Daily Human – United Nations meets Lord of the Flies meets Lagaan

I was on a flight from Bangkok to Koh Samui today. As expected the plane had tourists from all over the world. As I was watching them, I was thinking of the friend and foe combinations and the stereotypes we have for some of those nationalities. Being on holiday with my phone on airplane mode, my relaxed brain was free to wander and somehow it connected a bunch of thoughts and came up with a story.

Imagine a plane like this with people from over countries crashes on a remote island. The island is either football or rugby mad ( depending on whether it crashed in South-east Asia or gets closer to the Oceania region ). The islanders are willing to help the stranded tourists on one condition. They need to beat the Islanders at their favourite sports. Else, they will be killed or taken as prisoners for life (or some other horrible consequence). They have no time to run trials and figure things out. They need to figure out their team in one hour and start the game.

The composition of the tourists and the challenge on hand would create some fascinating human behaviour situations.

The tourists have very little data about each other. Their footballing prowess or their ability to handle pressure ? How do they decide on the team and the leader ? If you are one of the tourists, who do you want to play for your life ? Messi would have been first choice. But in his absence, do you trust yourself more or an unknown stranger ? Who do you trust more – a person from a friendly nation or an enemy one ? Would you give any of the ladies a chance ?

The only data they have are their physical appearances plus how they are dressed, their nationalities and their professions. And they fit claimed football resumes. All put together, we have almost an infinite combination of stereotypes and biases.

There is also a huge communication challenge. There isn’t a common language which is understood by everyone. There will be a few bilinguals who will transalate. But there is bound to be a case of Chinese whispers.

You could count like a dozen human behaviour and psychology experiments in this one situation.

There are only two ways of knowing how this might play out.

Either we run some sophisticated simulations and see how it plays out. Whether sanity and cooperation prevails or do we have a mini version of world war 3, even before the tourists take on the islanders.

Or we can create a reality game show bringing in participants from different nationalities.

One thing I know for sure. That I don’t want to play this game 😀