Survival of the weakest

We all are familiar with the world known Darwinian Theory 'Survival of the fittest'. This theory turns out to be wrong when it comes to human beings. Human beings are not the fittest ones on this planet; instead they are a species that needs to be protected above all. A bee is independent after five minutes of its birth and a baby giraffe is autonomous only six to eight months after its birth, however the specialists say a human being hardly becomes capable of surviving on his own after nine years of his birth. If Darwin's theory would be right, we would have been long extinct from the face of earth.





Today, this theory seems to penetrate so much in our everyday professional and personal lives. We've always been told that there is a cutthroat competition among us all and only the fittest survives. At our schools, we were taught to compete with our class fellows. Each child has a hidden talent of his own and he needs to be mentored in the right direction accordingly. Instead the emphasis was always laid on scoring well in pre determined areas of study when it should have been on acquiring knowledge and identifying our unique talents.




At works, we are in a constant practice of a cutthroat competition and we are appreciated for that by our employers. Someone who fails to follow the competition is considered incompetent and de-motivated. Research shows that people bring out the best results when they work in an environment that offers good team working instead of an antagonist environment where individuals fight for competition. Team working is working together, taking everybody along, in order to achieve a mutual objective. It's about helping and developing others - willingly sharing all resources and information. There is a famous saying, 'with competition there is always ego and hubris... competition gets in the way of work'. The only competition worthy of a man is with himself. Try determining your success with the number of people you help daily at work. This approach may not get you the so called fastest journey up in the hierarchy, but there is no fastest journey up. We all get the right stuff at the time most right for us.




This turns out to be right, even at our personal lives. All our lives we try to be in charge of everything, be it our feelings or emotions. We want to be independent. We are not supposed to show others that we are dependant on them otherwise we will be exploited or considered weak by them. The truth is that human beings have always been dependant and weak when it comes to relations. We are born with an essential dependency on each other and we need others support to survive. We only are able to live our lives truly when we are able to express our emotions fully.


Bushra


14 September 2009

Published in The Daily Mail on 15 September 2009

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