Author and profitability coach Mark Michael Lewis often uses the metaphor of a game in examining life and its possibilities. This frame yields beneficial insights. If life were a game, what would it reward? In basketball, the objective is clear: score more points than the other team. Certain actions move you toward that goal, others move you away from it. Life is really not so different. Like Mark, I believe that at its core, life is a game of flourishing—of increasing well-being and thriving.

Philosopher Sam Harris has argued that the well-being of conscious creatures is the only meaningful standard by which to measure what is good or bad. Whether we agree fully or not, it points to something fundamental: all human action ultimately aims at improving our condition.

In this game of thriving, there is one move that consistently works against that goal: Violence.

Violence does not create—it only destroys or redistributes what has already been created. Human beings are creative by nature. We solve problems, build systems, and generate value through thought and cooperation. Violence runs counter to that process. It is, in effect, a move that reduces the total potential for thriving.

Imagine a society where even a small percentage of people regularly relied on violence to get what they want. Progress would stall immediately. People do not create what they expect to be taken or destroyed. This is why systems of order emerge in the first place. Governments arose as a response to this problem: to restrain those who initiate violence. As Ayn Rand described it, government is the means by which a society places the retaliatory use of force under objective control. In that sense, it serves a stabilizing function.

But throughout history, this function has been confused and distorted.

We have come to believe that the very tool designed to limit violence—organized force itself—can be used to produce good outcomes. What started as a defensive mechanism has become an initiatory one. We have begun to use coercion not just to prevent harm, but to attempt to generate progress. This is where the contradiction emerges.

If violence undermines creativity and cooperation at the individual level, scaling it through institutions does not reverse its nature—it amplifies its consequences. When force becomes a primary tool, attention shifts away from creation and toward control: avoiding punishment, influencing authority, or wielding power over others.

This doesn’t mean nothing gets accomplished. Programs are built. Systems are enforced. But the question is not whether something can be produced through coercion—it is whether it is the best possible outcome. A society organized around force will always fall short of one organized around voluntary cooperation.

At the root of this is a lack of trust—both in others and in ourselves. It can feel safer to delegate responsibility to institutions, even when that delegation is enforced through coercion. But responsibility does not disappear; it only becomes obscured.

The alternative is not chaos—it is ownership.

To the degree we as individuals take full responsibility for our choices, and extend that same freedom to others, we align ourselves with the conditions that make human flourishing possible. As we move in that direction, many of our systems built on force will begin to dissolve—not through conflict, but through irrelevance.

What remains will be a society shaped less by control, and more by creativity, cooperation, and trust.