The beauty of competition

In Alfie Cohen's many books he disparages most forms of extrinsic motivation, chief among which lies competitive games. In his book 'No Contest: the case against competition' he cites numerous studies which show competition to be detrimental to the development of young children. He further goes on to talk about how despite the torrent of studies showing that children would much prefer to play cooperative games, hard headed sports coaches refuse to change their ways and continue to force kids to fight one another for superiority in any number of games and challenges.


While it may be true that some, or even most, find it discouraging to realize they will never be the best at a certain thing, what Cohen over looks is the inspiration that is passed between those at the top of the field. Cohen correctly keys into the negative feedback one gets from the frustration of realizing that one is not perfect, and the positive feedback that comes from successful socializing. Though unless a game is solvable, it is unlikely that players will aspire to mastering it if the only pay off they get is from their compatriots, as there are much easier ways to socialize than to jump through the hoops that any sort of game designs. So while competitivety might be bad for the players it is great for the game. Nothing motivates players quite like a the unforgivingly oppressive ladder of rankings that competitive games provide.


I have often felt that there is much to be said for perusing unobtainable goals. It is the perfect reversal of the demotivation of the 'grass is greener' paradox. If you believe that someone does something better than you, even if it is at a near impossible level of devotion, you can use that a marker of where to set the bar, and even when you fail at achieving it, it is quite possible that you are still shooting higher than most, and even possibly higher than the person who you are trying to emulate.*


While the emotional and social products of competition are negative, the production of high skill levels and ability is stunning. As people keep chasing after higher and higher standards we get mind blowingly high levels of play as a result. From Bobby Fischer's 'Game of the Century' to Steve Davis' Black Ball Final, the amount of focus and completeness of control is flooring. These testaments to perfect play are some of the most inspiring pictures of perfection out there, and I think purely beautiful. So while children on playgrounds around the world throw down balls, rackets, bats, and clubs in a mixture of disgust and frustration, I'll be sitting here with my eyes lit up with inspiration, hoping that one day I'll have a mind like a laser beam and complete level of control.

*This is a somewhat confusing concept that I don't feel like I am explaining well (in an abstract sense), so to illustrate it I will use an example. Presume you see someone you know keeping a diary, and because of this you decide that you would like to keep one as well. Every time you see them they are writing in it, so you (correctly) assume that they are writing in it every day, and as far as you can tell have been doing it and will be doing it forever. So you set that as your standard and try to write an entry every day as well. Every time you think to yourself "I don't have enough time to write an entry today" all you have to do is think about your friend, and realize that you have no excuse to lower your standards, because if they can write an entry every day (presumably) so can you. Now assume that you lose contact with this friend, but the vision of them writing daily entries persists. Even though you have no way of knowing whether or not they are still writing in their diary every day you can still use their (believed) actions as a motivational tool. From here one can easily imagine that were your role model to ever stop writing in their diary that you would actually be doing more than they are, even though you only see yourself as aspiring to their golden standard.

Picking

As a kid, I would always pick at things. Sometimes it would be paint chips on the wall, sometimes scabs (which my partents hated), but most of all it was the specks of paint and glue that are ubiquitous in grade school art rooms. People would always notice it, ask me why I did it, and make fun of me for it, and still I couldn't stop myself.

It might have been my diagnosed but untreated ADHD that caused me to pick all the time, or it might be that there is just something innately enticing about picking. Small clearly defined tasks that have an achievable and obvious end point. In retrospect it seems similar to the Montessori school practice of washing socks. Maybe all I wanted was validation for jobs that I could do. Instead all I got was rebuked for taking interest in an activity that no one else saw as important.


Oddly, others' scorn was directed not only towards the peculiarity of my actions but also towards their perceived futility. Countless times I was told that I 'could never get all the glue off of the table'. So day by day, comment by comment, not only was I taught that I shouldn't do what I could, I was also taught that I couldn't do what I believed I could.

While originally I meant to touch on how satisfying the activity of 'picking' is (be it in a 4th grade art class or a freshman year intro to computer science lab) I think it's much more interesting to think about how every day we're given incentives (through praise or reprimand) not to do easy, achievable, beneficial things that don't tax our time or energy.

with lowered potential,
Noah

Fight or Flight

Often after I wake up from a short nap (especially if I've fallen asleep while reading something) I wake with a burning desire to put pen to paper. While the writing that comes out of me at times like these is not the most consistent in style and are typically riddled with references that only I get, this is one of the few times that I actually mint my words. So while the following piece of writing isn't perfectly polished, contains some poor examples, is outdated and possibly disingenuous, I still very much like certain parts of it and I hope you do as well. If you see a sentence that seems odd just assume it's from a song that you've never heard or a movie you've never seen.

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I wake up, eyes bleary from a half hour of half sleep, senses numb.
   

Where am I? I think.
  

I look to my left and right, I‘m on a plane; transatlantic red-eye, Fight Club open on my lap, J. Mascis’ distorted guitar blaring just loud enough in my ears to drown out the hum from the engines. 
  

What time is it? Is the next thought to penetrate the molasses that is my mental state. 
  

It doesn’t matter how long it is till we land, it’s 10 days since Guillome Matingion beat Wafo-Tapa in the finals of worlds, tying Brad Nelson for the title of Player of the Year, and 52 days until their final showdown in Paris. It’s 216 days since I made my big splash in San Juan, 78 days since I flew home from Shipol without slinging a single spell in the Netherlands, 13 days since I walked out of the tournament hall in Chiba without a single match win under my belt. 52 days until I need to prove that I can still play this game on what is reverently called the ‘Pro Tour’, not because the people there make their living from it, but rather because their actions are meant to set the bar for flawless play.
   

Prove to who? I think.
 

Surely not to you. Despite the vitriolic remarks that pour from some of the communities more outspoken naysayers with a regularity and force on par with old faithful, that are aimed at me more often than not, I could care less if you think I’m good or bad. No matter how many value judgements AJ Sacher sends my way, tweets of encouragement that Patrick Chapin omits my name from, or Pro Tour fantasy drafts that I’m not picked in (far worse than the football games of my youth), it will never be what drives me to step up to the plate.
  

This is about me.
 

I’m reading a book about people who make it their life’s work to see the world crumble and burn in front of their eyes. Am I going to sit idly by while the same thing happens to me? To my world?
 

No. I think, This one’s for me.  
 

In the words of Elliott Smith, “Nothing’s going to drag me down to a death that’s not worth cheating.”

The same holds true for my life as a competitor. To give up on the inside is to have already failed.
 

Ok, I lied, it is about them. It’s about every person who looks at me and says, “He can’t make it;” with myself first among that list of naysayers. It’s time to laugh right in the world’s unthinkable faces.
  

The child of 7 sitting next to me on the plane is watching cartoons on his iPod (another lie, he’s actually sleeping with his head on the armrest, making this very hard to type, but he was watching cartoons on his iPod). My two favorite cartoons, no, my two favorite television shows. In short I am still a child, and it’s time I step up to the plate and show I’m an adult. 
 

In the words of David Bazan, “I used to feel like a forest fire burning, but now I feel like a child throwing tantrums for his turn.”

It’s time to re-light the fire. 
 

How? What do I mean? I think.
 

As a kid, I was told that to succeed, the best thing to do was to visualize myself at the finishline, or shooting the game winning three pointer, well now, slightly older and wiser I think that that’s BS.
 

While I agree that to win, one must truly want it, desire it, I hold that there are two types of desire; active and passive, true and superficial. Wanting to win a match or a tournament is not the same as wanting a nice present for Christmas or a slice of apple pie. One you can fool yourself into believing to be out of your control, and thus blame whether or not is manifests on ‘the luck of the draw’ the other is the complete opposite. To want it means to pour yourself into it, what is practicing when playing magic is the whole of your being. Knowing that at the end of every lost game there is something, there is always something, that you could have done better should be the only motivator that you need to try harder and do better.
 

But I digress.
 

I’m on the plane, waking up bleary eyed and looking back. Frankly I’m disappointed in myself, and I know that now it’s time to reach out and grab the reins. The world is my oyster, and I intend to cover it in Tabasco and slurp it down my cape-hole*. It’s my life, and with every action, I’m playing to win.
 

And that’s what it is to grow up, not only to take responsibility for one’s own outcome, but to know that the world is yours to stomp on.
 

So where does that leave me? With a cold determination in my stomach, and a force behind each of my actions. A knowledge that my successes are mine, and with every move I make I am either winning or losing.

So what now? I ask myself.
  

I’m going to be perfect from now on, I’m going to be perfect starting now Doug Martsch screams in my ear.
 

I think I agree, I smile to myself and think “I’m going to win.”  
 

*all within the confines of an el sobrante fortnight.

Indie Rawk

When sitting across the dinner table from my second cousin Ben Collins, member of the band Chronic Future, and now ‘curator’ of the Modern Art record label, I was asked (politely) “Oh, what kind of music do you like?.” My eyes transfixed on his inch wide stainless steel gauges and the H.I.M. tattoo on his girlfriend’s wrist I couldn’t think of much to say. So when my mother took the opportunity to blurt “Oh, he loves you guys!” it only made the rest of the night that much more awkward while I couldn’t tear my eyes away from the aforementioned body augmentations. In reality I think that I was listening to Broken Social Scene’s fourth or fifth album, confusingly titled Broken Social Scene, as per the advice of ‘indie rock’ cartoonist Jeph Jacques. At the time I felt a little like Tim Canterbury from the British office who during the introduction of the third episode exclaims in a perturbed voice 

"I'm into ballet, I love the novels of Proust, I love the work of Allen DeLon, and I guess that's what influenced her to buy me HatFM… I love the radio too."

 In regards to what his mother bought him for his thirtieth birthday. Essentially I didn’t like that my musical tastes had been reduced to a form of interfamily pandering.

It’s not until now, something like six years later, that I can look back on it and laugh. I’ve come a long way since then. I’ve seen BSS in concert, and have had a severely intoxicated Kevin Drew order security to forcibly remove me from the Cleveland House of Blues because I would rather hear the bands older material than one of the self-indulgent tracks off of Kevin’s The Spirit If… I felt (more than) a little vindicated years later when my mother once again ran into my cousin and this time responded to the same question by saying that I loved that new band The Arcade Fire. Although this was again a lie, Ben’s response; that if that were the case that I should check out the latest addition to the MA label, The Miniature Tigers, made me feel a little more warm and fuzzy inside than the blank stare he had given me at the dinner table years earlier.*

                Despite the truth that a large portion of my music taste is defined by Jeph’s two year-in-retrospective type album reviews I have come to realize that he is, in essence, a phony. Like most people who carry that title he not only aspires to, but also presents himself as, something which he will never be, the epitome of indie rock fandom. Unlike his phony brethren, I think it’s honestly not his fault. As with any music enthusiast Jeph can’t help but like what he likes, and while he is attempting to make his taste not only an allegory for but also a guide map to anyone’s (and everyone’s) indie sensibilities he falls into the same trap that most do when they talk about their (music) tastes; he’s not nearly as self-aware as he would like to be. Unlike Chuck Klosterman who will preface any statement advocating 80’s hair metal by mentioning his first reaction when listening to it as a 14 year old child, Jacques fails to delineate between his guilty pleasures, bands that he likes because a girl he has a crush on was wearing their shirt, and what he really thinks defines indie rock. Instead it all gets rolled up into a confused and conflicted laundrylist that more accurately gives us a sense of JJ’s life than of the spread of current indie bands. This isn’t to say that these bands aren’t interesting, I would have never have heard of RATATAT had it not been for the four sentence album review that I stumbled across one school day afternoon while desperately looking for something of interest on the internet. But in the end no amount of jokes about Stephen Malkamus or anecdotes from Jeph’s only attendance of an Arcade Fire show** will make his collection of pet CDs anything more than just that.

                Much like the indie scene will only be populated by those of have no concept of the roots of any of the music that they listen to, Jeph and his acolytes will continue to be impressed by the musicianship of the artists that they admire and advertise while not ever having heard the sound of Chick Corea’s fingers tickling ivory*** (or as the case more often is; plastic) or the vibration that occurs when John Coltrane’s lips wet reed. These are the people who mock Jam bands for being self indulgent and absorbed while they simultaneously talk of how Sufjan Stephens is a musical genius and the Arcade Fire’s Suburbs****  is the seminal work of the decade. While each of these people will tell you that they truly have a feel for the heartbeat of this sub culture that they so desperately want to be at the center of, in the end all they can do is tell you about all the albums that other people and publications told them to like. The result of this is crowds of cross armed fans impatiently tapping their feet through new songs as they mutter to themselves about how much better every band’s ‘older stuff’ was. While this might lead to such wonderful results as a Grammy award and Kevin Drew singling you out in the crowd, it will never be as much fun as cranking the volume while Captain Marvel plays or watching the lights explode as Phish comes out to encore with  the Edgar Winter Group’s Frankenstein.

                

*In truth even before meeting him for the first time I had recently waited outside of the Riveara theater to catch a glimpse of these (now) indie superstars. Managing to purchase a ticket to the sold out show from an over-stoned concert-goer, I got to not only see the Arcade Fire three months before they were making the cover Time(?) magazine, but also Wolf Parade before they had released an album, and the Bell Orcestre during the only period of time that anyone gave a shit who they were.

**the most notable being a story about confusing the lead singer of Wolf Parade for an additional percussionist for the Fire, which can be found here: http://questionablecontent.net/view.php?comic=178

***In case you were not aware, this is a euphemism for playing the piano. You should have been able to tell this because a) Ivory is not sentient and b) it is a dentine, meaning it has a protective enamel that covers any of its nerves that could even be considered to be susceptible to tickling.

*** *an album that nicely compliments Win Butler’s 15 other songs about how he hates his childhood in Texas, the only difference is that this time he is telling you that you should hate it too.

Disclaimer

While I have never thought of myself as a particularly good writer I have often found myself wanting to write. The result was lots of stream of thought type short pieces that I was too self conscious of to ever let reach the light of day. I've finally come to the realization that if I continue with this I'll never improve, and never truly know if any of my writing is any good. As such, I've decided to create this space in order to post some of these things. Bear in mind that the content is not my focus, but rather my candor. I am sure that you will not agree with many of my opinions, and it's also probably true that I might not as well, but the hope is that by posting them in writing will allow me to develop my voice enough that when I truly feel strongly about something I'll be able to express it in a (semi-)proficient manner.

So while I welcome your criticism of my writing, take what you read here with a grain of salt.