Competition Culture: What have we done?

Wow, what a sad,sad story coming out of Kansas City this weekend.  My thoughts and prayers go out to anyone affected by this tragedy.

An event like this makes me call into question our competitive culture.  Now, obviously this young guy must have had some problems.  And I'm sure stuff like this happens to people all the time and it doesn't get as much notice because they are in the position this kid is.  But, my question would be, do you think this would have happened to this kid if he had not been a pro football player?

Most of these players a essentially just kids, from the time they reach about sophomore year in high school they begin to come under intense scrutiny.  They are immediately thrust into the spotlight, and many of them continue to stay there through college ball, and into the pros.

Cam Newton is 23, and is almost exactly one year older than I am.  He regularly has articles published about him on a national level that call into question every aspect of his character.  Can you imagine being that young and having have those things read about you?  I can't, in fact I'm right up there with the other people saying they hate him most of the time.  I'm 22, and I spend most of my time wondering why my funny facebook status didn't get more likes, not thinking about whether or not all of my basic values are right or not.

Nathan Scheelhaase (for those of you who don't know who this is, he is/was the quarterback for the University of Illinois. Go Illini!)  is 22, in fact, he is about 7 months younger than I am.  He regularly is referred to as talentless on certain sites around the web.  What?  Can you imagine what that would be like?  I get stressed out when I have two exams in one week, I can't imagine how would feel if I could also pick one of a number of sites to read why random people think I have no worth.

The pressure most of these kids are under by choosing to be stars in this culture of competition that we have is just unreal.  It is not just the injuries these athletes are sustaining that will have lifelong side effects, it the emotional and phychological damage that comes from this culture as well.

I am reminded of Peter Gray's talk from AHS this year in times like these.  He talked about how in most traditional societies around the world there is very little competition.  One thing that really stuck with me was when he said that if you give kids a soccer ball in these societies they don't play a competitive game with it, they play something like seeing how long they can collectively keep it up in the air.

This competition culture isn't just present in athletics though.  It can be seen in almost any industry in America these days.  Who can get promoted faster, who can publish more papers, who can earn more money.  All the time we are constantly bombarded with competition, and it just doesn't seem natural to me.

Stress also plays a big role in this.  When you are in an intense competition like this all the time you are under quite a bit of stress.  Not only are these kids under stress during actual games that millions of people watch, but their actions throughout their lives are more stressful than ours. I think play can be a great way to reduce stress, and everyone should have multiple different stress reduction strategies they can turn to when things start to build up.

I think we could all benefit from some extra play in our lives.  Even if that play comes in the form of a competitive, taking the competition element out if it can make it that much more enjoyable.  For instance, one of my roommates and I enjoy playing racquetball, or course someone ends up winning, but we don't go out there with the intention of winning or losing, we just play a couple games so we have something more to do than just hit the ball for 45 minutes.

When you look at the multitude of factors that are contributing to our current health epidemics, both physical health and mental health, I think it is hard to say that our competitive culture is not helping to cause it.  Through the stress this competition causes we are slowly broken down, and stress reduction strategies need to be implemented to help us reclaim our health.