Beware of Competition
Daniel Plainview lurks within every heart
The following post is part of a Seed Pod collaboration about failure. Seed Pods are a SmallStack community project designed to help smaller publications lift each other up by publishing and cross-promoting around a common theme. We’re helping each other plant the seeds for growth!
Big question to consider: Does competition or cooperation create more positive change in the world?
The Oil Man
Daniel Plainview was an oil man and seemed very proud of that fact. Daniel Day-Lewis portrayed Plainview in There Will be Blood, which is a meditation on greed and how a man can lose his soul due to a kind of tunnel-vision, business-first, no-holds-barred pursuit of domination.
One of the great film characters ever, Plainview was unlikable but honest as to his true values. In a revealing moment, he said: “I have a competition in me. I want no one else to succeed. I hate most people…I look at people and see nothing worth liking.”