Building up or tearing down

There are two ways for you rise above the crowd, stand head and shoulders over your competitors, and make your way to the top of the heap.

The first way is to build yourself up

Gain the knowledge you need, pay your dues, and make the mistakes required to enable you to avoid those mistakes (and others like them) in the future while you keep getting better at what you do.

The second way is to tear others down

Demean them and insult them and belittle them so that they won’t ever try to rise above you, so that they’ll be so demoralized and devastated they’ll shut up and stay in their place.

The main problem with the second way is that you don’t actually rise any higher than you are.  Everyone else simply seems smaller by comparison.

The first way takes more time, but improves the quality of the game for everyone else.  You get better at hitting a baseball by going up to bat and swinging at more pitches than everybody else, not by breaking the pitcher’s arm.

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