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A New Form of Global Competition

By Daisaku Ikeda
[© Seikyo Shimbun]

The following is excerpted from the 2009 peace proposal, Toward Humanitarian Competition: A New Current in History by SGI President Daisaku Ikeda. Each year on January 26, the founding date of the Soka Gakkai International, Mr. Ikeda issues a proposal examining the current state of global affairs and proposing solutions grounded in a Buddhist perspective. The full text of this proposal can be read at www.daisakuikeda.org.

The impact of the "once-in-a-century" financial meltdown, which started with defaults in the subprime mortgage market in the United States, has now spread to engulf the whole world.

Even as policy makers struggle to find effective responses, the current financial turmoil is undermining the real economy, bringing about a global recession. If we remember that the Great Depression only fully set in two years after the 1929 stock market crash, the gravity of the current situation becomes even more apparent.

People have the right to live in peace and humane conditions, and to that end, they exert themselves assiduously day after day. It is unacceptable that the foundations of people's livelihoods should be disrupted and devastated by the effects of "tsunami" that they could not foresee and which originated in realms far beyond their control.

The processes of globalization, buoyed by deregulation and technological innovation, have encountered a fierce backlash in the form of globalized recession. It is now apparent that the faith in free competition and markets to resolve all problems was misplaced; nothing in the world is so neatly preordained.

photo A crowd outside the New York Stock Exchange after the 1929 stock market crash

As an alternative paradigm to both unbridled competition and centralized control, I would like to explore certain ideas set out by the founding president of the Soka Gakkai, Tsunesaburo Makiguchi, in his 1903 work The Geography of Human Life. Specifically, I would like to explore the possibilities to be found in his idea of "humanitarian competition."

In the closing chapters of this work, which was published when he was just 32, Makiguchi surveyed the grand flow of human history and identified the forms of competition--military, political and economic--that have prevailed in different periods, overlapping and intertwining as they undergo gradual transformation.

Makiguchi concludes with a call for us to set our sights on the goal of engaging in humanitarian competition, a perspective he reached by tracing the inner logic of historical development.

Makiguchi describes humanitarian competition thus: "To achieve the goals that would otherwise be pursued by military or political force through the intangible power that naturally exerts a moral influence, in other words, to be respected rather than feared."

I am reminded here of the idea of "soft power," defined by Joseph S. Nye Jr. of Harvard University as "the ability to get what you want through attraction rather than coercion."

Likewise, there are resonances between the concept of a "win-win world" put forward by the American futurist Hazel Henderson and the views Makiguchi expresses in the following passage: "What is important is to set aside egotistical motives, striving to protect and improve not only one's own life, but also the lives of others. One should do things for the sake of others, because by benefiting others, we benefit ourselves."

I am fully convinced that the time has now arrived, 100 years after it was originally proposed, for us to turn our attention to humanitarian competition as a guiding principle for the new era.

Free competition driven by the unrestrained impulses of selfishness can descend into the kind of social Darwinism in which the strong prey on the weak. But competition conducted within an appropriate framework of rules and conventions brings forth the energies of individuals and revitalizes society.

Herein lies the value of humanitarian competition. As a concept, it compels us to confront the reality of competition while ensuring that it is conducted firmly on the basis of humane values, thus bringing forth a synergistic reaction between humanitarian concerns and competitive energies. It is this that qualifies it to be a key paradigm for the 21st century.

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