Every human being wants to feel special, and therefore we want to believe that our own conditions are extraordinary. Competitiveness is there in our genes. We bring competitiveness to the corporate world, to the world of trade, business, governance, education, etc. from the jungle. If you go to the jungle—the place we all come from—what do you find there? Continuous competition. And if you listen to Darwin, he says evolution itself is a result of competition.
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Questioner: Ours is an era of racing and competing in building up our careers and earning money. But is it really worth it to waste all our life competing and running after these things?
Acharya Prashant: This is not something specific to this era; it was always there, always. It’s just that every generation feels something extraordinary is happening to it, something that has never happened before in other times to other generations. Every generation feels that way. We too used to feel when we were there on that seat, that the competition—“Oh my God! Dog eat dog! It’s never been like this!” Not only that, if I meet people of my batch from IIM or IIT, you know, they would rather say that the competition has rather diminished now. The environment is not as competitive as it used to be.
So, that’s the thing about human perception. Every human being wants to feel special, and therefore we want to believe that our own conditions are extraordinary. Competitiveness is there in our genes. We bring competitiveness to the corporate world, to the world of trade, business, governance, education, etc. from the jungle. If you go to the jungle—the place we all come from—what do you find there? Continuous competition. And if you listen to Darwin, he says evolution itself is a result of competition.
