A race

Races don't interest me so much.  So what if you're only second fastest?  Is it worth it for a jockey or auto racer to risk his life just to come in first?  There's a famous line in the Book of Ecclesiastes, "The race is not to the swift nor the battle to the strong." That book was written over 2000 years ago, yet it seems surprisingly modern, even existential.

I recall the space race from the 1960s.  Did it really matter whether the Americans or the Russians reached the moon first?  Unlike many people I don't remember where I was when Apollo 11 landed. (I felt sorry for Michael Collins, who had to stay up in the Command Module while Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin were walking on the surface.) They left a plaque saying "We came in peace for all mankind," but it was an American flag that they left behind.  they could at least have left a United Nations flag as well, like when they reached the top of Mount Everest.

And don't get me started on arms races, which only benefit national elites and manufacturers.  At the end of his presidency Eisenhower warned against "the military-industrial complex," yet where was Ike for eight years?  If he'd taken on the M.I.C. at the start of his presidency American history might have taken a different course.  But instead he largely took the path of least resistance.