One Up

One upsmanship is something of a treacherous mindStyle. It’s like an opening in chess in which a minor piece or pieces, usually a pawn, is offered in exchange for a favorable position. It’s a maneuver one might use in an initial stage of the play, a form of ‘creative intimidation’ if you will. It’s a croc!

The bottom line is that kind of game play is designed to make someone else feel inferior and gain for its perpetrator the status of being “one-up” on whomever they succeed in trying it on. Looks like a croc! Bears it’s teeth like a croc, I keep thinking it must be a croc!

“The term originated as the title of a book by Stephen Potter, a follow-up to the ‘The Theory and Practice of Gamesmanship’ (or the Art of Winning Games without Actually Cheating) and Lifemanship titles in his series of tongue-in-cheek self-help books, and film and television derivatives, that teach various “ploys” to achieve this.

One of my many favourite English actresses is Patricia Routledge who plays the perenially snobbish, perpetually but hopelessly trying to climb the social ladder and forever trying to impress her neighbours and friends, Hyacinth Bucket (pronounced “Bouquet,” à la française) in ‘Keeping Up Appearances’ (1990 to 1995).

Hyacinth does her level best to give the impression that she is of high social standing, while proving at all times that she is of working-class origins and desperate to escape them. She looks down on others, believing she is by and far more superior to those around her, and is particularly ashamed of her rather ‘very common’ relatives, her sisters Daisy and Rose, and especially her brother-in-law Onslow.

Her obsession with appearing socially advantaged and or enhancing her social status is clearly intended to compensate for her own insecurities and the fact that she comes from a family she considers common.” Sound like someone you know? Wonky thinking like Hyacinth’s is actually still quite common.

The thing about thinking you’re a big fish and being in a small pond is you can have a rather distorted view of the world as it really is. Far be it from me to point out the flaw but sometimes the glaring ‘smallness’ of the way in which a person thinks stands out like the proverbial tits on a bull. Acts of one upsmanship distort your sense of proportion, your sense of self-importance and that my friends is quite different from a healthy sense of self-esteem and confidence.

From time to time I encounter this little green-eyed croc and just of late I realise how incredibly impatient and derisive I can get about the behaviour. Am I any better? As you can read, I wrestle with my own flawed disposition. Often! I suppose the bottom line is, for me, one upsmanship makes me bilious. It gives me gas which can seem uncommonly impolite and unladylike but it’s a fact of life, girls fart too. Silent, violent types.

I’ve had occasion lately to witness acts of one upsmanship and thought it a completely ugly character trait, wondered too just what the person was thinking or even if they were. So you’re wondering, how is being competitive different? It is, completely. For sportsmen and women a competitive spirit has an inner discipline. To me, there’s an unruliness about one upsmanship. It completely lacks self-discipline.

To me, the defining character trait of a person is whether, when engaged in social interactions (right across the board) and play tickle leads to play slap whether they’ll leave the other person’s integrity intact. At the risk of sounding cynical, a person in one upsmanship mode takes no hostages. They don’t. Their wonky thinking is allowed free reign to run amok.

But it’s Hyacinth’s long suffering husband Richard I’ll allow to have the last word today. He says, “she is a kind woman, never failing to cook, clean, and iron for her husband.” Richard who is completely and utterly hen-picked. Perhaps his were carefully chosen words. Am I being counter-sexist and relegating upwardly mobilised Hyacinth back to the kitchen?

Not at all. I’m simply saying that sometimes underneath the veneer is a flawed human being, just like all the rest of us. Once upon a time and in my youth I might have gone head to head with one upsmanship, these days I’d rather open the door and allow it to pass right on through. There are bigger battles in life to defend against.