ANALYSIS: Survival of the fittest —Mir Mohammad Ali Talpur

Societies that reward fraudsters, cheats and bullies are predestined to languish in dark ages, tormented by tyranny and lawlessness

Recent research by Dr Swidbert Ott has shown that “swarming locusts look and act different from solitary locusts and they also have about 30 percent larger brains”. This they say is a survival mechanism, because “being inside these swarms is really a messy business — it is driven by hunger and the need to figure out where to find new food. It was found that these insects even turn to cannibalism — if they are not quick enough they turn into lunch, so the bigger brain gives them the edge in a cutthroat situation.” Craftiness, cunningness and cannibalism become survival tools.

In extremely severe Siberian winters the Siberian wolves sit around waiting for the first one to doze so that he can become dinner. The hardiest and brutal ones survive at the expense of their weak companions. Cruelty, callousness and cannibalism are their inbuilt defence mechanisms. It would be interesting to know about the respective sizes of the brains of hardy and weak wolves but sadly the brains too are on the menu.

In social, economic and political situations where cutthroat competition is the norm, survival depends solely on the above mentioned qualities. To me the behaviour of locusts and wolves seem to be an uncanny reflection of the pervasive social behaviour here. Those who ride to the top do so over the carcasses of careers, aspirations and livelihoods of their social, economic and political foes, competitors and ordinary people. If the analogies seem too farfetched, just survey the scene and you will find that those at the top are necessarily not those with the cleanest records.

The competition within the elite to become the establishment’s beneficiary is guided by the above rules and those with the best (read worst) track records succeed admirably. It would certainly be in the interest of science if a few such heads were broken open to check out their brain sizes but then this will remain a fantasy because the Bastille is not falling any time soon.

In all probability, cheats, crooks and the corrupt have bigger brains and are the hardiest too in social, if not physical, sense because they not only overcome the stigma and condemnation but also use it to their advantage. Here cheating is rewarded with social advancement and material benefits. Cheats and corrupt are rewarded because they have more potential of serving elitist interests as can been seen by their eternally required services regardless of the establishment’s leading grandee at a given moment.

Recently, four seasoned golfers of the Lahore Gymkhana Golf Club won a net team event at the World Amateur Inter-Team Golf Championship in Malaysia. Two players with handicaps of 7 and 8 played with handicap of 18 while the other two with handicaps of 3 and 4 played with handicap of 16; naturally this gave them a massive advantage over all others. The handicap system is a method of levelling the playing field because all golfers do not play equally well but by using handicaps, players of differing abilities can play each other as if they are equal in ability. Unfortunately, no handicap system has been devised for levelling the social, economic and political playing fields, therefore in them the fittest (read cunning and brutal) survive and thrive much to the disadvantage of a great majority of honest people.

The golfers’ laurels were temporary because someone told the tournament director, who asked the Lahore Gymkhana and the Pakistan Golf Federation (PGF) for confirmation and they stood exposed and were disqualified. They had participated and won the event’s 2009 edition similarly. Ian Fleming said, “Once is happenstance. Twice is coincidence. Three times is enemy action.” The tournament director however thought that even twice is ‘enemy action’.

Now these players are not just ordinary persons, one of them is a former captain of the Lahore Gymkhana Golf Club, one its secretary for eight years and two others members of the golf committee. So if the usual procedure is followed then each of them will be made the captain of the team on a rotation basis because here punishment is an alien concept and the bigger the cheat, the bigger the reward.

There will be a lot of backslapping, guffawing and applause in their group and snide remarks for those who condemn them for their brazenness. I presume that nothing will happen to them or their membership or even to their social status in the elite crowd they adorn with their august presence. This has been the tradition here. Was Shahid Afridi not rewarded for biting the ball — pun intended — to floor an opponent and scuffing the pitch? To cap it all, he has now been made the captain of the Test match team as well; a nice incentive to the team members to vie to outdo each other in cheating and deception to gain the right to leadership.

Who would not willingly cheat if cheating stands him or her in good stead as it did for Jamshed Dasti, who had earlier resigned in humiliation due to a fake degree, was re-awarded a PPP ticket because they say that he is nick named ‘15’ for his rapid response. Soon after his re-election the doctors of DHQ Hospital in Muzaffargarh got the taste of his rapid response when he led a crowd to protest alleged dereliction of duty of some doctors there.

Cheating and deception is lucrative here. There are exposed frauds with false ‘doctorates’ thriving as religious scholars, parliamentarians with ‘fake degrees’ deciding the fate of the people, apparently corrupt civil servants, politicians, judges and generals living beyond their means and not an eyebrow is raised. Ministers and aides charged of wrongdoing are pardoned for their loyalty and usefulness. To date the examples are endless and they are growing exponentially. With the principle of survival of the fittest reigning supreme here, a majority of the people are bound to become the lunch or dinner of the more aggressive, deceptive and ruthless class of people.

Sadly, societal restraints and defence mechanism against cheating, fraud and deception — the prime survival tools for the crooked here — have broken down completely. So instead of being condemned these people are considered meritorious. This proscribes the chances of these evils becoming extinct in any foreseeable future. Societies that reward fraudsters, cheats and bullies are predestined to languish in dark ages, tormented by tyranny and lawlessness. Such societies will perpetually wallow in corruption, villainy and venality.

Mir Mohammad Ali Talpur has an association with the Baloch rights movement going back to the early 1970s. He can be contacted at mmatalpur@gmail.com