Contents
A) Protocol 22.7.77
Imagine yourself as the player in a cooperative-competitive game called LIFE, moving upon the entailement-meshes of THE WORLD:
One move upon each occasion marked by UNDERSTANDING, towards one more node which contains a LEARNING EXPERIENCE:
If this node is already structured and completed (as results of other players goals that were fulfilled when their own life has reached an UNDERSTANDING at that node), then it has in it at least a partially ordered TASK STRUCTURE.
Each player is trying to reach his OWN GOAL within his OWN LIFE SPAN. His LIFE SPAN is determined by his own ACCUMULATED VITAL ENERGY.
The player obtains a DESCRIPTION of that goal from his EDUCATION, but he must BUILD his own PROCEDURE to get there. His selection of his PATH is thus the determination of his LIFE STRATEGY.
EDUCATION may contain built-in frustration, if It sets out to DESCRIBE GOALS THAT CANNOT BE ATTAINED, perhaps because there is no solidified ENTAILEMENT MESH that leads there. (Remember that an E. M. is made of OSSIFIED UNDERSTANDINGS of past players who might have passed away when their paths crossed there, they came to UNION and then died in which case the establishment of a new node entails a SACRIFICE. An educational system is EVOLUTIONARY when it trains martyrs for knowledge; a religion is evolutionary if it constitutes such an educational system.)
COOPERATION is BUILT INTO THE GAME by the nature of these nodes (or the mode) of UNDERSTANDINGS, because it simply TAKES TWO TO PLAY THIS GAME, while competition may be built-in by the PLAYERS MOTIVATIONS:
The event of raised consciousness is marked by a TRANSFORMATION OF MOTIVATION from that of competition to that of COMPASSION. (In the sequel, religions where viewed as strategies for effecting such transformation, i.e. Islam as adoring god as compassionate, Christianity as an imitation of Christ, Judaism as study and emulation of the behavior of the creator, and Buddhism as using a built-in mechanism of individual enlightenment which by itself does not change the structure of the world but enables one to return as a Bodhisatva. )
The role of entropy or, in other words, TIME:
The players may expire on their way. The mesh and nodes tend to decay and be consumed. They are maintained in good repair by constant recycling and repetitions of those who are trapped within the cycles. Thus, to make the quantum leap which ties between one cycle and another, in order to enable their connection (by synchronization) takes up much energy and is also liable to raise the hatred of those whose lives were dedicated to the preservation of their own cultural and personal cycles.
In order to hold each node in WORKSET, ascertain amount of energy needed. A situation is felt as DANGER or fright when this hold is being threatened by depletion of ones stock of energy (or of knowledge and confidence). Yet, in order to bring about a CREATIVE ACT, many NODES have to be held simultaneously through a greater expenditure of energy. The presence of another individual may become threatening if he is felt (or known) to be likely to cause severance of some of the accomplished connections which maintain (most efficiently) that assembly which is that P-Individual. A secure individual is he who enjoys a redundancy of connections (also potential command?) and can maintain his integrity in face of change.
B) LIFE GAME 3.8.77
Each actor has a direction of progress which is orthogonal to the directions of progress of the other actors. Thus, for N actors there are N dimensions to the game.
An actor advances one move each time he reaches a state of UNDERSTANDING with another actor.
A retrospective account of a game reconstructs the CONVERSATIONAL DOMAIN that was created through it. This means that each round of the game creates a history or a new conversational domain. Each such C.D. is thus a portrait of that appropriate Social Individual. (There come then conjectures as to the behavior of actors such as artist, specialist, leader, inventor, and guru.
On the use of Games:
Supposing the issue is a theory of motivation (or whatever) that is ahead, or outside, of present theories. Instead of trying to convince the others in the veracity of the theory, one can also go and build (educational) games that the mode of progress in them is based on that theory. The subject of the game would be whatever happens to be of interest for the population so that there will be motivation to play the game. To the extent that the people will succeed in the game they will continue to play it (which sets guidance for the planned difficulty) and will come as if by themselves to recognize the underlying theory. They may even receive cooperative conditioning in place of competitive conditioning which may have been built-in before.
C) A Life Game 25.8.77
- List the objectives you want to achieve.
- Count how many of those are personal objectives.
- In case you have not chosen any non-personal objectives, pull out one objective (at random) from the box marked IDEALS (in Israel one might be Zionism, etc.)
- Try to arrange your objectives as a (hierarchical) precedence network.
- Can you explain the strategy that you have adopted?
- Advance toward your next objective by the rate determined by throwing dice.
- When you arrive at a certain (sub)objective, you must wait there until another player arrives at the same goal.
- If no partner arrives within Ni rounds, you can try to communicate with a neighboring player who is found trapped in another goal. In this case you have to adjust the frequencies of your broadcasts. The frequency is determined by the rate you are shifting between personal and non-personal objectives in your life. The rate is taken from your past progress in the game.
- You can change your frequency when you reach UNDERSTANDING with the other player/partner about a COMMON MEANING of the objective you want to reach next, in which case both of you move towards the objective you have agreed upon.
- Each player has a game LIFESPAN Li = Eoi +
Er made of initial energy Eo allotted to player i by lot, plus energy accumulated during the game.
- In case you band up with a partner, you receive an energy addition E = (Li + Lj) / (- i
) where is a certain rational number, but as partners you must assume the same path.
(Note: Ni is a variable which denotes psychological resistance.)
D) URBAN LIFE GAME 25.8.77
There are N street types to live in, portrayed by pictures.
There are M actors.
- At the first stage each actor ranks the pictures by his own order of preference, thus giving it a value V:
Vij (i=1,2..M) (j=1,2...N)
- The price of each type of environment is determined by a weighting of the ranking:
Pj = f
mij
- Each actor has an initial budget Boi.
- In each case the actor enters into a partnership with another actor, he receives an addition: Er = (Bi + Bk) / .
- The total Li = Boi + Er is the LIFESPAN in the game which determines the number of dice throws a player has.
- A player can make a purchase of a type of street and then his remaining budget is Bi = Li - Pjk.
- The price or value of a type of street is calculated for each round of the game k Pjk = Pjo + Cju - Cjd where Cd is depreciation and Cu is maintenance cost invested by the players (the calculation is only partial, there should be personalized investments, deducted from players budgets).
- For each player whose LIFESPAN ran out, the value of his estate is calculated.
- The winner is the actor who collected the largest estate or who survived the longest (criterion to be decided upon by the actors).
A more advanced version of this game (maybe an adults version) may also introduce the subject of MEANING of the different environments and the possibility of joining with another actor through a COMMON MEANING and to advance from there with an energy addition.
E) COOPOLIS GAME 7/9/77
A cooperative game that during its run a metropolis is created.
Each actor has two criteria:
- Self-maintenance, or profit;
- Self-organization, or environmental design.
Profit is made by selling estate that was bought before or built by the actor, when the market price of the estate is favorable.
Environmental design is made through the elicitation of personal environmental preferences and their realization through ability to pay for them.
Financial and market rules are of the type of rules of the URBAN LIFE GAME, of which this game is an elaboration.