Virtuous Circle

In everything do to others as you would have them do to you ~ Matthew 7: 12

This book... rests on eight assumptions:

1. Life is a game.
2. There are two categories of games: finite zero-sum and infinite nonzero.
3. The goal of finite zero-sum games is to end the game with you as the winner.
4. In finite games, striving to be the winner requires at least indifference to others being losers.
5. The goal of infinite nonzero games is to keep the game going, and this means there are no ultimate winners or losers.
6. In infinite games, striving to maintain the game requires that you be sensitive and respond to the needs of others.
7. Life requires that we play both finite and infinite games, yet it is the infinite games that provide us with our greatest sense of meaning, joy, and purpose.
8. The Golden Rule is the best strategy for playing infinite games.

If you believe life isn’t a game, there is no point in reading this book. Or if you believe that life is a finite game, a game of absolute winners and absolute losers, then put this book aside without reading it. If you deny that life is an infinite game, you will play the game to win, and to win absolutely, and the only way to win absolutely is to make sure others lose absolutely. This kind of play makes the Golden Rule the enemy of your deepest desire… I am arguing that the most important games of life are infinite games— our relationships— and that within the context of these games the Golden Rule is golden and that it provides the ultimate strategy for playing well. We all play both finite and infinite games… While playing finite games is natural and inevitable, playing only finite games is neither. In fact, living a joyous, loving, and meaning-filled life is directly linked to how much infinite play defines your life…

To make this plain, compare a friendship with a basketball game. The goal of a friendship is to maintain the friendship indefinitely, and one way to do that is to treat your friend as you would like to be treated by your friend. The goal of a basketball game is to defeat your opponent within the fixed time allotted by the rules of the game. Applying the Golden Rule in the context of basketball would eliminate the chances of anyone winning: after all, you wouldn’t want someone to strip the basketball out of your grasp, so you would choose not to strip the ball out of an opponent’s grasp. This example may sound a bit silly, but the notion of examining the Golden Rule in the context of infinite nonzero and finite zero-sum games is not.

Take, for example, the 2015 uproar over the Religious Freedom Restoration Act (RFRA) passed, and then amended, in Indiana. Whatever its intent, the act seemed to allow for businesses to discriminate against customers if the customers’ request of the business violated the faith of the owners of the business. The classic example is a caterer who refuses to cater a same-sex wedding because same-sex marriage violates her faith. Whatever your opinion on RFRA or marriage equality, the Golden Rule would mandate that the caterer treat all her customers the way she would like to treated. Presumably she would not want to be discriminated against based on her sexual orientation, so she should, according to the Rule, not discriminate against her LGBTQ clientele. But in the mind of many, the Golden Rule just doesn’t apply…

What determines observance and nonobservance of an ethical rule, precept, or principle isn’t the rule, precept, or principle itself but the situation in which you find yourself. If violence is perceived as necessary, violence will be condoned. If violence is perceived as unnecessary, violence will be condemned. Circumstances arising in specific times and places, not any universal principle, determine what we consider right or wrong…
While playing finite games is natural and inevitable, playing only finite games is neither. In fact, living a joyous, loving, and meaning-filled life is directly linked to how much infinite play defines your life. Recognizing the need for infinite play opens up more and more opportunities for applying the Golden Rule, and the more we apply the Golden Rule, the more infinite our play becomes and the more opportunities for living the Golden Rule we have. This is a virtuous circle…”

~ Rabbi Rami Shapiro, The Golden Rule and the Games People Play: The Ultimate Strategy for a Meaning-Filled Life