At the risk of pissing off hockey fans, I find this terribly amusing.
Just go, Canucks. Just go.
Let me add though, that despite my ranting I have nothing against non-competitive, amateur hockey, any more than I have against the same kind of bowling, tennis, and Dr Mario.
I’m not pissed off. I find it incredibly amusing and some day after you’re dead (of natural causes — it’s not a threat!) we’ll dissect your obviously mutated brain to figure out what mutated in it to make you hate competition so much.
Maybe it’s just psychological, but my theory is that you’re a mutant offshoot of humanity, one that will never survive in the long run.
Now I’m off to play some non-competitive road hockey in Chilliwack. I think we’re doing it every Sunday at noon from now on (weather permitting) so if you’re interested in that, let me know.
Nobody will survive in the long run.
I play non-competitive tennis on Sundays (and Saturdays) but thanks for the offer!
i’ve been reading your various “I hate hockey/patriotism” posts.
it would appear (from my point of view) that the problem you have isn’t actually with the act of competition between individuals/teams, it is with the behaviour of the people that rally behind those individuals/teams. would it be more accurate to say that you dislike the tribal “us against them” clique mentality of the supporters and their sometime inappropriate actions rather than the actual act of competitive sport? or do i have it wrong?
personally i have no problem with competition. it has its place in the world and without competition, there would be less (or even no) incentive to strive to do better. however, like all things, when there is too much it becomes a problem. no where is that more obvious than in the English Premier League where football (soccer) fans take it to a whole new level than Canadian hockey fans.
i know you are joking (somewhat) with your picture but getting rid of the Canucks to stop competitive sports would not be the solution. humans will rally behind something else, like music or religion. as for what is the solution, well i’m at work and don’t really have the time to get into it. sufficed to say, the extreme emphasis on winning needs to be addressed.
Banks! as the voice of reason?!? And here I thought he was just a hot guy in a rock band, who knew!?
As for those competitive wankers, phooey, I’m off to play WoW And LotR Online! For the Horde!
Absolutely I have a problem with the “us against them” attitude, but I also do have have a problem with competitive sports (especially PROFESSIONAL competitive sports with the squandering of resources behind it). I don’t think that competition itself is a huge problem on an individual basis. I can tolerate a little competition. I myself get a little competitive in, for example, Scrabble, but it’s something I always try to control. I always try to do my best, and there is some satisfaction to being ‘the best’, but the best games are not the ones that I win, but the ones that are close, or better yet, fun because they are interesting. This goes for tennis or Boggle or Guitar Hero or whatever.
Besides, while I imagine hockey *players* are constantly trying to be the best athletes they can, how are Canucks fans trying to better themselves by mounting flags on their cars and (as I heard on the radio the other day) watching the game on the TV at the pub instead of spending time with their now indignant girlfriends?
Why do athletes compete so much more than, say, artists or musicians? Warren, you and I don’t write songs to show how much better we are than the next band (Maybe if we were rappers we would, we can argue about that if you like – let me find my gun). I don’t draw comics to beat anyone else at comics. I’m areligious, but I can’t imagine any Christians keeping score against Jews or Muslims about how many more times they pray (but maybe they are) – and that’s a whole different discussion about tolerance, not competition.
Joyce beats me at Dr Mario 99% of the time. One of the things I try to do when I play is to get as good as she is – so that’s a little competitive – but if the game wasn’t fun in and of itself, I wouldn’t bother. (And I certainly wouldn’t be interested if I wasn’t playing myself, unlike many Canucks fans.) Also, I don’t really believe I will get as good as she is before I get tired of the game. So I don’t subscribe to the “there would be no incentive to strive to do better without competition” argument. Maybe among some there would be less incentive to better yourself through competition, but I think the cons outweigh the pros. As stated in “The Case Against Competition I linked to in a previous post:
Most of us were raised to believe that we do our best work when we’re in a race — that without competition we would all become fat, lazy and mediocre. It’s a belief that our society takes on faith. It’s also false.
There is good evidence that productivity in the workplace suffers as a result of competition. The research is even more compelling in classroom settings. David Johnson, a professor of social psychology at the University of Minnesota, and his colleagues reviewed all the studies they could find on the subject from 1924 to 1980. Sixty-five of the studies found that children learn better when they work cooperatively as opposed to competitively, eight found the reverse, and 36 found no significant difference. The more complex the learning task, the worse children in a competitive environment fared.
Brandeis University psychologist Teresa Amabile was more interested in creativity. She asked 22 girls, ages seven to 11, to make “silly collages.” Some competed for prizes and some didn’t. Seven artists then independently rated the girls’ work. It turned out that the children who were trying to win produced collages that were much less creative — less spontaneous, complex and varied — than the others.
One after another, researchers across the country have concluded that children do not learn better when education is transformed into a competitive struggle. Why? First, competition often makes kids anxious and that interferes with concentration. Second, competition doesn’t permit them to share their talents and resources as cooperation does, so they can’t learn from one another. Finally, trying to be Number One distracts them from what they’re supposed to be learning. It may seem paradoxical, but when a student concentrates on the reward (an A or a gold star or a trophy), she becomes less interested in what she’s doing. The result: Performance declines.
Just because forcing children to try to outdo one another is counterproductive doesn’t mean they can’t keep track of how they’re doing. There’s no problem with comparing their achievements to an objective standard (how fast they ran, how many questions they got right) or to how they did yesterday or last year. But any mother who values intellectual development for her child should realize that turning learning into a race simply doesn’t work.
Competition is everywhere … it’s not simply a matter of scoring a goal.
Religions compete for the hearts and minds of followers. Corporations compete for consumers.
And you can’t play non-competitive tennis. It’s you against someone else. Are you not trying to stymie them with your volleys and serves? Are you definitely not scoring points? Are you both standing in the middle of court doing your best to hit it to their forehand, give them the easiest and best opportunity to return the ball? That doesn’t sound like very much fun. Thus you’re engaged in some level of competition.
Yes, people learn better in groups. People also compete better in groups, thus team sports.
And I would wager that if you were to split off groups of students into cooperative learning groups, there will still exist competition among the groups. The children learn better, and are further driven by competition between groups.
Even as a band, you’re competing with other bands. You strive to write the best music you can, so that you can get contracts and gigs. That’s a limited resource for which you’re competing. And as an artist, you’re competing for much the same thing with other artists. I’m sure it was a downer when some other artist got the drawing gig you wanted, so you then strove to be a better artist so that you’d have a better shot at the next drawing gig that came up.
Competition is everywhere. Competition is the root of existence.
As for your dislike of professional sports because of squandering resources. What exactly ticks you off about that? That the players make a lot of money? Are they undeserving? Sport is entertainment, should all the money stay with the team owners instead of being divvied up equitably with those that underwrite the team (i.e., the players). Do you hate movies and films? Because more often than not a $200 million dollar film is an even bigger squandering of resources, as well as the actor that took in $20 million for 45 days work. I’d gather than most professional athletes work harder and longer for their pay than any actor does for theirs.
I think Warren probably hit the nail on the head. It can’t possibly be competition you reject (you’re competitive every single day), but how some fans of certain entertainments conduct themselves. Hell, Star Wars fans bug the hell out of me. And yes, some Canucks fans bug the hell out of me too. But I enjoy the entertainment of sport, just as I enjoy the entertainment of music and film and art.
“Religions compete for the hearts and minds of followers. Corporations compete for consumers.”
And that can be a good kind of competition, if it’s done responsibly. If Tide is a better cleaner, less expensive, better for the environment than…Dove or whatever, then that is of benefit.
“And you cant play non-competitive tennis. Its you against someone else. Are you not trying to stymie them with your volleys and serves? Are you definitely not scoring points? Are you both standing in the middle of court doing your best to hit it to their forehand, give them the easiest and best opportunity to return the ball? That doesnt sound like very much fun. Thus youre engaged in some level of competition.”
Yes and no. My first goals of tennis is to spend time with my friends and have fun and get exercise. Traditionally when I play tennis with Stephane, we’ll just hit the ball for a while. Then when we get tired of that, we’ll play some actual games. They provide structure – they provide little goals to meet. We often keep score. Sometimes we don’t. A lot of the time we forget the score. I don’t mean this to sound condescending, but in Tennis as in many games, if I’m doing very well and my “opponent” isn’t, I’ll try to find a way to even the odds. It isn’t about competing for me. It’s about having fun. If the game did get competitive, that would not be fun, and I wouldn’t play it. Oh, and when I play with someone besides Stephane, scorekeeping is left out of it more often than not.
My point is not that all competition is bad – but a lot of it is.
“Even as a band, youre competing with other bands. You strive to write the best music you can, so that you can get contracts and gigs. Thats a limited resource for which youre competing. And as an artist, youre competing for much the same thing with other artists. Im sure it was a downer when some other artist got the drawing gig you wanted, so you then strove to be a better artist so that youd have a better shot at the next drawing gig that came up.”
I’m not competing with other bands. When I am trying to write (or perform) the best music I can, it’s not to be better than other bands – it’s goodness for goodness’ sake, and because I don’t want to disappoint fans. When I see and hear a band that is really good, they do inspire me to do well – to be as good as I can be – but not because I feel I need to beat them in any way. We’re going to enter CFOX ‘seeds’ competition – but it’s nor important that we defeat the other comers, but because we view it as a chance (however slight) for more people to hear our music, and for the band to do better. It’s a shame that there may be some really good bands that don’t win the competition and get on the CD, but there is only so much space on a CD and only so much prize money to give away. It would be great if there were 12 slots to be filled and only 12 bands applied (providing of course the other 12 bands are as good as us). That’s my point of view, anyway. Drawing – same deal. Actually the most competitive aspect of my life is acting, specifically voice acting. When I get sent to an audition, I am in a room with other actors who are all competing for the same job. In theory, we are all there to defeat the others in the arena of acting. We can’t all get the job. There will be one winner and a bunch of losers. I don’t like it, but it’s a fact. It’s not competition for competition’s sake though – I’m not there to score points. Each one of us goes there to make a living and hopefully be a part of an interesting and rewarding project (that’s a bit of a gamble).
“Competition is everywhere. Competition is the root of existence.”
Yes, throughout natural history that is indeed the case. But we human beings read books now. We have scientific knowledge and some degree of wisdom. If we go on with the old traditions we are going to spoil our future.
“As for your dislike of professional sports because of squandering resources. What exactly ticks you off about that? That the players make a lot of money? Are they undeserving? Sport is entertainment, should all the money stay with the team owners instead of being divvied up equitably with those that underwrite the team (i.e., the players). Do you hate movies and films? Because more often than not a $200 million dollar film is an even bigger squandering of resources, as well as the actor that took in $20 million for 45 days work. Id gather than most professional athletes work harder and longer for their pay than any actor does for theirs.”
That’s a whole different discussion for another day
“I think Warren probably hit the nail on the head. It cant possibly be competition you reject (youre competitive every single day), but how some fans of certain entertainments conduct themselves. Hell, Star Wars fans bug the hell out of me. And yes, some Canucks fans bug the hell out of me too. But I enjoy the entertainment of sport, just as I enjoy the entertainment of music and film and art.”
As I said – I can tolerate some forms of competition. Let me put it to you this way: I reject competition for competition’s sake. I’ll give hockey players the benefit of the doubt and say that they play to make a living and because they love the game. What are hockey fans competing for?
Patriotism is a kind of religion; it is the egg from which wars are hatched. -Guy de Maupassant, short story writer and novelist (1850-1893)
“Why do athletes compete so much more than, say, artists or musicians?”
Atheletics is very quantitative and by its nature inherently lends itself to competition. You can instantly see who is doing better. You have instant goals to meet or beat. You have a structured set of rules to guide you.
Art and music is very subjective. There is no quantitative measure. While you may have goals to meet or beat, there is no true way to know if you have. There is no one set of rules on how to make a painting or write a song.
I think there is some confusion in the terms we are using. I understand competing as striving to out do someone for what ever reason (money, fame, reaching a goal). I understand competitive as a desire to succeed. I understand competition as a contest between competitors, usually for a prize (money, fame, death of the opponent).
I think being competitive is the main force that drives humans to do better. I think competing is one of (if not the) main way humans strive to do better. No I don’t think that my opinion is based solely on my western upbringing though I would be naive say it hadn’t had an influence my thinking.
To use your band analogy, we don’t write songs to beat other bands. Or in other words, we aren’t motivated as though the band was in a competition. However, we do strive to write songs that are as good as or better than the last bunch and one’s that the fans will enjoy. We are being competitive with ourselves. We have a goal and have a desire to succeed.
Maybe I’m being too abstract and shaping competitiveness and competing to fit the mold, but I would say that competing and competitiveness as being ingrained in a lot of what we do in life. Most of the time it is healthy. However, there are times when it is not.
Well if you are going to say that I compete against myself, and what I’ve done in the past, I suppose technically that is true but that is not what I’m talking aboot when I say that competition is unhealthy. I’m talking about competing against others, not our own past records.
What if you took the points out of hockey? What if the score didn’t matter, and nobody recorded them? Would anyone still watch it? Would anyone still play it? I don’t know. I know that if you took the points out of tennis and badminton and bowling I would still play them. I know if you took the points out of Guitar Hero and Super Mario I would still play them – I can tell you that for a fact because I don’t even keep track of the points in those games…they mean nothing to me. But I get a lot of enjoyment out of the playing of those games.
Competitiveness actually takes the fun out of games for me. I find myself shamed whenever I start to get competitive in a game. I feel bad for everyone involved. I like to play the game for the socializing and the fun and the mental or physical exercise. This is just one of the reasons I like D&D – there are no losers, even when your character dies you’re not out of the game.
There is nothing wrong with honing your skills, or trying to be the best athlete/artist/roleplayer you can be. There are lots of ways to achieve that and I think a lot of people get hung up on the idea that competition is the only way to do that. There’s really no reason that competition has to be a part of that process. If you like hockey, play it for the reasons you like it – unless the reason you like it is to prove you’re better than somebody else. That’s my problem. That’s dark age mentality and it’s not helping us evolve as a society. It’s cliquey bullshit. It’s unhealthy competition.
Fans don’t compete. The point of fandom is a certain sense of comraderie with other people who share your fandom.
Yes, fandom can be unhealthy. Soccer riots. Or people that camp for 2 months in a line to see a movie. Or people that stalk famous people.
But I don’t see anything particularly unhealthy about the majority of hockey fans, people that convene at a pub to watch a playoff game and cheer on their favourite team. I don’t see that as necessarily different than the people who buy tickets to see Nomeansno, it’s people convening on a specific venue to express their fandom.
When your neighbours hoot and holler over a game, you’ve stated that you find that behaviour irritating. They’re simply expressing excitement over common enjoyment. Perhaps they’re equally annoyed when they hear hooting and hollering from your apartment during a particularly engaging roleplaying session, of which you and your fellow roleplayers are expressing excitement over a common enjoyment.
I understand the rest of your comments tho and it’s a healthy outlook to have, most certainly. I don’t tend to get very competitive either, though I do like some healthy ribbing among the people I play games with.
I enjoy watching hockey … but I tend to root for underdogs. And I don’t have hate-ons for opposing teams. I go to a lot of Vancouver Giants games (Junior A amateur hockey). When they play the Chilliwack Bruins, I want Vancouver to win, but I’m not sitting there wishing horrible things upon Chilliwack. And it’s fun to see the Chilliwack fans who made the long drive out to support their team.
Yes, I understand there are hockey fans that take things too far. But that’s true of any fandom. I’m just saying don’t force all hockey fans into some sort of automatically unhealthy, bad for the human race box. Many of us enjoy our fandom with the right amount of moderation.