[Lee Yongbeom's Psychology of Happiness] Would the 1st Place Have Been Happy If There Were No 2nd and 3rd Places?

<27>The Two Faces of Competition

Iyongbeom Novelist

There is a story that the dean of Harvard Law School tells every year to new students. Two students went camping and encountered a large bear in the forest. One student started tying his shoelaces, and his friend shouted, "What are you doing? You can't run faster than a bear!" The student tying his shoelaces replied, "I don't need to run faster than the bear. I just need to run faster than you." In life-or-death crisis situations, even friendship is a luxury. Is it ruthless? But if you want to survive, you must first tie your shoelaces.

Competition for Status Acquisition

We live in competition from the womb until death. The fetus competes with the mother for nutrients. Children compete with siblings for parental love, and when they enter school, they compete with peers. After entering society, they compete for good jobs and status, and before death, they compete for good hospital rooms and graves. There are many people around who are better than me. Therefore, competition is always exhausting. They spend money conspicuously, stimulating my inferiority complex and urging me to strive harder.

Competition over status is a zero-sum game with winners and losers. Because others also want status, occupying that position does not guarantee happiness. Low status causes stress. According to American physiologist Jay Kaplan, low-ranking female monkeys are four times more likely to suffer from arteriosclerosis than other females. High-ranking males also easily develop arteriosclerosis when entering unfamiliar and unstable groups. For females, low rank is stressful; for males, instability of rank is stressful. This stress drives males to engage in status competition.

Higher status reduces the risk of illness and speeds recovery. Social status also changes brain neurohormones. American neuroendocrinologist Robert Sapolsky observed baboon troops for a long time. He found that low-ranking individuals had higher cortisol levels and lower serotonin levels. Low social status increases the likelihood of stress and depression.

The idea that higher status means more stress is incorrect. Those in power are healthier and live longer. The Whitehall study, led by British public health expert Michael Marmot, proves this. From 1967, the study of about 17,500 British civil servants showed that simple clerical workers had a mortality rate four times higher than the highest-ranking civil servants. In a second study, low-ranking women were four times more likely to suffer chronic diseases than high-ranking women.

People with high status often complain about being pressed for time. But the hardest hit are those at the very bottom. Below the highest status person are proxies of power lined up. They also suffer stress but can pass it down to those below. This pleasure offsets the pain. German philosopher Theodor Adorno (1903?1969) called this phenomenon the ‘bicycling reaction.’ It likens the behavior to a cyclist who kicks those below while constantly bowing to those above.

There Is No Happiness Without Competition

Competition is the fate of living beings. Animals living in groups fight fiercely to climb the hierarchy. Some primates join forces with competitors in similar positions to overthrow the leader. Therefore, telling people to abandon the desire for status is like asking them to go against their nature.

People focus on their appearance to flaunt status to competitors. This involves enormous costs. Wastefulness is a superior strategy to overwhelm competitors. The public endlessly imitates to catch up. But as imitators increase, the strategy loses effectiveness. Thus, those with high status obsess over rare or meaningless things that cannot be owned without special status, making it hard for the public to imitate.

Competition is often portrayed as a feature of industrial society, but it was fierce even in ancient societies. Roman philosopher Seneca (4 BC?65 AD) said, "They live as if in a gladiator school. They must fight even with those who dine with them."

In any society, people who have to elbow their neighbors and run forward are like crabs in a pot. Pulling each other down in a pot that is getting hotter leads to everyone's ruin. To survive, they must push each other up out of the pot. Therefore, happiness advocates say the ‘ladder order’ of ranking by ability should be changed to a ‘round table order’ of mutual consideration. Instead of ‘faster, more, higher,’ we should aim for ‘slower, less, lower.’ Some say competition causes inequality and we should return to the Eden era when we lived in harmony with nature.

Would a society without competition be happy? No. We exist thanks to ancestors who won competitions. If our ancestors had not shamelessly jumped into competition, we would not be here. The sperm of your father that gave you life was chosen after a breathless race against hundreds of millions of competitors.

There is no place without competition. Humans are intoxicated by the joy of competition, from winning elections to opening bottle caps with a kick. This is because we are programmed to compete fiercely and be happy when we win. The brain’s pleasure circuits activate when seeing someone worse than oneself. A runner’s success is possible because of the slower records of other runners. Success cannot be evaluated without competitors. The disappearance of competition does not make us happier. Competition brings a sense of achievement and fulfillment and increases the likelihood of passing on one’s genes.

Competition Where Everyone Can Be a Winner

When all spectators sit in their seats, everyone can watch the game. But if one person stands on tiptoe, everyone else will stand on tiptoe too. Telling someone not to stand because they block my view is like asking trees in a forest to grow only up to 5 meters. To maintain ecological balance, various groups must compete and check each other. A cyclical competitive structure where they bite and are bitten helps create a coexistence ecosystem.

Excessive competition inflicts fatal wounds on each other. Competition enhances male performance but not females’. Infinite competition involving all members is also ineffective. In 2009, a joint study by Haifa University in Israel and the University of Michigan in the U.S. gave 70 students short-answer questions, telling one group that 10 people were solving them together and another group that 100 people were solving them together. The fastest 20% would receive $5. The result was that students who thought they were competing with 9 others submitted answers much faster than those who thought they were competing with 99. The fewer the competitors, the greater the effect. Competition of all against all is inefficient.

Humans are winners of competition but also winners of cooperation. Competition seems ruthless because there are losers. Competition aimed at defeating someone is destructive. Competition does not necessarily require losers. One can compete with oneself instead of rivals. Many can jointly achieve a single goal. Cooperation is the most effective tool for many to win competitions. The team’s victory ultimately benefits the individual.

The amount of happiness is unlimited, and happiness is not the result of a zero-sum game. Taking away others’ happiness does not make me happier, nor does sharing with others reduce my happiness.