I Want You To Do Well, Just Not As Well As Me.

Are you a bad person, or are you human?

Jul 02, 2022

Howdy friends, below you’ll find another addition of Ill-Informed Musings.

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Every organism competes for a limited number of resources, whether tangible, status-related, or just for the hell of it — Some men, just want to watch the world burn.

There’s a finite amount of race winners, investors on the successful end of a trade, nerds with the highest test score, etcetera, etcetera.

Across the interweb and related academic fields, there’s an ongoing debate on whether or not we’re a primarily competitive, or — and perhaps the less adopted — cooperative species.

In the camp of the former, you’ll hear things like ‘survival of the fittest’, ‘Darwinism’, ‘natural selection’, ‘capitalism’ — and say things like: give me your lunch money, nerd.

As for the latter, the argument seems to centre around why we act on certain impulses that in no way directly benefit us.
(Yes, smartass, because it makes us feel good — but that doesn’t make for a good blog.)

Think — getting up for someone less able than you on the bus, donating blood, and giving cash monies to charity. (Outside of tax minimisation, hero.)

In my under-educated opinion: as with most things, there’s a sliding scale. I’d like to think that the spread looks a little like a bell curve, with most of us residing in the middle, somewhere between world domination, and straight-up dove.

If you’ve encountered something different, or believe we generally tilt the scales in one direction, I’d love to hear about it below, or shoot me an email : )

Leave a comment

- As such I’ve carefully constructed a diagram to reflect these thoughts below:

So, we’ll continue under the assumption that:
a) We’re all a little bit of both, generally leaning more towards one side than the other.
b) I might not pursue my graphic design career.

As for me, well I’m pretty far over to the right there.

I’m one of those a**holes that enjoyed winning just for the sake of it.

I had gastro for our final year of high school athletics. Projectiled in my car post-race.
Had to get the W.

I’d study hard and compete to win academic tests just so I could beat someone specific. It didn’t matter whether I scored 60% or 100%.
Just wanted the win.

In my few years of sales, I couldn’t care less if we had the slowest week of the year, I just wanted to be the top salesman.

A slow week of sales wasn’t going to bankrupt me, but a big week where I didn’t take the top ticket would’ve certainly stressed me the f*ck out.

Begin: Saturdays & Sundays in the office character arc.
Both of my ex-girlfriends will remember this one a bit too well…

The equation simply read:
Less cash and being the best > More in the piggy, but placing second.

But hear me out, I’m not saying I won’t get up for an old lady on the bus, I’m just a young guy who skews a little further over to the right there than the others.

So, is this nature, or nurture?

Well, I’m an expert in nothing but myself, and even then at times it’s a questionable understanding, but as for my childhood, we were competitive little sods.

I’m extremely lucky to have a solid group of friends that were athletic and fairly switched on, and so this bred some pretty gnarly competition, on the pitch and in the classroom.

We were the type of friends that if we’re all riding bikes together, and you got a flat tire, that was pretty unlucky, and we’d see you at our next destination.

But, again, we weren’t complete jerks. There were a few kinder souls among us, and if you happened to be riding in front of one of them when your incident occurred, they’d at least stop to marvel and smirk at how flat it really was before moving on.

I’d have to argue that, again, each of our personalities and how we interact with others is a combination of the two forces

A drop of collaborative nature, and a dash of dog-eat-dog nurture, and you’ve got yourself a nice little concoction.

But are one of these character traits more right or wrong than the other?

We live in a civilised society — but it’s a jungle out there…

Not to be too self-righteous, but this touches on something I’ve been mulling over in the last few months:

How to be a better person?

A better friend, son, brother & lover?

What constitutes it? How do we measure it? Can I still be competitive?

I’ll explore this within Pt. II in more detail, but one of my go-to rationalizations when I don’t quite cut the mustard in a race, score lower on a test, or underperform a colleague is simple:

Well, that’s fine, at least I’m a better person though, right?

Without doing too much digging on the subject, I could pretty confidently say that there’s pretty limited metrics for your level of ‘betterness’ against your peers.

In any case, I’m not convinced that’s a great comparison to make, and it’s certainly not something we would look to quantify outwardly.

In relating to the pursuit of bettering yourself, and looking inwardly for development, one of my favourite quotes from Seneca puts it well:

“What progress, you ask, have I made? I have begun to be a friend to myself.”

Good from you, Seneca. But that doesn’t answer the question.

I think to grasp what’s deemed as right or wrong, we can again look at two separate camps, which undoubtedly overlap.
- This is a generalisation for the purpose of illustration, no hate mail or challenges to a bench-press comp, please.

On the one hand, we have a progressive population that is more inclined to express their full range of emotions, and as I’ve experienced, competitive tendencies are sometimes looked down upon.

It’s more socially acceptable for men to be feminine, the public-facing LGBTQ community is surely larger than it’s ever been, and even a hint of aggressive nature can be frowned upon quite easily.

Hitting your kids in public might get you, hit.

On the other — when the f*ck did every slightly-athletic male over the age of 16 become a gym bro?
Key Terms: “You’re being a BETA”, “Eat some testicles”, “Your ass looks peachy, bro”.

It’s an interesting phenomenon.

For me, personally, sometimes I can feel quite ashamed of my competitive nature.

I’ve found myself subconsciously overcompensating during the last few months to be less competitive, developing an acute awareness of even the slightest tone of aggression in my actions.

- Too much? Maybe.

Obviously, there’s, a balance, everything in moderation, etcetera, etcetera — but is there a definitive answer to what dominant trait is more wrong or right?

As you probably guessed, I don’t have the answer to that.

And if they’re telling the truth, I don’t think anyone does, or should for that matter.

So I hope you stayed with me, thunk something you haven’t thought about before, or are now able to see the world through a slightly different lens.

Life XP: +10

Enjoy your afternoon, evening, or morning.