💾 Archived View for library.inu.red › file › laurence-labadie-on-competition.gmi captured on 2023-01-29 at 12:07:39. Gemini links have been rewritten to link to archived content

-=-=-=-=-=-=-

Title: On Competition
Author: Laurance Labadie
Date: 1966
Language: en
Topics: competition, individualism, Minus One Journal
Source: Retrived 10/18/2021 from https://www.unionofegoists.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/07/PP1421-MinusOne-No13.pdf
Notes: Published in Minus One #13 (March/April 1966).

Laurance Labadie

On Competition

Most people cannot see any further than their noses. Every individual

person may be looked upon as one of many caught in an avalanche, each

trying to make comfortable his immediate surroundings and oblivious of

the general movement. Whole civilizations have lived in misery without

knowing it, for how could they if there were nothing to compare their

condition with?

People can suffer almost anything as long as they see that the other

fellow is suffering the same ills. But would the ills be considered

ills? The phenomenon is called gregariousness or togetherness.

Some people are averse to competition and allow the words “co-operation”

and “humanism” to drool from their mouths, apparently meaning thereby a

large blop of protoplasmic homogenuity that lacks all individuality. It

is not individuals and their liberty that concerns them, but rather some

sort of well greased squirming mass that would seem to be analogos tot

the brains from which such amorphous “ideas” emanate.

But if there is no competition, then there can be neither comparison nor

any real standard of evaluation. Competition is but a synonym for

individuality. If there were no individuality, that is no difference

between humans, then for certain there would be no competition.

But does individuality imply conflict? It does only to the lackwit who

aspires for togetherness in co-operation. And the reason for this lies

in the fact that the combination of differences inevitably causes

conflict or suppression of individuality.

The truth is that harmony, or at least lack of discord, comes from

disassociation, and the opportunity for independence.