Rol Fessenden said:
>After this review, I am of the opinion that competition has a place, but
>it also must be managed. I am still unclear where it is a positive
>influence, and where it is negative. I also am unclear how competition
>and collaboration interact, but they clearly do interact in a synergistic
>way.
>
>It is tempting to say that local collaboration and distant competition is
>a good rule of thumb. In other words, use the same model as African
>villagers. Same mother-same father takes precedence over all in the
>hierarchy of competition- collaboration.
Rol,
What I was taught on these issues are fourfold:
1. You must know who your community is and what that
entails in loyalty.
2. Within your community, the most wealthy person is
the one who knows how to give responsibly. (A gift that
enslaves is not a gift)
3. If you are truly in need, you have the right to ask
for help with no loss of pride.
4. Competition with other communities has three sides
1) Individual struggle for power with all
communities agreeing on the rules
(counting coup)
2) Group struggle
a) raiders: with the purpose of keeping
both communities strong. Very precise
rules which entailed a very rigid set of
"laws of blood".
b) war: with the purpose of balancing a
community's breaking of the rules. This was
so strong that armies literally ran a
thousand miles to "balance the book" on
that one. Andrew Jackson's account is
still open, on death there is no statute
of limitations.
c) games: within a nation, community competition
is limited to games with clear rules.
All of this is to say: If you forget your place in the cosmos and
the necessity for being strong enough to hold it, then you have
agreed to become food for the other beings in the cosmos. At the
same time, if you are a marauder that accrues for the sake of
taking power, you are decadent, an enemy of the people, a witch.
I believe that all people looking deeply within themselves and
remembering their family and community beliefs will find something
like these rules by which they operate unconsciously. Making them
conscious frees the individual to exercise choice as to context.
I also believe that there are primal processes that travel
across the boundaries of human endeavor. Knowing the processes
beneath that which we call systems, frees the community or
organization to learn and make choices as well.
Doug Seeley's "chaos connections" are very close to the most
primary of processes for community and responsibility. You
have to have seen this "edge" before you can responsibly utter
the West's great "Invictus"
"It matters not how strait the gate
How bound with punishment the goal.
I am the Master of my fate,
I am the Captain of my soul."
I have shared in what I was taught, I would be interested in
others doing the same. For me that type of sharing creates
the trust necessary for individual, community, and human
growth to occur. I am personally uncomfortable with people
referring to species growth before I have encountered their
individual context. Forgive me, but that has been often
used in the past as a form of "white man's burden" and so
I have a knee jerk reaction to any statement that does not
begin with personal context.
Ray Evans Harrell
Artistic Director
The Magic Circle Opera Repertory Ensemble, Inc.
200 West 70th Street, Suite 6-c
New York City, New York 10023-4324
212-724-2398
mcore@soho.ios.com
P.S. I just heard on the television that there are
more blacks in prison in the U.S. than in South Africa.
I realize that this is probably not "proportionately" but,
in the 46 years since Central High School was integrated
blacks have moved into every part of American society.
This is often used as an indicator of opportunity, I would
like to argue instead that it is an indicator of how much
society had missed in talent and human capital by exercising
segregation. That our ancestors were not only diminished
societally but as sophisticated human beings as well. I am
angered that the talent being squandered in the building of
more jails and the pursuit of vengeance is considered
"cost effective" when we have no idea of the great human
gifts that are being caged in a cell because we refuse to be
a serious people. How can we consider ourselves a nation
when we are so insecure and uncommitted personally?
-- mcore@soho.ios.com (Ray Evans Harrell)