Playing Games

Sometimes it feels like the only game we play is the "Challenge Card". Challenge is useful, and it is fun. But it is only one tool in the set. It also keeps a bunch of people quiet, because it is quite often unpleasant. Diving in requires developing a thick skin, and a level of detachment.

Rules can help. Kind of like playing touch rugby is much more fun when everyone sticks to the rules. At least then you know what game you are playing. Cricket and Baseball both have bats and balls, but different rules. People know in advance which one they are playing, and then get on with it. Often with a Ref for when emotions run high.

What I have found interesting with the latest iteration of the Public Outrage game are the teams.

I always find it odd when you get (for example) young, black, Christian, women who are openly homophobic. It feels like someone who is in so many difficult categories would have the ability to step back, and extend their empathy. There is something, from my story, that makes me unable to comprehend how someone can think the way they do.

In the "Should Caster be allowed to run" game, the teams are all over the place, but (in South African terms) we are clearly touching people all over their studios. Slap bang in the feels.

There is huge crash between racism, sexism, colonialism, patriotism, and all sorts of stories we tell about ourselves. Stories that matter to us. The cards fall in funny places. There are people I know, and am normally on the "same side as", who feel very differently about things that seem obvious to me. This comes as a big, confusing, pause-for-thought, surprise to me.

"Whenever we are surprised by something, even if we admit that we made a mistake, we say, ‘Oh I’ll never make that mistake again.’ But, in fact, what you should learn when you make a mistake because you did not anticipate something is that the world is difficult to anticipate. That’s the correct lesson to learn from surprises: that the world is surprising." -Daniel Kahneman