[Carmen]

I actually quite like this thread, cos its making me think!! Just been for my walk and continued this discussion with friends up the road. My friend Michael is reading (for the umpteenth time) The Inner Game of Golf. Some good stuff in that book about different levels on consciousness! The conscious and the sub-conscious mind.

I don't agree with you Dan that competition has nothing to do with co-operation. I think at the next level they are two sides of the same coin. They are ying and yang, male and female. Their is no creation without both. But it does take energy and effort to light the flame.

Ortho, what a dictator would get, wouldn't be co-operation, it would be coercion. Quite different. Slavery is not co-operation. Co-operation is something that is given freely.

Dan, your excellence (congratulations BTW) would have been as much about competiting and improving yourself to win than it was about "beating' someone?

One aspect of straight competition is that the person is extremely jealous of anyone else ranging alongside or winning. Other competitors are never celebrated by a very competitive person. They are resented and sometimes hated.

Jaqui D, There is nothing crueler than sportday at school for the non-competitive or non-sporty child. My heart goes out when I see the pain of failure in some poor kids faces.

I do think that when are society advances to higher levels competitiion as we know it today, will cease to exist. Enlightened people will just refuse to be part of winning and losing.

I know that in the striving, we have the excellence. I know that because I have experienced that. But there has to be a better way.

Love and Light

Carmen