NeoSapein:

Would you agree that this profit based system that creates planned obsolescence and intentional scarcity to ensure competition will be our demise eventually?  I am not referring to Hollywood, I am referring to the monetary system.  Hollywood plays its part though.

And you are correct that there seems to be something inherent in humans that resembles competition but we cannot really know for sure where it comes from whether it be from evolution or subliminal messages in our society that effect the sub-conscience. Children living in households with no reason to compete doesn’t necessarily prove that competition is natural, though I understand your point. And it is a strong one.

The point I am making is that we as a human race are also naturally inclined to work together to find food shelter and clothes. We had to learn how to survive and as frail as we are compared to the rest of the worlds’ life forms we had to stick together. That is why we are inherently social beings. And though their are levels of competition inside the social order the natural instinct to care about and look after one another over comes the need for competition. Competition may be somewhat natural since it was born of necessity to survive but as we evolve and develop new technology that can harness free energy and eliminate scarcity there will be no real reason to compete other than for fun which won’t at that point have much appeal anyway since our society wont feed us the constant subliminal messages to be competitive.

I don’t think it is logical to say on one hand, “human beings have had to compete for survival since the beginning of history and yet it is not in their nature. Something we’ve had to do for that long, just to survive, would be firmly embedded in our genetics” and then say on the other hand “I don’t think you could breed it out if you tried.” Since something that we learned in order to survive throughout our evolutionary process cannot be also reversed if in fact it was learned. I am not disagreeing with you though. I do however think it can be suppressed.

I guess another way I could put it would be to ask, what if we never had the need to compete for survival from the beginning of history; would we still have a natural competitive instinct? And if so, wouldn’t this logic also apply to the inherent nature of human beings to be social? Since we may have not developed that trait if we had not the need for social cooperation if every other being on earth were not physically dominant over us? I guess what it comes down to is the question of which instinct came first; the social instinct or the competitive instinct? And if one instinct can or cannot be bred out of us then doesn’t that theory apply to the other? I would think that since our bodies evolved into physically frail entities the instinct to work together would of had to come first. However this is also a form of competition but with other life forms instead of among ourselves. So in that sense competition came first. To go even deeper would be to suggest that without social cooperation among ourselves we wouldn’t have a chance to compete.

So I think the answer is clear. We need to to be social to survive so if either one of these traits can be suppressed then we should choose to suppress competition.

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