Essay – The Rules of the Game (Ethics in Leadership)

Essay – The Rules of the Game (Ethics in Leadership)
The Rules of the Gam e by Carl Saga n Everything morally right derives from one of four sources: it concerns either ful l perception or intelligent development of what is true; or the preservation of organize d society, where every man is rendered his due and all obligations are faithfully discharged ; or the greatness and strength of a noble, invincible spirit; or order and moderation i n everything said and done, whereby is temperance and self -control . Cicero, De Officiis, I, 5 (45 -44 B.C. ) I remember the end of a long ago perfect day in 1939 — a day that powerfully influence d my thinking, a day when my parents introduced me to the wonders of the New Yor k World’s Fair. It was late, well past my bedtime. Safely perched on my fathe r’s shoulders , holding onto his ears, my mother reassuringly at my side, I turned to see the great Trylo n and Perisphere, the architectural icons of the fair, illuminated in shimmering blue pastels . We were abandoning the future, the “World of Tomorrow,” f or the BMT subway train . As we paused to rearrange a tray around his neck. He was selling pencils. My fathe r reached into the crumpled brown paper bag that held the remains of our lunches , withdrew an apple, and handed it to the pencil man. I let out a lou d wail. I disliked apple s then, and had refused this on both at lunch and at dinner. But I had, nevertheless, a proprietary interest in it. It was my apple, and my father had just given it away to a funny -looking stranger — who, to compound my anguish, was now glarin g unsympathetically in my direction . Although my father was a person of nearly limitless patience and tenderness, I could se e he was disappointed in me. He swept me up and hugged me tight to him . “He’s a poor stiff, out of work,” he said to me, too quietly for the man to hear. “He hasn’ t eaten all day. We have enough. We can give him an apple. ” I reconsidered, stifled my sobs, took another wishful glance at the World of Tomorrow , and gratefully fell asleep in his arms . Moral codes that seek to regulate human behavior have been with us not only since th e dawn of civilization but also among our pre -civilized, and highly social, hunter -gathere r ancestors. And even earlier. Different societies have different codes. Many cultures sa y one thing and do another. In a few fortunate societies, an inspired lawgiver lays down a set of rules to live by (and more often than not claims to have been instructed by a god — without which few would follow the prescriptions). For example, the codes of Ashok a (India), Hammurabi (Babylon), Lycurgus (Sparta) and Solon (Athens), which once hel d sway over mighty civilizations, are today largely defunct. Perhaps they misjudged huma n nature and asked too much of us. Perhaps experience from one epoch or culture is no t wholly applicable to another . Surprisingly, there are today efforts – tentative but emerging – to approach the matte r scientifically; i.e., experimentally. In our everyday lives, as in the -momentous affairs of nations , we must decide: What does it mean t o do the right thing? Should we help a needy stranger ? How do we deal with an enemy? Should we ever take advantage of someone who treats u s kindly? If hurt by a friend, or helped by an enemy, should we reciprocate in kind; or does th e totality of past beha vior outweigh any recent departures from the norm . Examples: Your sister -in-law ignores your snub and invites you over for Christmas dinner . Should you accept? Shattering a four -year -long worldwide voluntary moratorium , China resumes nuclear weapons testi ng; should we? How much should we give t o charity? Serbian soldiers systematically rape Bosnian women; should Bosnian soldier s systematically rape Serbian women? After centuries of oppression, the National Part y leader F. W. de Klerk makes overtures to the African National Congress; should Nelso n Mandela and the ANC have reciprocated? A coworker makes you look bad in front of th e boss; should you try to get even? Should we cheat on our income tax returns? If we ca n get away with it? If an oil company suppor ts a symphony orchestra or sponsors a refine d TV drama, ought we to ignore its pollution of the environment? Should you cheat a t cards? On a larger scale: Should we kill killers ? In making such decisions, we’re concerned not only with doing right but also with wha t works -what makes us and the rest of society happier and more secure. There’s a tensio n between what we call ethical and what we call pragmatic. If, even in the long run, ethica l behavior were self -defeating, eventually we would not call it ethic al, but foolish. (W e might even claim to respect it but ignore it in practice.) Bearing in mind the variety an d complexity of human behavior, are there any simple rules — whether we call them ethica l or pragmatic — that actually work ? How do we decide what to do? Our responses are partly determined by our perceive d self -interest. We reciprocate in kind or act contrary because we hope it will accomplis h what we want. Nations assemble or blow up nuclear weapons so other countries won’ t trifle with them. We retur n good for evil because we know that we can thereb y sometimes touch people’s sense of justice, or shame them into being nice. But sometime s we’re not motivated selfishly. Some people seem just naturally kind. We my accep t aggravation from aged parents or f rom children, because we love them and want them t o be happy, even it’s at some cost to us. Sometimes we’re tough with our children and caus e them a little unhappiness, because we want to mold their characters and believe that th e long -term results will br ing them more happiness than the short -term pain . Cases are different. Peoples and nations are different. Knowing how to negotiate thi s labyrinth is part of wisdom. But bearing in mind the variety and complexity of huma n behavior, are there some simple ru les, whether we call them ethical or pragmatic, tha t actually work? Or maybe we should avoid trying to think it through and just do wha t feels right. But even then how do we determine what “feels right” ? The most admired standard of behavior, in the West, at least, is the Golden Rule , attributed to Jesus of Nazareth. Everyone knows its formulation in the first -centur y Gospel of St. Matthew: Do unto others as you would have them do unto you. Almos t no one f ollows it. When the Chinese philosopher Kung -Tzu (known as Confucius in the West ) was asked in the fifth century B.C. his opinion of the Golden Rule, of repaying evi l with kindness, he replied, “Then with what will you repay kindness?” Shall the poo r woman who envies her neighbor’s wealth give what little she has to the rich? Shall th e masochist inflict pain on his neighbor? The Golden Rule takes no account of huma n differences. Are we really capable, after our cheek has been slapped, of turning the othe r cheek so it can be slapped? With a heartless adversary, isn’t this just a guarantee of mor e suffering ? The Silver Rule is different: Do not do unto others what you would not have them d o unto you. It also can be found worldwide, including, a generation bef ore Jesus, in th e writings of Rabbi Hillel. The most inspiring twentieth -century exemplars of the Silve r Rule are Mohandas Gandhi and Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. They counseled oppresse d peoples not to repay violence with violence, but not to be compliant a nd obedient either . Nonviolent civil disobedience was what they advocated — putting your body on the lin e and showing, by your willingness to be punished in defying an unjust law, the justice o f your cause. They aimed at melting the hearts of their oppressor s (and those who had no t yet made up their minds) . King paid tribute to Gandhi as the first person in history to convert the Gold or Silve r Rules into an effective instrument of social change. And Gandhi made it clear where hi s approach came from: “I lear nt the lesson on nonviolence from my wife, when I tried t o bend her to my will. Her determined resistance to my will on the one hand, and her qui t submission to the suffering of my stupidity involved on the other, ultimately made m e ashamed of myself and c ured me of my stupidity in thinking that I was born to rule ove r her. ” Nonviolent civil disobedience has worked notable political change in this century — in prying India loose from British rule and stimulating the end of classic colonialis m worldwide, and in providing some civil rights for African -Americans — although th e threat of violence by others, however disavowed by Gandhi and King, my have als o helped. The African National Congress (ANC) grew up in the Gandhian tradition. But b y the 1950’s it was clear that nonviolent noncooperation was making no progress whateve r with the ruling white Nationalist Party. So in 1961 Nelson Mandela and his colleague s formed the military wing of the ANC, the Umkhonto we Sizwe, the Spear of the Nation , on the quite un -Gandh ian grounds that the only thing whites understand is force . Even Gandhi had trouble reconciling the rule of nonviolence with the necessities o f defense against those with less lofty rules of conduct? “I have not the qualifications fo r teaching the philosop hy of life. I have barely qualifications for practicing the philosoph y I believe. I am but a poor struggling soul yearning to be . . . wholly truthful and wholl y nonviolent in thought, word and deed, but ever failing to reach the ideal . “Repay kindness wit h kindness,” said Confucius, “but evil with justice.” This might b e called the Brass or Brazen Rule: Do unto others as they do unto you. It’s the le x talionis, “an eye for an eye, and a tooth for a tooth,” plus “one good turn deserve s another.” In actual human (and chimpanzee) behavior it’s a familiar standard. “If th e enemy inclines toward peace, do you also incline toward peace,” President Bill Clinto n quoted from the Qur’an at the Israeli -Palestinian peace accords. Without having to appeal t o anyone’s better nature, we institute a kind of operant conditioning, rewarding the m when they’re nice to us and punishing them when they’re not. We’re not pushovers, bu t we’re not unforgiving either. It sounds promising. Or is it true that “two w rongs don’ t make a right ? Of baser coinage is the Iron Rule: Do unto others as you like, before they do it unt o you. It is sometimes formulated as, “He who has the gold makes the rules,” underscorin g not just its departure from, but also its contempt for the Golden Rule. This is the secre t maxim of many, if they can get away with it, and often the unspoken precept of th e powerful . Finally, I should mention two other rules, found throughout the living world. The y explain a great deal: Suck up to those abov e you, and abuse those below. This is th e motto of bullies and the norm in many nonhuman primate societies. It’s really the Golde n Rule for superiors, the Iron Rule for inferiors. Since there is no known alloy of gold an d iron, we’ll call it the Tin Rule f or its flexibility. The other common rule is: Giv e precedence in all things to close relatives, and do as you like to others. This Nepotis m Rule is known to evolutionary biologists as “kin selection. ” Despite its apparent practicality, there’s a fatal fla w in the Brazen Rule: unendin g vendetta. It hardly matters who starts the violence. Violence begets violence, and eac h side has reason to hate the other. “There is no way to peace,” A. J. Muste said, “Peace i s the way.” But peace is hard and violence is ea sy. Even if almost everyone is for endin g the vendetta, a single act of retribution can stir it up again: A dead relative’s sobbin g widow and grieving children are before us. Old men and women recall atrocities fro m their childhoods. The reasonable part of us tries to keep the peace, but the passionate par t of us cries out for vengeance. Extremists in the two warring factions can count on on e another. They are allied against the rest of us, contemptuous of appeals to understandin g and loving -kindness. A few hotheads can force -march a legion of more prudent an d rational people to brutality and war . Many in the West have been so mesmerized by the appalling accords with Adolf Hitler i n Munich in 1938 that they are unable to distinguish cooperation and appeasem ent. Rathe r than having to judge each gesture and approach on its own merits, we merely decide tha t the opponent is thoroughly evil, that all his concessions are offered in bad faith, and tha t force is the only thing he understands. Perhaps for Hitler this was the right judgement . But in general it is not the right judgment, as much as I wish that the invasion of th e Rhineland had been forcibly opposed. It consolidates hostility on both sides and make s conflict much more likely. In a world with nuclear weap ons, uncompromising hostilit y carries special and very dire dangers . Breaking out of a long series of reprisals is, I claim, very hard. There are ethnic group s who have weakened themselves to the point of extinction because they had no machiner y to escape from this cycle, the Kaingang of the Brazilian highlands, for example. Th e warring nationalities in the former Yugoslavia, in Rwanda, and elsewhere may provid e further examples. The Brazen Rule seems too unforgiving. The Iron Rule promotes th e advantage of a ruthless and powerful few against the interests of everybody else. Th e Golden and Silver Rules seem too complacent. They systematically fail to punish cruelty an d exploitation. They hope to coax people from evil to good by showing that kindn ess i s possible. But there are sociopaths who do not much care about the feelings of others, an d it is hard to imagine a Hitler or Stalin being shamed into redemption by good example. I s there a rule between the Golden and Silver on the one hand and the Br azen, Iron and Ti n on the other which works better than any of them alone ? With so many different rules, how can you tell which to use, which will work? More tha n one rule may be operating even in the same person or nation. Are we doomed just t o guess abo ut this, or to rely on intuition, or just to parrot what we’ve been taught? Let’s tr y to put aside, just for the moment, whatever rules we’ve been taught, and those we fee l passionately — perhaps from a deeply rooted sense of justice — must be right . Suppose w e seek not to confirm or deny what we’ve been taught but to find out wha t really works. Is there a way to test competing codes of ethics? Granting that the rea l world may be much more complicated than any simulation, can we explore the matte r scientificall y? We’re used to playing games in which somebody wins and somebody loses. Every poin t made by our opponent puts us that much farther behind. “Win -lose” games seem natural , and many people are hard pressed to think of a game that isn’t win -lose. In win -los e games, the losses just balance the wins. That’s why they’re also called “zero -sum” games . There’s no ambiguity about your opponent’s intentions: Within the rules of the game, h e will do anything he can to defeat you . Many children are aghast the first t ime they really come face to face with the “lose” sid e of win -lose games. On the verge of bankruptcy in Monopoly, for example, they plead fo r special dispensation (forgoing rents, for example), and when this is not forthcoming may , in tears, denounce the g ame as heartless and unfeeling -which, of course, it is. (I’ve see n the board overturned, hotels and “Chance” cards and metal icons spilled onto the floor i n spitting anger and humiliation — and not only by children.) Within the rules of Monopoly , there’s no way for players to cooperate so that all benefit. That’s not how the game i s designed. The same is true for boxing, football, hockey, basketball, baseball, lacrosse , tennis, racquetball, chess, all Olympic events, yacht and car racing, pinochle, potsie, an d partisan politics. In none of these games is there an opportunity to practice the Golden o r Silver Rule, or even the Brazen. There is room only for the Rule of Iron and Tin. If w e revere the Golden Rule, why is it so rare in the games we teach our childr en ? After a million years of intermittently warring tribes we readily enough think in zero -su m mode, and treat every interaction as a contest or conflict. Nuclear war, though (and man y conventional wars), economic depression and assaults on the global envi ronment are al l “lose -lose” propositions. Such vital human concerns as love, friendship, parenthood , music, art, and the pursuit of knowledge are “win -win” propositions. Our vision i s dangerously narrow if all we know is “win -lose. ” The scientific field t hat deals with such matters is called game theory, used in militar y tactics and strategy, trade policy, corporate competition, limiting of environmenta l pollution, and plans for nuclear war. The paradigmatic game is the Prisoner’s Dilemma. It i s very much non -zero -sum. Win -win, win -lose and lose -lose outcomes all are possible . “Sacred” books carry few useful insights into strategy here. It is a wholly pragmati c game . Imagine that you and a friend are arrested for committing a serious crime. For t he purpose of the game, it doesn’t matter whether either, neither, or both of you did it. Wha t matters is that the police say they think you did. Before the two of you have any chanc e to compare stories or plan strategy, you are taken to separate interroga tion cells. There , oblivious of your Miranda rights (“You have the right to remain silent…”), they try t o make you confess. They tell you, as police sometimes do, that your friend has confesse d and implicated you. (Some friend!) The police might be telli ng the truth. Or they migh t be lying. You’re permitted only to plead innocent or guilty. If you’re willing to sa y anything, what’s your best tack to minimize punishment ? Here are the possible outcomes : If you deny committing the crime and (unknown to you) your friend also denies it, th e case might be hard to prove. In the plea bargain, both your sentences will be very light . If you confess, and your friend does likewise, then the effort the State had to expend t o solve the crime was small. In exchange you both may be given a fairly light sentence , although not so light as if you both had asserted your innocence . But if you plead innocent, and your friend confesses, the State will ask for the maximu m sentence for you and minimal punishment (maybe none) for your friend. Uh -oh. You ar e very vulnerable to a kind of double cross, what game theorists call “defection.” So’s he . So, if you and your friend “cooperate” with one another — both pleading innocent (or bot h pleading guilty) — you both escape the worst. Should you play it safe and guarantee n o worse than a middle range of punishment by confessing? Then, if your friend plead s innocent while you plead guilty, well, too bad for him, and you might get off scot – free . When you think it through, you realize that, wha tever your friend does you’re better of f defecting than cooperating. Maddeningly, the same holds true for your friend. But if yo u both defect, you are both worse off than if you had both cooperated. This is the Prisoner’ s Dilemma . Now consider a repeated Prisoner’s Dilemma, in which the two players go through a sequence of such games. At the end of each they figure out from their punishment ho w the other must have pled. They gain experience about each other’s strategy (an d character). Will they learn to co operate game after game, both always denying that the y committed any crime? Even if the reward for finking on the other is large ? You might try cooperating or defecting, depending on how the previous game or game s have gone. If you cooperate overmuch, the other player may exploit your good nature. I f you defect overmuch, your friend is likely to defect often, and this is bad for both of you . You know your defection pattern is data being fed to the other player. What is the righ t mix of cooperation and defec tion? How to behave then becomes, like any other questio n in Nature, a subject to be investigated experimentally. This matter has been explored in a continuing round -robin computer tournament by the University of Michigan sociologis t Robert Axelrod, in his remarkable book The Evolution of Cooperation. Various codes o f behavior confront one another, and at the end we see who wins (who gets the lightes t cumulative prison term). The simplest strategies might be to cooperate all the time, no matter how much advantage is taken of you; or never to cooperate, no matter what benefit s might accrue from cooperation. These are the Golden Rule and the Iron Rule. They alway s lose, the one from a superfluity of kindness, the other from an overabundan ce of ruthlessness . Strategies slow to punish defection lose — in part because they send a signal tha t noncooperation can win. The Golden Rule is not only an unsuccessful strategy; it is als o dangerous for other players, who may succeed in the short term onl y to be mowed down b y exploiters in the long term . Should you defect at first, but if your opponent cooperates even once, cooperate in al l future games? Should you cooperate at first, but if your opponent defects even once , defect in all future games? The se strategies also lose. Unlike sports, you cannot rely o n your opponent to be always out to get you . The most effective strategy in many such tournaments is called “Tit -for -Tat.” It’s ver y simple: You start out cooperating, and in each subsequent round s imply do what you r opponent did the last time. You punish defections, but once the other player cooperates , you’re willing to let bygones be bygones. At first it seems to garner only mediocr e success. But as time goes on, the other strategies defeat themse lves, from too muc h kindness or too much cruelty -and this middle way pulls ahead. Except for always bein g nice on the first move, Tit -for -Tat is identical to the Brazen Rule. It promptly (in the ver y next game) rewards cooperation and punishes defection, a nd has the great virtue that i t makes your strategy absolutely clear to your opponent. (Strategic ambiguity can b e lethal. ) TABLE OF PROPOSED RULES TO LIVE B Y The Golden Rul e Do unto others as you would have them do unto you . The Silver Rul e Do not do unt o others what you would not have them do unto you . The Brazen Rul e Do unto others as they do unto you . The Iron Rul e Do unto others as you like, before they do it unto you . The Tit -for -Tat Rul e Cooperate with others first, then do unto them as they do unto you . Once there get to be several players employing Tit -for -Tat, they rise in the standing s together. To succeed, Tit -for -Tat strategists must find others who are willing t o reciprocate, with whom they can cooperate. After the first tournament in which t he Brazen Rule unexpectedly won, some experts thought the strategy too forgiving. Nex t tournament, they tried to exploit it by defecting more often. They always lost. Eve n experienced strategists tended to underestimate the power of forgiveness an d reconci liation. Tit -for -Tat involves an interesting mix of proclivities: initial friendliness , willingness to forgive, and fearless retaliation. The superiority of the Tit -for -Tat Rule i n such tournaments was recounted by Axelrod . Something like it can be found throughout the animal kingdom and has been well -studie d in our closest relatives, the chimps. Described and named “reciprocal altruism” by th e biologist Robert Trivers, animals may do favors for others in expectation of havin g th e favors returned — not every time, but often enough to be useful. This is hardly a n invariable moral strategy, but is not uncommon either. So there is no need to debate th e antiquity of the Golden, Silver, and Brazen Rules, or Tit -for -Tat, and the prior ity of th e moral prescriptives in the Book of Leviticus. Ethical rules of this sort were not originall y invented by some enlightened human lawgiver. They go deep into our evolutionary past . They were with our ancestral line from a time before we were human . The Prisoner’s Dilemma is a very simple game. Real life is considerably more complex . If he gives our apple to the pencil man, is my father more likely to get an apple back? No t from the pencil man; we’ll never see him again. But might widespread acts o f charit y improve the economy and give my father a raise? Or do we give the apple for emotional , not economic rewards? Also, unlike the players in an ideal Prisoner’s Dilemma game , human beings and nations come to their interactions with predispositions, b oth hereditar y and cultural . But the central lessons in a not very prolonged round -robin of Prisoner’s Dilemma ar e about strategic clarity; about the self -defeating nature of envy; about the importance o f long -term over short -term goals; about the dangers of both tyranny and patsydom; an d especially about approaching the whole issue of rules to live by as an experimenta l question. Game theory also suggests that a broad knowledge of history is a key surviva l tool .