'Level playing field' too often means 'tilt'

The term "a level playing field" is an overused ubiquitous one which often attempts to justify not having a go!

The level playing field sometimes is a place inhabited by the less adventurous who want success without enduring the effort. No strain … no pain!

Why should the level playing field be a desirable goal for those who couldn't care less about obsequious notions of enforced equality, but just want to get on with whatever striving is needed?

If people have the ability, the determination, the confidence , or are just downright better than those who they are confronting, then it really doesn't matter a damn whether the "playing field" is level, or on the side of a steep hill – they'll win anyhow!

This increasing apology for inferiority refuses to recognise that some people are more competent and capable than others. Loud cries for a "fair go for all' are often an apologetic attempt to remove innate ability differences.

Life's just not like that.

No matter what you attempt, sometimes factors are balanced in your favour, sometimes totally against. This is when differences in personal or organisational ability determine the degree of success or failure in a particular endeavour.

As George Orwell wrote in his classic Animal Farm, "all animals are equal, but some animals are more equal than others."

However, the mark of someone who deserves to win is sometimes a willingness to have a go despite the likelihood that things may not result exactly as wished. This comment does not attempt to argue why some one may deserve to win in the first place, but contest is certainly there, and must not be regulated out of existence by the mythical 'level playing field'.

The utterance seems to have expanded from a simple rule encouraging equality and balance, to a mindset of softer options for contest in any form; in other words, copping out. Now, it largely has become a metaphor for failure, inability, fear of not winning.

"Level playing field" is used sometimes in a sporting sense where it fails to note the unfortunate shift away from playing sport for the sheer fun and enjoyment of bettering one's personal standards, to that of an ego-driven craving for the team to win, sometimes at any cost. Victory is mandatory! Victory is business!

Would the trainer of a horse beaten by Black Caviar insist that her win was because the playing field wasn't level?

In a literal sense, it would be hard to find a racetrack that wasn't, so in the end it comes down to which horse is best.

That brings us to the dreadful word "best" - the anathema for champions of the level playing field which attempts to drag everybody down to the lowest common denominator of achievement.

Of course it is important to recognise the shortcomings in ability of opponents if it becomes necessary to out-manoeuvre them successfully.

That is the basis of analysing strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats, but the level playing field denies much of the significance of these factors, demanding instead that everything should be uniform, that one person should not appear disadvantaged compared to another.

Take a stark example of contest at its most severe – warfare!

Diggers risking their lives in Afghanistan are not copping out of engagement because the enemy are exploiting the advantages of knowing their home terrain intimately and better, or improvising bombs instead of using standard issue types.

Our troops do not demand a level playing field for this deadly contest. Certainly a more level playing field would be an advantage for them, but our men are just getting on with the job of overcoming enemy forces, both in combat, and politically.

My criticism is not about fairness, nor justice. Both these conditions are important for honourable and harmonious behaviour, as well as interpersonal relationships. Societies need the rules by which we live or function.

However, rules should set out the rationale for each activity's outcome, not impose needless restrictions or limitations on such actions without a clearly understood reason, or reducing endeavour's scope.

Rather, my criticism is of the growing tendency to imagine that everything must be the same for success to happen rightly; that we should all conform to an artificially flat standard, without spikes of brilliance, or troughs of challenge.

Geoffrey Rush, Edmund Hillary, Ludwig van Beethoven – back off a bit. Conformity requires that we should all be the same – don't depart from the norm, or you'll be accused of not being on a "level playing field"!

Many joys come from overcoming challenges, not from having the bar lowered to an effortless level.

This notion of the level playing field seeps into the mind's reasoning and rationale, countering motivation to try harder, or strive stronger in the belief that if the opposition are doing better than I, then taking away opportunity from them and giving it to me will flatten things out, and be fairer. Fair to whom?

That level playing field should be kept mown well, so that its growth and weeds do not obscure the things which may be outstanding about the determination of some participants.

It should be a landmark for effort, not a fertile ground for cop out.