Introduction : Zero-sum games, grandiosity, and illusion tricks

Modern society is characterized by grandiose self-personifications and claims on a large scale. There is a strong desire to be labelled in the most attractive and pretentious terms. This applies to individuals, occupations, organizations, and political elites. One problem is that the struggle for the most coveted sugar plums—high professional status, conspicuous consumption, ‘world-class education’, ‘excellence’, and so on—involves a zero-sum contest. This means that a benefit for one specific individual or group is gained at the expense of another. Not everybody can be excellent or afford high-status goods or get a degree from a high-status university. Grandiose projects occupy an ever-increasing proportion of the time, commitments, and resources of various elite groups, such as politicians, media people, corporate executives, union leaders, and other representatives of organizations and professional groups. But also the lives of common people increasingly circle around grandiosity. There is a strong emphasis on illusion tricks to back this up: CV improvement, title and grade inflation, organizations exhibiting impressive window-dressing through policy formulation and executive development programmes, and occupations re-launched as professions. This book focuses on the hollowness of such grandiosity and illusory projects, and emphasizes the zero-sum games involved, and also the destructive social and psychological consequences of such phenomena. Based on these concepts, I will develop a framework for understanding the contemporary age and its institutions. I will examine critically some predominant ideas about management, organizational structure, working life, consumption, and education, which are often taken for granted : • Economic growth and higher consumption are key sources of increased satisfaction. • Education is something positive that leads to higher qualifications, and is needed to a greater and greater extent by both individuals and society. • Current and future working life is permeated by views of a knowledge economy and a knowledge-intensive society, a greater degree of professionalization, and an emphasis on leadership in the creation of effective organizations. I will show that many conditions and developments in these three areas, which may appear to be positive and socially functional, can be better understood in terms of grandiosity, illusion tricks, and zero-sum games.