No Strings Attached

Introductory Questions

• Who do you owe the most to? What do you owe them?

• How often do you make promises? How often do you break those promises? How vulnerable do you feel when making promises?

• Is their word enough for you to believe that someone else will do something? When would you trust that person enough to believe them before they actually did the action?

• What would happen if all of your current liabilities to other people were erased?

• If a friend accidentally broke your arm, what would you expect them to do to make up? What if a stranger broke your arm? 

• What should people be promised from birth? Do these vary later in life depending on the actions taken by the person?

• How connected should the world be?

• What do you regret? Is it good to regret in order to learn from your past actions? Or does it keep people stuck in the past?

• What makes you feel free? Is freedom the same as independence? Can you be truly free if you have ties to other people?

• How integral are other people to your life? Who do you think you could or could not live without?

• When was the last time you felt you did something wrong? What did you do about it?

• Would you prefer more or less freedom in your life right now? Would you be more or less successful if you had more constraints?

Forever Intertwined

• To become a citizen of a country, some have you revoke your past one, whereas others simply let you spend a certain amount of money; furthermore, many will have you verbally declare allegiance to the country. Research the so-called “rites of passage” of the following countries and discuss with your team: why do we love verbal declaration given how meaningless it is in practice?

  • United States | South Africa | Australia

  • Norway | Ireland | Colombia | Indonesia

• People presently ponder how personal they can probe with their peers. Entrusting someone with a secret is really entrusting them with two—the first of the actual secret, and the second of the knowledge that there is a secret. Experts have studied what the effects are of keeping a secret; whether it be from family, friends, or even public figures, privacy between multiple people seems to be integral to today’s society. Discuss: is it a good thing that the world is getting less and less private with the advent of the internet?

• Pledging to do something is only giving them your word, and there are many instances of parties following through with their promises, but there are also many on the contrary. Some business managers follow a promise-based management system to get their employees to complete tasks. Diplomatically, treaties are just contracts saying that a doctrine or policy will be followed or met. Learn about the following agreements and treaties throughout history and how they turned out and discuss with your team: how important is accountability and trust in today’s world? Has its value changed throughout history? At what point in history was it most important? What about least important? Be sure to look at this legendary example from the First Punic War.

  • Peace of Callias | Treaty of Saint-Clair-Sur-Epte | Treaty of Jaffa

  • Golden Bull of Sicily | Magna Carta | First Peace of Thorn

  • Treaty of Bangkok | Basel Convention | Paris Agreement

• Socially, one of the most prevalent examples of pledges is the near-universal precedent of marriage, which has been on the decline; to the point that in some places, people are becoming concerned how sustainable the future will be in terms of the number of workers and how they could possibly support the growing elderly population. Different cultures throughout history have had varying traditions as to what customs constitute a lifelong bond. Discuss with your team: how bound to promises should we be? Is it ever right to break a promise, even if it would be utilitarian to do so?

• Companies sometimes promise lifetime supplies to a lucky customer, and can regret it much later. Sometimes, a company will provide a warranty for their products, meaning they promise to repair damages that occur to the product within a limited time frame after purchase. Discuss: what resources should we be entitled to and what should we have to work for?

• Promises can be intimidating too. Martin Luther King Jr. was delivering a speech at an auditorium in Los Angeles when a bomb threat was reported and the speech was paused. Ultimatums, or even just personal threats are a strand of promises whereby instead of one party being vulnerable with the other, one party instills superiority over the other. Consider the following examples of ultimatums and discuss with your team: when is hard power better than soft power?

  • Tsar Alexander I (1812) | Tsar Nicholas I (1853) | William McKinley (1898)

  • Baron Musulin von Gomirje (1914) | George W. Bush (2003) | Potsdam Declaration (1945)

Untwisting the Turns

• It comes as a surprise to many to hear that the study of knots is a vast ocean of knowledge, and its abstraction yields numerous practical applications. Within topology, they represent one of the purest forms of mathematics. Consider the following knots and discuss with your team: should we be looking more into the designs of the real world and dissecting them?

  • Overhand knot (trefoil) | Figure-8 knot | Bowline knot

  • Square knot | Granny knot | Blood knot | Jamming knot

  • Constrictor knot | Cinquefoil knot | Butterfly loop

• In the event that a person, company, or organization harms another, the victim can look for compensation for the damages. If the damage is irreparable, it can be difficult to come up with an appropriate consequence for the perpetrator. Usually it ends up as some combination of money and sentencing, even though the damages caused are often priceless. Take a look at the following examples of lawsuits and trials; then, discuss: how much is a life worth legally? Should there even be a possibility for the perpetrator to resume normal life if the damage they caused ruined the livelihood of another?

  • Brown v. Board of Education | Nuremberg Trials | Mabo v. Queensland

  • Apple v. Samsung | Pinochet Extradition Case | Bre-X Scandal Case

• To avoid being liable, many locations and organizations go out of their way to take sizable actions to not be seen as negligent or at fault. This may involve anything from waivers to adding important signage. Sometimes these procedures are not enough to prevent mishaps; meanwhile, some have criticized the procedures taken during the pandemic within the realm of vaccine testing. Discuss with your team: will there ever be a day where none of these accidents occur? How safe should we strive to be before we reach diminishing rewards?

• In the world of insurance, providers will look for any excuse to not pay out their customers, and customers will look for any excuse to receive a payout. This dichotomy fuels many of the legal battles seen in courts, as one party feels duped by the other. Discuss: do exchanges have to be imbalanced to a degree of mistrust? Why does it almost always devolve into this dynamic?

• Usually, people feel negatively about themselves when they do something wrong. The term guilt itself developed from a sense of a “crime, fault or debt,” and today someone held responsible for a crime is considered “guilty.” Learn about the following terms about this emotion and discuss with your team: should society play more into this emotion? When does guilt become unhealthy? 

  • Guilt | Remorse | Regret | Shame | Anxiety

  • Natural guilt | Existential guilt | Survivor’s guilt | Collective guilt

  • Guilt society | Shame society | Fear society

• In order to not feel guilty, people do many things to amend the past; in the same vein, companies are known for having a mixed track record in terms of the effectiveness and genuineness of their apologies, but sometimes they pull through. Take a look at the following apologies through history, and the reaction that followed; then, discuss: what good does a set of words do for a person? When, if ever, is forgiveness expected?

  • Lance Armstrong - doping | James Gunn - racist tweets | John Mayer - slurring

  • Equifax - data breach | Airbnb - racial profiling | United Airlines - overbooking

  • Belgium - kidnapping | Chea & Samphan - genocide | Pope Francis - residential schools

Wild and Free

• Criminals can be rewarded for good behaviour too. In many places, parole is a possibility to lighten the sentences faced by criminals. The modern practice was developed by a British naval officer. Also, it is typical for states at war to capture enemy forces and treat them as prisoners of war. People who end up as prisoners of war tend to go through a lot of abuse and mistreatment, and some effects of enduring the designation are being studied. Discuss: how hard is it to truly redeem oneself? Should freedom have to come with baggage from the past?

• In some societies, it is customary for children to leave home after a certain age. In others, that practice is frowned upon. Perspectives on the practice appear to be currently shifting in different ways across the globe. On a similar note, both of the extremes of the scale of the strictness and protection given by the parents are harmful to a child, whether it be overprotection or underprotection. Discuss with your team: what strategy of parenting is the most effective at raising children “correctly”? What does it even mean to “correctly” raise a child?

• Independence movements were the main cause of the fall of colonialism in places around the world. But different countries became independent in different ways. Take a look at how the following countries obtained independence and discuss: is independence always a good thing?

  • United States | Bolivia | Pakistan & India

  • Post-Soviet Republics | Tanzania | Fiji

  • Singapore | Dominica | Ireland

• At the subnational level, there are many places around the world that have more self-governing power than normal, often being fought for in an independence movement. This advocacy, known as separatism, has led to many conflicts around the world, from the ones in the United States and Canada, to the ones in South Africa and, most recently in Ethiopia, leading to the most profound loss of life in the 21st century. Some result in partial success, although usually they become drawn out due to reluctance by government officials. Discuss with your team: are separatist movements always a result of a bad government? Or are external forces to blame for disillusion and disharmony within a country? When are separatist movements justified and when are they not?

• “Absolute power corrupts absolutely.” This famous adage reminds us to stay away from letting any one person or group of people, no matter how charismatic and trusting they may seem, gain overarching and unimpeded control over the lives of everyone they rule. George Orwell’s Animal Farm (1945) illustrated this exact premise masterfully, and time and time again throughout history, we see similar results. However, some studies show that power does not corrupt, but rather it exacerbates and accentuates the morality of a person; if an underlyingly bad person gains power, the bad side will be pronounced, whereas the reverse is true for an underlyingly good person. Discuss with your team: are these studies true? Or are there external factors of how a person reacts to obtaining power that were not accounted for?

Concluding Questions

• When developing a country in the modern world, wealth has to be brought in. Usually, that comes in the form of supplying a resource or commodity to another country. Whether it be tourism, energy, food, or technology, countries need a way to be on the global market and exchange goods to better their own people. Despite this, however, resource-poor countries have seen success in growing their economies, and some resource-rich countries have seen catastrophic failures for a number of reasons. Being heavily reliant on a single resource bogs down the potential growth of a country due to how unstable a situation like that is. How can we solve these problems facing the modern “natural resource curse”?

• Small communities can be over-reliant on a resource too. One Mexican city gains all their water resources from Coca Cola, leading most in the city to lack running water during times of scarcity. How quickly can a smooth transition be established for places akin to this one to move to a diversified and secure resource intake?

• Competition is a leading factor in driving economies and industries. When driving is the industry, multinational corporations need to keep up with the leaders to remain relevant. The recent Nissan-Honda Merger is a great example of this concept at play. Will corporations be forced into “allying” with each other more in the future?