yourself stranded on a desert island
with just one other person what do you
do do you cooperate with them and try to
work together and get the most food or
do you compete against them and try to
get more food than the other in order to
survive you might think at first that
cooperation is simply the best choice
it’s the most visually beneficial but if
you really put yourself in their shoes
you might not be so sure what choice you
make cooperation and competition in this
situation can be simplified into a
spectrum of two opposing AIA sites one
being competition one being cooperation
life itself is made up of many different
kinds of sub spectrums everything from
sexual orientation to your political
affiliation they’re everywhere and part
of growing up is learning what your
identity is and how you’ve paid along
those spectrums and how you can turn
that to your advantage in life
so starting I want to break down this
spectrum of cooperation versus
competition I’m gonna start with
competition one of the first things that
you might think about when you think of
competition it might be the negatives
maybe the stress or anxiety associated
with it but I’d rather start with the
positives in a competitive environment
one of the biggest benefits is
innovation certain vocations like
engineers take this idea into the daily
Creed when they’re trying to create the
best machine or make the best building
entrepreneurs use this idea when they
try to create their products because in
the market only the best products and
get sold in this way the stressful
competition pushes entrepreneurs and
engineers to try to make the best
project or product that they can try and
innovate and deviate and trying to be
better than the others as the president
of this school’s first robotics
competition team I see this play up
firsthand every day in 2009 our team
reforms and how to rebuild itself in the
ground up after having disbanded for
three years
there are many really interesting
stories from that time of Reconstruction
my favorite has to do with reading the
rules you see and every kickoff event
each year we
Laura competition is and they release a
rule handbook back in the day we only
had one designated person who would read
the rules and they would serve and
through that how we would for a robot
enter those rules for the whole year
however one year that rural reader had a
bit of a Braveheart moment like we all
do sometimes MT misread the robot max
height as being six feet not here but in
which competition the robot effector
stops right away he says that robot is
way too tall because the actual height
limit was 60 inches since then we’ve
learned from our mistake
and now make sure to read the rules
thoroughly each year for over an hour
it’s been through little improvements
and learning from mistakes like this
that we’ve been able to slowly get
better and succeed more over time in
2016 we were semi-finalists in our
division at the World Championships and
we would never would have gotten there
if it weren’t for the health and
motivation that we got from competitive
stress stressful competition can be a
really great motivator you see a study
by social psychologist dr. sander van
der Linden found that it can found at
the Princeton University do it in the
dark campaign which is a competition
among the different residential colleges
at Preston University so you can serve
the most energy it was the leading
factor during the competition of course
they would conserve energy but as soon
as the competition ended that was
basically it
they’d go back to using the same amount
of energy before and it was ready back
to where they started
so as soon as that stressful stimuli was
removed it was as if no progress had
been made
therefore it seems that the stress of
competition can be very useful however
too much of it can be a detriment in a
very high-stress environment it can be
unhealthy and be harmful for example in
the environment of the average high
school especially around the time of
junior and senior year students had to
look a lot more at their grades and
their test scores their GPA at the
colleges they’re applying to
I had to basically break them selling
themselves down into a series of numbers
and it could be really dehumanizing this
is especially true at Union back
Union County vocational-technical
schools here where students are often
pushed to their limits and have to work
even more living in such a chronic
high-stress environment can be there a
touch consoles your health for example
it can even kill brain cells it can
damage your immune system and it can
so therefore if you live in a completely
competitive as in totally zero of the
other competition environment it can be
very harmful and stressful first year
whoever that’s where you must look at
the other side of the spectrum we have
to look at cooperation in a totally
cooperative environment you see solution
to the very phones that I just described
in a totally competitive environment
imagine instead of the cutthroat high
school description that I just gave you
students would help each other they
would share their notes they wanted to
help each other as a whole learn and as
a whole succeed rather than just the
individual and this way students would
have more time to focus on their own
interests in their own needs and rather
than focusing on stress and being simple
basically tests for generators ice and
FIRST Robotics we actually have this
concept called gracious professionalism
in simple terms it means that everyone
was feel special to each other no matter
what
but then that is something called
coopertition
it’s basically a combination of
cooperation and competition that’s the
idea of that robotics team should be
helping each other to succeed whenever
they need it no matter what even if they
might be competing against each other in
the next match which she would see
happen when we were still rookies and we
were still trying to rebuild ourselves
up it was thanks to the help and good
nature of all the teams that we were
able to really succeed it wasn’t just
our efforts alone and now that were a
much better team we’re able to even give
back and help all the teams who are now
in the same place where we once were
so therefore cooperation can be there
very beneficial but it is not of course
without some downsides when you focus on
a totally cooperative environment and
that is one where there is no
competition whatsoever and you lose the
same thing that competition would give
you innovation because of a totally
cooperative environment there would be
no real need to innovate or deviate if
you’re always focusing on the same team
you’re on the same side it’s all about
the team success as opposed to personal
success there’s no reason to try to make
something better than the other compete
over the other because it’s all about
the whole so as a result if you focus on
a totally common environment and at the
same time you might be sacrificing your
own personal success well it might be
difficult to find a totally cooperative
apartment in the real world a simplified
example can receive in history in a very
simplified version of the Cold War the
world was decided into two sides divided
into two sides you see the capitalist
countries who had a very innovation a
very competition driven economy where
they were trying to make their own the
best products they would have a
beautiful society and they would be
focused on their own individual once so
they would be driven more how and they
were even traded with other capitalist
countries in order to thrive whoever on
the other side almost like a spectrum
the communist country has had a more
cooperation focused economy in this way
people were unhappy because they were
strapped into society where they could
not move up and there was no innovation
to no reason to innovate or deviate
because there was no way they could move
up or again any personal success from
that it was all about the team success
as you know from history ultimately the
capitalist economy flourished while the
economy economy de clay it decayed on
account of because they had the
innovation and the competition aspect
therefore in a way it seems like no one
wins if you look at totally once
spectrum on competition there are so
much stress and it’s all on you to find
that personal success that it could be
hard to thrive whereas on the other side
on a totally cooperative environment
you couldn’t sacrifice that personal
success even more and then you lose your
innovation clever we don’t live in a
world that’s made up of these black and
white features we live in a world that’s
meeting up with different spectrums
there is no real totally competitive or
totally cooperative environment every
environment like that has a little bit
of both this can be symbolized by the
end yang you need a little bit of good
in the evil and vice versa in order for
an environment to really succeed this
can be seen in many different kinds of
spectrums it could be seen in things
like political affiliation maybe gender
maybe eats maybe if you’re focusing on
stem versus arts and similar to the way
the center of the yin-yang wavers as you
travel through life the different
spectrums that you might be looking at
may also waver maybe you’ll be around a
group of conservative Republicans so
your political affiliation spectrum
would be more to the right or maybe
you’re focusing on being an engineering
major
so you’d be more around engineering
include people and artists however this
spectrum as you travel across is not out
of your out of your control to control
as you understand your identity and
these spectrums you can affirm this
identity and have an effect on it for
example if you were a Democrat and you
happen to vote Democrat then you would
affect your community and then it would
be more democratically a lot of course
that’s what you would most likely to do
if you’re a Democrat and he’d most
likely go Democrat if you were a a stem
major than he looks like we go to a stem
school and be around more stem majors
you would most likely go to the side of
the spectrum that you are already
aligned palm however I would encourage
you to do something a little bit
different to take the pass the path less
or traveled instead I would encourage
you to try to find the balance to try to
find the center of the yin-yang
because once you do that you might
unlock a whole new role for yourself you
can see both sides of the same coin and
both sides of every situation you will
unlock for yourself different
perspectives that you might not even
thought up before and once you’ve
unlocked that it will empower you thank you