Léon Benjamin in his great Ebook Winning by Sharing says-
“The challenge with understanding the concept of winning by sharing is that it requires the thinker to let go of their reason and their natural instinct to rationalise everything. This is well illustrated by the Prisoner’s Dilemma, an idea conceived to explain the mathematics of non-zero sum games.
Consider a hypothetical scenario where two people have been arrested for committing a crime and are being held separately. The police interview each of them and offer a deal. The prisoner who offers evidence against the other will be freed. If neither of them accepts, they are cooperating with each other and both will only receive a small punishment because of lack of proof.
Each prisoner has only two options but has a dilemma because each cannot make a good decision without knowing what the other one will do. The problem with the prisoner’s dilemma is that if both prisoners were purely rational, they would never co-operate because natural selection dictates a decision that is best for you whatever the other person chooses. In this mathematical model, the only scenario in which there is net positive gain for both parties is if they both cooperate.”
In these days we need to be more and more creative, not only because most people will never again be able to assume the government will look after them, but more particularly because the very fabric of our society is being underpinned by different rules, rituals, social media, the internet and the agreements, implicit in our fast changing world.
I have always had a particular aversion to this “winning by sharing,” credo not because “sharing,” is not a desired state but really because we need eventually to see that without a life of sharing the whole effort is futile, whether you win or lose.
My emphasis, and I’m sure many others adopt the same view, is that whatever we do, sharing should be the cornerstone of our approach. If we are only sharing to win, the whole concept is ugly; if we are taking the survival aspect seriously we can agree that we’re helping others and sharing as a means to survive and win. But it’s good not to kid ourselves.
However, whether it is sharing by winning or winning by sharing, “sharing,” must be the common denominator. Sure many times we will stray and many times we will triumph because often we will say when in a tight corner, “I decided this way because of my family.” Of course this way of looking at things is a complete abrogation of any responsibility at all and a giant cop-out as far as I am concerned.
If we remind ourselves as human beings that we’re not here to win over others we will be happier, healthier and able to live a life worth living, not a life struggling from the cradle to the grave.
I am not against a rich life at all, far from it, but the concept of winning is a hangover from the days of competition where you had to win, become first at school or university but the outcome was connected with prizes of some sort; furthermore, not everybody could win the prize.
Those days are more connected with the more controlled way life was viewed and business was done, not with the higher vision of the 21st century.
The Olympics can still be held but more in the spirit of their origin. And business can still be won, but more in the spirit of sharing.
Image Credit: FreeImages.com-Brian Lary
Chris Borrett