People can achieve goals by cooperation rather than competition.

Since cooperation without the presence of competition is meaningless, competition is more important for someone to achieve his future goal. Cooperation without competition may help someone achieve his goal, but not in as short period of time as it is to be handled with competition. If there were no competition for him, he would not work hard enough to achieve his goal because there aren't enough motivations for him to give enough effort into his goal. My opponent implies that people don't need competition in order to achieve a goal with the example of "a doctor and a patient work together in order to heal the patient's health." Let's set a situation where there is no competition and only cooperation exists. First possible thing that could happen is since there is no competition, doctors would not have to try to increase their skills, or lower their prices in order to lure patients. Therefore, patients would not be trated with diligent care because doctors do not have to worry about the quality of their work. The only thing they have to do is to cooperate with doctors, and set the price as high as they can. Patients will not get any option other than be victims of the doctors' COOPERATION. Going back to my opponent's argument, what would be the doctor's primary motivation to set the goal, which is to heal some stranger's health? It is to gain more success than other doctors, or to help more people than other doctors, which is another example of competition. It is not possible to cooperate without competing against someone. My opponent also points out that cooperation in sports gives athelte more success than competition, but it is not true. To win against other atheletes is primary goal of athletes who practice as hard as they can, and struggle with their own minds. If they did not have competitions, they would be so discouraged that they would have no reason to practice or struggle with themselves. It may sound wonderful to some people, no struggling and no hard work. However, without competition, people will not be able to see historic, and glorious moments where great athletes go beyond human-being's limits, and let you know the meaning of nothing is impossible. These people are all motivated by competition, rather than cooperation. Another example that my opponent also pointed out is an example of a goal of increasing your sales by 30% at the end of the year. Well, without competition, what is the point of setting the goal to increase 30% of your sales? Isn't the purpose of increasing the sales is the desire to get better lives than others by achieving the goal, a motivation that fits right into the definition of competition? (rivalry between two or more persons or groups for an object desired in common, usually resulting in a victor and a loser but not necessarily involving the destruction of the latter.)[http://www.dictionary.com...] Furthermore, my opponent gives an example of a runner who sets a goal as running a mile in 5 minutes by cooperating with nature. "What if you have the goal to be able to run a mile in 5 minutes? You have to have the cooperation of the weather, ... Believe me, if you start competing with them while you are trying to run a mile that will not help you achieve the goal." The first motivation for someone to set such a goal would be the desire to compete against himself, not the nature itself. The bottom line is, he started to compete against himself, or maybe others who had better running records than him. As my opponent said, "The destination is not the path." cooperation in this case, can be considered as the path, and winning the competition against himself should be regarded as his own goal. My opponent also argues that cooperation is more important than competition in this particular debate because we both have to get the votes from the audience. It is true that to win the debate, we need cooperation of others as well. However, if there was no competition, we would not have the common goal of "winning the debate by presenting better arguments than the other" in the first place. At the time when the goal is set, the existence of competition is inevitable, while the presence of cooperation can be often unnecessary. I think my opponent contradicted himself a little bit when he argued it is not the competitors themselves whom are more important, but are the audiences whom are more important. My opponent said, "The reality however is that competition is part of the goal, not the way to achieve it." but competition is definitely the only way achieving the goal because the cooperation of the audiences would not be followed if the arguments were not good enough. My opponent's saying is something similar with that of "it is not how great the president is that is more important, but it is the votes that is more important to achieve his goal." How will people know whom to give their votes if the presidential candidates did not compete against? and how would the candidates achieve the goals to be the president without competing? Will they cooperate with each other to take turns to be the president? Competition is more important than cooperation in order to achieve someone's goal because it is the motivation which helps people to achieve their goals and even set their start lines.