Coming out of Prisoner's Dilemma

Musings after a ten-day meditation retreat. :)

Part 1: Do Not Go To Jail. 

In his seminal book “How will you measure your life”, celebrated Harvard Prof. Clayton Christensen, nicknamed “innovation guru” for billions of dollars of value he helped many organizations create (including Intel), offers a strange piece of advice to Harvard grads. 

 “Do not go to jail.” - He tells the graduating classes. 

It may even sound preposterous, only except that it is not. 

Every five years the graduates meet for a reunion. At the fifth year reunion, most people seem to be doing great. By tenth year reunion, many are struggling with happiness and relationships. By fifteen, twenty and twenty fifth years, situation is progressively worsening. One of his batchmates at Harvard was Jeffrey Skilling: the CEO of Enron - object of the massive scandal. 

Clay says “The Jeffrey Skilling I knew of from our years at HBS was a good man. He was smart, he worked hard, he loved his family…And yet when his entire career unraveled with his conviction on multiple federal felony charges relating to Enron's financial collapse, it not only shocked me that he had gone wrong, but how spectacularly he had done so. Something had clearly sent him off in the wrong direction.” And Clay says this is not one-off, a rather common disturbing pattern. 

Part 2: The Sociopath Personality Type 

I heard Raj Sisodia, Founder of Conscious Capitalism cite that 20% of fast-rising corporate executives have sociopath personality type. The average for the society is 1%. Twenty times higher sociopathic tendencies! 

Even among prisoners, this rate is same - 20%. So in that sense, Christensen’s advice doesn’t sound off-placed at all. 

One of my friends, a very successful performer at IIM-Bangalore, told me once that he wasn’t as successful in his initial career at Mckinsey because “office politics” didn’t come to him naturally. Hence, despite being supremely hardworking and intelligent, he wasn’t able to secure the early promotion. He thought he needed to train himself in office politics – to learn to be schemy to further your own interest over and above others. :) My boss in his early days at Avendus Capital was told “You are too nice to be an investment banker. Tujhe thoda kameena banna padega.” But luckily, when he turned 45, he decided that turning back to innocence and simplicity was a much more valuable proposition, and quit, even though it was clear to him that he was sitting on a gold mine of India tech funding boom, at the peak of his career. :)

The reward for becoming more selfish, more schemy - is very easily visible and clear – climb up the corporate ladder. But the cost - which we are super bad at calculating and visualizing - isn’t as easily visible. But Clay would rightly argue, that it too huge and outweighs the rewards. 

Part 3: Prisoner’s Dilemma

Coming to think of it, it is no coincidence. Modern economics consciousness has conditioned us to remain caught in what it calls “Prisoners’ Dilemma.”

Instead of doing the right, ethical thing, we get caught in game theories, wanting to compete and win against others - placing our sense of worth and well being, in shallow relative comparisons. So you may keep winning narrow games in economics, but ultimately you remain a prisoner.  

We keep chasing money because our friends are also chasing money - eventually we all end up worse off - disconnected from our deeper dreams and purposes. Yuval Harari beautifully explains how the concept of foreign vacations are no short of absurd - but we start enjoying it because that’s the narrative in our culture. I read once that wearing makeup is an example of prisoner’s dilemma - we want to look more beautiful than we are – but everyone starts doing so and hence there is no relative advantage. We all end up with more synthetic appearances. Our pretentious, shallow social media profiles are another form of make-up I would say. Saints would say our very notions of separate identity is an unnecessary make-up we have created, that creates agony for us. I need to be selfish, because others around me are also selfish. When someone hurts you, it’s a prisoner’s dilemma moment. Will you also choose to activate your ego and hurt back (fight) or disconnect (flight) or you have the capacity to activate a deeper response (love)? Like Vipassana teacher Goenka says, if someone throws burning petrol at you, we bring out our own (hidden) reservoirs of petrol. Result: more and more heat, more and more fire, more and more burn, trauma and suffering. Both are worse off. Or as David Bowie would sing, “I’ve been putting off fire with gasoline.”   

This keeps us plummeting downwards into narrow and narrower existence. That’s why perhaps Harvard grads at the 25th year reunion, have no idea where they went wrong. Clay says

“I know for sure that none of these people graduated with a deliberate strategy to get divorced or lose touch with their children much less to end up in jail. Yet this is the exact strategy that too many ended up implementing.” 

Or as Master Hua would wisely say, “Off by an inch in the beginning, off by ten thousand miles at the end.” Clay taught through his own example that it is easier to practice your values 100% of the times, than 98. And for sure it is safer too. One small inch of shortcut here, and the gates to jail get opened for you. Sad, but that’s how the nature of things are. 

Part 4: The Jail Within    

“Between stimulus and response there is a space. Therein lies your freedom.” - Viktor Frankl

In the social media age, where we are much more caught in prisoners’ dilemma than we were ever before, we are completely surrendering that space of inner freedom. We are completely making ourselves a prisoner of the stimulus - what others are doing. The inner voice of freedom is dead. Yuval Harari in the book Sapiens, says -  

“How many young college graduates have taken demanding jobs in high-powered firms, vowing that they will work hard to earn money that will enable them to retire and pursue their real interests when they are thirty-five? But by the time they reach that age, they have large mortgages, children to school, houses in the suburbs that necessitate at least two cars per family, and a sense that life is not worth living without really good wine and expensive holidays abroad. What are they supposed to do, go back to digging up roots? No, they double their efforts and keep slaving away.”

Victor’s quote has an important lesson inside – till we find that space between stimulus and response, we are not free. To the degree, the stimulus and response is coupled, we are prisoners - of our own mind, of our own stories, of our own narratives, of our own conditioning. 

Now it is this kind of prison that bothers me most. It is the most deceptive of all. If you’re in an external prison - it brings a clear awareness of the crime, the duration of sentence and how to not repeat it. But this inner prison of the mind, can go unhinged. We can keep repeating our crimes. Some of those (like greed), society will even reward it as success. And it is really hard to arrest the negative momentum of our own mind, and change it. I was speaking to a batchmate of mine, she said she feels strongly misaligned with her current job and how rampantly it is spreading consumerism in the country. Yet, she doesn’t feel free to leave it and pursue something more meaningful. Because when she sees her friends taking foreign vacations, she also wants them. When she goes to a party, she feels she also needs the expensive designer dresses. Hence, she doesn’t feel equipped to leave her job.

Another friend had a more stark observation: I met her after five years of college and asked her that if she’d reflect on her past five years after college, what is one key pattern or learning. She felt a bit taken aback by the question, but very wisely responded - In the last five years, I have achieved success more than I would have imagined or asked for, and yet, never once, have I felt content or satisfied with what I’ve got. At least, these people are wise to notice these dissonances inside themselves. Trying to change external stimulus seems an easier pursuit, but the task of creating that space of freedom within - indeed is a tricky and slow task.    

Part 5: Buddha and Prison Break

That brings me to Buddha. He would say that we are caught in the prisons of our illusions - life after life. And his great great contribution to humanity was to dive into the depths of this inner imprisonating mechanisms and figure out - how to break the links between stimulus and response.  

This is the “law of dependent origination” as discovered by Buddha. The cycle which keeps us imprisoned in the prison of self. Without going into too much of the specifics here (which I also don’t understand all too well), he discovered that all of us can start to dilute this causal chain at the level of “feelings and sensations”. By deepening our awareness to observe sensations at the level of body, we can start to transform our unconscious invisible habit pattern of deep craving and aversion at every small stimulus, and start embracing it as a witness. As J Krishnamurti would say, “the ability to observe without evaluation (judgement) is the highest form of intelligence.” 

I just recently returned from a ten-day vipassana meditation. It was my fifth such retreat, first one being in 2016, a year after graduating from IIMB. Easily, it has been the single most powerful influence in my life - in bringing more happiness, clarity, silence, insight, joy, creativity, courage, and lot more! 

The crux of the practice is to turn your gaze inward. While we spend so much of our life trying to optimize the external, we are totally blind to the imprisonating tendencies inside our own minds and bodies. Even for slightest of stimulus outside, if we see the kind of *strong reactions* (of craving and aversion) that are going on inside our minds and bodies, we will be really humbled. Then it doesn’t take a genius to deduce where we need to prioritize our investments. In optimizing the outer world, or optimzing our inner world! The ROI from inner investments is way too higher - it is so clear. Not only it is higher in quantity (more of the same kind), but it a completely different axes of well-being altogether.    

These were Buddha’s first words after liberation - 

Aneka-jati samsaram
sandhavissam anibbisam,
Through countless births in the cycle of existence
I have run, in vain

Gahakarakam gavesanto
dukkha-jati-punappunam.
seeking the builder of this house (prison?); and again and again I faced the discomfort of new birth.

Gahakaraka! Dithosi,
puna geham na kahasi.
Oh housebuilder! Now you are seen.
You shall not build a house again for me.

As it is, most of us aren’t too concerned about past and future lives. We don’t even know whether it exists or not.

But more freedom in this life - why not? 

This is the “first and last freedom” we all seek, Krishnamurti would say. 

Part 6: Gandhi — Prisoner’s Dilemma to Pilgrim’s Conviction

Many people attribute the quote “Be the change you wish to see in the world” to Gandhi. If you look at it, this is a clear guideline to rise above prisoner’s dilemma. But yet, it can seem hard to follow.

It can even seem like a losing, sacrificial proposition.

But Gandhi never said it.

Gandhi’s actual quote in this regard was much more nuanced and telling - 

“We but mirror the world. All the tendencies present in the outer world, are to be found in the world of our body.”

Anyone who has tried some serious meditation, would attest to this experientially. We are all children of same tendencies. It is quite naive to label someone outside as bad or selfish. That’s what prompted Saints like Kabir to say “Bura jo dekhna mai chala, bura na milya koi. Jo mann dekha aapna, mujhsa bura na koi.” So if you can’t see the Jeffrey Skilling in you, then you simply need to work on refining your awareness.

“If we could change ourselves, the tendencies in the world would also change. As a man changes his own nature, so does the attitude of the world change towards him.”

Now this is the space beyond meditation. This is the space of action. And experimentation. That’s why Gandhi devoted his life to such experiments. And Gandhi is saying that, not as such abstract moral assumption, but as a very tangible thing. Network science proves that virtues and vices spreads through networks. If you are in a kind and grounded place within you, it will ripple to others around you. That is how DNA of life works.

“A wonderful thing it is and the source of our happiness. We need not wait to see what others do.”

This I feel is another key. Not only Gandhi is saying that this is a sensible logical way to live, else we create world full of conflict - but he is challenging our very understanding of being the change. That being the change without concering yourself with how supportively others respond – is not a sacrifice but rather “the source of your happiness”. That in doing so, you will find your true freedom, your true expansiveness, your true power, your true calling, your true contribution to the world, your true aliveness. 

And this is not Gandhi, all saints and wise men and women have across millennia, said and done the same thing. 

The Final Bit: The great hope and the great responsibility

One of our community friends, Jacques Verduin, actually works with hardened criminals in San Quentin Prison. Murderers, rapists - you name them. And helps them discover their true - loving, kind, accountable selves. His program is called GRIP (Guiding Rage Into Power). The four elements of GRIP are - 

1. Stop my violence/do no harm
2. Develop emotional intelligence
3. Cultivate mindfulness
4. Understand victim impact

Once we were on a call with him - and two of our friends, two buddhist monks: asked him – they also really want to join that program. Why doesn’t he open it up for people like us - who seem to be free - but really are as much prisoners of our mind - as these prisoners. 

I think *all of us* need this kind of GRIP training. We all can come out of our inner prison. Hurt people, hurt people. Healed people, heal people. Once we start our journey of inner transformation, we all can be wounded healers. This is the basic for living a happy and responsible life. Guiding anger into power. Guiding our greed into generosity. Guiding our lack of empathy which makes us see fellow humans as “customers” and make us want to “acquire” them and then milk them for rest of their lives. Is it so hard to see a human being as a human being? Why do we want to “acquire” human beings? Would you like your children and grandchildren to be seen like that — Like cells in a spreadsheet, meant to optimize profits for your startup? The degree to which we ourselves are unconsciously imprisoned, we would unconsciosly crave to imprison and “acquire” others - whether at home or at work. A man who freely walks this earth, carries no desires to control or profit from others. Utterly detached and utterly full of love. To the degree we are ourselves trapped, the noblest of our schemes and organizations will end up perpetrating newer subversive forms of bondages.

After independence, when Gandhi was asked “now that the Britishers are gone, what is your greatest fear”, his response was “heartless intellectuals”. Not criminals, but heartless intellectuals. It was quite prophetic. As people who have a sharp mind, get more leverage and power in this world, without a proportionately cultivated heart, we are bound to unleash too many negative externalities in the world.    

Another inspiration of mine, Preeta Bansal, who was general counsel for Obama’s White House, says that the way science and technology are exponentially growing, just respecting the laws is grossly insufficient. i.e. you can stay out of jail, and yet create lot of negative consequences for the society. The gap between legal and ethical is widening everyday - at the speed of generative AI.   

So it is easy to escape the external prison in that sense (relatively speaking), but it is when we truly start transforming ourselves and come out of our greed and insecurities, we can dilute the clutches of internal prison. And that’s only when, we will actually start becoming positive contributors for the society also. 

We have great skills that we have been gifted with, let us transform our minds, awaken our hearts, so that we are able to find happiness inside and also use these gifts in creating a more beautiful world.    

May all be free!

Follow-up – 

1. “Be” the change – This is a nice primer on Vipassana if you’re interested. Otherwise, find a practice that helps you go inward and cultivate equanimity.

2. “Act” the change - Take up a practice for small acts of kindness - either at home, or in your neighbourhood or at your workplace. As we are kinder, the world around us becomes kinder. :) Here are 52 ideas for some inspiration.

3. “We” the change - Talk to people who are on a similar inner exploration. We can help each other. :)