This Week In Sunday Letters

Content from weekending 28th April 2024

When it comes to living a successful life, we generally see competition as necessary and unavoidable. We hardly ever question it. If you want to do well, then you’ll need to work harder than almost everyone else. This is because the pie is only so big, and you must get there first if you want to survive. The idea is pervasive in our individualistic, Western industrialised countries, but is is accurate?

This is the question

Dmitri Belikov

and I have been discussing this week. Dmitri wrote on The Distortion of Darwin, and how perhaps the Darwinian idea of ‘survival of the fittest’ wasn’t the full picture. Maybe it suited certain political and economic interests, and through clever marketing, we eventually came to believe it as a first principle.

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The Podcast

We’re trialling video direct in podcast episodes here on Substack, and you can check that out in Episode 003. In this week’s episode, we ask, are human beings inherently competitive or more socially oriented and naturally cooperative? The question is important because the workplace seems primarily oriented towards competition. We compete for a limited number of clients and projects, departments within the same organisation may be adversaries, and workers are encouraged to compete for recognition, bonuses and promotions. In parallel, we also find workers in these same situations cooperate, albeit reluctantly at times, to achieve goals and get things done.

Get The Podcast Here;

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