Is competitiveness a "human-nature," or a cultural construct? (That is the question)
I bet Darwinians would say it's human nature to be competitive, considering Charles Darwin's concept of "survival of the fittest." There's a lot of competition going on in this planet, too many to count, in fact. We see it in every species of animal and plants. Human is included--yes--we are competitive being. We compete with other animal and plants. Science, I suppose, studies animal and plants behaviors to understand how they work, up to the molecular level so that we are able "control" them. We are scared over things we can't control (I don't know about you, but I am). I think this is something that I(we?) can't fathom completely (or psychologically?), the "fact" that we are driven by fear. We are afraid not to be "the fittest," merely because being the fittest means to survive, to live. Instead of physically evolving into the "fittest" version of human, in order to survive the environments on Earth, we evolve "intellectually," and then manipulate our environment to survive. And YES, manipulating our natural environments disturb "NATURE," hence the consequences we're to dealing with today (the extinction of other species, GLOBAL WARMING...etc).
Going back to my question (cause I can go on rambling about this), YES, I think we are "naturally" competitive, and YES competitiveness is also a cultural construct. We are wired to be competitive simply to survive. But culturally, we are taught to be competitive over certain things that we can actually live without. For example, women and beauty. Ancient Chinese cuture: small feet is beauty, therefore foot binding was a must. Instead of being the fittest, women became the weakest with bound feet. Of course, politically speaking, men wanted to keep (imprisoned?) women inside the house the whole time. Today, kids at school compete to be the best student. This is debatable because sometimes competition at school can be healthy, for it could positively force kids to develop their intellects (and this, of course, also depends on the education system). But up to a certain level, competitiveness in school can lead to cheating (desperate to win), psychologically and emotionally unstable (envy), which I believe could lead to bullying...and so on, but most significantly, I strongly believe that it could limit creativity. Because when students (and every human being) focus on being the best student in class, and the straight A's, they are limiting themselves into seeing what's beyond being the best student, and what's around them. They stop exploring the world, questioning, discussing, challenging and playing with possibilities. In short, we are "mechanized" to strive for goals set by our society, which one of them would be "TO BE RICH!"
Elizabeth Gilbert recently posted on her Facebook, "But here's the thing I've realized over time: You can be ambitious without being competitive. Competitive means: 'I will beat you at EVERYTHING.' Ambitious means: 'I will strive for excellence.' " And everyone should have their own definition of excellence, one that is not influenced by the society (family and friends and the world). Let's try this and I think the world would be much more interesting, and hopefully better.