Episode 50: A Strategic Approach to Happiness

Synopsis

In this episode I share one of my favorite memories of being a student at the US Air Force Academy - how I "broke" an academic simulation meant to demonstrate human nature through collaboration.

Competition can make us rabid if we don’t stop to consider that maybe the stakes are not all they’re being broadcast to be. But Trust is the antidote. All it takes is one person to lead like that to let all the air out of the balloon.

18 years after the fact, I realize that this memory doubles as my vision of the future. It’s also a picture of the way the relationships in my life are structured. What about yours? Do you want that ease, that trust, that cooperation for yourself? How do you bring it about?

It isn’t achieved through force – it isn’t achieved through convincing. It’s achieved one of us at a time - pulling the curtains back and turning the lights up on the fact that power isn’t something in short supply, but each of ours inherently. I'd love to know how this influences your thinking today, or how it helps you.

Show Notes

There was a time in college.:

Poli Sci class. (political science)

It was an academic simulation similar to that board game Risk: A game of strategic conquest.

Our assignment was as teams to divide “scarce” spoils through negotiating, forming alliances, and then making choices either in accordance with those agreements or going back on them.

It was a classic prisoner’s dilemma. Basically if you screw someone over in the end, you can take some amount of rewards (which ultimately resulted in bonus points). To the victor would go the spoils. And yet if everyone would cooperate, the rewards were fair and ample.

At surface level, the easiest course of action – the one requiring the least effort – would be for each team to make their deals, strategize their best move for meeting personal goals and act according to personal, inherently competing interests. The chips would fall, and the expected theory of human behavior would be demonstrated: That some win and some lose in a zero sum gain, but that people do in fact act in accordance to their personal interests at the expense of the common good.

But the thing is, life isn’t actually a zero sum game, and neither was this simulation.

There was one person in my class of 22 who had no interest in that. That person was me.

The whole construct was artificial. I knew where it was going, and the point it would demonstrate, and the predictability of it and the obviousness of the meta lesson was boring to me.

I couldn’t have had less interest in fighting over a few bonus points if it meant some classmates got screwed over.

In the end, it only took a few words and a few minutes to independently get all 4 teams on board for total collaboration. I made the proposition to my own team first, and then did the legwork to get all other teams on board. I still remember the toughest sell: he was actually a squad mate of mine and graduated very near the top of our class. Even a hyper competitive, by the rulebook, type A like he was could see the futility of all of us working against each other if there was a willingness to collaborate. I think the main reason he was attached to competing was because of the thrill of seeing who would win and how things would shake out. One huge let down of NOT competing is that we deprived ourselves of the adrenaline rush often associated with not knowing how the drama will resolve – how the chips will fall. When everyone cares for each other, and just cooperates, our nervous systems don’t ride the rollercoaster. It can be just plain boring.

Competition can make us rabid. We don’t even stop to consider that it’s all a game, or maybe the stakes are not all they’re being broadcast to be.

All it takes is one person to lead like that to let all the air out of the balloon.

It just wasn’t worth it to anyone to reap the spoils at the expense of others.

How did I know everyone would comply – would follow through? Of course I didn’t.

But you know what takes the electricity out of the air? When people can tell you just don’t care that much if you lose. The stakes are only what we perceive them to be. People can tell when you don’t want what they have that badly. And that’s what it means to be safe with one another.

Its not what you say. It’s whether they can feel you mean it.

People are used to being deceived. We all are. And it creates these hairpin triggers and mutually assured destruction.

Trust is so foreign today – when you see it you know.

All it takes is seeing that someone else winning doesn’t cost you anything. We can all win. The whole system is rigged up to make us believe that’s not what’s real. That’s scarcity’s what’s real. Conditioned fear.

You know what happened when it came time for the envelopes to get submitted?

No one took advantage of the opportunity to abandon the treaty.

The teacher was flabbergasted, and downright indignant. He wanted answers. It wasn’t that he couldn’t understand – rather, it was that he couldn’t tolerate that the principle didn’t hold. That the precept that people will fuck each other over wasn’t universal.

And it’s not.

Not everything is about rational behavior.

Trust transcends rationality.

It’s perversion that teaches us that no one cares about common good.

Perversion and experience.

But experience can change in a moment.

Every passing moment is another chance to turn it all around.

It can either be by the strength of one person’s conviction, or by the many – but it’s like homeopathy. A little goes a long way.

This is my vision of the future. It’s the way the relationships in my life are structured. What about yours?

Do you want that ease, that trust, that cooperation for yourself?

How do you bring it about?

My vision is a new reign, a world where actual collaboration governs interactions.

This isn’t achieved through force – it isn’t achieved through convincing, triumph, or capitulation.

It’s achieved by pulling the curtains back and turning the lights on on the fact that the real real is that death isn’t the end, scarcity is a lie, power isn’t something in short supply, and everyone coming into their own.