The Ruthless Don’t Survive
A microscopic analysis
That morning, Mr. Benard Maruti gave us the pep talk we would remember when we later won the inter-classes competition.
In the second term of every year, we held the inter-classes competition but the range of sports was extremely limited.
Not everybody could do crossovers or dribble without travelling, so basketball was excluded. However, everybody could kick a ball. Or smack it with their hands. Thus, we would compete for the ultimate prize in these two categories — football and volleyball.
And what was the ultimate prize? Well, that’s a post for another day.
My class, East — the school within a school — had been eliminated for the first two years for reasons that largely lay outside our control. However, now that we were seasoned and suffered many near wins, our teacher told us that morning:
When you defeat a team, defeat them convincingly. A 1–0 is not a convincing win. Three, four, or five goals are enough to convince any team that you are the better opponent.
That evening, we defeated our opponents a convincing 4–0. We became ruthless since that time and went on to win the competition.
We did not survive. We thrived.
To survive, however, one needs to avoid this ruthless tactic.
This is what I mean.
Sun Tzu thrived and Marcus Aurelius survived
The Art of War is a classic book.
I have never read it from page to page. Only snippets here and there. Sometimes, a quote from a book or a song. That’s it.
I do, however, remember the quote from Robert Greene’s The 48 Laws of Power. He mentioned how it was important to crush your enemy completely. It is the same advice our class teacher had given us.
You can never know if your willingness to forgive an enemy is a chance for them to re-strategize and bring you down. Ruthlessness is needed.
Despite the examples Greene gives in his book, we have the counter-example of Marcus Aurelius. First, unlike Sun Tzu, I finished reading Meditations. Secondly, using the Lindy Effect, Aurelius’ book is likely to outlast Greene’s. His actions, therefore, are likely to survive and last longer than the ones Greene highlights in his book.
The singular action I speak about regards the forgiveness of a long-trusted general and friend — Avidius Cassius. It was an attempted coup, and he decided to take over the throne of Rome because it was thought that its emperor had died.
Rather than practice what Sun Tzu prefers, Marcus Aurelius gave orders to capture but not kill Cassius.
Such actions are likely to survive. They are weird. We definitely remember the weird.
Complete annihilation is a feature we are used to witnessing in nature. The perfect examples are colonization and the collapse of cities and civilizations such as that of Easter Island.
Marcus Aurelius, however, did not go for complete annihilation. He was not just strategic — he tried to live as he believed and wrote in his daily meditations.
But why consider these historical episodes when we have a recent global pandemic? It was muddled with episodes of survival and complete annihilation. In particular, there’s a lot to consider at a microscopic level when we think about ruthless aggression.
Let’s zoom in.
At a microscopic level, the ruthless agents don’t live to tell the tale
Consider COVID-19.
An estimated 3 million people died from COVID-19 in 2020. The reason? The virus was ruthless with its hosts.
Take the example of two types of strains. One multiplies ravenously in its host. In the process, it completely depletes its resources and with it the machinery for further replication.
Death soon ensues. If the virus is lucky, the members who are close to the entity try to rescue their loved one and in the process, begin the same cycle in the new host.
This is the same mechanism Ebola rides under. Once the cycle had been established, protective measures were taken to prevent contact. Minimizing contact ensures that the virus is buried with the host without jumping to other hosts.
The ruthless behaviour doesn’t get to spread. For the members who succumbed to the global pandemic, they likely died in this manner — ruthless viral behaviour.
The other example is a virus that only causes distress but not enough to kill. These are the strains we often hear about. The emergence of new strains is inevitable when the replication is widespread.
But since these viruses are not lethal, they can spread from one host to another, and survive because they are not ruthless.
Thus, all the ruthless viruses die with their hosts while the ‘kind’ ones survive. The ruthless and not-so-ruthless dynamic relationships satellite around hierarchical relationships.
Unstable relationships
The role of one organism to another defines the kind of relationship organisms have.
If a group of viruses help to establish efficient blood flow in a pregnant lady then the virus helps the two growing human beings. It is a stable hierarchical relationship if humans preserve the viruses so that they too benefit.
It turns out, we preserve this relationship.
This is an example of a stable hierarchical relationship.
However, if an organism does not serve another, it develops an unstable one. These are unlikely to last. Another example is malignant cancer. It consumes the resources of the host so fast that victims end up eventually dying along with the cancer.
The less-than-ruthless ones are the benign cancers. These have a chance to survive inside the host for as long as the growing mass does not have serious effects on the person.
However, it is not a stable hierarchical relationship because the role of the host serves the cancer. The cancer, however, does not serve the host. That’s why it still has the potential to be fatal.
Similarly, the moderately destabilizing virus does not serve the victim it infects.
They are like commensals — there for the ride but neither benefit nor cause harm. It’s almost as if they are innocent parasites.
Since the role of organisms is to avoid annihilation, the ruthless ones do not consider their hosts. They thus end up dying along with the individual.
The ‘friendly ones’ however, stick with their host. Some eventually end up being protective. In the words of Lil Wayne:
I’d die for my motherf*ckin’ nigga
Jump in front a bullet for my motherf*ckin’ nigga
On the stand I’d lie for my motherf*ckin’ nigga
Rob a bank, I’d drive for my motherf*ckin’ nigga— Lil Wayne
I can picture the viruses singing this song about their hosts. It explains why they survive. In my head, the song goes viral.
*coughs
What I’m trying to say…
Empires rise and die due to ruthlessness.
Those that seek mergers survive. However, they have to be accepted for the merger to be viable.
Alexander didn't accept Darius’s offer to merge the empires of Persia and Macedonia. It is one thing to seek the merger and another to receive the offer.
Mergers are the core force highlighted by the theory of Organismal Selection.
Viruses that don’t consider merging with the host don’t live long enough to tell the tale.
The ruthless don’t survive.
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