Who’s Up, Who’s Down…and How Many Scientists Does It Take to Make a Chirp?

It was just Presidents’ Day; so let’s toss a coin in honor of Lincoln. Heads I Win, Tails You Lose. What, you don’t like that?

Anyone who follows all this presidential campaign stuff too closely runs the risk, it seems to me, of seeing most everything in terms of Winning and Losing. Fortunately, something else— a humble chirp with a link to the vast universe—just reminded us that, when it comes to really winning, teamwork is almost always the star of the day.

Who’s up and who’s down? What’s the very latest? Wait a minute — did something just shift? Wouldn’t want to miss a beat. The morning after any debate, headlines can’t wait to dissect how the race altered itself overnight, almost as if someone came in and re-arranged your living room, very slightly. And then you’re not sure how it matters.

This conjures up good ol’ Henry David Thoreau and his disdain for needing to keep up with every incidental events in the human world, like accidents, over paying attention to the way more significant constant happenings in Nature—say the breaking of the ice each spring.

Mr. Trump makes news by constantly promising that, with him, we’ll be whole country of winners. He has an ethos based just about completely on the value of taking all the chips from everyone else in any situation. Here’s part of his New Hampshire victory speech:

We’re going to beat China, Japan. We’re going to beat Mexico with trade. We’re going to beat all of these countries that are taking so much of our money away from us on a daily basis. It’s not going to happen anymore.

Phew, that sure is a relief. Because only when we’ve successfully stomped on everyone who shares this planet with us will the earth be bathed in American Glory.

Trump may have written The Art of the Deal, but he evidently never read The 7 Habits of Highly Effective Teens, by Sean Covey (Franklin Covey Co., New York, 1998). Talk about a chip off the ol’ block: Sean Covey is the son of Stephen R. Covey, author of the original blockbuster—The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People.

I don’t know if we generally go around saying, “Wow, I just met a highly effective teen.” Nonetheless, the book lays out good advice with plenty of entertaining graphics. Habit 4, wouldn’t you know, is “Think Win-Win” (p. 145). He calls this approach to life “The All-You- Can-Eat Buffet.” The three other strategies, he says, are “common but poor attitudes towards life.” And they are:

Win- Lose— The Totem Pole

Lose- Win— The Doormat

Lose- Lose—The Downward Spiral

Spirals in general can bring us to the entire cosmos; and one momentous sound.

As headlines go, this one in last Friday’s New York Times was pretty unusual: “With Faint Chirp, Scientists Prove Einstein Correct.” Apparently, as we were trudging through our daily business, most of us not giving the universe much of a thought, a contraption called LIGO was detecting gravitational waves that were, in fact, “the billion year echo” of the collision of two black holes.

Einstein may have been the first obvious winner here, but honestly 1) He doesn’t really need the accolades and 2) Did any of us really ever doubt him anyway?

No, the real news was how a whole lot of smart people can take care of business:

Members of the LIGO group, a worldwide team of scientists from a European team known as the Virgo Collaboration, published a report in Physical Review Letters on Thursday with more than 1,000 authors.

Wow, if there were that many contributors, they must have been on a slow and steady march, with arms entwined, to the finish line.

At my school, a tight group of sophomore boys who are really good friends call themselves a “squad.” When they roam the halls together, they’re proud to be “squadded up.” Most likely the LIGO scientists don’t use the same lingo, but in order to accomplish what they did, they must have roamed the vast universe together in some sense. No Physicist Who Advances the Cause Left Behind!

Just imagine, for a moment, if instead of frittering away their time looking for gravitational waves, they had adopted the Trump Way. “We’re gonna make Earth great again! And we’ll do it by beating all the other planets, and the stars too!”

Incidentally, it just so happens that a chirp has taken up residence in our household. The headline might go like this: “Persistent Chirp Alerts Homeowners to the Declining Battery Status of Smoke Alarm.” OK, I guess some chirps are more noteworthy than others.

The fact is, there will never be any shortage of messages out there about the value of winning. Increasingly, however, the culture is also coming around to the reality that effective collaboration, especially among diverse groups of people, can provide way more substantial benefits – including plain old happiness.

I’m a mentor to a 12 year old girl; a couple of weeks ago, before the New Hampshire primary, I could have brought her to see Hillary Clinton on a Saturday at her very own middle school. This event might well have been inspirational, and probably we should have tried harder to get there. It was in the realm of “historic” and also more about leadership than about winning. And there was the whole element of conveying to a girl, just beginning to get her wings, that she can rise up and do great things. I mean, really, what was not to like, except maybe the crowds?

Trouble was, it happened on the very same afternoon that we were expected at a pool party an hour away, where this particular pre-teen would be able to have a reunion with her camp friends.

Guess which option she preferred?