When Competition Creates Enemies

How rivalry forms when safety feels uncertain

By Josh Singleton | Founder, serving as Lead Cultivator, The Neighborhood Garden Project

There is a moment in The Courage to Be Disliked where the philosopher makes a sharp claim. He says that when competition sits at the center of our relationships, the world slowly fills with enemies. Not loud enemies. Not obvious ones. Quiet rivals. People whose success subtly threatens our place. People whose progress makes us measure ourselves. People we begin to watch instead of know.

Philosophically, it is a strong observation. Psychologically, it is accurate. But like much philosophy and psychology, it stops just short of the soil.

Because what looks like competition on the surface is usually something deeper underneath.

Most people are not driven by a desire to win. They are driven by a fear of losing safety. Losing belonging. Losing worth. Competition is not the root. It is the coping strategy.

Underneath competition often sits a quieter sentence that rarely gets spoken out loud.

Don’t take this from me. I worked so hard for it.

That sentence carries effort in it. Sacrifice. Survival. It usually belongs to people who did not receive freely, who learned early that nothing was guaranteed, who had to earn what others were given.

So they grip.

They grip outcomes.
They grip recognition.
They grip position.
They grip identity.

Not because they are greedy or ambitious, but because what they have feels fragile. When something has been secured through strain, the nervous system treats it as endangered. Anything that threatens it feels like theft, even when no one is taking anything.

This is how neighbors quietly become enemies.

From a physiological perspective, this makes sense. The human nervous system is designed to scan for threat. When belonging feels uncertain, the body shifts into vigilance. Comparison becomes automatic. Status becomes a proxy for safety. Winning feels regulating. Losing feels dangerous. Over time, the body learns that staying alert, guarded, and self-conscious is protective, even when it is exhausting.

This is where physiology reaches its ceiling.

The body can explain why competition feels necessary. It cannot tell you when it is no longer needed.

Philosophy reaches its ceiling in a similar way. It can name the pattern, but it cannot create the conditions where the pattern dissolves. It can say, “Stop competing.” It cannot make the body feel safe enough to actually do so.

This is where a deeper truth begins to surface.

The most destabilizing reality for a competitive system is not cooperation. It is the realization that the contest was never real to begin with.

At the most basic level, the most important questions are already answered.

You are here.
You are breathing.
You are sustained.

Before you achieve anything. Before you produce. Before you contribute. Before you are useful. You exist. And existence itself is not something you earn. It is something you are given and continually upheld.

This is what it means to say we have already won.

Winning, at its core, is about survival. About securing enough. About making it through. About proving we deserve to remain. But survival has already been granted. The body does not wake up each morning negotiating its right to be alive. It simply continues. Heart beating. Lungs filling. Cells repairing. Systems sustaining themselves without permission or applause.

The nervous system knows this at a deep level. It forgets when environments teach it otherwise.

When systems imply that worth must be earned, the body adapts by striving. When culture suggests that visibility equals value, the body learns to perform. When belonging feels conditional, the body stays alert. Competition becomes a way to reassure ourselves that we are still allowed to be here.

This is where the soil speaks more clearly than theory.

In a healthy garden, competition is not the dominant force. Roots intermingle. Fungi connect one plant to another. Nutrients are shared. When conditions are right, one plant thriving does not threaten another. It strengthens the whole system.

A plant does not say, “Don’t take this from me. I worked too hard for it.” Because the plant is not the source of its own provision. It participates in growth, but it does not originate it.

Competition only shows up when something is off. When soil is thin. When water is scarce. When roots are shallow. When systems are misaligned.

The same is true with people.

When identity is thin, comparison increases.
When belonging is scarce, rivalry grows.
When worth feels conditional, others become threats.

This is why the Kingdom does not begin with behavior correction. It begins with placement.

You already have a place.
You already belong.
You are already seen.

These are not philosophical ideas. They are stabilizing realities.

When a person no longer has to secure their worth, competition loses its function. When safety is restored, vigilance softens. When identity is rooted, comparison fades without effort.

Psychology can diagnose the defense. It cannot remove the need for it. Philosophy can critique the system. It cannot create a body that feels safe enough to rest.

Only presence can do that.

This is also why so much work feels tense, even when it is good work. Nonprofits compete for funding. Churches compete for relevance. Individuals compete for visibility. Not because they are evil or ambitious, but because scarcity is assumed. And scarcity always turns neighbors into rivals.

In the garden, a different order becomes visible.

People arrive guarded. They watch. They compare. They stay near the edge. Then something subtle happens. No one is keeping score. No one is rushing. No one is measuring their worth against another person’s harvest. Over time, shoulders drop. Breath deepens. Conversations slow. Curiosity replaces comparison.

Not because someone taught a better philosophy, but because the environment no longer requires protection.

This is the ceiling philosophy hits.
This is the ceiling physiology hits.

They can explain why the cage exists.
They cannot unlock the door.

The Kingdom does not argue people out of competition. It outgrows it. It establishes a deeper order where winning and losing are no longer relevant categories because belonging is no longer in question.

This is the deepest freedom the soil teaches.

And there is a paradox here that matters.

When a person truly lives from the posture of having already won, they do not become passive. They become precise.

When survival is no longer at stake, attention sharpens. Energy is no longer spent defending what might be lost. It becomes available for refinement.

Only what is no longer being clutched can be handled carefully.

This is why refinement rarely happens under threat. When the body is defending, it cannot listen. It cannot adjust. It cannot fine tune. It can only hold on.

But when the grip releases, curiosity returns.

What has been entrusted to me?
What actually needs care?
What needs pruning, not proving?
What needs patience, not pressure?

This is the difference between protecting outcomes and stewarding callings.

The Kingdom posture is not disengagement. It is surrender without fear. Nothing essential is at risk.

From that place, work becomes responsive rather than anxious. Effort becomes attentive rather than compulsive. Refinement becomes possible because failure no longer threatens belonging.

The garden knows this well.

A gardener does not hover in panic over a plant fighting for survival. They return again and again to what is already growing, adjusting water, light, spacing, and timing. Not to secure the plant’s right to exist, but to help it become what it already is.

This is the posture of someone who has already won.

Not hands off.
Hands open.

And from that posture, the work does not shrink. It deepens.

What we have been entrusted with is no longer something to defend, but something to tend with care.

Once you have tasted that kind of safety, the world no longer looks like a battlefield.

It starts to look like a garden again.

The soil knows this.
The body remembers it.
The Kingdom restores it.

And from that place, life stops being something you have to win and becomes something you are finally free to steward.