>On Thu, 23 Oct 2003, Brian Siano wrote:
>
>
>
>>Nobody denies that there are social situations where competition isn't
>>an explicit factor, or where people can put it aside in favor of other
>>motives. That's _not_ what we were asking you to provide-- so your
>>answer is as off-topic as it is trivial. Could you please describe an
>>_environment_ wherein competition would _not_ arise? What sort of a
>>world would produce human beings for whom "competitiveness" just doesn't
>>exist? _THAT_ was the question.
>>
>>
>Okay, we're definitely talking past each other. I don't understand
>how the question could be effectively answered one way or another.
>I don't even understand why you think it's an important question
>to answer. What's the point of bar-stool speculation about this?
>
>
You may want to re-read your original post _again_. In response to a
point made by Dennis Perrin stated that: "Competition is part of human
nature and not strictly a capitalist conceit, though capitalism does
corrupt the competitive urge."
To rebut this comment, you wrote: "Man, I thought Justin just went over this. If by "human nature"you mean some biological or genetic imperative, Luke and Woj's claim here is nonsensical. One more time: any genetic or biological factors must be expressed in an environmental context. There is no way to "strip away" the environment to assess the pure, isolated genetic effect. Thus to make the claim that X is "natural" or "inevitable", independent of environmental conditions, demonstrates a (willful?) ignorance of what has been learned about genetics and biology." Later on, you stated that "Competition is simply not a necessary or inevitable element of social interactions."
So, you were obviously arguing that competitiveness was _not_ "natural or inevitable," and that it was not "independent of environmental conditions." You were also arguing that Luke and Woj (and Dennis, probably) were ignorant of "what has been learned about genetics and biology."
I asked you to provide an example to support this position-- specifically, an environment where competitiveness would not arise in human beings. You have failed to do this-- instead, you've merely raised social contexts where competitiveness was not an explicit part. That's a very different issue than the genetics-heredity-innateness issue you brought up.
It's like this. Imagine if we were talking about growing hair. Imagine if Person A then asserted that growing hair was not innate, but a result of interactions of organism and environment. Imagine that Person B asks, "Okay, please describe an environment where human beings would not grow hair." Person A then asserts that there are places in society where people shave their heads. Person B then reiterates, "No, I asked you to tell me where people _do not grow hair_."
In this discussion, you are Person A.