Let’s stop worshipping at the altar of competition

A session I had been particularly looking forward to at the World Government Summit in Dubai last week was the one with Ray Dalio, the noted American investor.

At first, I was not disappointed: Dalio’s account of the rise and fall of empires over the past 500 years succeeded marvelously well in simplifying world history without trivializing it. I appreciated his thesis that events can take us by surprise only when we have not previously experienced anything analogous in our own lifetimes. Look back far enough and there is nothing new — indeed scarcely anything unpredictable — under the sun. Didn’t make enough money out of the American empire while it lasted? There will be another one along in a minute; just hop onto the next wave and invest in China.

As Dalio was talking, I was only conscious of the pleasure in hearing such well-argued and well-researched observations. This, surely, was the wisdom (as I have often said) that comes not from seeing only the surface of things, but from seeing beneath the surface. But as I reflected on his words afterward, I realized that his account of the endless rise and fall of empires — their rise to military, monetary, linguistic and economic dominance, infallibly provoking the challenge from the next rising empire that is awaiting its turn to replace the hegemon, leading inevitably to years of war and incalculable loss of life, peace and property — had left me rather depressed.

Can humanity really do no better than this? How is it that, after so many dreary repetitions of the same performance, we still have not learned that what grows too strong must be laid low, that the desire to dominate must lead to humiliation, and that what goes up must come down?

Competition is fine, as long as we have the wisdom and the self-control to mix it in the correct proportions with collaboration and cooperation

Simon Anholt

This never-ending cycle of mankind’s hubris (or, let’s be honest, man’s hubris), driven by his insatiable lust for wealth and power, his endless greed, vanity, tribalism and aggression, is not, in my opinion, the story of civilization. Rather, it is the story of our inability to become civilized.

I will not accept an account of human history that holds this to be the best of which we are capable. This has indeed been our story until now, but the future might be substantially different from the past. Unfortunately, this is most likely to be the case because of the one phenomenon that Dalio, oddly, failed to mention about the past and future of humanity: climate change. The fact that we have broken the weather is one of modern mankind’s genuinely unprecedented achievements. Together with pandemics and nuclear conflict, these are genuinely existential threats — and all our own work. They are what make it virtually certain that the future will be dramatically and fundamentally different from the past.

To suggest that investors can continue blithely paying their money games with nothing to fear from the future save the reassuring, slow rhythm of imperial ambition, seems to me deluded at best, and suicidal at worst.

But let us not forget that humanity is capable of great genius as well as great cruelty and tireless stupidity. There is a more positive version of our future in store if only we can learn to stop worshipping exclusively at the altar of competition, each tribe forever fixated on gaining ascendancy over the others. Competition is fine, as long as we have the wisdom and the self-control to mix it in the correct proportions with collaboration and cooperation.

By working together, we might find a way to get off Dalio’s imperial switchback and achieve stability rather than endless growth, peace rather than constant conflict, and harmony with nature rather than its relentless destruction.

Dalio’s picture of humanity’s past is all too accurate. But it makes me all the more determined to reject the idea that it is an accurate picture of our future.

• Simon Anholt is an independent policy adviser. He is the founder of Nation Brands Index.