You split, I choose
As an only child, I rarely came across this in my youth until friends with siblings introduced it to me. At the time it made sense, but with age, I’ve come to think of it as a distinctly masterful leadership move.
You split, I choose.
Said often by kids, especially siblings, it functions such that the person who does the splitting (of a cookie, a piece of gum, a pile of toys…) cannot also determine their piece. The fairness in splitting is moderated by the knowledge that someone else gets to choose first, so if the split is unfair, the splitter is highly likely to be left high-and-dry with the small piece.
Much later in life, I heard a very interesting, thought-provoking question from a writer (who I can’t recall in this moment), to a similar effect: How would you assign power in a system if you didn’t know your place in the system before you did so?
It all comes down to this: perhaps our most fair, most considerate, most empathetic behaviors would come forward if we acted without knowing what we would later have to accept.
What would our world be like if, when slicing a pie, we didn’t know what piece we’d end up with?
