On the good side of competitive desire – Didier Pitelet for the book “Envier ou avoir envie”
15.03.2023
EXCERPT FROM THE NEW COLLECTIVE WORK OF THE CERCLE DU LEADERSHIP “Envier ou avoir envie”
“Carpe diem, quam minimum credula postero.” – Horace
Between desire and competition lies an original battle of meaning between good and evil, positive and negative. Emulative desire as a driving force and competition as self-surpassing, on the one hand; malignant envy and competition as a fight to eliminate the other, on the other.
Two sides of a mirror that can produce the worst as well as the best, and that have marked the story of humanity.
These two realities exist as much in the economic world as in the sporting, associative, and cultural worlds. They illustrate the human soul in its duality but also in all its existential complexity. I exist to dominate or I exist to live with… “Homo homini lupus est” (Thomas Hobbes) versus “Man is naturally good” (Jean-Jacques Rousseau).
As it is customary to import into the business world a breviary borrowed from sport – “We are a team”, “Let’s surpass ourselves, smash our goals, make a record year”, “the coach manager”, “We’re going to eat our competitors”… – it is worth pausing on the diversion of words and analyzing whether, behind this breviary, desire feeds on the virtues of competition.
Better for oneself and for others
Competition only makes sense in confrontation and self-surpassing at first with oneself, and with others in a second stage.
Whether in an individual or collective sport, alone on the track or on the field, the athlete exults in his ability to reveal himself, by going beyond what he believes to be his limits; this surpassing is the fuel of desire, the spark of that little extra, synonymous with victory.
It is this fuel that allows him to feel fully alive!
In this sense, desire helps fight against the ego which often diverts the person from his path, if its hold locks him into a castrating selfishness. Competition for competition’s sake, sport for sport’s sake are just as many neuroses and possible addictions, if the athlete does not move forward with the ambition of becoming a better person in his art and in the City.
The agora of sport abounds in both typologies, but history glorifies the great champions more than the self-centered.
The desire to become better for oneself and for others is a path that must be guided by humility, like the rugby kicker who knows that with the tip of his foot often rests the victory of the team, and who stays alone on the field after training to strike again and again between the posts. His challenge? The perfect gesture, for himself and for the jersey he wears.
Desire is the reason for commitment and action. To want, in a competitive environment, is to wish to be better with regard to one’s art, but not only that. If progress is limited to the perfect gesture without questioning the very meaning of the result, or to the accumulation of titles without asking the fundamental questions of exemplarity, transmission, sharing, and communion with stakeholders, then that progress has little impact beyond the time of performance; it has little impact on the world outside the restricted circle of supporters.
Competition in the face of desires
It is the same in business, which for years has suffered a logic of dehumanization of its organization, from schizophrenic matrix models to rampant individualism and its absurdities of non-sense.
The company is by essence a champion, meant to perform, progress, move forward… But too often, under the pressure of always more, always higher, always stronger… some end up believing that trees grow to the sky.
It is fashionable to speak of problems of engagement or to highlight the behaviors of the famous Generation Z, a.k.a. the mutants; the sacrificial good old times of “all work”, in the sense of “I exist through my work”, are shaken up, even gone, in favor of another form of desire that undermines the very notion of performance.
The desire to live, quite simply.
If the desire for performance and competition is embodied in the current situation of the world of work and of the planet as a whole, then for more and more people it no longer makes sense, precisely because it no longer inspires desire. Behind this shortcut lies the question of the meaning to give to corporate desire and to performance/competition.
Of course, mission-driven companies embody a path to follow, provided they are fully authentic…
Useful performance substitutes for competition, driven by a purpose that gives meaning. It can motivate desire both individually and collectively to engage in competition.
But how many managers mistake words for ideas, hoping to trigger everyone’s desire while leaning on clichés from the last century.
The true competition is now with oneself, with one’s desires and with the desire to be fully oneself.
Being the champion of one’s life
Between this legitimate aspiration and its realization, there is often a gap that rests on the audacity of stepping aside. The desire to break out of the mold to follow one’s path. But not everyone dares to go toward that unknown that one is for oneself.
The real competition is the one that allows one to move toward oneself, to free oneself from the shackles not only of economic, consumerist dogmas and others… It resembles a competition against time which, by definition, is limited, against the diktats of the era that enslave, and against the consumer society that pretends to bring happiness through consumption itself.
It is the desire to have versus the desire to be.
Each of us is potentially the champion of his life, provided that:
✓ we do not model it on others in the sense of envying them;
✓ we free ourselves from the chains of conformities;
✓ we know our true nature (“Know thyself and you will know the universe and the gods” – temple of Delphi);
✓ we trace our own life plan without seeking the pre-established plans of society;
✓ we rid ourselves of all forms of envy in the sense of envying others, understanding that the uniqueness of each person is not imitable, but rather puts into perspective the richness of humankind.
Sublimating the desire for competition
In a time when all desires tend to compete with each other, it is more than useful to recall the right of each to exclusivity within respect and collective interest. History has not succeeded in eliminating the notion of competition from humanity, but perpetuates the fratricidal heritage of Cain and Abel and its share of jealousy, frustrations…
Desire and competition can indeed feed on the exemplarity of the one who succeeds not only in the material sense of always more, but in the sense of the happiness of living one’s dreams harmoniously.
The competitor becomes a model like the master and the apprentice. He serves as an example, opens a way for others to find theirs. His success is a source of desire to go, to imitate, to understand why do better; every performance is made to be surpassed. He who inscribes his name on a trophy above all inscribes it in a lineage, a heritage. It is the same in life and in business, as soon as one understands that desire is a driver and not a source of competition.
Too many companies and civil societies oppose the desires of some to those of others. This creates internal struggles in business and the parade of hypocrites who pledge allegiance to a culture while acting contrary to its values, as in civil society. It is the advent of lobbying by minorities and other forms of fragmentary communitarianisms that lead to a bidding war of exclusive desires.
A company, like a society, that does not know how to sublimate the desire for competition (to go beyond) in the collective interest and for a better world is condemned to disappear. The art of life that unites can shatter under the neglect of harmful desires. Positive competition is a cultural and pedagogical state of mind to be on the good side of desire.
This is the tragedy of our country and its republican school model which confuses equality and equalitarianism and ultimately produces “La fabrique du crétin”. It is also the tragedy of corporate leadership which glorifies egos more than culture and its rites. In both cases, individualism prevails to the detriment of the collective project, the short term over transmission. In short, corporate desire becomes an illusion, like the “buissonnière company” and the great resignation sweeping across many countries.
For lack of courage and vision of leaders (political as well as business) driven by their own personal desires, we are living an end of cycle that resembles an unprecedented chaos where the lights of yesterday no longer illuminate any path. The fashionable prophets are already predicting a new order, like the metaverse and its promises of substituted lives, supposedly more beautiful, richer, more fulfilling than real life. Obviously, the power of the merchants of the Temple already assures us of enslavement through the illusion of being alive.
Is this the end of competition in the sense of fully living the challenge of life, or the beginning of a new humanity that will know how to redefine the desire for the common good?
I fear that if everyone lives a superhero’s life via their avatar, the very meaning of life’s values will be called into question, with the famous quote of William of Orange, called “the Silent”, passing into oblivion: “It is not necessary to hope in order to undertake, nor to succeed in order to persevere.”
One thing is certain: a life is only a finger snap. To forget it generates the illusion of life. “Carpe diem, quam minimum credula postero” invites us to live every second of life to the fullest, and not just to let time pass in the hope of finding meaning in it.
Kronos watches over us.