Thinking Beyond Flagellation

The title “Thinking Beyond Competition” may evoke mixed responses — what does it really mean? Does it imply that we people today are too competitive and need to shed our competitiveness? Not exactly. I think that today we have a lot of potential in our hands and consequently, also a lot of responsibility. Excellence and specialization is the order of the day. When different agencies and entities strive towards excellence in the same area, competition is a natural corollary. This competition is qualitatively different from the competition for food, water, mates and territory that our animal instincts try to make us cope with. Consequently, we humans often end up applying the wrong “coping mechanisms” to the current competitive scenarios and suffer the consequences.

I’m not talking about the coping mechanisms for out-and-out competition, where the competing agents have no common interests. Rather, the scenarios I discuss here are those frequently encountered in situations where the competing agents are also simultaneously trying to cooperate with each other. This usually happens when the total number of competitors is very large and thus, small groups of competitors consider it in their own interest to align with a few others.

The first of these coping mechanisms is the so called mutual flagellation mechanism. Mutual flagellation works as follows. A and B are both supposed to do a certain task (say, a homework assignment). A, for some reason, was unable to do it. Now, A hopes that her not doing it is nothing unusual, viz that the assignment is hard to do. Hence, A tells B things like: “You haven’t done the assignment, have you?” If B replies that she has done the assignment, A laments about the soup that she is in, and throws praise on B for having done the assignment in time. Somewhat disconcerted, B hastily underplays her having done the assignment, saying that she is behind on a number of other things, and just happened to be able to do the assignment. If B also hasn’t done the assignment, A suggests that they do it collectively, disses the teacher for setting such a hard assignment, or commiserates about the burden of assignments,

The subtlety here is that A seeks reassurance of her competence through something negative about B. This is, of course, not the most pernicious consequence of the “competitive mindset”. But it is one of the most common, something that I am sure you all see at least twice a week, may be even every day.

The second “coping mechanism”, which is fortunately far less common, is that of topper flagellation. Some people simply view it as jealousy, but I think it has a deeper meaning. Once again, it arises from the need of people to feel that they cannot do better.

Suppose you have been working for days on developing or practising something and at last you feel you have something worthwhile. Then, you see a colleague of you produce something of far superior quality. You don’t logically see how, had you been in his shoes, you could have produced something so magnificent. There are lurking doubts within yourself: may be I’m intrinsically not as good? or may be I didn’t exert myself? But it is uncomfortable to put oneself under the scanner, so you instead pick on the other person to rationalize the situation. Typical excuses: if the other person outdid you in academics, you can claim that the person doesn’t have a social life; if the other person outdid you in a co-curricular activity, you can say the person sacrificed time meant for academics; if the other person succeeded in a sedentary activity, you can criticize him for neglecting his bodily health; if the other person has succeeded by putting in long and inhuman working hours, you can safely criticize him for neglecting his family and friends.

Ergo, that person cheated in order to succeed, and you would rather be a good and normal person than sacrifice other things to achieve such a lopsided success.

The third, and possibly most pernicious “coping mechanism” is that of self flagellation, which basically means that I criticize myself for not being able to cope up with the competition. Superficially, it appears as if the self-flagellators have got it right — they are looking inwards to determine reasons for their failure rather than seeking to fix the blame on others or shift responsibility. However, 99% of self-flagellation fails to miss on the genuine causes and the genuine improvement measures needed to achieve greater success: all too often, they focus on peripheral issues I already know have existed, do exist, and will continue existing. Typical things are:

1. I didn’t work hard enough
2. I was juggling too many things
3. I wasn’t really all that keen on it.
4. I don’t have the correct level of experience and the right resources at my disposal

All these points can be said for almost every endeavour. The point where self-flagellation becomes dangerous is when people start converting these flagellations to self-praise:

1. I am not one of those hardworking types. I enjoy. Chill Chill Chill.
2. I always have lots of things on my agenda. I’m in demand. I’m not like one of those jobless people who can afford to give their full energies to one task.
3. I’ve learnt not to go around getting attached to worldly achievements, worldly objects, people, dreams etc. I live life a day at a time. Why go around risking your neck?
4. I lead a simple life. I don’t go around accumulating resources and wasting other people’s time to fulfill some stupid ambitions. I stay within my boundaries. I’m not one of those aggressive arrogant types.

A quick review of the three “coping mechanisms”:

1. Mutual flagellation (second person flagellation)
2. Topper flagellation (third person flagellation)
3. Self flagellation (first person flagellation)

Interesting, isn’t it, that all of these coping mechanisms are flagellative: they seek to pull both oneself and each other down. Is this what competition entails today? Do we want to remember ourselves as flagellators, as people who discouraged one another, who looked down upon doing things properly, who looked down upon dreaming and achieving? Surely not! That’s the very antithesis of competition. Why, then are we moved so much towards flagellation in today’s competitive world?

I’ll explore these questions in subsequent posts.

Looking forward to comments in the meantime.