The Sandpiper and the Clam Struggle

In “The Sandpiper and the Clam Struggle” Christopher Michaelson retells an ancient folktale as an allegory for (Darwinian) zero-sum business competition where predators and prey, fixated on their adversarial relationship, all lose when they do no learn to collaborate. It is a tale of greed that warns us not to try to accomplish goals in one fell swoop or believe in one single stroke of luck, but to work persistently and with patience. Corresponding to the Prisoner’s Dilemma it conveys the need for trust, the limitations of controlling individualism and values of a collectivist understanding of shared intelligence and wisdom as well as institutions that yield more mutual benefits. The quality of this tale is that it uses animal metaphors and allegory, and also shows the value of animals’ capacity for reciprocity and other apparently virtuous behaviors suggesting that also in nature, “there is room for cooperation for the common good”.