Me Against Me vs. Me Against You... and Everybody Else

It is human nature to compare, but do you know that how we compare makes a big difference in the outcome of our behavior tendencies?

How We Compare #1: Me Against You... and Everybody Else

When we compare ourselves with others there is this sense of competition with 'making others lose' as the objective. It is as if one shall live because the other is gone, or basically both cannot win together... somebody has to lose. And in organization (as we know it) there is no such thing as winning alone. Everybody counts. Everything that you do shall make an impact to others like links in a chain, and everything that you do depends on others as well.

How We Compare #2: Me Against Me

I am in competition with no one.

I have no desire to play the game of being better than anyone.

I am simply trying to be better than the person I was yesterday.

That's me and I am free.

On the other hand, see what happens when we compare ourselves with ourselves.

We are stretching yourselves beyond what we previously were. Our target is going beyond our previous achievement. That way, we are growing and stay motivated in every situation; not just because there are other people exist besides us. We are growing independently. Thus in a situation where others challenge us, it is not that we need to challenge back by making them withdraw their challenge, but by taking such challenge for our individual growth.. no matter how resenting it might be. In other words, we take others as opportunities to bring the best in us. "As iron sharpens iron, so one man sharpens another." If everybody in an organization does the same way, everybody grows together; nobody is left behind and nobody has to lose. If all the iron links in a chain get stronger together, then the chain gets stronger as well.

See the big difference?

"I CAN Live Without You."

People in love often say "I can't live without you", but life is never in our full control that sometimes leaving someone we love, or being left by someone we love is inevitable. Words matter and what we say to our partner, or our own self give us and our partner suggestion on how to react and respond if such situations happen. Saying "I can't live without you" can be perceived in a positive way, for example a deep attachment to the loved partner, but it also suggests the idea of dependence that may make the leaving partner feel guilty, in addition to the sadness that they may have already felt with their decision to leave. Such guilt may or may not become related to his/her own sense of self (e.g. feeling that one is an irresponsible person), although perhaps the person who said that did not mean for it to be that way. But one can never tell what these words may lead to.

On the other hand, for the person who said so, while those can be perceived as an expression of love, if they were taken seriously, those words can also indicate that he or she is vulnerable, psychologically speaking. What I learned from psychology classes is that a healthy relationship comes from the union between two independent individuals; not two dependent individuals. Of course, having a partner can be a boost to self-esteem but it should not be considered as a channel to enhance one's self-esteem in the first place. Check out this video of one of the most prominent figure in developmental psychology and psychoanalysis, Erik Erikson, talking about intimacy vs. isolation, the common crisis faced by young adults which is related to intimate relationship:

As shown in the video, in healthy intimate relationships people fuse their identity with somebody else's, without fear of losing themselves, but also not because they want to find their identity in somebody else. In order for a relationship to be healthy one should be comfortable in it, and by being comfortable it means that one can express themselves freely. The problem of trying to find one's identity in somebody else is that one can never be oneself and therefore cannot function well in the relationship, because there never was a firm self to begin with. I guess people like that will be pretty difficult to understand, but one thing that is clear is that they will get depressed as soon as the partner removes him/herself from their side.

Of course, losing someone that we love is very heartbreaking; I've been through that a few times, but then it is a solid fact that life does not stop, and should not stop, there. It is the moment where the firmness of our identity is challenged, and it can be determined by what we say about it. In this case, "I can't live without you", if put seriously, is a bad response, whether the cause of the separation is in the couple's control or out of it (e.g. death). While the latter can make a profound impact on the succession of the grieving process, the first relates to the success of the relationship itself. A relationship should make people feel good about themselves, and by generating guilt toward one's partner from saying so means that one has made another feel bad about themselves. "No one stays in love by chance, but by work", so in order for a relationship to work one has to work it out, and by working it out it means one must have already the willingness to do so. So basically the relationship itself is about choice; a choice to be in the relationship and to stay in it; it is about whether one wants to be, not one supposed to be. It is not that one can't live without the other, but that one don't want to live without the other. There is a crucial difference between the two: while the first may show how one demands the other to stay as an obligation, the latter show how one wants the other to stay if the other wants to stay too - giving the other a freedom to choose with nothing to lose. It is therefore a mature expression of love, where one can give and take willingly, not forcefully.

Nobody likes to be forced. When we were being forced to obey some rules during our childhood period it is because it's the only way for us to behave safely, for our brain is still too young to understand why things work around us. But when we are adults, aren't we supposed to take responsibilities on our own selves and take care of it? That is why negative responses can be given to "I can't live without you"; it is an inappropriate beg; a beg that perhaps can only be given appropriately to parents by their children and thus making it a childish beg. Clearly, healthy romantic relationships should be equal so no burden is felt between the couple; both partners take responsibility toward themselves as well as taking care of each other. In this kind of relationship, both can live without each other; only that they don't want to.

"I can live without you. I just don't want to." --Jennifer Aniston in Rumor Has It (2005 film)

Note: Move cursor to the image to see the image source.

Pursuit of "Harmony" Backfires

Collectivism conveys the idea of being rewarded when we successfully follow the group norms in order to bring harmony (while individualism is the opposite). However, it seems that the idea of reward-and-punishment that lies behind this concept of culture may follow with implications that do not bring the members of the group actually come to harmony. Moreover, it might lead to disharmony instead. The root of this may be is the different beliefs people hold about the norm itself, and the norm itself is vital because it defines what actions or attributes that deserve to be rewarded and/or punished. How this is the case can be related to how the human mind works.We all know how extraordinary the human mind works that even one behavior or mental activity cannot be reduced to simple elements of the brain, and instead they are distributed across the brain. It makes associations so fast; sometimes we are aware of them and sometimes we are not. Simple pressure to conform with the group norm may lead to development of internal motives to be the same as the other member of the group, especially if the member's attribute is thought as a desirable quality one has to have; while in reality, there never exists such pressure to be the same (the norm never says so), and we simply invented it ourselves. This also applies the other way; the pressure to conform with a certain group norm may lead to development of internal motives to make/force other people to be the same as us.

Basically, both motives are developed in order to eliminate differences, up to those that are not listed on the shared norm in the first place. People feel that they have to always be in a harmony, perhaps up to the point this unconsciously makes them feel they have the right to control other people when that harmony is translated into "sameness", again, without their own awareness. Maybe they thought that they are trying to do something good, but what they are doing is actually violating other people's rights and is no other than being disrespectful. What is right and wrong becomes blurry when people do not have a clear basis, but clear basis, in form of the consensual rule/norm, can actually have been there all along. It is our own doing (thinking) about that basis that drives us away from what it actually says. Of course, one can join different groups at once, for one has so many aspects in his/her life that need to be expressed through interaction with other people with the same characteristic of such aspect (one can join sports team and debate team at once in school). Usually, this phenomenon happen in a group that particularly has no clear grounding rules; perhaps merely brought together by liking or the positive emotional feelings one have when being with the members of the group, such as friendship - the bond that satisfy one's personal need for well-being. Because we open ourselves to our friends this may create a sense of psychological ownership distributed through all the group members; we feel we own our friends that we can do anything about them.

"You're wrong if you're not with me.
No explanation, just wrong; especially
with most of everyone agrees with me
as well." -from this source.

Problem rises when one expresses that he/she is right as differences rise among the group members, for one can easily get hurt for being accused to be wrong when he/she simply has different code of conduct which serves as the basis of his/her own concept of right and wrong, making this a disrespectful act. While this is a form of ignorance of differences, other problem may occur due to an anxiety or uneasy feeling one has as he/she sees a discrepancy underlying the qualitative difference he/she has with other member/s of the group. In the first case, the difference is simply rejected or claimed that it is not supposed to exist; thus, leading to conformity pressure toward the member that is claimed wrong based on one's own concept of right and wrong (to be elaborate: I think right and wrong is a very serious concept; it involves morality which so far I believe is valued everywhere as long as humans feel the need to get along with others. One feels guilty when he/she does something immoral, and for that he feels not worthy. Thus, to claim someone wrong on such matter means to claim him/her not worthy, and it can be considered a personal attack to the person).

Portrait of a woman suffering
from envy; Jean Louis
Théodore Géricault
(1791-1824), from
this source.

In the second case, the  subject of difference becomes the focus on which one believe he/she is supposed to deal with, not by rejecting it, but by minimizing the discrepancy that creates such difference. This can only happen when one acknowledges the subject of difference to be a desirable quality (in contrast with the first case, where one rejects the difference right away, thus claiming it to be undesirable or even despicable). Here, one can try to make oneself closer to the desirable quality, or make the one possessing cease to have it. Which of these one will choose to do may have to do with one's own concept of control/agency over such discrepancy, for minimizing it always involves an activity and an activity always depends on one's own sense of agency. Problem exists when one takes the latter action, for it can also be considered as a personal attack by the member possessing the desirable quality. However, back to where we start, the main problem lies on whether people think they have the right to do all these effort in eliminating differences in their own group, including ones that involve personal attacks.

Harmony never states that differences are to be eliminated, and I am sure assuming the group is sane (by this,  I mean still holds into moral principles) it will never state doing personal attacks to the other members of the group is worthy of reward. Instead, it tries to find the common ground among the members, and common ground itself would always involve respect. Therefore, if there is an effort for harmony, it is an effort to minimize the differences (not eliminating them), and it can be done not necessarily by removing them one by one literally (seriously, who is able to do that?), but by shifting focus to the original norm: what drives us together in the first place and not the ones we created based on our own elaborative thought that goes beyond it; thus, making us more comfortable standing the differences that exist around us, and eventually accepting and if possible embracing them. We all join and create groups to have a good time or at least making something good out of it; this reason behind should always be kept in mind if it is harmony we seek.