Humans admire success—winning—but perhaps equally as much, we respect and honor the person who succeeds by running the race but not winning. We teach winning to our children, but we also show them respect for participation because playing the game also requires discipline and effort.
We often criticize the parent, teacher, or coach who puts too much emphasis on winning and not enough on partaking. There is nothing wrong about receiving a “Participation Trophy” as long as participation required some sacrifice. Not everyone can come in First but everyone can do his or her best to reach for that Winner Trophy.
The original Olympic motto was first expressed by the Dominican priest Henri Didon in the opening ceremony of a school sports event in 1881 as “Faster, Higher, Stronger” in Latin. The new motto now reads “Citius, Altius, Fortius—Communiter.” “Faster, Higher, Stronger—Together” in English.
We want to build higher, go faster, and live in a stronger, more enduring world. Where would humanity be without this hard-wired ambition for both individual and collective accomplishment? Mud huts and banana leaf loincloths?
Jeffrey A. Tucker is founder and president of the Brownstone Institute and speaks widely on topics of economics, technology, social philosophy, and culture. He wrote the following as part of a review of the movie The Joker.
“The trouble begins with personal life failures. While this man is troubled, you sometimes think that perhaps he is not so far gone as to be irredeemable. He might function well. He can get through this, just like everyone else deals with their own demons.
“Yet there are life circumstances that keep driving him more and more to the point that he loses love for life as it is. And then he does evil and discovers something that empowers him: his conscience does not provide a corrective. On the contrary, the evil he does makes him feel empowered and valued.”
Tucker continued, “His life was not working; he found something that worked for him finally: Destructionism. That ideology says that the sole purpose of action should be to tear down what others have created. This ideology becomes necessary because doing good seems impossible, one still needs to make some difference in the world to feel that your life has some direction, and because doing evil is easy.”
“Destructionism” discussed by Austrian economist Ludwig Von Mises in his 1922 book Socialism, refers to policies that consume capital but do not accumulate it. Accumulation of capital is the basis for economic progress because as the value of an economy increases, labor productivity as well as standards of living increases.
The CPP-NPA rebellion is the world’s longest ongoing communist insurgency and no doubt some of its grievances are justified. It’s mandate is to “establish a people’s democratic republic and a democratic coalition government,” which the people have never welcomed. It is therefore unachievable. “The NPA, as the central agent of armed struggle, serves to achieve its central task of destroying and dismantling the rule of the enemy and taking their political power.”
September 2005: “NPA bombs 11th Globe cell site.” The CPP-NPA cannot overthrow the government, but they can make Smart and Globe pay P200 million. “Destructionism becomes a psychology of wreckage imparted by an ideology that is a failure by necessity of theory and practice.”
Some people discover satisfaction in destruction because it makes them feel alive and gives their life meaning.