Rethinking Wargames - a few thoughts from a correspondant in Minessota
Read/Post Comments (0)
I visited Rethinking Wargames and have a few thoughts.
1. I love the creativity involved.
2. The idea of pawns taking over the chessboard by any means is a good poetic image but it breaks down at the level of philosophical analogy.
Perhaps breaks down is the wrong phrase. It needs to engender. What does it engender?
My sense is that we have exhausted the polarizations that gave rise to the political changes of the 70's and 80's globally...including perestroika, etc. In fact, the whole concept of polarization, us vs. them, is pretty destitute of solutions or ideas. It invites simple rehashes of hippy/radical protest and definition by exclusion. But it doesn't keep things working that need to work and identify the excess baggage that needs to be left at the train station, so to speak.
What do you know of Buckminister Fuller and his World Game, and his concept of sustainability?
For example, lets say that there is a need for some form of hierarchy in the game process, but the problem is when certain players grab the top of the hierarchy and won't let go. Do you try to "empower" the lower part of the hierarchy and invite the breakdown of that particular game, or do you find ways to rotate both the burden and reward of the top of the hierarchy among the players? In a sense, the New England town meeting that tried to vest power in every speaking member of the community didn't do away with a hierarchy of judgment and consequence in the community..but it tried to rotate the role of speaker and judge among the whole speaking community. This in turn was modeled on the Iriquois Nation customs which included the idea of the speaking stick being passed among all community members in the lodge house during meetings.
The grand foolishness of the last two decades that has resulted in the upper ranks and lower ranks losing touch completely has been due, in part, to the inability of those in the upper hierarchy to cycle down and through the lower existential parts of the hierarchy, while those in the lower parts are not allowed to experience their innate dignity often enough to maintain their perspective on the true human condition. It is a craziness that makes everyone daft and bereft, not just the powerless.
Games are a powerful imago and participatory transformation tool. What kind of game allows people to be King, Knight, Rook, Pawn, and back up again, and play their role in the grand design of destiny without devolving to insane greed or pathetic resentment?
That is what I think about. But I also think that the "game " must have a real place in one's sense of fortune and fortunes. If it is too speculative, i.e. didactic, it floats off into the blue vacant space of inconsequence.
-a correspondent in Minnesota
RC's Response
1. I love the creativity involved.
2. The idea of pawns taking over the chessboard by any means is a good poetic image but it breaks down at the level of philosophical analogy.
Perhaps breaks down is the wrong phrase. It needs to engender. What does it engender?
My sense is that we have exhausted the polarizations that gave rise to the political changes of the 70's and 80's globally...including perestroika, etc. In fact, the whole concept of polarization, us vs. them, is pretty destitute of solutions or ideas. It invites simple rehashes of hippy/radical protest and definition by exclusion. But it doesn't keep things working that need to work and identify the excess baggage that needs to be left at the train station, so to speak.
What do you know of Buckminister Fuller and his World Game, and his concept of sustainability?
For example, lets say that there is a need for some form of hierarchy in the game process, but the problem is when certain players grab the top of the hierarchy and won't let go. Do you try to "empower" the lower part of the hierarchy and invite the breakdown of that particular game, or do you find ways to rotate both the burden and reward of the top of the hierarchy among the players? In a sense, the New England town meeting that tried to vest power in every speaking member of the community didn't do away with a hierarchy of judgment and consequence in the community..but it tried to rotate the role of speaker and judge among the whole speaking community. This in turn was modeled on the Iriquois Nation customs which included the idea of the speaking stick being passed among all community members in the lodge house during meetings.
The grand foolishness of the last two decades that has resulted in the upper ranks and lower ranks losing touch completely has been due, in part, to the inability of those in the upper hierarchy to cycle down and through the lower existential parts of the hierarchy, while those in the lower parts are not allowed to experience their innate dignity often enough to maintain their perspective on the true human condition. It is a craziness that makes everyone daft and bereft, not just the powerless.
Games are a powerful imago and participatory transformation tool. What kind of game allows people to be King, Knight, Rook, Pawn, and back up again, and play their role in the grand design of destiny without devolving to insane greed or pathetic resentment?
That is what I think about. But I also think that the "game " must have a real place in one's sense of fortune and fortunes. If it is too speculative, i.e. didactic, it floats off into the blue vacant space of inconsequence.
-a correspondent in Minnesota
RC's Response
Read/Post Comments (0)
Previous Entry :: Next Entry
Back to Top
