BlushSpirals

Workplace politics is a funny concept to me. Sometimes it’s even a bit foreign. I’ve never understood how people can be super friendly to your face and then throw you right under the bus the very next minute. It’s a concept that has always felt unfamiliar to me, and maybe that’s because I grew up in an environment where emotions were never hidden. What you saw was very much what you got.

It wasn’t until I started working in corporate America that I began to understand that what you see isn’t always what you get. I began noticing that people often have hidden motives to get ahead.

In some ways, it’s only natural. People throw others under the bus to make themselves appear better. It’s called self-serving bias, and it happens all around us.

Robert Ingersoll once said in his popular quote, “We rise by lifting others.”

But that isn’t always a common concept for the average person, because human emotions naturally get in the way. Jealousy. Fear. Anxiety. The list could go on.

It’s a culturally accepted belief that to be successful you must have high status and bigger and better material things. Most people leave their families for the first time operating in survival mode. They have to sacrifice in order to meet their basic human needs.

But I want to argue that the survival mindset rarely leaves a person once they finally reach a place of comfort.

The average human being continues to operate from a place of survival even after their basic needs have been met. And with survival comes competition—getting ahead, protecting what you have, and sometimes using hidden motives to make sure your needs are not only met but surpassed.

If we as humans stopped operating from a place of survival and constant competition, I am convinced the world would be a better place.

I am not talking about a form of socialism where we help those who choose not to help themselves. Rather, I am addressing the way competition for bigger and better things has come to rule basic human desire. What if we stopped allowing that instinct to dominate us and instead focused on rising together?

It has become a sick cycle. The idea of stepping on others just to appear better has been ingrained in us for generations. And because the majority operates this way, those who genuinely want to lift others up often struggle to rise themselves.

Look at politics. Imagine if opposing parties lifted up their rivals instead of tearing them down. They would likely get nowhere, because that simply isn’t how the world operates today. There is almost always a hidden motive or agenda for power, rooted in survival instincts that trace back to the idea of survival of the fittest.

So how do we break a rhythm that has existed for centuries?

How do we begin lifting our neighbors up despite our differences instead of constantly tearing each other apart?

Will the world eventually collapse into complete self-isolation as individuals continue to accentuate differences rather than similarities—and use those differences to conquer one another?