re at the same place we had started. That return, the center, the true self?