Cooperation

In the ongoing PS5 saga, my pastures were cleaned to such a point where I received a text from a child asking what to do if the wheelbarrow wasn't completely full, but they could find no more poop to pick up. Such was the urgent need to earn money to buy the disc reader. Then yesterday, a package was delivered to our house and I hear Y. telling L. and G. that they had an early birthday present. This announcement was followed by shrieking and then absolute silence. I was baffled. Y. explained to me that K. had bought the disc reader for them for their birthday the day before with his Amazon account. I had no idea this was happening. You can imagine how much of today has been spent. It was extremely generous of K., though as Y. pointed out, he had some games he wanted to play and they were only available on PS5. 

Our children working together is more the norm than sibling bickering and fighting, and this has been true since W. and B. we're little. I also know that this seems unusual to many people. I've actually been thinking about this idea of cooperation in families quite a bit. So much so, that it has influenced my choice of research topic for my post-grad EAL course. I'm not ready to announce the specific title of my project, but it will definitely be on the idea of moving from competition to cooperation, both in families (in terms of sibling rivalry) and in organizations where members are in competition with one another. 

Right now I am in the research phase. If you have been reading here for any length of time, you know this is one of my happy places. My book stack is growing. So brace yourselves as I occasionally process here the things I have been reading about. Who knew that researching cooperation meant reading far more than one would expect about The Prisoner's Dilemma game?

For right now, I'll spare you The Prisoner's Dilemma and instead leave you with this from Getting to Peace: Transforming Conflict at home, at work, and in the World by William l. Ury.

"Violence is not the only contagious phenomenon, so is cooperation." (p. 13)

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