COMPETITION IS UNFAIR
Hal Pepinsky, pepinsky@indiana.edu, pepinsky.blogspot.com
September 13, 2011
I’ve just been listening to a BBC segment on how among bicyclists blood doping competes with new tests for whether cyclists are corrupted by the practice of giving themselves blood transfusions before they race.
I wonder at the idea that competition, also known as real growth, let alone its representation in sport (today’s Western Roman circus?) Are you a more real competitor if you avoid blood transfusions or advantages of birth in political and economic life? Alfie Kohn’s 1986 book No Competition has long informed my opinion that compassion for the suffering of those closest to us works better than attention to who wins on the football field or on any stock market. It’s time to reframe rhetoric. Those among us who are suffering, and those of us who profit in the process, need a NEW DEAL in our thinking, for all our human sakes. Love and peace--hal
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