In one of the annual events of my company, we were made to play a game called 'Win as much as you can.' As the name suggests, the aim was to garner as many points as possible. No one was a holy cow, no move was a taboo, only winning mattered.
The rules were such that if all the teams got it right, points were distributed, but if only one team got it right, all the points went to that team. So the recipe for winning maximum points was not just to get it right but do it in a way that all others get it wrong. Also, there were negative points if you got it wrong. It was a classic case of human psychology and game theory. The ground rules were laid clear and it was understood that if everyone stayed truly honest, all the teams could've won. There were about four rounds and the stakes got bigger as the game progressed. But what began was a downpour of deceit, secrecy, back-stabbing and betrayal within the context of the game. At the end of round 4, the winning team's score was ‘(-2)’. All other teams were more negative.
My learning: This game reflected our lives quite closely. If winning is all that matters in life, then we take the whole society, ecology, nature and life down with us. There is no winner in this philosophy, there is only the one who loses the least. We all started the game with a neutral zero, but we all – including the winner – ended up in the negative. This insightful game was for me, the reflection of life as we live it now. Do we realize yet that we’re all in the negative already?
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