Straffern

When I was in high school, instead of sex, drugs, and alcohol... I did this: Diplomacy. It was Richard Nixon's favorite board game. It's a combination of a map based strategy game and poker. There's lots of backstabbing. What I learned was that backstabbing was a really effective short-term strategy, but a really bad long-term one. My move was always to find the new guy and befriend him early and then talk about how we would form an early alliance that would mature into domination of Europe. As soon as he committed to that strategy, I'd stab him in the back. It worked well; you'd get a nice early lead. The problem with it is that, while it oftentimes meant that you'd win the game, you'd play with the same people next time. Not only did that guy you backstabbed never ever want to cooperate with you again, but everyone else who found about it would give you the reputation as the backstabber, which made it impossible to make alliances with anyone, even if you kept them. What can you take away from this? Reputation is forever. Doing things right isn't just about integrity, honor, or heaven and hell. It's also about your reputation. Treating people right ensures that others in the future will cooperate with you and success in life is about cooperation! And the other thing is that good short-term strategies are oftentimes bad long-term ones. The "Art of the Deal" strategy comes to mind.