THE TEN PRINCIPLES
These are the ten principles of Win-Win. You can think of them as life tips, game rules, simulation parameters… whatever floats your boat. They are not compulsory, merely recommendations. Nor are they complete! This number was chosen for obvious memetic reasons, and will likely grow. But that doesn’t make them any less useful to you, dear player.
The universe is fundamentally and radically abundant. Scarcity is the exception, not the rule. As such, a mindset based in scarcity will ultimately self-defeat.
Permanence is a fool’s errand. A living universe is increasingly complex and dynamic. Be adaptive, not boring.
Do your best to grow the pie, not just take from it. In the rare case where the pie cannot grow further, only take your fair share. How you define fair is up to you. (See #4).
Love is that which enables choice. As such, true power comes from empowering others to make their own choices; to design and play their own games.
All games have consequences. Intelligence is knowing how to win a game; Wisdom is knowing which games to play in the first place.
Selflessness and Sacrifice are not as noble as they appear, for such acts are lose/win. The best acts are mutually beneficial.
A win/win game usually requires some collaboration. Nonetheless, most win-win can often contain competitive win/lose sub-games within them.
Scoring systems can be useful tools, but resist the temptation to turn them into primary goals. Single-minded maximalism is a tactic for n00bs.
While trade-offs can exist, beware of false dichotomies. A paradox often dissolves when viewed from higher dimensions.
Don’t take anything too seriously. The universe loves to play.
Those are the ten principles of Win-Win. There is also a very important 11th principle, but we’ll get to that later. Because now it’s time for this game to get serious. And to do that, we need some bad guys to defeat. And one of these bad guys is very big, very bad, and sadly, very real.
Ready?
Level 5
