The car race

I’ve added this facebook application for car racing. Thorugh that you can race with your friends, and if you win, you get points, and if you lose, the friend gets points. And with the points, you can upgrade your car.. There’s no real racing as such.. you just click a button and it give the results. Yeah, yeah. it’s kinda dumb.. but don’t worry.. it’s not the game I’m talking about here..

This simple game made me have a glimpse of how people are driven by goals, and pushed by competition.
There were many of my friends playing the same game. And it was interesting to see some aiming to win a new car.. and some aiming to pass their friends in the points ranking..
You know, some were motivated by goals set at specific level by the system.. while others were driven by peer competition..

All in all, it was kind of a nice way to discover people..
I think you can learn more about a person from a simple game, than from 100 hours of conversation..

This made me think more about ‘competition’..
I grew up in a culture where competition is not looked as the best.
I still remember this pali stanza, which had a meaning as the following.
“Losing makes sorrow.. Winning creates enemies. Avoid competition”

But when I look around now, competition doesn’t seem to be such a bad thing.. It drives people to give their best.. And most of things humankind has achived so far, are mainly due to their competitions.. No one undermines the uglyness of the warld war 2.. but aren’t we stil thankful for the inventions resulted from it.. And how much the space war between USA and the early USSR contributed to the developments of astronomy.

Still, I wish we could have achived all these things with out the wars and other competitions.. May be if people were more internally motivated..

After all, as they say, what brings me to my highest potential is when I am competing with my ownself..