Volume 2, Issue 24
So many writers have impressed me with at least one thing, if not everything, they said. Crowley for example in Liber Aleph makes the point that there are no rules, just principles to balance in every given situation. Yet probably just a few principles come closest to being rules that apply strongly in virtually every circumstance.
Pondering this, it occurs to me that Win/Win is such an important principle it comes near the top of the list if not at the very top.
In my cosmology we are all holograms of the One Consciousness, or more precisely facets of the one Conscious Hologram. So it follows logically that we would do unto others as we would do unto a reflection of our very own self. This is truly enlightened self-interest.
Even in a humanistic materialistic worldview such as some of my best friends have, Win/Win follows logically from their chosen noble stance. My lifetime favorite writer F. Scott Fitzgerald notes in The Beautiful and Damned and elsewhere that such a stance is even more meaningful if it is taken after assuring oneself there is no moral imperative to do so, no value that is not ascribed, usually unconsciously, à la Shakespeare’s “there is nothing either good or bad, but thinking makes it so” (Hamlet).
The intention and fact of only making agreements that are good for all parties is the essence of Win/Win. It ideally permeates to the minute level of almost invisible tacit agreements going on every second of social interaction. It is the most palpable form of omnidirectional unconditional love.
Win/Win is hardest to maintain when one has a score to settle with someone. We want them to lose, as a lesson to them, so they stop being the way they are. In the end this contamination of attitude undoes any good. “Vengeance is mine” as a concept gives us permission to not carry the burden of corrective punishment, absolving us from that task, and enabling us to continue Win/Win even with folks who have harmed us. More good is done by this than by any other strategy. We ourselves benefit more long-term and often short-term by Win/Win, even when dealing with known sociopaths. By definition one does not make a deal with a sociopath that inflicts harm on oneself because each party is required to win by the strategy itself. It comes down, as so many things do, to a deepening of creativity to make it possible to achieve Win/Win even when up against such a Win/Lose “opponent”.
Two Win/Lose players met years ago and Mr. Z humiliated Ms. Y in front of others. I had a feeling and said to the other onlooker later, “She is going to find a way to get even someday.” Sometime later there followed an unrelated Lose/Lose lawsuit set in motion by a quiet remark to her boss from Ms. Y, which ended with both Y and Z injured.
It is a glorious fact of existence that each of us is a far more powerful player on the stage of this world than we ever suspect based on appearances. Words or even facial expressions can escalate things disproportionately. Win/Win as a deep-seated metaconscious attitude is not only the best way to win oneself, and the way to do the most good in the world, but it is also the best protection against undoing oneself even in a careless or tired moment.
Best to all,