THE HIGH AND MIGHTY The code of survival in the jungle life, with reference to the superiority of brute force or self-interest means every man for himself, anything goes, might makes right, survival of the strongest, survival of the fittest, kill or be killed, dog eat dog and eat or be eaten. When selected stimuli are magnified to become super-normal stimuli, the effect is to give it a relative stronger appearance. This is the principle of ‘stimulus extremism’. People ‘super-normalize’ the world around them, using any means. They send out competence cues; they talk louder, speak more assertively and act brazenly (and unreasonably) to get things done at their will. You’re standing in front of an ATM machine. Someone brazenly walks right in front of you as the previous person exits the vestibule. He or she pretends not to see you…until you stop him. While you operate to draw cash from the ATM he’s simply on your head within the vestibule flouting the privacy required for operating your bank account. He’d pester you to even surrender your turn in his favor irrespective of whether you finished with your transaction or not. You’re driving to somewhere in a queue and someone comes from one side and blasts your way through. He honks; right till it goes up the value chain. He’d rather honk when he’s walking. He’s an F1 driver; no one can go any faster! He’s a Macho driver, a Flasher! He wants you to consider VIPs rights for him. As he believes he owns a laser gun, he can zap you out of existence. Anyone that cuts him off and then proceeds to slow down makes him feel like hitting that car from the back…….in his frenzy he won’t mind cross over the ‘divider’ to other side of the road. Late at night, the oncoming police vehicle, cruises past you in the wrong direction, and shines the equivalent of a 100,000-candlepower lighthouse directly into your retinas. Hes compromising your ability to drive safely. When you object; it’s a criminal-chides-the-judge situation….. The fast moving VIP cavalcade and the security guards wave you with AK47s to be shooed on to the sides of the road. You stand at airport for an hour, flirt at the security at the check in counter and then at the X ray machine. Along comes a VIP, who is simply whisked ahead of you. The norms, systems, and processes of the ordinary folk don’t apply to the high and mighty. At the work place you can’t correct the ‘lucky fool’ when he makes vulgar moves, gives damn to rules (seniority) and wends his way to go top. Our speed barkers come in all shapes and sizes and if they account for a disproportionately large percentage of all road accidents it’s no body’s concern. Road dividers could be anything ranging from slabs of stone or cement to tin barrels and plain boulders. Gruesome hoardings on ugly scaffoldings; unruly sign-boards on shops; narrow, unplanned and perpetually dug-up (and pot-holed) roads; religious camouflages and cacophonic mikes; free-roaming fauna; crisscrossing telephone and electric wires; unkempt shopping complexes; buildings with unmatched balconies and awnings; grubby buses, trucks, tippers, and auto rickshaws, construction material dumped on the roads in the comfortable knowledge etc. are all examples of unreasonableness and anarchy. Illegally occupied footpaths/already-narrow streets and buildings allowed by SMC (Chief Khilafwarzi Officer facilitates ‘khilafwarzi’) to be demolished later, imagine, for example, the perpetual traffic mess at Jahanghir Chowk. As long as they receive their booty, traffic police won’t mind allowing mess created by parking of vehicles even in the middle of the road. And what about early-in-the-morning, when the pulpit-singers indulge in high decibel recitation of nimaz/awarad-o-azkar or things heavenly or things earthly or things scriptural; things sacred or things profane isn’t it then the religion becomes cause of misery? Businessmen, mostly discourteous, rude, and crafty; use sleight-of-hand to grab one-time skimming, despite tub-thumping sermons on religiosity and morality. Tragically we accept such flouting of systems as a matter of course in every walk of life. Somewhere along the line, our corruption and flouting of systems get mixed up. Free riding being a problem, nobody can stop the defector; he jumps the red light, for example. Soon he’s emboldened to jump not only late hours but at any time there is no cop in sight. He’ll jump even if the cop is there he knows cop has no vehicle to chase him. And even if caught some money will save him. So he defies rules and norms. He graduates to honk at you should you be conscientious enough to stop at red light when he wishes to jump it. In his calculations it’s a waste of time to stop at red lights, particularly if there is no risk of being stopped by a constable and it saves him a precious moments. With a little patience or self-control, before long we too begin to mimic this ‘intelligent guy’. And soon we’ve on our hands a traffic nightmare. A mass scale defect-defect behavior, everybody-else-is-doing-it, becomes the SOP. The irrational people usually don’t have an inkling of what they’re doing. Unreasonability comes from being selfish, prideful, stubborn, ignorant, vengeful, or insecure. Being crazy like the proverbial fox, insanely ambitious they see profit in unprofitable places. With all the arrogance, ‘they-need-not-to-follow-rules’, they’re used to make the rules as if bestowed with the power to decide their own path. Disrespecting the ownership of others and invading their territory are perceived as qualities of being more-in-control. They forget that they’re dealing with creatures of emotion, creatures that also bustle with prejudices and are motivated by pride and vanity. The message is unambiguous: ‘I-am-powerful-and-bold-therefore-can-do-whatever-I-want-to-you-nincompoop’. Mistaking talk of action, deep-rooted corruption and the flair for free riding, mean that these persons don’t feel like following or implementing systems. Rearing the propensity to look holes in laws, which is massaged only if they’ve the ‘authority’ to break rules, guys use much of their intellect to figure out ways of circumventing every law, regulation and norm in a bid to twist and turn every available opportunity to their immediate advantage. Plagued with the abysmal sense of self-regulation, we’re reluctant to penalize wrong conduct in these guys.
Posted on: Sun, 03 Nov 2013 15:00:50 +0000
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