Is Competition Killing Us? The battle between Creativity and Competition.

Competition is killing Creativity.

How is competition killing Us?

Every hour a student commits suicide in India. Over 30 students commit suicide in a day.  Over 35,000 Students have committed suicide from 2019-2021.

What is wrong with our society?

Is competition killing us?

On competition v/s Creativity I lean towards creativity.

I will share why you should prefer Creativity over Competition.

Through four different illustrations, I will share how “Competition curtails our growth”. How “Competition is Killing Us” and why it is not good for the survival of society.

Ecomomist v/s Psychologist

Economists and Psychologists argue over this point. Economist says that competition incentives innovations where whereas Psychologists argue that Pressure to perform kills creativity. Where I don’t completely disagree with the economists but I will lean towards the Psychologists. Here are four Points against the competition.

How competition is killing us:

1.      We are born Creative, but competition has made us dull.  In schools, we are taught only the past. We are taught History, and in English, we are asked to memorize stories and poems of the past. We are asked to solve problems in Maths that have been already solved, and we are taught physics which has already been published.  We are not allowed to discover. All we have to do is swallow the past and compete with friends in throwing it out on paper. We never learn to be creative in school.

When I was in school, I never enjoyed learning. Why?

Let us understand it.

Suppose you have a Maths problem. Now we are constantly told we have to score good marks. What is the simplest way to score good marks in the short term?

Simply try to memorize the solution to the problem. Therefore while in school,

I have never learned to be creative. And when we are not creating something new, our life isn’t exciting.

How do you enjoy a dull life?

2.      Competition forces Society to criticize us for being wrong: We can't be creative if we are afraid of being wrong. But society won't support that. And we are afraid of going against the society.

Maya was four years old. She took up the pencil and started to scribble. But her parents were worried.

Why?

Because Maya was scribbling with her left hand.

As Maya grew she always preferred to write with her left hand. But her parents won't allow that. Writing with the left hand was stigmatized. Left-handed people were considered unlucky. 

Under pressure, Maya picked up writing with her Right Hand.

But her parents didn't know, - Bill Gates, Steve Jobs, Mark Zuckerburg, Ratan Tata, Sachin Tendulkar, Barack Obama, Oprah Winfree, Amithabh Bachchan all were left-handed. The list famous left-handed persons is endless.

Some studies suggest that left-handed people are more intelligent and creative than right-handed people.

But we are so busy competing with each other, we are afraid to take a creative step. What if it doesn’t work? How will society react?  What if others get ahead in life? Will society still accept me?

3.      Competition forces us to think of short-term goals: It narrows down our vision.

I have been guilty of killing the creativity of my students. I guide students for GATE – A competitive engineering exam for getting selected into PSUs and IITs for Masters. I teach Engineering Mechanics and Machine Design.

Being a competitive exam, they have to complete many things in a very short time. I ask them to stay on track, not study what is not told. Whenever they try to do something differently, I ask them not to.

Why I am doing this?

Because if they learn something not asked in the Test, they don’t get credit for it.

This is what competition does to us. It forces us to focus only on the short-term goals.  

The problem is not having short-term goals. Short-term Goals are also important.

The problem is we have never learned to develop long-term goals. 

And it is the long-term goals that help us substantially change our lives.

4.      Competition has killed our Education System: Our education system is obsessed with competition. We grade students to measure their competitiveness. Students with high marks get the status of being superior. In school, every student is taught the same subject in more or less the same way, irrespective of individual talents and interests. And then we are made to compete for the same goals, ‘Marks’.

Manish my cousin has a creativity level beyond imagination.

When he was 8 years old,

Once he screamed to call his mother who was talking with some guests.  “Mother come here, you need to see this. Snake had laid eggs in the garden”.

Everybody was terrified and rushed tom see it. They even decided to call a Snake catcher. And suddenly the housemaid from m the kitchen shouted, “Maam, Manish has stolen some eggs from the kitchen”

 My cousin fled away at his top speed.

He had taken some eggs from the kitchen, dug a hole in the garden, and buried the eggs.

This is just one of the many creative acts by Manish.

 mm

But as he grew, he could not transfer his creativity to his studies.

Could you tell me why? 

Well who has time for creativity, Manish had to compete with his friends to get good marks and get a good Job.

No one cared about the talents and interests Manish had.

Everybody pushed in the same direction.

As we grow, society becomes blind to our creativity. All they know is to compare us with others. And we are criticized if we fall behind in this competition.

It's important to note that competition doesn't always kill creativity. In some cases, healthy competition can spur innovation by motivating individuals or organizations to push beyond their comfort zones and strive for excellence.

But in today's rat race in competing against each other, we are killing our creativity. It is through creativity that the world could be a better place in the future, not through competition.