Competition and Cooperation

In my experience, Friends are keen to emphasise cooperation over competition. Whether it be with our children and young people, or in our approach to the world at large, it is obviously true to the Quaker way of thinking that working together is better than working in opposition.

And yet, competition and cooperation are not inherently opposing concepts. Competition has its positives, and a preference for cooperation to the extent that we lose those advantages will do us, and wider society, less good than we might hope. Competition does not preclude cooperation, and need not even be in tension with it; seeing them as alternatives is both reductionist and counterproductive.