Mankind has a lot to learn from nature... Today I am going to focus upon upon two of the nature's most fearsome mammals existing - the lion and the tiger...
I perceive, humans are essentially of two psychological set-ups, individualism and collectivism, and these two types can be roughly understood if one studies the behaviour of the lions and the tigers...
Lion has been the symbol of majesty, pride and strength across all civilizations over the history of mankind. They, to me represent the collectivists. By collectivists, I mean human beings of the psychological thought which necessitates co-dependence. This group of people believe that there is strength in organising oneself, or a community into a systematic group for its concerted goals, aims and achievements, and like lions they "hunt" together, and share the exploits too...
The group of lions being called "pride" is no mere coincidence either. Lions are social animals, and their social behaviour along with their majestic look and strength has often been appreciated as a symbol from nature to be inspired from... In human collectivists, I believe the notion of uniting under a banner represents a lion's mane... A symbol binding all collectivist human beings together, and also a symbol which brings fear, and/or reverence to the members of the group, as well as in the rivals...
Generally, unlike in lions and tigers where both are vulnerable on an equal scale, amongst human beings, it is noticed that collectivists tend to be greater in number... All the behaviour of collectivists except one can be understood by studying the lions. We will get to the one anomaly later...
Now there is the tiger... The biggest and strongest of the cats, often depicted with fear and certain suspicion in most of the folk myths... Tiger, unlike lion, is a solitary but social animal... This implies that they don't generally socialise but only accept company while sleeping, only at times, and mating. No more.
Tigers, according to me, represent a much smaller yet equally significant group, which is the individualists. Now individualism is seldom appreciated for what it is, and portrayed as selfish or anti-social behaviour, but it essentially is a natural way of behaving for certain set of human beings. It is not that harm is intended upon other human beings, but they just want to be left alone and not forced into anything that they do not choose by themselves. They are highly self-motivated and do not feel the necessity to seek companionship and comradery in any of their endeavours, and prefer to do it alone. This behaviour is just like the tigers, who prefer to hunt alone. But though they hunt alone, tigers are characterised by their ability to share with other related and unrelated tigers, as well as sometimes with other animals like jackals. They don't mind, as long as they are not interrupted and their space not intruded without their permission or acceptance. Unlike lions who generally squabble over the propriety of the prey even amongst themselves.
However, it doesn't mean that they do not seek company, they do. But their definition of company only restricts to few chosen tasks. They believe they can handle the rest of their aspirations all by themselves, and almost always they succeed, if allowed to do so without interruptions or intrusions.
Team-work and such sorts is greatly appreciated in the world today, but this set is only made up for individuated tasks, and they fail miserably in tasks of inter-dependence, just like collectivists generally fail in tasks of independence.
Now coming to one major point of deviation between humans and the big cats - affectation.
While lions and tigers have been the predators in different places of earth respecting each others' territory and not trespassing, we humans almost always have to deal with individualists and collectivists in a common environment. There is also this innate tendency of lions amongst our ranks to force tigers to behave like lions...
It is true that the way of lions is admirable and one to learn from, but the age-old proverb "united we stand, divided we fall" is greatly unjust to the few endangered tigers in our society. Tigers can be of great benefit to humanity if left to hunt alone, rather than in a pride of lions.
We try to force out a collectivist out of individualists. This can simply not happen, as some of us are just not cut out for that.
So, in the end, I would just say, lions to grasslands and tigers to jungles, where they rightly belong.
No TRESPASSING and No COERCION please.
