 Stuart`s new book cover
Our already known legend sailor Stu at age of 86 soon will be releasing his 10th book, this time not only about sailing, but as usual it is related to sports, find here the preface and some information about the book that promises to be a new hit not only amongst the sailors...
The Code of Competition - by Stuart Walker
Preface
I started many years ago to write a book about great competitors, the antecedents of greatness and the attributes of greatness. I gradually realized (to my surprise) that the attribute that most clearly distinguished great competitors from ordinary ones - was their resistance to altruism. I had for a long while thought it was only me who empathized with my opponent when I defeated him, who felt uneasy when I faced him again, who sometimes gave up a victory to reassure him that I was really a nice guy. But then I began to see that most of my competitors suffered from a similar excess of this concern for others and that only the few, the mentally tough, were able to act consistently in their egoistic interests.
The rest of us are handicapped by a need to comply with an altruistic Code.
The Thesis of the Book
The competitors who I have observed and about whom I am writing are chiefly amateur sailboat racers. But newspaper reports and books written by and about golfers and tennis players and runners - and other participants in individual sports - demonstrate that all amateur sportsman behave similarly and are similarly committed to an altruistic Code of Competition. Nor are professional players immune; they have inherited the same genes and they differ merely in their greater talent and their greater ability to resist the universal inclination to give their opponent a break.
The thesis of this book is twofold:
First: Competitors behave deliberately. They do what they want to do and achieve what they want to achieve. Although other competitors and other influences occasionally prevent them from succeeding, their actions - rational or irrational, beneficial or detrimental - are deliberate.
Second: Much of what competitors do deliberately is consequent to their inheritance of unconscious dogmas, including an altruistic Code of Competition, that require them to behave in accordance with principles that were essential to the survival of their primitive, pack-living
ancestors.
That the behavior of competitors is deliberate has been widely recognized, although competitors have paid it little attention. That the behavior of competitors is the consequence of information inherited from their primitive ancestors - information that largely drives them to altruism - has not been widely recognized. Competitors are typically unaware that their egoistic intentions are regularly opposed by a set of inherited altruistic precepts and that they usually choose to comply with this Code to the benefit of their opponents, rather than to themselves!
Compliance with the Code creates the pleasant ambience of sport. It accounts for the willingness of one competitor to assist another in his acquisition of competence, for the distress one competitor feels when his opponent is adversely affected and for everyone’s admiration of the winner and the more deserving.
But it also causes competitors to accept being controlled, to acquiesce in being beaten, to restrain their aggressiveness, to be embarrassed by winning and to be tantalized by fear. It promotes the belief that deservedness should determine outcomes, that pre-existing rankings should be accepted, that the more aggressive should dominate and that losing is a satisfactory outcome.
The Basis for the Book’s Assertions
I bring to this book a long history of interest in behavior: a preoccupation with it during my medical training, practice and teaching (as a Professor of Pediatrics for 23 years). During my competitive career (of more than seventy- seven years and more than 5,000 sailboat races), I have maintained a keen interest in and a desire to understand my fellow competitors, as well as an enthusiasm for recording my observations.
Sailboat racing, which is largely an amateur sport (although some events include professionals), provides a unique platform from which to observe competitive behavior. Its highly unpredictable course and outcome facilitate the exposure of inherited, unconscious drives and the portion of the sport in which I have participated, international Olympic sailing, provides frequent insights into the behavior of great competitors.
I have concluded from my observations that much of competitive behavior is determined by impulsions of which competitors are unconscious and that they regularly forego their egoistic intentions so as to comply with an altruistic code. The Code appears to have been inherited and to derive from the behaviors necessary to the mutual sustenance and support required for the survival of our primitive ancestors who lived in packs. These conclusions have been substantiated by a number of recent scientific investigations.
Studies in animals conducted by Vanessa Woods and Brian Hare (What’s Next? - Out of Our Minds) have indicated that sociability, i.e., cooperation between individuals, rather than intelligence, may have determined man’s transition from mere primate to master of the world. Woods and Hare believe that insight into the minds of others - possession of a theory of mind (an attribute restricted to humans and those animals, such as dogs, that have lived in close association with humans) - is the primary determinant of human success. The implication is that an awareness of and a concern for others - altruism - was necessary to the survival and progress of our pack living ancerstors and that we inherited it, are committed to it and cannot escape it..
Terrence Deacon (The Symbolic Species - The Co-Evolution of Language and the Brain) proposes that persistent and powerfully influential ideas, like language and codes of altruism, fit into the pre-existing structure and function of the human brain. The implication is that the codes of behavior that have persisted, that continue to govern our instinctive behavior, are hard-wired into our brain. It is not surprising that competitors cannot (or can only with difficulty) resist the code of the primitive pack that they have inherited.
Joshua Greene (Fruit Flies of the Moral Mind), who studies human responses to altruistic challenges, has demonstrated that egoistic, emotional responses are regularly overriden by altruistic, cognitive responses emanating from another center in the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex. “When an apparent moral duty [egoism] conflicts with the greater good [altruism], judgments in favor of duty are driven by emotion, while judgments in favor of the greater good are driven by more controlled [and more powerful] cognitive processes. These insights into brain physiology explain why my competitors and I so often forsake our egoistic intent and act for the greater good of our opponents and the sport.
Although Aristotle claimed that observation is the basis for all natural philosophy, I was pleasantly surprised to find that my observations have been corroborated by these (and many other) recent neurological and behavioral investigations. It’s so nice to be proven right!
I do not - as I used to tell my medical students - expect my readers to believe that all of my presumptions are necessarily true, i.e., that there can be no other explanation for them. But I believe that after reading the book they will recognize that competitors are regularly complying with an altruistic Code and that the precepts of that Code reflect behaviors that evolved in the packs of-their primitive ancestors.
Sutart`s new book cover bottom part
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Price and where to buy?
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Stuart Walker
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January 19 of 2010
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Price and where to buy? by Stuart Walker click on comment to hideOne Copy to 3 $us 25.00 each
4 to 19 $us 18.00 each
20 or more $us 15.00 each
Order Addresses:
Email: tphubbell@gmail.com
Web: sites.google.com/site/codeofcompetition/
Fax: +1 740 363 5288
Also at: www.USSAILING.org & www.APSLTD.com
Comment by Stuart Walker on January 19 of 2010 |
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