Miles Jackson wrote:
>
>
> That's a goofy conclusion to draw from my statement. Saying that
> competition is not inevitable is far from saying competition
> cannot (or should not) occur. I'm not sure who you are arguing
> with, but it's not me.
>
Actually, sports probably should be thrown out the window, since (in the last several centuries) the word "competition" has come to refer primarily to _economic_ competition, which involves _none_ of the features of sports competition. In fact economic competition is only possible if there is total cooperation within the economic unit. It is only sports (not even war) which involves anything like "self-conscious competition" in the present, that is, with the agent consciously competing rather than merely attempting to perform some non-competitive activity.
In capitalist society "competition" is a metaphor rather than a description of the "real," and that is what creates the illusion of competition as a pervasive element in human life.
No one 50,000 years ago would have conceived of a fight to the death with a predator as being "competitive," any more than he/she would have thought of picking berries or falling asleep as "competitive." In Homer there is no competition except as the conditions for it are self-consciously created, as in the funeral games for Patroclus.
Under almost _all_ social conditions (including war and "cut-throat" business) most human waking activity is cooperative.
Grade-school softball (among rural elementary schools) in the '30s & '40s was in some ways more similar to the "competition" in the funeral games than are organized sports today: when the goal is the season average, the immediate moment is leached of some of its competitive zip. No records were kept of that elementary-school softball, neither team records nor individual records. So, win or lose, the game's significance ended with the end of the game.
Carrol