Humainologie creative dialogue ideas for a Dialogue and Democracy Game

“Don’t do anything that isn’t play.” - Joseph Campbell https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joseph_Campbell

“To practice the process of conflict resolution, we must completely abandon the goal of getting people to do what we want.” - Marshall B. Rosenberg, Nonviolent Communication: A Language of Life

“We can only see a short distance ahead, but we can see plenty there that needs to be done.” - Alan Turing

Imagine you are Alan Turing, except that instead of being asked to break the German Enigma code in order to win World War II (see the movie, “The Imitation Game” https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Imitation_Game ), you are asked to create a game that will redirect history toward a healthy global community. We’ll share ideas for such games at our Humainologie creative dialogue tomorrow, Wednesday April 21.

Below this message, I have appended some ideas that may help you get started. Whether you use those ideas or come up with your own, please develop the details of a game structure. Then share with us both 1) your game structure and 2) your ideas about how to get the game started in Calgary. Specifically, is there a group of Calgarians and a place in Calgaryyou would suggest as the participants and the playing field, respectively,that would help the game take root and flourish?

Here is the Zoom link provided by Shinobu.

Topic: Humainologie creative dialogue Time: April 21, 2021 06:30 PM Mountain Time (US and Canada) Every week on Wed, until Apr 28, 2021, 9 occurrence(s) Join Zoom Meeting https://us02web.zoom.us/j/83720756307?pwd=WVU2OGo3ZjMzWVMwdlVZUzY1RVMwdz09 Meeting ID: 837 2075 6307 Passcode: 12345

Wanna play?

Arthur

Dialogue and Democracy Game ideas to help start your creative engines

Teams of players from Calgary would compete in the game. Teams should probably be kept small, perhaps four or five players on the team. The purpose of the game is to foster the players’ ability to dialogue constructively about issues on which they disagree.

A Games Committee would organize the game, including the details of the game’s object (question, problem to be solved, whatever) and the process of judging and announcing the winners.

The object of the game could be a team consensus statement in response to a specific question. The question might be about some aspect of a preferred future (perhaps six generations hence) or about some problem that Calgary is currently facing (the team being asked to come up with a highly innovative solution to the problem). You would probably want to set a maximum word limit for the consensus statement.

Timeframe: The game could be played once each year or once every six months or even once a month. The timespan for the actual game could be long enough for the players to put together a creative consensus statement, and this can be assumed to require at least a week to ten days. Alternatively, you could create a game that is played over a few hours, the start and finish times taking place on just one day.

Each team must include members having strong differences of opinion about issues related to the object of the game.

A unique scoring system can be helpful for the judges to decide on the winners. One of many possibilities would be to give each team two independent scores, one for the initial diversity of opinion among members of the team; and the other for the excellence of the consensus statement. There could be one group of judges who would score the teams on diversity and a different set of judges evaluating the consensus statement. The team diversity score, assigned first, could be kept secret until after the second set of judges have given a score for the consensus statement. Then the two scores could be made known and used to decide the winning teams.

The game outcome could include prizes (for example, for the first, second, and third place teams), which might help guarantee that the game would actually “take off” here in Calgary in the years ahead. Here is one of many possible examples of how the prizes might inspire the evolution of the game in Calgary: The prizes could consist of money. The prize money could be raised each year at Christmas by an “Ebenezer Scrooge team” of ten wealthy Calgarians, and the amount they have raised for the game to be played the following year could be announced at the same time the Games Committee announces the details of the object of the game. Once the winning teams have been selected by the judges, the winning teams could meet to decide among themselves how the prize money is to be distributed. Details of the game’s outcomes could be published each year in the Calgary Herald.