Mainstream

There are some parts of you that you know it's morally right, it's always been, yet it's worldly wrong. And it's you to decide whether you want to stick to one over the other, or vice versa.

One thing I figured out about myself is that I always think people like peace. People like the win-win solution, mutualism. Everybody's happy. The total 100% happiness. I thought everybody wants peace, no one likes war or killing or betrayal or sort of.

...unless I'm being too naive, I did think that's true.

Today's game in my US History class has perfectly proven that hypothesis is wrong, especially in America. Well maybe, everywhere. Yes, like John Lennon's song, You may say I'm a dreamer. I am indeed a dreamer. It's pitiful to know that in such easy situation, people don't even think peace at all.

So, here's the story. We played this pink-green card game called Everybody Can Win. The objective is to get positive result, no matter how big it is. The rule is, our teacher will give us one minute to decide whether we want to use pink or green card--you can discuss it with other team.
If all teams raise up the green card, everybody gets the positive point.
If there's team who raised up green and others pink, the pink ones get the positive, while the green ones get the negative. If all raise the pink one, everybody get negative point.

It's a six rounds games, each round the points are doubled (for example, 1, 2, 4, 8,...)

One tricky thing about this game is that since it's doubling, if you messed up the first five round--get all minus--but then you won the sixth round, you still won by one positive point. But if you won all the first five rounds and messed up the last one, you automatically lose.

I teamed up with my host sister and some other friends. When the game started, I was trying to campaign about using green all the time, since it won't bother any teams, everybody gets points, everybody gets the extra credits. One of my team member grabbed the card and picked the color, which is pink. Ignoring me, he consulted with other groups about which card to pick, since he knows I'm a too I Love Peace, Win-Win Solution person, he decided to take over.

They're crazy. Yes, they are. Nobody can actually be friend. There's no one to cooperate with. Well, I thought there are... Some. But there wasn't any. I was shouting about what's the point of trying to trick others when all of us can win and just play by the advantage. And guess what? Nobody's listening. I feel like an excluded hippie in a such modern world. In a good way, though. Although bad situation.

I was trying to gain trust which I should not be doing in the place based on my observation throughout the room, that no American in that class room you can trust, and tried to grab the card over. Yes, I made a huge mistake, I pulled the green card in the last round, along with one other team, while everyone else took out their pink card. We just got 31 positive points, and suddenly being smashed pretty bad with the 32 negative points.

Everybody, except for the big guy and my host sister, was mad at me. Well, childish mad, not the mad-mad. There's five people in my team, two didn't really care about the game since it's just a game and you can get extra credit else time, the one was freaking mad--like, "I told you to put pink, and hoooo you just keep saying put green, we better gain trust,..."--and he indeed annoyed me so much, while the other one was just being the cheers for the mad one.

It indeed annoyed me, so much. Both of them are in my bus as well, and all of the way home, they just kept buzzing about how I'm being stupid and naive and not strategically smart. I apologized--sincerely--over the matter that they didn't get the easy extra credits. I was laughing hard, to be honest. You know when you get annoyed so much that you just laugh hard because they are indeed hilarious? That happened to me.

The game--titled Everybody Can Win--made me think again about humanity, the restoration. It might be one of the games that I don't like that much.

It made me realize about human true nature. No matter how easy it is to actually win by just letting everybody wins, there are some little part of our human nature that is selfish. No, most of it. Like my host mum said, You were born with selfishness, as you grew older, people teach you to share. Being generous is not a genetic cause, it's a learning experience. What I saw in the game today was not bunch of people wanting to get extra credits--it's people who like to see others suffer, not happy, less fortunate. Less equal. We were born with inequality, superiority. The joy was not getting the extra credit, but seeing people don't get extra credit or even better, get minus. That's human.

I know that I was supposedly using the pink card. There's no way I'd risk my life for less than 25% of success for using the green card, on the very last round, the biggest point, both for negative and positive. It actually made me wondering. What are the reason I decided to use that green card in the very last round other than bothering my other teammate? To gain trust or having solidarity with friends (because there is indeed a team that raised green card)? Or to just try?

A lot of things happened today. I'm glad tomorrow's Friday.

I might be naive, I won't be.