Basically, from birth, we are challenged to stand out by being better than or the best. It occurs first in personality, behavior, and beauty, and is reinforced throughout life by competitions like sports and school. Never are we to be encouraged as equals, even with a judiciary system. Life is not fair. This creates a better than/worse than mentality which leads to feeling less than or better than everyone else, constantly judging each other to overcome our feelings of failure, because there is almost always someone better, and striving constantly to improve societal rank in very psychical manifestations based in materialism.
Competitors are great for capitalism founded with the "free market" mentality where Darwin's survival of the fittest plays out economically. Everyone vying for their share of the pie. Since the United States outsourcing manufacturing and became a service oriented society rather than production based society, materialism has grown to become almost purely materialistic, catering to our every desire, we are fed the same food day in and day out in different packaging never questioning for ourselves. Even the philanthropic and environmental movements are corpratized and packaged as well (not to say I am against them).
With a growing and growing online marketplace, corporations loose physical presence and become overpowered by the companies who capitalized on internet technology to recreate the industry, mainly distributed consumer and entertainment goods. This example of survival of the fittest is not necessarily the best outcome. More and more we are trained to be lazy, and interact with others less and less. This is exactly what capitalism wants lazy loner consumers, more easily programmable without real input from others.
I am not saying capitalism is all bad, nor competition, but there is a significant downside to both that perpetuates materialism, greed, envy, lust, murder, ect. In fact they work together to bring about it's power to control. If people were first seen as equals and then honored each for their uniqueness wouldn't that be something!
This blog is opinion and journalistic in nature. I may have many deep rooted contradictions which are difficult to extract the subtles of their coexistence. Perhaps, it's just duality of thinking. I don't know. Will find out more later.