Questioner: I would like not to be competitive, but how is one to exist without competing in this highly competitive society?
Krishnamurti: You see, we take it for granted that we must live in this competing society, so there is a premise laid down, and from there we start. As long as you say, ‘I must live in this competing society,’ you will be competitive. This society is acquisitive; it worships success, and if you also want to be successful, naturally you must be competitive.
But the problem is much deeper and more significant than mere competition. What lies behind the desire to compete? In every school we are taught to compete, are we not? Competition is exemplified by the giving of marks, by comparing the dull boy with the clever boy, by endlessly pointing out that the poor boy may become the president or the head of General Motors – you know the whole business. Why do we lay so much stress on competition? What is the significance behind it? For one thing, competition implies discipline, does it not? You must control, you must conform, you must toe the line, you must be like all the others, only better, so you discipline yourself in order to succeed. Please follow this. Where there is the encouragement of competition, there must also be the process of disciplining the mind to a certain pattern of action, and is that not one of the ways of controlling the boy or the girl? If you want to become something, you must control, discipline, compete. We have been brought up on that, and we pass it on to our children. And yet we talk about giving the child freedom to find out, to discover!
Competition hides the state of one’s own being. If you want to understand yourself, will you compete with another, will you compare yourself with anyone? Do you understand yourself through comparison? Do you understand anything through comparison, through judgment? Do you understand a painting by comparing it with another painting or only when your mind is completely aware of the picture without comparison?
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Competition Only Hides Fear of Failure
You encourage the spirit of competition in your son because you want him to succeed where you have failed; you want to fulfil yourself through your son or through your country. You think that progress, evolution, lies through judgment, through comparison, but when do you compare, when do you compete? Only when you are uncertain of yourself, when you do not understand yourself, when there is fear in your heart. To understand oneself is to understand the whole process of life, and self-knowledge is the beginning of wisdom. But without self-knowledge, there is no understanding; there is only ignorance, and the perpetuation of ignorance is not growth.
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Competition Is the Worship of an Outward Show
So, does it require competition to understand oneself? Must I compete with you in order to understand myself? And why this worship of success? The man who is uncreative, who has nothing in himself-it is he who is always reaching out, hoping to gain, hoping to become something, and as most of us are inwardly poor, inwardly poverty-stricken, we compete in order to become outwardly rich. The outward show of comfort, of position, of authority, of power, dazzles us because that is what we want.