Dear Friends, Family, Neighbors, and Those of You I Don’t Yet Know —
Welcome to this issue of Odd Company, in which I attempt to talk a little bit about the messy issue of winning. Of course it’s on my mind because today the state of Iowa kicked off the official start of the 2024 election season by holding the first Republican presidential caucuses, and a winner has already been declared. But that’s not the only reason it’s on my mind. You see, we have two cats in our yard who both want to be winners.
One of our neighbors has a large, white cat. I believe this cat to be male, though that claim is conjecture. This animal looks and smells altogether too good to be a Tom cat. And also, if it is male it must have had the usual operation, because much as I have looked, I haven’t seen any sign of…you know…the hallmark paraphernalia of an adult male cat. Family jewels or not, it’s very big and very aggressive. And when it comes to staking out territory, Big Whitey (as I think of the white cat privately) definitely wants to win. Old-fashioned woman that I am, I think of this as a male trait. But if it were only a male trait, there would be no problem, as our two female cats would be fine with having him in their back yard. Which they are not. Particularly Penny, our calico cat, is not fine with it; not in any way, shape, or form. In the matter of whose back yard it is, both Big Whitey and Penny want to win, and nothing else will do. It doesn’t matter to Penny that he outweighs her two-to-one. She just can’t stand him. It’s her back yard, and that’s final.
Or so we wish. In truth, we’ve already spent $1,500 on a vet bill getting Penny patched up after an especially emphatic altercation with Big Whitey. I also went down to Cheeky Monkey Toys and bought a Super Soaker water rifle which John and I have used any number of times to break up fights and chase the interloper away. Too bad, the white cat is determined to win this territorial dispute, as is Penny, and no amount of Super Soaking has stopped the ongoing hostilities. Our back yard, once a haven where our cats could freely nap in the sun and chase bees and mice, is now a sort of demilitarized zone where ambushes are a constant concern. None of the cats appear to enjoy this situation, but they can’t seem to hear my lectures on the benefits of being friendly — because they are living beings, after all, and like all living beings, they want, deeply and sincerely and more than anything else, to win.
I think this goes back to the old, old problem of the deep need to get our own DNA replicated, which means not only surviving, but also coming out on top, so to speak. And to do that, one must win every competition. Or so our instincts tell us. All of us have very “hungry hearts,” as Timothy Miller says in How To Want What You Have. Some of us know when we’ve had enough, but some of us don’t.
Tonight’s music is very different from my usual picks. I wanted a piece that says something about the psychological state we’re in when when we lose sight of everything except winning. Mikky Ekko (born John Sudduth, in Louisianna) is a somewhat obscure American singer and songwriter. One of the joys of YouTube is that you can find there music and musicians you might only have heard once or twice. Ekko’s work has appeared in the soundtracks of several well-known TV series, including Teen Wolf and True Blood. Here is “Watch Me Rise,” lyrics available here.
What happens when the drive to win becomes so important to us that nothing else matters? Earlier this week I read a fascinating Substack piece by the economist Robert Reich. I have often wondered what caused the business culture in America to change so dramatically between the 1950’s of my childhood and the present. I am old enough to remember when the leaders of large corporations felt responsible to all of the different groups who make any company a success — that is, the employees, the customers, and the general public as well as the shareholders. The Great Depression seems to have impressed on these leaders the importance of maintaining a balance among all the interested parties, so as to avoid the crashes that happen when things get too wildly favorable to one interest group at the expense of another. I might go so far as to say I think these corporate leaders of the mid 20th century understood the difference between Finite and Infinite Games (as outlined by James Carse in his book by that name). As Carse says, “There are at least two kinds of games. One could be called finite; the other infinite. A finite game is played for the purpose of winning, an infinite game for the purpose of continuing the play.” These CEOs of the past understood that the real object of running a business is not just winning. It’s also about making sure that, in the process, we don’t kill the geese who lay our golden eggs. It’s about understanding that if you don’t pay your employees enough, they can’t buy your stuff; if you don’t pay enough taxes, there’s no money to build the roads you need to get your goods to market, or to educate your workers; if, in the process of “winning,” you cause the civil society you’re part of to become compromised and unstable, you lose.
Also earlier this week, in one of those strange coincidences I’m so fond of writing about here, I came across a TED talk by Liv Boeree, an astrophysicist who found her way into game theory by becoming a professional poker player. (See my post about game theory, The Unexpected.) Boeree presents the notion of “Moloch Traps.” The name Moloch most usually refers to the dreadful deity worshipped by the Biblical Canaanites. Moloch demanded that the Canaanites sacrifice their children by throwing them into a fire in his name. In return for this sacrifice, they hoped Moloch would give them money and power. Whoa.
A Moloch Trap can happen when people get so wrapped up in winning that they forget what they’re trying to win. Real-world examples might be things like a nuclear arms race, or a politician who’s willing to do whatever it takes to stay in power, even if that involves ruining the society that gave him his job. (Or her.) I think it would also apply to business leaders who are so intent on beating the competition that they end up ruining the society that makes their business possible. Like, for example, large financial institutions that take unreasonable risks in order to come out on top, figuring the government will bail them out even if that practice eventually bankrupts the government.
So, to untangle my tangled thoughts and come back around to where I started, it’s a strange thing about democracy, but the people who make the best leaders are not the ones who have their hearts set on winning. Instead, they are those who understand that there’s more to leadership than constantly scrambling to be the top dog (or cat). There is also the small matter of making sure everyone can enjoy the back yard we all must share, and of caring about everyone, not just those you like. In a nation as large and diverse as ours, that means trying your best to see things from points of view other than your own. It means bringing people together rather than dividing them. Which will sometimes involve settling for less than complete victory, especially if it’s a choice between that and sacrificing everything. Those are the candidates I’ll be looking for.