Seconds

It’s all about winning, doing something memorable in order to carve your name into the history books before anyone else gets the chance. They say no one ever remembers who came second, and they’re probably right most of the time. Take the 100 metres: whoever wins is an instant hit; the rest of the field may as well have stayed on the starting blocks! We’re talking about fractions of a second to become a hero or a has been. If you think about Formula 1, these guys race at 300 miles an hour, so frighteningly fast, and yet separated by the merest hundredths of a second. The urge to get there first is paramount, an evolutionary human trait, one which pervades our existence to greater or lessor degree, manifesting itself in many different guises: in sport, naturally; the business world, of course; but it is also evident in our everyday lives, some of which is distinctly unpleasant. There’s the jostling at the bar, shoving into queues at the supermarket or petrol station, brazenly nicking a space in the car park right in front of your nose, any excuse to get ahead at your expense. Of course, the best sportsmen and women are paid a small fortune, and expected to set new standards; the business world must excel because it has its shareholders to answer to (though whether that produces the right kind of results is a whole different ball game); but ordinary individuals? They have no such high pressures, except those which irradiate their daily lives. This, apparently, entitles them to set aside common courtesy in favour of some fairly obnoxious behaviour. They cannot contemplate (or comprehend) waiting for a mere second or two, and would rather offend than hang back. Holding back is a sign of weakness, appropriate only for wimps.

Don’t get me wrong. People have difficult lives, but, then, that has always been the case. The trouble is that these difficulties have become an excuse for a way of living: be inconsiderate, be rude, because everyone is behaving the same way.

Who is to blame? I’m inclined to point the finger at Thatcherite Britain, the kind of Gordon Gekko culture that we woke up to in the 1980s, when me first was applauded, and we were berated for not getting on our bikes to hunt down a job. The tone was set by Norman Tebbit in 1981, and, since then, we have become enamoured with people (so-called celebrities) grabbing their 15 minutes of fame, by eagerly embracing any one of the seven deadly sins, oft times through voyeuristic shows like Big Brother and their like.

Where will it end? Well, give me a second, mate, and I’ll tell you.

 

Copyright © David Thomas Cochrane 2011

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