“When we donate to a good cause, it ’says’ to our associates, ’Look, I’m willing to spend my resources for the benefit of others. I’m playing a positive-sum, cooperative game with society.’ This helps explain why generosity is so important for those who aspire to leadership. No one wants leaders who play zero-sum, competitive games with the rest of society. If their wins are our losses, why should we support them? Instead we want leaders with a prosocial orientation, people who will look out for us because we’re all in it together.”

What I take from this quote is that even the most basic animal-like instincts want to see others playing cooperatively as leaders. In a strange sense, it is a hopeful statement because we can expect idealism to generally come from our leaders since it’s what we want to see from them.

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