the unusual efforts we have to make to get along with them. Through teamwork, our anxious egoism is sub- merged within a bigger loyalty: we are held together by a shared goal which everyone knows they could never accomplish in isolation.


Our efforts are not even constrained by the limita- tions of a single working lifespan. In an important sense, collaboration allows us to cheat death, because our contribution lives on in the efforts and ambitions of our successor members. The best teams reverse the baneful fundamentals of the human condition: through collaboration, they replace the competitive war of all against all; they substitute collective strength for individual weakness; they turn the brevity of our lives into endeavours that outlast us. It seems a hope worth holding on to as a dark vision of a zero-sum game seems to be gaining ground in some spheres in which every nation’s interests are opposed to every other’s gaining power—as if the world were playing a global game of The Apprentice, in which there can be only one clear winner.


Collaboration should be founded on the recognition that there are bigger tasks we believe in but cannot accomplish on our own. And not merely in the sense that we do not have enough time ourselves, but, more profoundly, in the sense that we ourselves lack many of the necessary aptitudes and skills for an important project. Fully acknowledging dependence leads us to a deep sense of appreciation: it means recognising


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