A teacher’s social experiment lands fifth-grade Ben Lillie in an ethical dilemma.

Ben Lillie, co-founder of The Story Collider, is a high-energy particle physicist who left the ivory tower for the wilds of New York's theater district. His current project is Caveat, an event space for entertaining talks and conversations on Manhattan's Lower East Side. He is also is a Moth StorySLAM champion, and was a writer and contributing editor for TED.com.

This story originally ran on May 26, 2017.

Story Transcript

In fifth grade, when we walked in the door every day, our teacher would have written up on the board our schedule.  Nine a.m., English. Ten a.m., Social Studies. Eleven a.m., Math.  And it would just go on and that’s how we’d know what we were doing for the day, because fifth-grade classroom, you do all kinds of different things. 

So one Monday, I walk in and it says, Nine a.m., Social Studies. Ten a.m., Social Studies. Eleven a.m., Social Studies. Noon, lunch.  One p.m., Social Studies. Two p.m., Social Studies. Three p.m., go home.  And that was the day, and we’re all like, Oh, something is going to happen. 

Now, this has happened before.  Our fifth-grade teacher liked to have us do this big classroom things.  And so the whole year was Wild West themed, so they're always Wild West themed.  I grew up in Oregon so actually a lot of years were Wild West themed.  So he would have us do these things, like earlier in the year we had played the Oregon Trail, like the video game but like LARPing.  So we had groups and we had to pick what we were putting in our wagons and trying to get across the Oregon territory.  It was great because I had a team, and, like, I wasn’t the kind of kid who had a team.  I wore sweatpants to school every day.  I didn’t have a team.  But for that I had a team. 

It didn’t go well.  We got stuck in the mountains and it went all Donner party.  It was pretty bad actually, but things like that were great. 

So when we walked in this day we knew some kind of big activity was going to happen.  We walk in and the teacher, Mr. Swanson goes, “All right.  Here’s some cards.”  And he gave us all five cards.  And this was Wild West themed so on each of these cards was something Wild West-y, like a musket or hardtack or a fur -- you know, like they had in the West. 

So we each got dealt five of these cards and he said, “All right, here’s what we’re going to do.  This is a trading game.  Your objective is to trade to make better value.”  I don't remember if he said value.  Better something for yourself.  So like we were supposed to trade and we were supposed to get points for the cards on our hand. 

They had different values, so like a musket was worth five and hardtack was worth two, but you could make sets.  So like a hardtack was worth two, but three hardtacks was worth eight, or something.  I don't remember the actual numbers.  But it was like, all right, so you need to trade with each other and make sets and get points, and this is going to teach us something. 

So he's like, “All right, there's just a few more rules.”  He explained the whole rules of the game and then set us out to trade with each other.  We had like ten minutes to trade and make sets and get points. 

Now, some of the rules were kind of weird.  There was a whole bunch of them.  Three of them were particularly odd.  The first rule was that if you were trading with somebody, you couldn’t show them your hand.  You had to tell them what you wanted, you had to tell them what you had to offer, and they had to do the same.  You couldn’t just look at each other’s hands and decide what to trade. 

As a fifth-grader I couldn’t have told you this, but you can sort of see how that makes sense.  Like maybe learning the value of communication or like, asymmetric information and interaction.  Like economists might say something like that. 

The second weird rule was that if you started trading with someone you had to trade.  You couldn’t walk away from the trade and you couldn’t trade the exact same thing.  You, like, had to make an actual substance of trade. 

And the economists I've talked to about that tell me that that is all about what the… why would you do that?  That doesn’t mean anything.  What is that?  That’s what they said. 

And the third weird rule was that while you were trading with someone you had to hold hands.  I got nothing on that one. 

But so those were the rules and we had ten minutes.  We got five cards.  We had to trade and make the best thing that we could.  We did it.  And after that, you went up to Mr. Swanson and you showed him your hand.  He said, “All right.  You got this many points.  You're supposed to write that up on the board.”  I’m like, “All right.” 

And we sat down on our desks and it’s like, “All right, we’re going to do that again.”  So we did it again.  Cards, trade, hold hands, not be able to show each other.  All that stuff.  Ten minutes, show him points.  All right. 

All right, we’re going to do it again, and we’re going to do it again, and we’re going to do it again, and that is all we did that entire day is we just traded these cards, we got points and it was sort of Wild West themed.  We were like, What is going on? 

But all right.  Fine.  We don’t have to do math or read or… which some of us liked but some people in the class… anyway, we’re just like, all right, fine. 

So we did that and then we went home and we came back the next day.  Nine a.m., Social Studies. Ten a.m., Social Studies. Eleven a.m... whole day.  Like all right.  I guess we’re going to do that again. 

So we sit down and he deals out the deck and we play a couple hands and he says, “All right.  We’re going to keep doing this.  We’re going to keep doing this all day, but we’re going to make one change, a couple of changes in fact.” 

The first change he said, “All right, everyone look at the scores on the board and figure out who are the seven highest-scoring kids in the class.  Also figure out who are the seven lowest-scoring kids in the class.”  Then he says, “Get into groups.”  I was in the highest scoring group because, obviously, I’m brilliant.  Or I got good cards.  I don't know.  It’s hard to tell. 

So we split into groups and he says, “All right, here’s what you're going to do.”  And he had these plastic conference-name-tag things, where it’s like a little plastic thing and you can stick something you've printed out in it.  He goes up to those of us in the highest-scoring group and he says, “Here, you're going to wear these.”  He gave us these little plastic things and each of them had a green triangle. 

And he goes to the middle group and he says, “All right, you guys each get these,” and he gave them an orange square. 

And he goes to the lowest scoring group and he says, “All right, you guys get these.  You get a purple circle.  So what you're going to do is you're going to wear these around school all day while we’re playing this game.  By the way, we’re playing it all week.”

We’re like, okay.  So we put on our little name badges and wore the green triangles and the orange squares and purple circles.  We wore these badges.  And if someone here were looking at me right now you’re going like, “Wait a minute.  Did he just say badges?  Is this going to get really dark?  Is this going to be like some Lord of the Flies shit?”  Yes. 

Because the other thing that changed was he said, “All right.  In between each trading round for five minutes the Green Triangles can sit in the circle.  It has to be unanimous.  But as long as it’s unanimous you can make up any rule you want.”  Somebody over here just said, “Oh, my God,” which is correct. 

We’re like, “All right, we can make up any rule we want.”  So we sat in the circle and the first thing we did, the very first thing, we repealed all three of those stupid rules, because why would you have those?  Those were really dumb.  And in retrospect, that’s exactly what those rules were there for.  They were there so we could remove them to legitimize our regime.  The time it took us to go from that, from making an obvious rule that helped the whole class, to making the rule that because we were working so hard for everyone we deserved an extra card, was just over twenty-four hours.  And we did it. 

And we kept playing.  Came in the next day when we made that rule, Social Studies all day.  Now, people in the class are starting to go, “Uh, I don't want to be doing this.”  And all of us in the Green Triangles are like, Yeah!  I had a team.  I had a group.  This was awesome.  The Green Triangles really loved it. 

We came in the next day after we made that new rule. Thursday, nine a.m., Social Studies. Ten a.m., Social Studies.  I’m like, Yeah, this is fun.  All right.  We get to do more of this. 

My friend Mack who was an orange square was like, “No, I don't want to do this.”  I’m like, “Why not?  It’s fun.”  He's like, “No, it’s not fun.” 

Lunch that day on Thursday, we had been playing this game just over and over again.  I go out to lunch, and a lot of days my friend Mack and I we would play this game during recess called Wall Ball.  It’s pretty simple.  You get a ball, you find a wall, you hit the ball against the wall.  It’s great.  It’s a great game.  I recommend it.  And Mack and I would play this.

So on this Thursday I found him and I said, “Hey, Mack, I checked out the ball.”  He's like, “No, I don't want to play.” 

“What are you talking about?” 

He says, “What are you talking about?  Why would I want to play with you?” 

I’m like, “What?” 

He's like, “What you guys are doing is unfair.  That rule is insane.”  There's other rules I forgot and he was upset about them. 

I’m like, “Why are you upset?  We’re making everything better.  We’re working harder.” 

He's like, “No, you're not.  You're not.” 

And if it sounds like he's being very sharp for a fifth grader, he grew up to be a civil rights lawyer.  He was very good.  I didn’t get it.  And we argued and we left and I went to find the other green triangles.

We get back in there in the afternoon.  We’re back in the class dealing cards, trading cards.  Now, one rule we hadn’t repealed was that the Green Triangles, that the power group was the seven highest-scoring people.  And one of the Orange Squares had been getting enough points that they were going to surpass one of the Green Triangles.  Because even despite the extra stuff we had passed to make it easier for us, one of them, let’s call him Scott, because I don't remember his name and I kind of hate Scotts.  (All right, there's one in the room.)  He hadn’t been doing well. 

So we were talking about this.  We were like in a round or two, Scott is going to go down and it’s going to switch.  Someone was like, “Well, we have to pass a rule to make sure that doesn’t happen.” 

I was like, “Wait, what?  We have to do what?” 

Someone was like, “Yeah, we have to stick up for our team.” 

So someone else says, “Well, what should we do?” 

And we hadn’t changed the rule it had to be unanimous.  We’re all talking about this.  So someone says, “Well, we should just give them a hundred points.”  A hundred was a lot.  “We just give him a hundred points.  We can do that.” 

And it goes around the circle.  Everyone is like, Yes, yes, yes, yes, yes.  It gets to me and I’m like, “That feels wrong.”  I'd been thinking about this thing Mack said, just the whole thing felt wrong.  So I said, “I don't think we should do that.”  And they got pissed.  They got angry. 

They were like, “What are you talking about?  This isn’t wrong.  We have to protect our team.”  Another kid was like, “We have to stick together.” 

I was like, “It doesn’t feel fair.”  And we were saying this out loud, and we’re all in the same classroom as the other kids so the rest of the class heard what we were talking about doing, and they started getting very pissed off, because they should be.  They started yelling and they started screaming and they're coming towards us.  And they're standing up and they're screaming about fairness and I’m listening to that.  Then the other Green Triangles are sitting here and they're talking about you have to stick up for your team.  And I’m sitting there going, “I don't know what to do.  I don't know what to do.” 

The one thing I knew, and I couldn’t have put it in these words at the time as a ten-year-old, but I knew that this was important.  Like this decision was important because it would tell me the kind of person that I was.  Was I the kind of person that stuck with my team and did the thing for the team, or was I the kind of person who did what was right and what was fair and what was just? 

Or, on the flip side, was I the kind of person who just wielded power for the sake of wielding it and because that was intoxicating, or… and I can’t come up with a bad thing for the other decision, because it’s clearly the right one?  But this decision mattered and would tell me who I was.  And I’m sitting there trying to figure out what to do with everyone yelling at me. 

Now, over the last couple of years, I have spent a lot of time talking to two groups of people.  One of them are people who understand stories and narrative and they have taught me a lot of things like, for example, if you pause just before revealing a crucial bit of information you can get through a lot of exposition. 

The other group I spent a lot of time talking to is neuroscientists.  One of the things neuroscientists tell you that is fascinating is that our memories do not behave the way we think they do.  Not even close.  They're very, very fragile things. 

So we think that something happens and we record the memory like it’s on a hard drive and then every time you want to remember you just read it off the drive.  I remember this thing.  I remember this thing.  I remember this thing.  That’s not what happens. 

It turns out when you remember something, you sort of crystallize it when it happens and then when you want to remember it you pull it out of storage and it becomes this living thing that you think about as you remember it and then you put it back.  Then the next time you remember, you're not really remembering that thing, you're remembering the last time you remembered it.  And then the next time you're remembering, the memory of the last time you remembered remembering it. 

And this keeps happening.  Every time you pull it out and then put it back, you can kind of fuck with it, you can kind of twist it, and little imperfections can go in.  So counterintuitively the more you remember something, the less accurate the memory is.  And we can distort the memories that we have by the way we tell it to people or the things people say to us as we are telling them the story or by who we want to be. 

And the other thing that both the neuroscientists and the narrative people tell me is that we tell stories about the things that we did in the past as a way of affirming who we are in the present and who we want to be in the future.  We tell stories about ourselves as a way of establishing our own identity and our own sense of our goodness and our place in the world. 

So there are two endings to this story.  You know what both of them are.  I’m going to take you through them briefly. 

Ending one: I am sitting there.  I don't know what to do.  The Green Triangles are yelling at me about being part of the team.  Everyone is yelling at me about fairness.  Finally I say, “No, we can’t pass this rule.  It’s unfair.  We have to not do it.  I’m not voting yes.”  And the Green Triangles go nuts.  They start screaming at me.  The rest of the class is relieved finally one of us has done something right.  There's all kinds of general chaos and Mr. Swanson, the teacher, steps in and ends the game. 

And he says later as we’re all sitting in class that this has been an exercise in what happens when one group gets unlimited power over another group.  As you've all guessed, that was the point.  He told us that in fact our year was one of the tamest, that sort of the least bad stuff happened that year compared to other years that he had done this.  And in later years I would both be grateful to him for having taught us that lesson and have deep reservations about the ethics of doing that to fifth-graders.  Like, seriously, what the fuck? 

Ending two: I’m sitting there, the Green Triangles are yelling at me, saying, “You have to be part of the team.”  Everyone else is saying, “You have to do the thing that’s fair.”  The Green Triangle is saying, “You have to be on our side.” 

I say, “Yes, you're right.  I have to side with the team.”  We pass the rule.  The guy gets a hundred points.  Everyone else in the room starts going nuts.  They start running at us.  It looks like they're going to throw things.  Mr. Swanson steps in and ends the game, etcetera, etcetera, exactly the same. 

Now, here’s the thing about that story.  I have told it so many times.  I have told it to people to tell them what a great person I am.  I have told it to people to tell them what a horrible person I am.  I have told it to myself in both ways.  I have told it with all kinds of endings.  I have no idea, no idea, which of these is correct.  Absolutely none whatsoever. 

I was right about one thing, though.  I thought in that moment that this was important, that this moment would define who I was as a person.  And I was correct.  What I didn’t know is that I would become a person who was obsessed with uncertainty and ambiguity and nuance and how it exists in the world. 

And what I finally realized Mr. Swanson was teaching us was that absolute power corrupts not because of evil in the world or inherent badness but because we all tell ourselves that we are the heroes of the story, and we don’t know if that’s true.  Thank you.