Competition focuses, reaches, catches, traps, evolves, gives, takes, glorifies, laughs. Competition is a god.
Competition is like love. I don’t want to give it up! Like love, competition puts the fun in everything. Competition makes games. Games make fun. Fun makes community.
Think, Olympics without competition.
Imagine only one football team.
Games, all about not winning?
Business, drooping like some Communism.
Events, not planed to out-do the one before.
Competition is god. Sometimes though, we stand up to god. We can pick how we want to worship. We get to say what games we want to play. Vote with our feet.
The game where a few smart and amazingly talented people beat the rest of the world at the Monopoly is not fun. The point of a game is fun right? Fun on both sides. When the game is over, it stops. Or when we say it’s over, it stops. It’s a game. We made the rules, remember?
Play a new game.
Tug of war is no longer fun when it’s people against a machine. Maybe this game got dropped from the Olympics for good reason.
Give us bread lest we die.
It’s that old story. Growing up I always thought the protagonists that the God in the Bible Stories helped were the good guys.
But Joseph Sold Into Egypt he was more like a Red Ocean dreamer of dreams. So, like Warren Buffet, he could tell what the economy was going to do. We get the story that his prognostication was fair and based on the weather. Maybe so. In that case, so is the economic climate: There was going to be an inflation then a drop. So he invested and bought up all the corn. Yeah, people ate nothing but corn.
Then when the Great Depression err famine came he did the usual.
The people spent all their money on food the first year of the seven-year famine, Great Depression.
Second and third years people traded their cattle for food.
Next years their land.
Then the clincher: Give us bread else we die!
So, our righteous Joseph-Sold-into-Egypt accepted the lives of everyone in the kingdom in exchange for feeding them. Viola!
He was the king’s deputy. Kings are servants of their people. Not the other way around. They got their jobs backwards.
I don’t know if a God did or didn’t give him the heads up or the vision of patterns and the wisdom to save the world from starvation. Enslaving everyone was not necessary, though. Or was it? It was four hundred years later that, well surprise, Joseph’s own descendants are enslaved to the system that he started when he might have just served.
They wanted out of slavery and vicious miracles got them out in our Exodus Bible story.
Key to being enslaved is both sides play the game.
Oh, so you want just you and the Pharaoh to be left alive then?
You lose us, you lose your kingdom. Ayn Rand glorifies this outcome. In her popular novel Atlas Shrugged, just a Pharaoh and a Joseph and a mighty girl are left after they didn’t help the people. Try and get dumber than that. No one else was worth it. Some folks do seem to think that is a great story. (Note: I was one of them. People change.)
“Give us liberty or give us death!”
It’s just an attitude, as opposed to:
“Give us bread else we die!”
People are more important than game rules. Rules and games are for people. People matter. Public servants are for people. Smart ones are great gifts to all of us. Smart people matter just as much as not-smart-in-that-way, people.
Joseph and Warren Buffet can serve and care and offer their gifts how their hearts desire.
We have hearts, too. We can dictate what we experience and believe by consciously making choices.
We don’t have to sacrifice liberty to live. We don’t have to kill anyone, or die.
My childhood hero Joseph Sold into Egypt no longer impresses me.
Re-living re-rewriting this same story now.
Heroes, step up.
In response to WordPress The Daily Post
Daily Prompt: Competition
http://dailypost.wordpress.com/2013/03/24/daily-prompt-competition/
waywardspirit 
Heroes step up! Yes!
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You’re awesome for writing this Wayward!
Corporate Manifest Destiny. Couldn’t have chosen better words.
I’m setting up!
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Funny. I read the word backwards and envisioned setting up for battle or for the ultimate change and adventure.
I don’t know which one I like better now.
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And so we have the coeval failure of Economics & Religion (if they are not one-&-the-same) at the same time as the break-down of morality & ethics…… Only an unseen, unpredictable success of imagination will move us forward to a point where we can say, “Of course that’s the answer, it’s obvious when you think about it…..”
It’s not the system of the machines that will change our world, it’s the imagination to see them afresh & the courage to begin pulling the levers.
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unpredictable success of imagination will move us forward to a point where we can say, “, Of course that’s the answer, it’s obvious when you think about it…..”
= Inspiration, shift, Miraculous, Quantum, superpower, destiny, superhero, Way, Buddha, Christ, intervention, creating new world, fluke, unexpected, unpredictable, chaos, edge, tipping point explosion, infinite possibility, improbability drive, serendipity ,Spirit, Life, unpredictable, a good story!
And everything I missed….plus what can’t be calculated.
I think I’ll let all this handle stuff for me. : )
I’ll just do what I do best and love the hell out of you Hugo. : D
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Now I shall hide behind the couch until I stop blushing.
😘
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Love the spirit in it, Waywardspirit. 🙂
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Kindred!
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Waywardspirit, here is the comment you requested from our Defining Success thread:
I agree that by “losing the rat race” (which I interpreted as losing the desire to compete within common American culture), we are, to use your words, redefining ourselves and creating new worlds. How we do this in the face of such a strong competing force is a great question. Off the top of my head, I think that we need to create a culture that celebrates not only questions, but the change that questions generate (the new worlds). It’s very easy to say and much more difficult to accomplish.
I think it starts with each individual interaction and grows from there. It starts from within our own subcultures. I saw on the news tonight that 58% of Americans now favor same-sex marriage. It took a long time, and there is still a long way to go, but think that about that number. More than half. Five years ago that would be unthinkable. And, though this is old news, an African-American president was elected to a second term as President of the United States.
Both of the above examples are, to my mind, the work of subcultures keeping at it and working tirelessly to help others see their truth. Different paths were tried, dead ends were reached and courses redirected, and people suffered. But persistence pays off.
I suspect that you are already creating a subculture that is driving the change you want to see in the world. What are the things that you are doing to celebrate questions and define new worlds? How can you help others do the same? Perhaps in small, incremental steps, you can lead others to your truth and ensure that our artists starve no more. There are likely several ways to get to that place, and I’m not sure any of us can know any of those paths. The only thing that I think we can do is live by example. What does that example look like for you? How can you help others understand it and make a transition?
(I love the idea of “feeling questions.” I’ve never heard it spoken that way before – thank you for that gift.)
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such insight –Key to being enslaved is both sides play the game
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How do you know stuff like this and why doesn’t everyone?
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Miss, I went through your posts, and it was my privilege, for you write brilliantly. Absolutely adore your direct manner of expression!
You can write as well.
To use a puerile and outmoded form of expression, hi5.
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The Bible, Ayn Rand, Douglas Adams, – that’s quite a reading list right there.
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