Play Stupid Games, Win Stupid Prizes

Stop competing for status and fame

You are a slave. But your master is not someone else. Your master is your ego. If you stop working today, if you stop your pursuit of achievement, you will not die of hunger. You are probably not working because you must put food on your plate. You already have enough to feed yourself and keep a roof over your head. Then why are you working?

You are working for your ego. You want more money, fame, achievement, and more “status” symbols because you have been trained from your school age to be competitive. This is toxic competition.

Comparing yourself with another student who has a 1st rank or 2nd rank is BS. Even two leaves of the same branch of the same tree are not the same. How can the system put us in a competitive environment where the comparison is made on vague metrics such as your power to remember facts like when Aurangazeb died?

The comparison game continues in the college and, after that, in the work environment. You are an assistant manager, then a manager, then a VP, and then a CEO. We are constantly comparing ourselves and working not to have a roof over our heads or put food on our plates but because we need to “compete” and be better than others.

Women mostly make this comparison with their looks with other women in the race to get the best men to commit to them, and men primarily do it with their careers and money to be more competitive in the sexual marketplace. However, the game doesn’t stop once a man is married because most people have never been taught to play any other healthy match. They are distracted by comparison all the time.

This kind of status game is played because it’s in our DNA. When humans lived in tribal groups of 150-200 people in the jungle, they had to play status games all the time because there was not much trade happening. A low-status man in the tribe had nothing to offer to others of value apart from some slave labor. The high-status men enjoyed power, access to resources & companionship with women, often multiple women.

The only thing that kept you alive in the tribe and not getting sent to war with another tribe was having power over other people. That’s why it’s in our DNA to seek comparison and status among other humans. It’s a survival instinct. But we have come a long way and now have money as a tool to trade. A random person is not killed because the tribal chief is angry because that random person could write a book, make a tool, or make something that others want.

We also live in a global village that is connected by the internet. There is no small-scale comparison anymore. You are comparing things at a larger scale with your city, state, country, and even the world. You will never be able to win anything because there will always be someone who has more than you in one way or the other.

If you play stupid games, you will win stupid prizes.

The games you play in career, wealth, status, and comparison are stupid. It’s an ego massage. Your status is a perceived status that’s very, very temporary. The highest level of stupidity is playing politics - at every level. If you are a politician, you are a stupid person because you are playing a status game of who has a bigger d*ck. Sorry for being blunt but most of the people are spending most of their time in a d*ck size measuring contest - in one way or the other.