What's more important?

One of the things concerning me these days is the idea or concept the most important thing is being on top or 'winning'. It doesn't matter whether it's politics, sports, or life in general, the most important thing seems to be, to quote Oakland Raider owner Al Davis, “just win, baby”.

While winning is understandable in sports (although sportsmanship is far more important and should be the first focus), it is extremely disturbing in politics. Although when one looks at politics, they can see how closely politics and sports seem to be. If you're going to have a representative government (whether parlimentary as in Europe or our own representative republic), politics is going to take on the qualities of the coliseum games of ancient Rome. Both sides fighting each other using tactics that almost shock the senses. It seems almost to the point in our modern society that politics have all the drama and bloodsport of professional wrestling. Listening to the radio these days, and how people on both sides are quickly getting to the point of 'the end justifies the means', it reminds me of a wrestling quote. The individual involved was talking about winning a particular type of match, and I'm paraphrasing here: “to win, to survive, you've got to get down in that gutter and do something so horrible, so violent, that the other person looks at you and says 'I quit'.”

Is that where our society is now? We have had other instances in our country's history where people who were passionate about their particular point of view decided the ends justified the means and the end result has been violence. If we are not careful, we have multiple issues that may lead up to violence between people. We need to work on our ability to not only communicate our ideas, but our listening ability to understand the concerns and fears of others, so we can better address those things and come to a peaceful and equitable solution.