Of Friendship And Competition Analysis

In this article, “Of Friendship and Competition”, Peter, the author, states very clearly that competition plays a major role in life. Several websites disagree and even conclude that competition should not exist. Peter overstates the health of competition in his thesis. He states “it [competition] is the most important aspect of human life” (Peter). While competition does play a major role in life, its origin contains unhealthy aspects that Peter fails to see. People compete over land, money, food, housing, even love, power, or importance. This competitive side effects the life of a number of people on a macro scale and a micro scale, because it causes war, hate, economic and political problems, and it ruins friendships, allies, or families. Peter believes a lack of competition results in a lack of friendship; however, this belief does not take into account unhealthy aspects of competition that can
In high school, lots of competition exists between boys and their claims, then girls compete with their grades. While Peter gives a good picture of how competition plays a role, he contradicts himself and proves himself wrong. Because of the striving competitive children, friendships ruin in devastating ways. Also, colleges teach in a way so as to help their students to understand the healthy ways to compete. Colleges teach to aid their students to work well and learn. Colleges, however, do have sport teams, more competitive than high school. Alfie Kohn, in “The Case Against Competition,” suggests that “It’s remarkable, when you stop to think about it, that the way we teach our kids to have a good time is to play highly structured games in which one individual or team must defeat another. (Kohn)” However, this competitiveness remains healthy because coaches teach their teams to lose