Success means someone else's failure, a feast someone else's famine.
Anatol Rapoport, professor emeritus at the University of Toronto, director of the Institute for Advanced Studies in Vienna until December and now back here to do research and teaching in peace studies at University College, returned to Toronto each summer to teach a course in social psychology that demonstrates, among other things, the folly of this notion. In 1970 he came to the University on a dual appointment in mathematics and psychology, and now he combines the two approaches in a statistical analysis of how people tend to resolve conflict. The winner does best by sharing and never attempting to put one over on the opponent. To win, you quietly follow the other person's lead, never trying to outmaneuver him except in immediate retaliation. Life, says Rapport, is a mixed motive game in which the interests of people partly coincide and partly conflict.