Brad Babines
Twitter: @RejuvenatingRo1
March 23rd, 2020
What is TransitionB?
In Jum Rutt’s “A Journey To GameB” he gave definitions to different epochs regarding GameB, but TransitionB was not one of them. However, he did mention TransitionB briefly and stated, “With respect to previous and ongoing discussions with the GameB movement, I see this essay providing one possible path forward among many for what has been called “GameB Transition” or #TransitionB.”
I think this is a good start but I would like to evolve TransitionB to “The space where one cultivates the skills, knowledge, and depth to work/create/discuss ProtoB pieces, ProtoB systems, and GameB adjacent communities while still having to function and deal with largely GameA life.” This definition is what I am calling TransitionB 1.1. Perhaps you don’t like that definition and that is fine. However, this is the meaning of the term I will be using when I reference TransitionB throughout the article.
Both/And
I am both greatly inspired by the theories going on in the GameB space and deeply troubled by the interactions that are taking place in these various platforms. It appears a lot of people are waking up to the problems of GameA life and that is great, but without a solid way of organizing these concepts, on-boarding future participants, and increasing our capacity to nurture group cohesion, we stand little chance at creating the first ProtoB Dunbar community. We need a skillful way of interacting with each other and working as a team that is agreed upon and is the norm among our different groups.
Why a ProtoB Dunbar community?
I was not part of the original GameB group, however, I have taken notice to some of their problems. In the end, no ProtoB community was created for them to “fail forward.” Therefore we cannot learn from their mistakes in that regard. However, we can still learn why they did not reach that point. There appeared to be a robust discussion on concepts, theories, and intellectual work. Let’s not overlook this part. We must first have a good direction in which to go, and having sound intellectual work is part of the equation. It’s the foundation of the movement. With that being said, Brett Weinstein’s quote says it all: “…there were too many Thomas Jefferson’s and not enough Benjamin Franklin's.” This is probably why the older members of the GameB group often emphasize “a bias towards action”. For this movement to be worth anything, we actually need to build something. And my personal opinion is that ‘something’ be a ProtoB Dunbar community. Not only does this community need to function in the GameA space, but it also has to function better by our standards, of course.
Are we arriving at a Paradox?
But we are getting ahead of ourselves. The original group also had a lot of infighting and disagreements. This is not unusual, or even bad. However, I’m not certain they were very skilled in disagreeing in ways that evolved the movement, strengthened group cohesion, or led to personal growth. If we are to “fail forward” and learn from past mistakes we then face a huge challenge: we must grow personally while building tools, guides, and modules that act as quasi institutions for future people who wish to properly function in the GameB space. Essentially we must embody the wounded healer archetype. (Please see this site for a brief intro into the archetype: https://frithluton.com/articles/wounded-healer/).
Uncomfortable Spaces
This lead me to an uncomfortable conclusion that I originally resisted when I read Nordic Ideology by Hanzi Freinacht. He asserted that it is the moral obligation of a select few to form communities to carry out their goals. To be clear, he was not writing about GameB and he has his own vision of what a future society should look like. However, there are plenty of similarities between GameB and meta-modernism. This is contrary to the values I held closest to me: open source information, collective intelligence, and democratic ways of organizing. Not to mention the current political climate in the U.S. is a populist one that argues for fighting against “the elites.”
So was I wrong? A little. When I view GameB from his ideas, it starts to make sense why our community has yet to produce anything meaningful in the GameA space beyond intellectual sparing. And no, retweets/down-votes/and likes do not count. I’m talking about real, functioning institutions that are out-competing GameA. It’s not that open source information, collective intelligence, and democratic values are wrong, it’s the timing, scale, and tactics of those concepts that aren’t achieving the tangible results that we are looking for. This seems very apparent if you join the GameB Facebook group or look at many of the comments in the Twitter thread of #GameB. Most of the discussions can’t manage to communicate with each other in a respectful way, let alone excel in teamwork. And this is the group that is supposed to build an omni-win civilization? That is irony my friend.
I hope that critique didn’t hurt too much but there may be a reason for all this madness: people in the GameB space are coming from every walk of life, different political leanings, and at every stage of personal development. This is beautiful and necessary. However, a lot of people at the earlier stages of personal development may cause serious problems at this fragile moment in the movement. Combine this with normal behavioral patterns on social media and you are looking at an ill-tempered group that is taking on the task of building a new way of life. No wonder so many people are communicating in ways that are antithetical to achieving our professed goals. At minimum, we need people who can evaluate concepts from multiple perspectives, know how to evolve their own thinking, and employ non-judgmental awareness while being kind to one another. Perhaps personal development, institutional development, and societal development are causing more conflict with one another than I previously suspected. Yes, I was very naive.
Solutions, anyone?
It is clear to me that we need an “operating system” and an on-boarding process for those like-minded people who wish to join us. Not having this will lead to an influx of people bringing the GameA way of thinking and the GameA way of communicating with each other. This is not productive. It also won’t achieve a movement that is building “something other than GameA.” It is imperative that we improve our way of communication, cooperation, conflict resolution, interpersonal skills, emotional intelligence, introspection skills, and critical thinking. And when all else fails, just be kind.
Our challenge is to out-compete GameA. Therefore it is my view that we need to achieve high levels of these skills and traits. Maintaining and building group cohesion is a must and I believe these are some of the tools that we must utilize in order to do so.
Ok, now what?
Put simply, we must create a TransitionB operating system and an on-boarding process. But how? Since we are all interacting with each other online, a social media site or another online platform must be used. While each platform has its pros and cons, I feel Reedit is the best equipped to sort through promising ideas at scale and making sure bad ideas/interactions are down voted. I am aware of the GameB Reddit groups, GameB Facebook group, #TransitionB on twitter, and the sub-channel TransitionB on discord. However, I wish to discuss purely TransitionB and ProtoB concepts that will lead to something tangible. Therefore I will be creating a sub-Reddit to get the OS/onboarding for TransitionB. Anyone who agrees with my assessment of the problem, and wishes to help, is more than welcome to join.
I am hoping we can open source ideas on creating the operating system and on-boarding process for TransitionB. We can do deep dives on certain subjects and up-vote the best ideas. From there, it is my hope to recruit certain people to form small groups in Discord for each domain they excel in. I see my role as simply managing these different moving pieces and sharing the results with the larger community.
I hope this essay has been a helpful critique to the GameB community with one possible way of acting on a solution. If you disagree or have suggestions, please feel free to let me know!