A couple of thoughts:

First, it is interesting to note that the original meaning of "competitor" was someone who ran alongside an Olympic athlete to help him to improve by giving him someone to "compete" with. In that context, competition was actually a way of collaborating! These days, it seems we have corrupted the word to suggest a winner and a loser, a method for addressing our greed.

Second, social anthropologists have long held that language was a monumental development for earliest man. The cultural advantage of language was, in fact, to allow collaboration -- groups could share knowledge so that each individual did not have to learn everything "the hard way." Then and now, language and collaboration permit individuals to share information, resources, struggles and successes for the greater good.

Whatever generation we belong to, competition (in its untainted version) and collaboration both offer a hopeful way forward..especially if we can use them as tools to connect Boomers and Gen Xers, men and women, Eastern societies and Western nations, poor and affluent, technical and artistic, Muslim and Christian, rural and urban...the possiblities are endless!