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EVOLUTION

It’s a jungle out here! And if Darwin is anyone to go by, only the fittest will survive.
And here’s where the confusion begins- does this atmosphere of cut-throat competition give us the moral go-ahead to claw our way to the lead of the pack? Stomp on competitors and change lanes midway?

Did you know that if you leave a bunch of live crabs in a bucket, you can be assured that when you get back from watching the FIFA finals, they will all still be there? Every one of them! That’s because as soon as one gets close to escape, the others pull it down. And Darwinians may go further and say that at the end of the match, only the toughest one will still be alive enough to pinch you when you try to fish it out of the bucket.

Big cities remind me of this proverbial bucket.

It starts early in the day, when you try to find a rickshaw to take you to work. A layman would be tempted to believe that these guys want to transport passengers from A to B, and make some money. Oh! How I pity these fools! Truth is rickshaw drivers are very goal-oriented. They never lose sight of their target, i.e. to change the very fundamentals of their business. But don’t lose hope! Sometimes you may get lucky, if your destination falls on the way to their home, lunch adda, snooze area or favourite chai stall. And if you live near a wine shop, your worries are over. Once you do get to work, the real melee starts.

This is the place where you must watch your back at all times, even when you are standing against a wall. At the risk of sounding like a real small-towner, I’d say that all the back-stabbing, ego-massaging and gossiping was unnecessary. I did try saying this aloud once, when I was promptly told to stop being naïve. According to the new rules of this game, trusting someone equals being weak, expecting something to be done in your favour is monumentally foolish and not plotting people’s downfall shows lack of ambition.

Here’s where Darwin’s more subtle, and more accurate point comes up. When he spoke of “survival of the fittest” he didn’t mean a clawing contest to decide the fittest. The poor guy really was misunderstood. What he meant was that adaptation is necessary to avoid extinction. But in this jungle, absolute morals won’t help you. If you are worried about reserving a place in heaven, along with one on the executive board, situational ethics may be your only hope. And if that means spreading a few nasty rumors and twisting the truth a little, that’s fine right? And if you do open yourself up, you might, in a moment of weakness expose your own Achilles heel. So why risk it? If you lay down a doormat, you can’t expect people to not dump their dirt on it.

Unfortunately, I am not ready to jump this fence yet.
I am not ready to deal with a new and resilient avatar of that naïve small-towner.
And if don’t change that I will be facing extinction

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