There is a saying that the amount of bickering between
humans is inversely proportional to how high the stakes are. The lower the
stakes, the more bickering. I am not
making this up. This is something known as Sayre's law.
The saying is generally used in the context of academia
where the department politics puts politics at the world stage to shame.
And what is the bickering in academia for? Aiming to become
the department Chair? Or perhaps a financial grant to support a graduate
student and to add papers to the CV?
Does one think that being the department Chair gives one
the power to lord over others?
Mind you, bickering
over small things is the state of affairs among the most educated people
society has to offer. These are people who hold PhD degrees (also referred to
as the terminal degree) from prestigious universities. These are the people who
are supposed to set an example and guide us to a higher level of consciousness
and lead us common folks out from the darkness but...
...like the rest of
us, these stalwarts of society fall prey to the same basic human instincts, one
of them being the desire to be the leader of the pack.
In all of us, there
continues to be an unshakable desire to be the alpha male and the PhD’s are no
exceptions.
The deeply rooted
desire to be the leader of the pack is the desire that served our genes well
along our evolutionary trajectory. You see, the basic purpose of genes is to
carry their lineage forward and traits that help achieve that, over time,
evolve to become automated behavioral preferences.
Being an alpha male
and being at the top of the pack can bring us some privileges - access to more
resources (think food), access to more mating partners. These privileges have
the consequence that the genes have a better chance of propagating forward.
We may or may not be
aware, the constructs of human minds are shaped by the basic desire of genes
that themselves are only self-replicating molecules that have no thinking
mechanism per se.
But over time, parts
of human consciousness have been slowly molded by the invisible hands of a
potter, who without an understanding of what he is trying to create, follows
the instructions from the genes.
The pace of social
evolution has advanced at a much faster rate than the timescale on which the
evolution of genes takes place, and we have not adjusted to the new paradigm of
a society that is no longer a hunter gatherer. But could one ever be free of
such gut level instincts that helped us during our days as hunter-gatherers,
e.g., the instinctive desire to be the leader of the pack?
Assuming that we would
not self-destruct and continue to survive as a species, given enough time would
we rise about the traits that genes and natural selection promoted in the past
but may no longer be required or beneficial anymore?
The argument that we
will not change could be made based on a plausible assumption that resources
are always limited, and survival and efficiency of procreation, is a fight to
corner limited resources. In this fight someone would always want to be the
leader of the pack, and in academic departments, there will always be a
bickering to be the Chair.
Is there a solution?
There may be one.
The solution is to
send faculty members to one week retreat where they are reminded of their
mortality. It is only when confronted with their finiteness that they will
realize how futile, and petty our bickering for inconsequential outcomes is.
I am not being cheeky.
When we wake up in the morning and remind ourselves that one day we will no
longer be around, it could result in a powerful change of our perspective. That
reminder has the power to be the antidote of Sayer’s law. It can make us
cognizant of the fact that low stakes are just that – low - and are not worth
bickering over.
I am positive that if
everyone reminded themselves that they are mortal, this world would be a much
better place.
Ciao.