How, What & Why of playing the game!
Future generations might remember this era of humanity as a time when most of the sports we played necessarily had to have a winner and one or many losers.
This is so deeply ingrained in our culture that feels like a hard rule, a given that cannot be tempered with.
However, to move to the next phase of humanity, we need to actively abandon many win-lose games that we have internalized so deeply. (I use ‘games’ here in a broader, generic sense). There are communities globally (like Game B) that are inviting us to move away from zero sum games that we are stuck in.
As a step towards this, playing sports with a different set of rules and the possibility of a collective win would be worthwhile experiment. Crystal Maze, Takeshi’s castle and the german Telematches were half-way there (pardon the 90s references)
Would this take away from the joy of competing and how it brings out our best? Who will watch sports where everyone is going to win anyways?
I don’t think we need to look at this as an either or. Both these formats can co-exist and people can choose what they want to play on any given day and time. Name your game :)
As a huge fan of culture transformation work, I see the possibility of us changing the rules of the game even as we play it. Constant improvement is not only about HOW we play the game but WHAT game are we playing and WHY are we choosing to play it.
When that starts happening, we’re moving on an entirely different plane.
What would it be as humanity to start shifting the very rules we are playing by, rather than getting better at beating each other at the existing games?
I don’t know if it is possible. But given where we are as a species, it seems increasingly necessary.
