Light or dark jerseys - what do they each bring out? A Classic Star Trek episode exemplifies the conflict and connection between primal needs and enlightened virtue.
Behavioural Economics could be termed the science of decision-making, action, and corresponding appropriate allocation of resources. In this optic, I discuss in this post the allocation of priorities deep in the human heart.
I will refer to a classic Star Trek episode as a touchstone for human behaviour and decision-making. I wonder what Freud would have done with Star Trek? Spock complex? Phaser envy?
Recently, I was asked which jersey I preferred to wear at a pick-up hockey game, lights or darks? Notwithstanding my local workout specifics, this dichotomy brought to mind the different mindset that each shade (light vs. dark) can impute to a wearer. I am reminded of the literature on sports jerseys. Black for instance raises aggression, a performance advantage, but is more likely to be penalized. [What does that say about good colour-picking strategy in an honour-system-run pick-up game with no externalized authority figure?] Red has also been associated with success in combat sports. What about wearing white? Do the good guys really wear white hats?
Now, to the Star Trek archives. One classic episode, "The Enemy Within" involves a transporter malfunction in which Captain Kirk is split into two physically identical people, but whose character elements have been polarized into what we would traditionally categorize as "good" and "bad" traits. "Good Kirk" is friendly and kind, but proves to be quite indecisive and unable to focus. "Bad Kirk" is focused and action-oriented, but highly exploitative and self-serving. For example, Bad Kirk expresses an unbalanced element of the Whole Kirk's healthy libido by attempting to assault attractive Yeoman Janice Rand.
Ultimately, each dichotomized Kirk begins to lose strength and die. The two halves need each other. The Bad Kirk comes to the realization, in his self-focused way of seeing things, that he needs to other Kirk to survive, exclaiming "I want to live." Good Kirk, highly
altruistic and externally focused, but unable to make decisions and finalize the situations he oversees, finally says to Bad Kirk, "I need you." With the usual end-of-episode melodrama, the whole Kirk is reintegrated, pro-social and authoritative, and the crew (stranded on the freezing planet below) is saved now that the transporter has been fixed and tested.
What strikes me with this episode is the fundamental truth that although pro-social attitudes are frequently emphasized as better or higher (kindness, sharing, patience, joy), there is also a need in dealing with our world today, such as it is, for a decisive, pragmatic, authority-oriented attitude and perspective. Freud might well have categorized Good Kirk as embodied Superego - the strictures of society, Bad Kirk as Id - the passions and desire for survival of the organism, and the Whole Kirk as Ego, the healthy, productive integration of competing demands resolved in a confident, positive, but pragmatic individual. In terms of behavioural economics (how we act and choose on a day-to-day basis), we do well to integrate these elements too. We do well to seek to maximize the benefits of a pro-social orientation, but in the final analysis, we all need to have our fundamental, primal needs, met too.
I'll be wearing white at hockey; but I will bring my "killer instincts." Perhaps that's when one gets to wear "command gold," as does Kirk.
