To Compete or to Cooperate?
When you truly observe our shared reality and collective mental conditioning, you may realize that this question lies at the core of almost every macro and micro system in existence.
Competition is a rivalry where two or more parties strive for a common goal that cannot be shared; one’s gain is the other’s loss—an example of a zero-sum game. Competition can arise between entities such as organisms, individuals, economic and social groups, and so on.
Whether in evolution or nature, business or economics, geopolitics or sustainability, human psychology or sociology, biology or anthropology, history or science, or within the human body or mind—no matter where you look, you are likely to encounter the fundamental question: Do we approach this together or not? Do we compete, or do we co-create? Do we choose a ‘win-win’ formula or a ‘win-lose’ scheme? Do we wage war or seek peace?
This simple yet profound decision shapes the quality of both your personal reality and our shared reality. Every moment and every thought you have is a choice between competition and cooperation, creating either a context for violence and abuse or for collective well-being. Every time you choose to compete rather than co-create, you generate scarcity somewhere, creating ‘losers’ and contributing to their suffering and poverty.
Even the most seemingly innocent forms of competition, where it seems acceptable to have both a winner and a loser, impact our collective reality. When you choose to compete, you reinforce a culture and belief system that perpetuates the notion that for someone to win, someone else must lose.
But is this always the case?
Why couldn’t we train our brains to seek strategies and solutions where no one loses? Why don’t we consciously choose to play win-win games with each other instead of win-lose games?
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Observe how children play together. Do they care more about winning or losing, or are they more interested in inventing games where everyone can participate and have fun?
Children naturally tend to play in a collaborative manner, ensuring that everyone feels included and welcomed. Even when they play competitive games, they don’t take winning or losing too seriously—they simply restart the game and keep playing. For children, the joy of playing together is often more important than the concept of winning.
Adults, on the other hand, often prefer the more intense games of competition. They focus on winning, sometimes with little regard for the suffering or losses others endure in the process. Adults might exploit children in another country, destroy nature, and kill each other—all in the pursuit of determining who is the true winner.
But why do adults act this way?
Is it because of Darwin’s concept of ‘natural selection’? Is the human mind so limited that it clings to this idea to justify its own ignorance, greed, and hunger for power?
Interestingly, Darwin himself questioned whether nature is fundamentally cooperative or competitive. This paradox troubled him throughout his life. He acknowledged that natural selection is a process of evolution, but he also recognized that evolution relies heavily on deep interconnection and cooperation among all life forms.
Darwin didn’t discuss competition in the way we often interpret it today. Instead, he observed the cycles of evolution and natural recycling that create a coherent, diverse, and beautiful shared ecosystem. He spoke about how our co-creation, collaboration, and cooperation with each other and with nature enable life to evolve, grow, expand, and diversify.
Evolution isn’t about competition or war. It’s about authentic co-creation and regeneration. It’s about rebirth, not destruction.
The idea that a rabbit ‘loses’ when eaten by a wolf is a limited and human-centric perspective on how nature works. How do we know the rabbit doesn’t want to be eaten by the wolf? Perhaps it’s a game they’ve been playing for ages, one that we simply cannot understand. Maybe the rabbit is done with being a rabbit and wishes to experience life as a wolf. If we assume that the rabbit’s consciousness can survive the physical form, this theory might make sense.
Of course, the rabbit’s survival instincts will fight to avoid being eaten, but who’s to say that, in the end, the rabbit doesn’t find peace in becoming part of the wolf’s existence? Perhaps animals, fungi, bacteria, and plants already operate from a collective level of consciousness, where death doesn’t exist as a concept. They see only endless cycles of rebirth and evolution. Together, they form a powerful, interdependent whole with a shared purpose, not small, isolated beings competing for survival.
Maybe nature knows it’s already immortal.
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Humans invented competition, not nature.
Competition might destroy our civilization and reduce our chances of survival on this planet, but nature will continue to cooperate and co-create, no matter what shape or form it takes. Nature will survive, but will we?
Competition was created by the human mind to aid its evolution. However, in doing so, the mind forgot that, unlike human society, nothing else in nature competes. Everything else follows the cycles of regeneration, growth, evolution, and abundance. Life is always about the win-win formula; only the human mind (or a very wounded heart) insists that someone must lose for others to win.
One day, you may come to understand a simple truth: if someone truly loses in the games you play, you are ultimately the loser too. By ‘destroying’ your competition, you are destroying parts of what makes the entire whole what it is today. You are diminishing our shared reality every time you engage in win-lose scenarios.
This is especially true in business.
When you suggest the possibility of a shared reality without real ‘losers’ in the business world, you might be seen as the most outlandish person on the corporate scene. Few of us can imagine a world where we all work towards win-win scenarios. Few can adopt a belief system based on genuine co-creation, collaboration, and regeneration rather than competition, exploitation, or scarcity.
People rarely ask who your co-creators or collaborators are, but they are always interested in your competitors.
We often fail to acknowledge that businesses exist thanks to profound collaboration and co-creation among many minds and hearts within the team and the wider ecosystem. Success is rarely about competition or making others lose—it’s about how cooperative and co-creative your team is in achieving their objectives.
The most innovative business and organizational structures today address exactly this philosophical question. Circular economy, industrial symbiosis, regional synergies, open-source innovation, creative networks, systemic design hubs, and social laboratories are all tools and strategies we use to shift our core beliefs about competition versus co-creation in the way we do business.
Business becomes abusive, inefficient, and destructive when based on the idea of a win-lose game. But when we collectively seek and co-create win-win games, business becomes fun, regenerative, meaningful, and coherent for all of us.
You decide what you want to believe in and do.
Do you want to kill and destroy the old or wrong system to win a non-existent trophy as the world’s savior, or do you want to learn how to co-create a shared reality based on deep regeneration and meaningful transformation of our systems?
Do you actually want to win over something or someone, or would you prefer all of us to win and continue enjoying the game of life together?
Do you seek the deep pleasure of the shared game of our collective co-creation process where we all win, or do you still choose the suffering that comes with losing in your own games and competing with yourself, humanity, and the nature we all share?
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