I Must Be the Best or Let's Pull Through This Together?

     When I log into Facebook and view my homepage, I often see this type of post. It is this: "Please vote for my photo, my video, my blog or my Facebook page, to enter the Top 10." I have usually not paid attention to these online appeals; I don't take part in such voting unless someone asks me, directly, to cast my vote for the person's material. Many times, I find that the sites where such votes are cast are not user-friendly or I find it tough to navigate. It is clear that our mentality of aspiring to be the best, has also made its way all over the World Wide Web. Surprise? For competitive people make up the Web.
     Sometimes, as I did yesterday when I was visiting one person's page, I will see a post where a person will proudly proclaim, "My blog or my Facebook page has been voted to enter the Top 10! Thank you, everyone, for voting for me and supporting me!" What is the value of such a distinction, except to the page or blog owner and to their loyal supporters? What is the point of being in the Top 10 unless it is going to do something practical for you? And sometimes, people will requests votes, saying that if you cast your vote for them and they "win," they may "win" an expense-paid trip or a sum of money. Well, I still wonder. Maybe this is just me.
     In my own social networking experience, I find myself getting sucked into the mentality, that I am doing something wrong or I am missing something, if my posts do not get comments or few of them. And on birthdays, it seems like it's almost a contest of seeing how many birthday greetings a user can get. I have seen users post with pride, the day (s) after their birthdays, "I have received so many hundreds of birthday greetings! I did not know I was so popular!" And now Facebook's new feature, I understand, lets a user know how many friends write on that user's page for that user's birthday? Social networks have become, as so much of life is, a contest to see who "comes out on top" and beats the competition." It's not only an effort to "keep up with the Joneses" (bad enough) but to "outpace the Joneses" (worse).
     I'm not against incentives or pushing people to do their best through the use of these. In the workplace, we know that "Employee of the Month" is a popular incentive to spur workers to do their best for companies. It's okay to implement such incentives as long as everyone has a level playing field in striving for the mark of distinction and it is made clear that the competition is to be one's own personal best, not to be someone else's best. And yes, I'm aware the competition is par for the course in many fields in entertainment, sports and the arts (music, singing, writing, modeling). Events like beauty pageants are just one example, as is American Idol where there are finalists and one "winner." But we understand that, more more today, most of the entire job market, because of limited resources, has also become very competitive. For many positions, there are far more applicants than there are jobs for them. This has become so bad that personality tests and other screening tools, are used simply to get rid of applicants!
     And competition starts early in life and certainly when a child enters school, getting more intense through the years. As a child growing up, I remember that, according to old childhood records I had read, I was a "sore loser and unable to cope with defeat." Well, when my developmental issues hindered my performance to the effect that I rarely won anything, it was hard not to take an "attitude" about losing. I'm all for children learning to embrace the reality that, in life, we all lose sometimes and that defeat is not the end of the world, to pick up one's self and move on. But how is a child (or anyone) supposed to handle it when being subjected to an unlevel playing field means a constant experience of losing? For I remember that I was always picked last for teams. School team sports for me, as they have traditionally been for so many children with developmental issues, were miserable and pounded into me the notion that I was just not good enough and that if you could not "make the team" you were bad.  
     Yes, team sports, in school and at all levels of education and in life, have traditionally been widely praised for building character, not to mental building and maintaining physical strength and co-ordination. And I know that being active in sports has been an invaluable experience for many young people, including for youth from troubled backgrounds who will find team sports to be their only outlet. It has helped them not only have better childhoods but has often helped them find rewarding and good-paying careers. But there is where these young people presumably have the aptitude for playing competitive team sports. But team sports should not become a sources of torment, as they have traditionally have been for so many children with developmental challenges, where the playing field is not level.
     In school as in life, incentives are a good thing when the playing field is made level. The traditional school "honor roll" is a main example, where students are motivated to earn good grades, which will help determine their success in life. But we know that many students don't have the aptitude to make top grades just as many others don't have the aptitude to shine in sports. The idea should be to motivate all students (and all people) to do their best, but in competition with self, not others.
     This competition madness is part of the free world and is not going to go away in this life. But when we see other people as our competition whom we have to outdo, we are not going to like them well. Even on social networks, I find myself getting caught up in this mentality. Early in my Facebook experience, I would pay close attention to my "friends" list count, finding myself measuring how many "friends" I had in my social network as compared to others. So silly! And even now, though I know better, I'll find myself comparing the "likes" I have garnered on my Facebook pages to those which others have garnered on their pages. 'Fess up time!
     My mom has been fond of sharing a rather humorous story of how, when she and her sister (my aunt) were growing up, they would measure their drinks before drinking them. But this just shows how competition has made its way into everything. Even in my current petition drive, I find myself comparing my petition campaign to that of so many others who have been able to gather many thousands of signatures. Yes, a sheer volume and quantity of signatures is impressive. But this does not factor in that names can be duplicated, especially if users cannot remember if they have signed the petition before or if a user has more than one account. And signatues, in and of themselves, say little about the thoughts and feelings of the petition signer.A petition drive has more impact if it is combined with letter-writing. Therefore, further down the road of my petition campaign, when summer is over, I plan to organize a Facebook "event" as a mass "write-in" or "call-in" to  legislators. This would be where supporters can copy/paste a pre-composed letter by me, inserting their own thoughts and stories, and send it to their legislators with their provided contact information. Or they can send their own messages. But getting back to my earlier point, I know that I need to stress quality over quanity, including in this petition drive. Stressing quality over quanity should reduce the drive to compete.
      It seems that the only things that convince us to stop competing with each other and to expect more from co-operation than competition, are need, poverty and tragedy. I recall that, years ago, one evening I was viewing a news channel. The topic of coverage was a weather diasaster in a certain region where an anchor from a competiton station, had been at the time. The anchor, who was discussing the disaster, had said: "This anchor is with our competition but when you consider a tragedy like this, you see people as human beings and not as competitors. Therefore, our prayers are with this anchor, his family and everyone else in the wake of this disaster."
     I understand that in Third World countries, like throughout Africa, the synonym for suffering and want, the emphasis is not on competition but on co-operation. For example, in school, students don't know the fierce competition for grades that is rampant in the free world. When one student excels, everyone celebrates and it is not an occasion for anyone else's relative lack of success. In such countries where education is a scarce resource and can't be taken for granted, getting to go to school is victory enough for any student. Suffering and want have a way of bringing people together and causing us to embrace the truth that we are all in this situation together.
     The whole idea behind the Special Olympics is to give every athlete, no matter how limited, every opportunity to achieve success. It is sad that, in many circles, competition is so much a part of our culture that enrollong kids with special needs in Special Olympics is often seen as a stigma or "holding them back." The Special Olympics is all for their athletes doing their best but the competition is with themselves and not with anyone else. After a competition, each athlete is hugged and congratulated, not only the "winners." No one is allowed to feel like a "loser" or bad.
     In the Scriptures, we are told to outdo each other in showing each other honor. How's that?
     A week or so ago, at the end of a news clip, a moving video was played. In this video, a four-year-old girls was comforting her dad, a professional athlete,who was obviously dejected at his team having lost the game they were playing.
     This says it all.