I’ve been thinking lately about a discussion I once had with someone in a high school history class. At the time, I dismissed the argument and the experience almost as soon as it occurred. I’m beginning to regret that decision, if only because it seemed the other person didn’t.

My memory of the conversation starts with someone enthusiastically explaining a model of the world.

“The world is like a pie,” they started. “There are finite resources. Right? And everyone, no matter who they are, has a slice of the pie.”

I was following along so far.

“But that means,” they continued, “that every time you give someone else a bigger piece of the pie, you take some away from someone else.”

Here’s where we ran into trouble. This person’s explanation of the world as a fixed system (one pie) makes the entire operation a zero-sum game: every time one group or person — say, for example, a historically oppressed group — makes gains in one area, it takes away from another.

My first instinct when I heard this was to quibble with the conclusion — the resoundingly selfish worldview that instinctively resents any personal inconvenience regardless of the societal impact. In fact, I distinctly remember this exchange being the last I had with this person.

But it’s become clear in the past few weeks that this idea — the world is pie, and the point of life is to get (and keep) as much of it as you can — did not go away and is not new. And that person in my history class was not the only one who thought of the world in that way.

The flood of vaguely worded, threatening mandates from the newest presidential administration smacks of vindictive, smug psychology, finally rooting out corruption in order to return resources to those who truly “deserve” it. DEI, and the words that make up the acronym, are being rebranded as harbingers of a less meritocratic, “woke” agenda. A clip of conservative pundit and Turning Point CEO Charlie Kirk even went viral this week in which he says, “Diversity is not a strength. Anyone who tells you that is lying to you.”

Kirk’s claim is so actively bizarre it’s almost impossible to parse, but its popularity does explain one thing: People would like to combine the idea of “race-based” programming with the idea of diversity in general. They believe, or would like others to believe, that diversity wouldn’t occur without programs that force it to happen. Furthermore, they want to position diversity as the opposite of unity — a lot of arguments online take it as a given that “diversity” weakens through separation.

The conclusions that come out of this understanding of the world are unsettling and abhorrent. They draw most of the attention and ire and rightly so.

But to me, the biggest mistake is in the premise. The world is not a pie. Obviously. And you and your experiences do not make up the entire world. The mistake lies in assuming that society at large is made up of individuals who are purely in it for themselves and their own benefit. This model fails to account for philanthropy. It fails to account for units bigger than an individual — for families, for organizations and for groups.

The larger lesson in all of this is that the simpler a model of the world is, the more it obscures.

Pundits like Charlie Kirk would prefer for you to believe that they are leading with facts. They would love to seem clear-eyed and objective. But their insistence on a simple world only reveals an incapability to see past their own emotions. Kirk and others have fallen into the trap of letting their personal feelings lead the way, constructing a cherry-picked house of cards that reveals a mind-numbingly myopic worldview.

One can choose to look at the world as an endless zero-sum game. That’s absolutely an option. But contrary to Kirk’s rhetoric, that doesn’t make you a smarter, more objective person.

As real economists and economic historians know, a model of the world always has limitations. Each model has its own constraints, its own subject, a timescale and a direction that narrows its view. The tools we use to understand our world, whether they’re economic or theoretical, are just that: tools. They shouldn’t determine our reality.

As scientists know, the point of a model is not to make the world easier to understand by imposing it onto real events. A model is meant to reflect the world.

If you have a pressing problem you need advice on, or a response to this, email opinion@dailynorthwestern.com with “Best Guess” in the subject line.

Mika Ellison is a Medill senior. She can be contacted at mikaellison2025@u.northwestern.edu. If you would like to respond publicly to this op-ed, send a Letter to the Editor to opinion@dailynorthwestern.com. The views expressed in this piece do not necessarily reflect the views of all staff members of The Daily Northwestern.