The Squid Game We All Unwittingly Play
I was your average fiction-devouring teenager in school. When I heard the buzz around the 2008 novel The White Tiger, I did what any self-respecting nerd would do. I cried and begged my father to buy me yet another fiction book in what was supposed to be a pivotal school year.
I inhaled the breezy book in a couple of days — it had none of the literary heft I expected from a Booker Prize winner. While I don’t remember much, I do recall developing an intense hatred for the book almost immediately. Whether this was general anger toward how it portrayed my country and how the West lapped it up, or a more specific indignation about why this aggressively average book — both in prose and plot — happened to become the toast of the town. It doesn’t matter — we need not question our past emotions. If I’m sure of them, I’d rather they stayed as they are.
As I grew out of my ideological underpants, expanded my tether’s radius by a thousand miles in college and spoke to others who did not look like me — I did not gain much perspective. My beliefs only became stronger, only I could defend them using fancier words and concepts.
An ounce of perspective
Realization of class divide and power distance in India slapped me in the face when I traveled to other countries. I had assumed this is how it must be everywhere — I saw no reason for society to actually follow utopian ideas like basic human decency. Sure, inequality as a concept was much bandied about, but I never gathered what the solution would look like.
In the lovely city called Bergen in Norway, I was part of a group renting out an Airbnb. Our common perception of a Scandinavian host was straightforward: smiling, open-minded and terse. Our host was all three. He told us, in short but clear sentences, to behave like it was our own house. Enjoy, but be mindful that in Norway it was not as easy to hire cleaners or expect them to mop up any mess like it was back in India. As if to emphasize, he added that this was important to state since Indians don’t appreciate this fact at all. I felt the same sting I had felt upon reading The White Tiger — or so I surmised.
After the bitter pill was swallowed and forgotten, perspective dawned. The Indian society is broken.
Rats and Races
A fairly simplistic view of how various social classes view others around them can be found in the below schematic. Needless to say, it’s an astronomical oversimplification — but what else are we here for.
If we pick column 2, this can be read as:
- Tier 2 classes look up to Tier 1 with a burning aspiration to replace them, or with envy, coveting what they lack
- Tier 2 classes look down to Tier 3 with condescension, a mix of fear and anger at their potential likelihood to displace them in the hierarchy
- Tier 2 classes peer down upon Tier 4 with either pity or disgust, depending on the circumstances or relationship with a particular group
Let’s investigate these six emotions, in a descending order of acceptance in society.
- Reverence
This is what the lowest echelons feel for those on the highest. The gap between them is of such celestial proportions, you could be forgiven for thinking the parties were mortals and Gods. The richest exert this power not just economically, as employers, but also via a psychological toolkit to reinforce this relationship. If they sense their grip on the fief loosening, they will pull out all stops to convert docile deference into over-reliant reverence.
Do the devotees stop worshipping their Gods as their relationship matures? No: funnily, as familiarity increases, their reverence only deepens. - Aspiration
If the universe conspires to put a goal within their reach, the deference transforms into aspiration for the lower tiers. Whether it is a physical proximity to opportunities or the intellect to replicate a successful blueprint, the hierarchical tiers just below your own could view your success as achievable. The class divide dictates you must dissuade all such efforts by highlighting the futility of trying or by creating artificial obstacles and moats.
How dare the son of my milkman aspire to the same university seat as my own son? The nerve! Maybe I should get my son to take the SAT like boss did. - Pity
From the highest of highs, the lowest tiers appear far too distant to seem threatening. The kind-hearted 1% among the top 1% harbor emotions like pity for those less fortunate they have stepped on. This likely stems from the burning conscientiousness that percolates after a bittersweet self-awareness.
My sedan’s blacked out windows don’t show me much, but I happened to see a few homeless kids at the traffic signal near my house. I wouldn’t say it was guilt-ridden pity, but I experienced an overwhelming positive feeling where I wanted to uplift them — so I asked my driver to distribute some biscuits later. - Envy
The mirror image of motivational aspiration is envy. It is sparked by the same dynamic of achievable comforts being just outside your reach, but instead of the emotion driving you, you let it consume you. - Condescension
A close friend of envy in the reversed dynamic is condescension. Manifesting among upwardly-mobile, nouveau-successful tiers and directed toward their downstairs neighbors, condescension is part annoyance (please stay in your lane) and part insecurity (how dare they even consider). - Disgust
Driver, please can you increase the tint on my sedan’s windows so that no photon that has touched the bodily atoms of these ragpicker kids frollicking at the traffic signal can penetrate the glass and touch my immaculate retina? It’s just to avoid some disease that may not have been discovered yet. Also, witnessing such poverty and filth brings me bad juju.
But what causes this largely negative spiral of emotions? Why do mums inherently distrust maids and rickshaw drivers? Why do bosses in small or medium firms rage on their employees? Why do we flinch if made to share public amenities with slum-dwellers? Why do beggars expect us to part with our money at traffic signals as if it were an obligation? Why do sexagenarian clerks expend inordinate amounts of energy to please thirty year old managers?
I see four reasons, although there may be more.
- Perceived zero-sum nature of competition
When resources (seats, jobs, a chance at prosperity) are limited, the instinct is obviously one of risk minimization coupled with developing a cutthroat competitive spirit. This would make education, employment and your position in society a zero-sum game. Your success implies others’ lack of success. - Keeping up appearances
Once we’ve entered a race, it would be an ignominy to not finish it. Losing out can be pardoned but forfeiture in front of a million pair of eyes cannot be tolerated. This is also an outcome of a society collectively chasing prestige, and not accomplishments. - Ignorance of fundamental cognitive biases
While the above factors are quite intuitive, I think an underlying and often ignored factor is our abysmal grasp of human psychology. Even higher education does not really impart this basic knowledge that is necessary to learn and practice empathy. Beginning with a universal pooh-poohing of Arts, and consequently Psychology, our society has dismissed any attempts at understanding cognitive biases. This invariably results in a lack of perspective, an inflated sense of self, stereotyping, and all other myriad flaws one would find in an educated idiot with zero common sense. - Inertia
There are likely to be several asparagus-eaters in our country, the Tier-1 class with a well-rounded education and obscenely worn-out passports, that conform to this artificial class hierarchy merely out of inertia.
Now that this author has outlined the contours of this deep-rooted problem, he can finally engage a Tier-1 consulting firm to go about solving this. Questions like “can a Tier-2 consulting firm also bid?” will be met with looks of condescension. As for Tier-3 firms, we shall be doing our best impression of an “Aww”, which is a solid combination of pity and disgust. Kindly refer to the framework for more clarity.
Fin.
