In our present Survivor it looks like Terry's downright excellence at competitions plus a decent strategic sense will have him winning the competition. He could lose, however, if Cerie's superior strategic sense can get someone other than someone jury members detest opposite him in the final two.
It's been the same since the show began: good competitive skills, good strategic thinking and a dose of luck have separated the winner from those that fell by the wayside.
The subject matters and venues are different in the Apprentice and American Idol. And so are the means of selection/elimination. Fellow contestants vote at all stages in Survivor; the public votes in American Idol and Trump votes in the Apprentice. But the end result, i.e., that there will be only one at the end, is fixed. Clearly the success of the shows indicates that there is a deep appeal of such a format and such an end!!
For me, at any rate, the competition certainly has appeal. I was raised to it in a culture which seems to honor competitiveness above most other natural drives. I say natural because I believe it's "wired in" from birth. I see it as being shaped rather than created in familial and cultural upbringing.
Take jealousy for example (Is jealousy the parent of competitiveness or vise-versa?). Jealousy exists without help; it shows itself amongst brothers and sisters and in groups and classrooms. How does it show itself? As a concern over signs that another has been recognized or rewarded more than oneself.
Also two dog-derived ideas (legitimate source: we can can find the bottom-line roots of human behavior in the behavior of other pack animals! Packs are just early mammalian tribes, prototribes, as it were.):
- first clue: the sweet talk refrain used by a dog trainer with her charges -- "You want to be the only one", and
- second clue:, the comment yesterday made about a longtime family dog as she politely snubbed the newbie dog who had been adopted two months before -- "She'd prefer to have been an only child". [She's quite civil about it, but her preferences are clear]
- third clue: the evidence of puppy behavior as the litter approaches even two months -- to have adequate physiological support appears to be almost less the drive than to get more than anyone else.
To summarize my response and to take it back to Reality TV:
If our tribal behavior is pack derived and thus legitimate enough to be expressed,
I don't want it to be just bravado-laced,
unscrupled cleverness as in Richard
Hatch's example.
I would prefer the competition to be fair
and principled as in the behavior of
Colby Donaldson (#2 in Survivor 2)
or Sally Schumann (recently voted out Survivor 12)
,
For me the most recognition should go to those who are nurturing
as well as competitive.
Tina Wesson (winner Survivor 2) is a prime example.
(Interestingly she won only because recognized as "the real winner"
by Colby Donaldson; that was, to me, true excellence on his part!!!)
.It seems to me that we could put together programming which is not only entertains us but teaches and inspires. I don't know if Survivor can be reshaped. But a show could be so structured that longer term necessities are taken care of -- and probably be built around other instinctively natural behaviors to boot!!
That is, we need to give some scope to competitiveness but also to encourage the development and display of skills (and drives) which afford a people-friendly, environment-friendly survival for the whole group. In the real world elimination of competitors is an antisocial high cost strategy which, when I think about it, has to be the lesser of the set of strategies which support a longer term societal success.
Given this reasoning I think you'll have to agree that you and I, fellow Survivor watchers, may be spending too much time watching the struggles of Survivor participants. Why? Because their victory-targeted strategies are only a small subset of the total set of strategies, skills, understandings that we as individuals and as a society must apply. That total set needs to be applied at home, in school groups, at work and in our communities. When we have done that we will all prosper in ways that ensure our families and communities survival. That survival will have with quality, and it will continue into a future that lasts many generations.
The small subset of competitive skills are, if practiced alone, destructive. We don't live life to win at the expense of all others. The "I want to be the only one" goal is natural, yes. But -- life strategies that give it first or only place are suicidal. Let's put something together that helps us learn behaviors and strategies that allow all of us to have a real future.
[Most recent cleanup: 5/1/06 9:40 am]
