A Thought

I watched the last half of the movie 'Arrival'.  I didn't understand it all, but grasped that it involved alien linguistics and apparently things worked out in the end.

But what stayed in mind afterwards was that the heroine finally came up with "zero sum game" when her daughter was seeking a "sciencey" phrase for "not lose-lose".  And I got to thinking about that.  I often do that when watching TV and completely lose the next 15 minutes deep in thought.  Which is a good reason to watch DVDs because you can just rewind them.  And see how old I am?  You don't rewind a DVD, LOL!  But I digress...

So I was thinking about "zero sum game".  Too many politicians think of life as zero sum; "if you win, I lose".  And that actually annoyed me.  In the movie, there were alien ships in many nations and all nations were trying to solve the language problem on their own for individual advantage.  One minor character dared suggest that everyone share what they knew and was ridiculed.

So back to reality and "zero sum"...

We have to stop thinking that way.  It's just causing too many problems.  We all know some things but no one knows everything.  We need to start sharing better.  If Nation "A" knows more about building wind turbines and Nation "B" knows more about storing that energy, shouldn't we share?  And why not tell Nation "C" about both parts so they can make life better for their own people?

I once read about 2 Chinese villages that both made hoes and were fiercely competitive.  As they were about to go to war, the Emperor stepped in and demanded that one village make the blades and the other make the handles and share the profits.  It a myth of course, but makes a good point.  We are all one species and should help each other.

Suppose we detected actual aliens approaching Earth 5 years away.  I bet we could all get along better then, huh?  And if they arrived and looked like 8' squirrels with tentacles, we wouldn't think we were all that different either. 

Why wait?

My paternal grandmother used to say that if a flying saucer ever landed on Earth, she would be the first person aboard.   On the surface, that reflects the fact that she and Grampa had rather "hard-scrabble" lives.  But I knew her better than that.  She was a brave and forward-looking person who thought our human progress was too slow and needed a better challenge.  A good kick in the butt...

And I agree.  We have gotten too locked into to group competition.  That's the "zero sum game".  No one wins that way and I'm getting damn tired of it.  We need to go from "zero sum" to "win-win"!

This is all because of the current political nonsense here in the US.  Be on any side you like domestically or internationally, but things are just not working as they should.  It isn't that one side should win and that would solve everything. 

Too many people feel a need to "win" at the expense of "the others" just to get ahead.  But isn't reality the idea of everyone getting ahead?

There is a reason we all don't live in caves today.  We traded knowledge.  One group showed another how to use animal sinews to hold hides together to make a portable shelter, and the other group gave them some seeds they saved that grew better grains.  And the next group had a better flint-knapping technique.

Everyone benefitted.  When did we stop?

Let's start doing that again.

And Happy Summer Solstice Day in the North and Winter in the South...