New Math
Spring is here, a time of longer, brighter days; tulips and daffodils blooming; and living creatures large and small emerging from winter hibernation. Nature is showing off her abundance once again, reminding us there is more than enough of everything for all.
Sadly, the human planet is currently dominated by a different kind of behavior: leaders holding onto what they can, denying others rights and resources, and grabbing for whatever they want.
My teacher Prof. Douglas Brooks always reminds us that we are every character in the story. So when I look around at today’s global stage, I try to get inside the heads of the movers and shakers. Have I ever thought the way they are thinking? Do I still sometimes think in those ways?
Here’s what I’ve come up with: When I am afraid that I will lose something I have or not get something I think I need, I operate in a limited-resource universe. Which is scary. If there’s not enough to go around, then I need to reach for what I can before you get your hands on it. Which provokes you to do the same. This pits us all into a self-seeking scramble. The world divides into winners and losers, haves and have nots. And since we’re all driven by fear, we’re prone to make poor decisions based on short-term self-interest—with disastrous results for the planet and the human race as a whole.
This worldview is called “zero-sum” thinking: resources are finite. What I gain, you lose. Imagine a pizza pie: for every slice I eat, there’s one less for you, and vice versa.
This is the basic math we all learned in grade school, so it’s not surprising we unconsciously apply it as adults. But there’s an opposite phenomenon, “non‑zero-sum” (and a variant called “positive-sum” thinking, but please don’t ask this muddled brain to differentiate the two), that actually dominates as many if not more human affairs. In this world, my gain leads to your gain: a high tide raises all boats.
The macro economy works like that. Innovations work like that. Good leads to greater good. (Of course, the opposite can also be true. We all go down together, is in large-scale economic recessions and depressions.)
I’m still wrapping my mind around this. I think of zero-sum as “Newtonian” mathematics: observable in lots of everyday scenarios like the pizza above. Non-zero-sum strikes me as more “Einsteinian”—intriguing but somehow mysterious or at least counter-intuitive. I don’t quite understand how everyone can get richer or poorer at the same time. Who brought the extra pizza? Where did the missing slices go? Yet there’s just as much evidence of “non-zero” as of “zero,” especially on the macro scale. And the beauty of a non-zero-sum world is that we’re experiencing the same things at the same time. We’re in it together, not in competition with each other. We feel empathic not alienated. Your win is my win; your loss is my loss. We’re all up, or we’re all down. And hopefully, just knowing that quantities are elastic will inspire us to think and act more creatively and more expansively.
NON-ZERO-SUM YOGA AND LIFE
All this was getting rather heady, so I tested my expanding knowledge against my lived experience.
I started with yoga, my ground zero for contained experiments of all sorts. Within the confines of my mat, with minimal outward stimuli and just my own thoughts to keep me company, I remembered why I do yoga: Every other form of physical exercise or movement (including playful things like games and dancing) eventually wore me out. As one would expect, these activities “took” energy to perform and hence depleted my reserves of energy. I had to choose whether to “spend” or “expend” energy in such ways or “save” it to use elsewhere. Zero-sum-world.
But yoga was different: The more I did, the more energy I had! Students are often baffled by how much yoga I can do in a day, and I honestly think I’m only limited by linear time. I have never left a yoga practice feeling more tired than when I began. Usually it’s the opposite. Teaching also gives me more energy than I expend. And even if I practiced the same poses every day, as I did for a decade of Ashtanga yoga, I got better at all the other poses I wasn’t doing, so developing certain abilities spurred on others.
Non-zero-sum yoga also works on the collective level. In group classes, the energy created exceeds that of the sum of the individuals’ input. There’s simply more energy to go around! So if you’re struggling, you can ride the group energy.
When Madonna announced years ago that she practiced yoga daily, the phone rang off the hook at our yoga studio. Lots of people were suddenly willing to give yoga a try. Those of us already on the mat enjoyed celebrity endorsement. Every high-profile yoga teacher raises the bar for the rest of us. We don’t take each other’s places or usurp the limelight: We broaden the stage and expand the light.
Any writers, musicians, or artists out there? My guess is that any creative thing we do—bringing more into the universe (more art, more music, more literature, more insights, more connections)—in turn generates more energy to produce more, for you and for the people your work inspires. We all feel uplifted by a powerful musical concert or a good book. Non-zero-sum world.
Non-zero sum means you all benefit from my effort, my creativity, my productivity, my innovations, as I do from yours. Think about open-source technology, which is now broadening to apply “open source” processes to business and other arenas. The more people who get involved in developing a given software or system, the better the results for all. Platforms like Substack that rely on reader-to-reader connections rather than algorithms prove that human engagement creates webs that support and increase each participant’s reach.
Sadly, zero-sum thinking can lead to unfortunate non-zero-sum results. We’re all seeing this play out on the global stage: One leader trying to grab “his” “share” by depriving others may well lead to a global recession—or worse. Forcing others to hang onto what they have as the pizza slices disappear may land us all in the soup. Low tides lower all boats.
Still, I’m not going to sit back passively and watch us all go down. The non-zero-sum world is always ripe for growth. Let’s all keep on producing our best and sharing it with others. I’m starting with this essay. What will it prompt you to do? Please share and raise the tide for all of us!