Theos-Talk Archives (December 1996 Message tl00278)

>Competition does not have to be personal.  This is another area in which men
>are superior to women.  Men can compete with each other in an impersonal
>way, separating a business relationship from a personal relationship, much
>more so than can women, who are much more prone to resort to personal attacks.

I happen to have several books & magazine articles here, in praise of the
fact that women, rather than compete, and trying to stamp out or best, each
other's ideas, work together, are supportive of what colleagues are doing,
use a colleague's findings to help their own research along (and give credit
to the colleague) and get more accomplished as a group. I've also seen a
writeup of Lyn Margulies, who fiddles with bacteria, I think, (and recently
was part of a science panel on C-span). She found indications that among
bacteria, rather than survival of the fittest, those entities survive(d) who
learn to adapt to new environments. The book passage describes especially
the arrival of oxygen on planet earth, which caused a regular holocaust
among bacteria. Eventually, some of the bacteria learned how to live with
oxygen, and perhaps utilize it, or mix with it, and those survive to the
present day.

Liesel