Reviews for Omissions are not accidents

The average rating for Omissions are not accidents based on 2 reviews is 4 stars.

Review # 1 was written on 2017-03-24 00:00:00 Pleasure Pryncess Thorough and pointed. I had never even considered competition as anything but a positive force in our society, but Kohn's case is destabilising. I'm still trying to figure out exactly how these ideas fit into my life and world - don't read this if you're not prepared to set aside the necessary time for reflection. My first thoughts: Ender's Game was one of my favourite books growing up. I think it might still be, but for different reasons. When I read it as a teenager I loved how driven the children in Battle School were. It was like a hypercompetitive, orbiting version of Hogwarts, complete with its own Battle Room game in place of Quidditch. How fun would that be? Spoilers for Ender's Game ahead, if you care. The protagonist, young child Ender Wiggin, is unknowingly Earth's last hope in the war against the 'buggers'. And Earth's military has determined that the only way to win this war is to take Earth's brightest children - too young to have lived through the previous encounter with the buggers - and mould them in an intensely hypercompetive environment to create ruthless murderchildren military generals. But not too murder-y; they need to be empathetic enough to walk in the enemy's shoes. To become the enemy in order to understand the enemy's weaknesses. But too much empathy might create hesitation - even for the best groomed murderchild - to commit genocide. Needless to say, the Battle School administration has a delicate game of deception to play. And they play it. With guilt, they break little Ender Wiggin. And in return, he breaks the buggers. Earth wins! Then Ender is promptly discarded, left to wander in exile and ruminate over his actions. The younger version of myself didn't think much about the clear self-destruction Ender was experiencing. I was thirsty for more victory! So I checked out of the library the sequel of Ender's Game, Speaker for the Dead. I was very disappointed with it. I didn't want to read about adult Ender trying to right his wrongs in a small-town-small-planet backdrop! I wanted more competition! More brilliant, scheming murderchildren! In the wake of No Contest, I might be due for a re-read Speaker. My second thought is what this means for my athletics goals. Competitive running has been an anchor in my life for several years. I'm faster now than I ever have been. Running has been the source of so many positive lifestyle choices, experiences, friendships and emotions that it couldn't possibly be bad, right? My old framework for racing was to focus on the guy I wanted to beat and hang on for dear life. Use him, and when the opportunity presented itself: crush his soul. This is one strategy, but it's not a great one. For the good races that I had where it worked, I had many others where I ran far below my physical ability. So now I'm experimenting. What if instead of defeating rival athletes, my goal was simply to run fast? Running fast is well known to be challenging - if not impossible - by yourself. To run a fast time, you need someone to either hold on to or to push you. The implicit assumption being that this competitive structure is what drives you to post better times. But after reading The Case Against Competition, I would like to suggest that maybe this effect could be better explained by cooperation. The athlete racing in a strong field benefits from the presence of more quick legs. Attempting to break away from the pack early is considered bold, or foolish, depending on the result. Early breaks get tightened or lost as running alone gets increasingly more challenging and the group more efficiently adjusts to the quicker pace. Is this competition, or cooperation at work here? The fastest times are only possible when the group agrees to run at both an agressive and sustainable pace. Any athlete desiring to put her positioning ahead of the group hurts both hers and the group's times. You have to ask yourself: what is more important? My time or my ranking? Championship races, where position is incentivised over actual speed, notoriously are run at slower paces than those at qualifying meets. If the competition hypothesis were true, you would assume that a gathering of the best runners in the world would most often produce the environment where the fastest races are run. But it doesn't happen this way. Championship medal systems redirect true running excellence into servicing the egos of armchair nationalists. Their egos are very important. The message to athletes is clear. Don't run fast. Race to win. I'm not a national level athlete. And you, person reading this, are probably not either. But that should not and hopefully does not stop you from pursuing excellence in your life. I'm getting faster! Will I ever be fast enough to 'matter' to an armchair nationalist? Probably not. I run for me. Racing can be problematic as a competitive structure - but it's your choice as an athlete to frame racing as mutually exclusive goal attainment. For me, racing is an opportunity to run fast with other fast runners. And in participating, I can cooperate with other athletes to help them run faster in pursuit of their own personal running goals. Who cares who finishes first as long as we all run well?! In my life I have 'won' races with thin fields where I was not happy with my performance. It's a hollow feeling. Take away the first place medal and it's just one race where I didn't meet my own expectations. That's fine, I can live with that. What I can't live with is the joy of victory being substituted instead for misery. Mutually exclusive goal attainment can play that trick. This is a challenging book. It does not sit flushly with my life and environment. There's some questionable Freudian mystery meat. But I'm trying to integrate what I can. This is what I'm taking away: 1) Recognise competitive structures where they exist and cooperate where possible. 2) Zero-sum situations are largely manufactured. 3) The dog-eat-dog world is inefficient. 4) Chase excellence and mastery over victory and dominance.

Review # 2 was written on 2013-04-18 00:00:00 Jeffrey Mausner This was a fantastic look at how competition is fundamentally destructive to human life. Competition is lauded in everything in our culture, from economics to sports, career advancement, and bleeds into nearly everything we do, say, and think. Yet as this meticulously researched book shows, competition hurts everyone, increases stress, anxiety and depression, makes our news less informed, our lives less healthy and happy, and turns our political system into a sham. I would put this book on every Basic Human Existence 101 class. Should be required reading for, well, everyone.