La idea que tenía mi abuelo de una búsqueda de huevos de Pascua consistía en esconder dinero en coloridos huevos de plástico esparcidos por su casa de Long Island. La mayoría contenían monedas, pero siempre había uno con un billete nuevo de 100 dólares.

Mi primo Billy-O y yo éramos los únicos jugadores. Por lo general, éramos compañeros juguetones en el caos, pero como competidores, afrontábamos cada caza con gusto, volcando cojines, tirando armarios abiertos, haciéndonos a un lado unos a otros hasta que, sin falta, Billy-O encontraba los 100 dólares.

La primera vez que ganó, me aguanté las lágrimas. Pero tras varios años de derrotas, exploté.

«No es justo», grité.

«La vida es injusta», nos decía mi abuelo. «O ganas o pierdes».

Es lo que se denomina pensamiento de suma cero: la creencia de que la vida es una batalla por recompensas finitas en la que las ganancias de unos suponen pérdidas para otros. Y hoy en día, esa noción parece estar en todas partes. Es la forma en que vemos las admisiones universitarias, como una competición despiadada entre grupos definidos por la raza o los privilegios. Está ahí en nuestro amor por «El juego del calamar». Es el ethos de Silicon Valley, donde el ganador se lo lleva todo, y está en el núcleo de muchas opiniones populares: que los inmigrantes roban puestos de trabajo a los estadounidenses; que los ricos se enriquecen a costa de los demás; que los hombres pierden poder y estatus cuando las mujeres ganan.

Pero en ningún lugar es más pronunciado el auge de nuestra era de suma cero que en el escenario mundial, donde el presidente Trump ha estado demoliendo décadas de política exterior colaborativa con amenazas de aranceles proteccionistas y demandas por Groenlandia, Gaza, el Canal de Panamá y los derechos minerales en Ucrania. Desde que asumió el cargo, a menudo ha canalizado la época que más admira:  el siglo XIX imperial.

Y en su propio pasado, el pensamiento de suma cero estaba profundamente arraigado. Sus biógrafos nos cuentan que aprendió de su padre que en la vida se era ganador o perdedor, y que no había nada peor que ser un tonto. En el mundo de Trump, es matar o morir; el que no es un martillo debe ser un yunque.

Puede que Trump no sea el único. Vladimir Putin, de Rusia, y Xi Jinping, de China, también han mostrado una visión de suma cero de un mundo en el que las potencias más grandes consiguen hacer lo que quieren mientras que las más débiles sufren. Los tres líderes, digan lo que digan, se comportan a menudo como si el poder y la prosperidad escasearan, lo que conduce inexorablemente a la competencia y la confrontación….

Hasta hace poco, el orden internacional se basaba en gran medida en una idea diferente: que la interdependencia y las normas impulsan las oportunidades para todos. Era una aspiración, que produjo un crecimiento económico cuatro veces mayor desde la década de 1980, e incluso tratados de desarme nuclear de las superpotencias. También estaba llena de promesas gaseosas —desde lugares como Davos o el G20— que rara vez mejoraban la vida cotidiana.

“La vuelta al pensamiento de suma cero es, en cierto modo, una reacción contra el pensamiento de suma positiva de la era posterior a la Guerra Fría: la idea de que la globalización podría elevar a todos los barcos, de que Estados Unidos podría elaborar un orden internacional en el que casi todo el mundo podría participar y convertirse en un actor responsable”, dijo Hal Brands, profesor de Asuntos Globales de la Universidad Johns Hopkins y miembro del American Enterprise Institute. “La idea original de Trump de 2016-17 era que esto no estaba ocurriendo”.

Lo que estamos viviendo ahora, especialmente en Estados Unidos, es efectivamente un rechazo de la creencia en la abundancia y la cooperación. Es un levantamiento contra la premisa de que muchos grupos pueden ganar a la vez: una actitud cínica y contagiosa de nosotros o ellos, que se extiende por países, comunidades y familias.

Con los juegos infantiles, quizá la suma cero parezca amor duro. Pero a escala nacional y mundial, cada vez es más difícil no preguntarse: ¿Qué estamos perdiendo con un planteamiento de ganar o perder?

Una imagen del bien finito

El pensamiento de suma cero probablemente parecía tener mucho sentido para nuestros antepasados evolutivos, que se veían obligados a competir por la comida para sobrevivir. Pero la mentalidad ha perdurado y los investigadores se han interesado más por cartografiar su impacto.

Los trabajos más recientes de las ciencias sociales se basan en los descubrimientos de George M. Foster, antropólogo de la Universidad de California en Berkeley. Realizó su trabajo de campo en las comunidades rurales de México, donde fue el primer investigador que demostró que algunas sociedades mantienen “una imagen del bien finito”.

En 1965, escribió que la gente que estudió en las colinas de Michoacán ve todo su universo “como uno en el que todas las cosas deseadas de la vida, como la tierra, la riqueza, la salud, la amistad y el amor, la hombría y el honor, el respeto y el estatus, el poder y la influencia, la seguridad y la protección, existen en cantidad finita y siempre escasean”.

Posteriormente, los psicólogos confirmaron que la sensación de escasez y el sentirse amenazado son componentes fundamentales del pensamiento de suma cero en individuos y culturas. En 2018, un análisis de 43 naciones, por ejemplo, descubrió que las creencias de suma cero tienden a surgir más “en sociedades jerárquicas con una disparidad económica de recursos escasos”.

Pero el pensamiento de suma cero es una percepción, no una evaluación objetiva. A veces la gente ve juegos de suma cero a su alrededor, aunque para la mayoría de nosotros, “las situaciones de suma cero pura son extremadamente raras”, como señaló recientemente un artículo del Journal of Personality and Social Psychology.

A muchos partidarios de la suma cero les gusta imaginarse a sí mismos como realistas duros y testarudos, y a veces un enfoque en el que el ganador se lo lleva todo puede conducir a ganancias o a la victoria, al menos temporalmente. Pero la ciencia dice que el pensamiento de suma cero tiene sus raíces en el miedo. Confunde la “imagen del bien finito” de Foster con la sabiduría y trata a los socios potenciales como amenazas, creando puntos ciegos ante el potencial de beneficio mutuo.

Por eso el pensamiento de suma cero puede ser tan problemático: afecta la perspectiva, agudiza el antagonismo y distrae nuestra mente de lo que podemos hacer con cooperación y creatividad. Las personas con mentalidad de suma cero pueden perderse fácilmente una situación en la que todos ganan.

Pero el peligro mucho mayor para el pensamiento de suma cero es el de perder.

Con nosotros o contra nosotros

La última vez que el pensamiento de suma cero guio al mundo, las potencias coloniales europeas de los siglos XVI al XIX consideraban que la riqueza era finita, medida en oro, plata y tierra. Las ganancias de unos se traducían en pérdidas para otros y los imperios imponían aranceles elevados para protegerse de sus competidores.

Trump ha idealizado el final de la era. “Fuimos más ricos de 1870 a 1913”, dijo a los periodistas el mes pasado. “Fue entonces cuando éramos un país arancelario”.

De hecho, Estados Unidos es mucho más rico ahora en ingresos familiares y producción económica. Pero quizá sea más preocupante la negativa de Trump a reconocer el contexto histórico. Los economistas dicen que el mercantilismo y las rivalidades entre grandes potencias de aquella época imperial obstaculizaron la creación de riqueza, hicieron avanzar la desigualdad y a menudo condujeron al juego de suma cero más completo de todos: la guerra.

La Guerra de los 80 años. La Guerra de los 30 años. La Guerra de los Nueve Años. Los monopolios comerciales y la construcción de imperios produjeron décadas de pérdidas y pérdidas que costaron enormes sumas y causaron millones de bajas.

Lo que realmente diferenció a Estados Unidos, según los historiadores, fue una mayor adhesión al exuberante capitalismo expuesto en La riqueza de las naciones de Adam Smith.

NOTA ORIGINAL:

The New York Times

Welcome to the Zero Sum Era. Now How Do We Get Out?

Zero-sum thinking has spread like a mind virus, from geopolitics to pop culture.

My grandfather’s idea of an Easter egg hunt involved hiding money in colorful plastic eggs sprinkled around his house in Long Island. Most held coins, but there was always one with a crisp, new $100 bill.

My cousin, Billy-O, and I were the only players. We were usually playful partners in mayhem but as competitors, we took on every hunt with gusto, flipping over cushions, throwing open cabinets, knocking each other aside until, without fail, Billy-O found the $100.

The first time he won, I fought back tears. But after a few years of losses, I exploded.

“It’s just not fair,” I yelled.

“Life’s unfair,” my grandfather told us. “You win or you lose.”

This is what’s called zero-sum thinking — the belief that life is a battle over finite rewards where gains for one mean losses for another. And these days, that notion seems to be everywhere. It’s how we view college admissions, as a cutthroat contest for groups defined by race or privilege. It’s there in our love for “Squid Game.” It’s Silicon Valley’s winner-take-all ethos, and it’s at the core of many popular opinions: that immigrants steal jobs from Americans; that the wealthy get rich at others’ expense; that men lose power and status when women gain.

But nowhere is the rise of our zero-sum era more pronounced than on the world stage, where President Trump has been demolishing decades of collaborative foreign policy with threats of protectionist tariffs and demands for Greenland, Gaza, the Panama Canal and mineral rights in Ukraine. Since taking office, he has often channeled the age he most admires — the imperial 19th century.

And in his own past, zero-sum thinking was deeply ingrained. His biographers tell us he learned from his father that you were either a winner or loser in life, and that there was nothing worse than being a sucker. In Trumpworld, it’s kill or be killed; he who is not a hammer must be an anvil.

Mr. Trump may not be alone in this. Vladimir Putin of Russia and Xi Jinping of China have also displayed a zero-sum view of a world in which bigger powers get to do what they want while weaker ones suffer. All three leaders, no matter what they say, often behave as if power and prosperity were in short supply, leading inexorably to competition and confrontation..

Until recently, the international order largely was built on a different idea — that interdependence and rules boost opportunities for all. It was aspirational, producing fourfold economic growth since the 1980s, and even nuclear disarmament treaties from superpowers. It was also filled with gassy promises — from places like Davos or the G20 — that rarely improved day-to-day lives.

“The reversion to zero-sum thinking now is in some ways a backlash against the positive-sum thinking of the post-Cold War era — the idea that globalization could lift all boats, that the U.S. could draft an international order in which nearly everyone could participate and become a responsible stakeholder,” said Hal Brands, a global affairs professor at Johns Hopkins University and senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute. “The original Trump insight from 2016-17 was that this wasn’t happening.”

What we are now experiencing, especially in the United States, is effectively a rejection of the belief in abundance and cooperation. It is an uprising against the premise that many groups can gain at once — a cynical, contagious us-or-them attitude, spreading across countries, communities and families.

With kids’ games, maybe zero-summing feels like tough love. But on a national and global scale, it’s increasingly hard not to ask: What are we losing with a win-or-lose approach?

‘An Image of Limited Good’

Zero-sum thinking probably seemed to make a lot of sense for our evolutionary ancestors, who were forced to compete for food to survive. But the mind-set has lingered and researchers have become more interested in mapping its impact.

The most recent work in the social sciences builds on the findings of George M. Foster, an anthropologist from the University of California, Berkeley. He did his field work in Mexico’s rural communities where he was the first researcher to show that some societies hold “an image of limited good.”

In 1965, he wrote that the people he studied in the hills of Michoacán view their entire universe “as one in which all of the desired things in life such as land, wealth, health, friendship and love, manliness and honor, respect and status, power and influence, security and safety, exist in finite quantity and are always in short supply.”

What we are now experiencing, especially in the United States, is effectively a rejection of the belief in abundance and cooperation. It is an uprising against the premise that many groups can gain at once — a cynical, contagious us-or-them attitude, spreading across countries, communities and families.

With kids’ games, maybe zero-summing feels like tough love. But on a national and global scale, it’s increasingly hard not to ask: What are we losing with a win-or-lose approach?

‘An Image of Limited Good’

Zero-sum thinking probably seemed to make a lot of sense for our evolutionary ancestors, who were forced to compete for food to survive. But the mind-set has lingered and researchers have become more interested in mapping its impact.

The most recent work in the social sciences builds on the findings of George M. Foster, an anthropologist from the University of California, Berkeley. He did his field work in Mexico’s rural communities where he was the first researcher to show that some societies hold “an image of limited good.”

In 1965, he wrote that the people he studied in the hills of Michoacán view their entire universe “as one in which all of the desired things in life such as land, wealth, health, friendship and love, manliness and honor, respect and status, power and influence, security and safety, exist in finite quantity and are always in short supply.”

That’s why zero-sum thinking can be so problematic: It pinches perspective,sharpens antagonism and distracts our minds from what we can do with cooperation and creativity. People with a zero-sum mentality can easily miss a win-win.

But the far greater danger for zero-sum thinking is the lose-lose.

With Us or Against Us

The last time zero-sum thinking guided the world, Europe’s colonial powers of the 16th to 19th centuries saw wealth as finite, measured in gold, silver and land. Gains for one translated to losses for another and empires levied high tariffs to protect themselves from competitors.

Mr. Trump has romanticized the era’s tail end. “We were at our richest from 1870 to 1913,” he told reporters last month. “That’s when we were a tariff country.”

In fact, the United States is far richer now in household income and economic output. But of greater concern may be Mr. Trump’s refusal to acknowledge the historical context. Economists say the mercantilism and great-power rivalries of that imperial age hindered wealth creation, advanced inequality and often led to the most complete zero-sum game of all: war.

The 80 Years War. The 30 Years War. The Nine Years War. Trade monopolies and empire building produced decades of lose-losing that cost huge sums and caused millions of casualties.

What actually made the United States distinct, according to historians, was a greater adherence to the exuberant capitalism laid out by Adam Smith’s “Wealth of Nations.”

Published in 1776, the book pivoted away from the scarcity assumptions of mercantilism. Smith showed that wealth could be more than metal. It could be everything an economy does, otherwise known as gross domestic product. New riches could be created through productivity, innovation and free markets that let each country prioritize what it does best.

Nonzero-sum capitalism was pretty compelling for a young nation of striving immigrants. (The foreign-born share of the U.S. population peaked at nearly 15 percent around 1890, a fact Mr. Trump also seems to ignore.) And in a lot of ways, free markets and sharing were harder for Europe’s leaders to embrace. World War I and II were both spurred on by zero-sum approaches to international relations.

That line I included high up in this article — “he who is not a hammer must be an anvil”? It comes from a speech that Adolf Hitler gave about the Treaty of Versailles, which forced Germany to pay reparations, disarm and lose territory after World War I.

“If it’s the 1930s, you correctly understand that if countries are not firmly in your bloc, they might be completely mobilized against you,” said Daniel Immerwahr, a historian of U.S. foreign policy at Northwestern University. Only after the war ended, he added, was there an attempt to “change the rules of the game” — to make the world less zero-sum, by assuring countries that they could get rich through trade rather than by seizing land or starting wars.

The United States built and oversaw that system, mainly through organizations like the International Monetary Fund. Which is not to say that Washington’s outlook was never zero sum, or that the United States never got stuck in a lose-lose of its own.

I covered the Iraq war, after President George W. Bush told other countries they had a zero-sum choice: “Either you are with us or you are with the terrorists.”

A few months ago, I opened a new bureau for The New York Times in Vietnam. I now live with my family in a country still dealing with the fallout of a zero-sum civil war that the United States joined because of its own zero-sum belief that any country the Communists won amounted to a major loss for America’s way of life.

The consequences were severe: a toll of three million Vietnamese lives and more than 58,000 American soldiers, plus a legacy of psychological trauma.

Maybe the world can avoid repeating such a catastrophic spiral. The global economy is more interconnected now, a potent disincentive to aggression. Many countries that have also benefited from the postwar system — especially in Europe and Asia — are seeking to protect its principle of peace through cooperative deterrence.

Maybe zero-sum thinking can even encourage restraint. In the same paper declaring that purely zero-sum situations are “exceedingly rare,” two psychology professors, Patricia Andrews Fearon, and Friedrich M. Gotz, found that “the zero sum mind-set predicts both hyper-competitiveness and anxious avoidance of competitions.”

Some zero-summers may not compete, they concluded, because they do not want to cause the pain or face the costs that they think are necessary for success. They also may avoid contests that they do not think they can win.

Mr. Trump may end up fighting and fleeing, depending on the circumstances. He views other nations in only two ways, Mr. Immerwahr said: “Either they are completely in your thrall or they are threats.”

Simplistic, yes, but many Americans also see foreign affairs in blunt, personal terms. After I wrote recently about the painful impact of U.S.A.I.D.’s demise on Vietnam’s Agent Orange victims, one reader emailed a short, telling critique: “Get real. That’s MY money.”

Change the Game

What causes this kind of zero-sum thinking?

Economic inequality fosters such a belief about success. But zero-sum Americans may not really be squabbling over taxes, college, jobs or wealth.

Jer Clifton, a psychologist at the University of Pennsylvania who oversees extensive surveys of primal world beliefs, told me the current backlash may be rooted in a zero-sum conviction about something deeper: importance.

Many Americans seem to fear that if some other group matters more, they matter less. “In 21st-century America, the more common, driving fear is not food or resource scarcity, but not enough meaning,” Dr. Clifton said. “We are a people desperate to matter.”

Under the old order, Americans found meaning in a belief that the United States was special. Our nation was built not on blood or soil but ideas — democracy, freedom, a chance to rise from rags to riches — and we were confident we could inspire and improve other countries.

Today, fewer Americans than ever want the United States to play a major or leading role in international affairs, according to Gallup surveys reaching back to the ’60s. They’re dissatisfied with themselves and the world, and they are wobbly on how to move forward.

Any desired revival of meaning may not come easily. Zero-sum culture breeds hostility and distrust by insisting on domination. You can hear a common response in Friedrich Merz, who is likely to be Germany’s new leader, calling for “independence” from the United States.