Not a Team Player

One thing I've learned about myself is that I really am not a team player. I much prefer to work alone, and most collaborative projects I've done have been frustrating. I wonder, however, if there really are all that many people who really are good team players. In my experience, there are always going to be a few people who do nothing, a few people who will do whatever task they're specifically directed to do, and one or two people who do all the work. Thus, I am always suspicious that people who call themselves "good team players" are in fact slackers who are good at taking credit for work they did not do.

Perhaps this is why Hobbes, despite the overall grimness of his outlook has such appeal to me. Hobbes's psychology is premised on inability of people to cooperate unless coerced to do so, even when such cooperation would be to the benefit of all. Of course, it isn't just Hobbes, a similar outlook runs through The Federalist Papers and seems to underlie much of our thinking in this country.

The political philosophies that stress teamwork however, seem to me to be rather nasty. Plato, Rousseau, Marx, are the theorists of the team. And, these ideas tend to have nasty, nasty consequences. It isn't enough that I am commanded and obey. I must want to obey. Thus, the human being must be somehow transformed.

In the end, the psychology of the good team player seems almost alien to me. There's a world of difference between cooperation and even collaboration and teamwork.