A rulebook for society — a possibility or a pipe dream?

When I was 27, I founded a small consulting company with eight friends who worked and played together. We maintained a file on our shared server, Official_Rules_of_the_Game.doc. If one of us missed a meeting, the penalty was a beer point which we kept track of in Beerpoints.xls. Next time we went to a bar after a heavy workday, the bill was distributed based on the points. This procedure, among others, was documented in the rulebook. It was a successful company. I still wonder why it failed.

I copied the rulebook file from machine to machine, but it got lost somewhere over the years. I remember it contained twelve pages of text, two diagrams to describe complex workflows, and it went through 32 revisions. To this day I’m not sure if it served us well or we failed exactly because it gave us a false sense of security. Is it possible to write a rulebook for the messy ways we collaborate?

Boardgames were not fashionable a few decades ago. Only nerds played. Skinny boys with thick glasses who lounge in front of ever-blue monitor lights. They never got laid.

That time is gone. Those boys have taken over. They got rid of their ridiculous glasses, came out of the underground hideout, and they don’t look geeky at all. The heaven on earth is theirs and they dictate the rules of the game.

Gamers may stab you in the back when you’re impersonating an ork that stands in the way to the treasure trove. They probably will. But in real life they are so nice I’d trust my newborn baby on any of them without checking their social media profile, even without knowing their name. Their souls are as clean as that of the newborn.

I have a theory why. Games have clear rules. A chess piece can’t occupy two fields, boy, you have to make up your mind where you place your rook. Is it a checkmate? Is it not? There should be no question about it, a half-checkmate doesn’t exist. If your friend breaks a rule, you can call her out. You’ll never see players debate whether a move was correct or who won the game.

When I was a child, I visited a park close to where we lived. It had a row of robust tables cast of concrete with an uncomfortable bench on either side. Retired men from the neighborhood were sitting here from morning till dusk. They played chess.

I joined a chess club at the age of nine. I learned chess theory, a few common openings, such as the Italian and the Spanish opening, the Queen’s gambit, and the Sicilian defense. While watching their games, I smiled at the old men in the park who made elementary mistakes in their very first moves.

I gathered confidence and asked them if I could play a game with the winner. Why not, one of them said.

My opponent asked if I wanted to begin with one move or two. I knew old-fashioned players opened with two. It was clearly a stupid thing, the rulebook clearly stated players always make a single move. I didn’t quote the official rules, I just said “one.”

I chose the Italian opening, the one I knew best. My opponent didn’t play by the book, an obvious mistake. He beat me in under twenty moves.

The FIDE rules of chess say it’s a draw if the remaining material is insufficient for a checkmate. It’s impossible to checkmate a king with a king and a knight only. What if your opponent insists she can beat you with a king and a knight? You sit and push around the pieces until she realizes it.

A new boardgame is played 60–70 times before it gets to the market. Game designers do their best to avoid any ambiguity in the rules. Ambiguity leads to anxiety and fight which in turn lead to a bad game experience.

When everyday life is so messy that it wears me out, I visit a boardgame club. I play Arkham Horror with any stranger. I play Secret Hitler with old friends I trust. I play Battlestar Galactica with strangers I’m sure I’ll never see again. In that musty underground room I’m the horrible person I’ve never dared to be.

Playing boardgames is as safe as to go to a self-help group. Minus the emotional burden of having to open up and having to tolerate while others do so.

We learn in kindergarten how to play with others. Play nice if possible. Did Johnny steal the ball from you? Don’t grab his arm, don’t push him around. Follow the rules to get it back.

We learn in preschool to sit still and listen to the others. When a proposal is made we vote on it. If the group decision benefits us, we try not to look too triumphant, and if we lose to the majority, we’re supposed to stay cooperative, no sulky behavior, please.

When I go to the movie alone, it takes me 5 minutes to find out what to watch. When I go with my partner, it takes us 10 minutes. When it’s a small group of friends, it may take between 15 and 30 minutes to come to an agreement. When it’s more than five people… I never do that. After half an hour of “I’m not willing to watch anything with Edward Norton” and “romantic comedies bore me to death”, I decide to go alone. 30 minutes wasted plus 5 minutes my own quick decision, that’s 35.

A man from the council attends the condo meeting, as 5 of the 28 apartments in the building are council flats. The representative is a Colin-faced man whose balding has left him with only two tufts of hair behind his ears. He clearly has plenty of practice managing condominium meetings. I suspect that some of those present never finished primary school. There are minutes, and there are motions. A quote has to be obtained for the roof insulation. But, interrupts one of the residents, from several independent contractors! The Colin-faced man nods as if to say that’s only natural, quite what he had in mind, too.

Mrs. Smith, the old lady from the second floor, struggles to her feet and launches into a speech about how long her flat has been damp because of the leaky roof, and how many times she had voiced her complaint to no avail. How can people just ignore an old woman like that? Back when her husband was still alive, he sorted these things right out, and then Mister Minit came and fixed it! Who’s Mister Minit? — asks the twenty-year-old girl from the ground floor, who is studying art history at the Catholic university. It’s hard to tell if she’s poking fun or really doesn’t know. Mrs. Smith waves her hand and goes on. People start fidgeting and casting hypnotic gazes at the man from the council to use his official capacity to stop the tirade. He finally has enough, too, and when the old lady loses momentum, he interjects. Thank you for your contribution, we will certainly put it in the minutes. Minutes, get away with you, Mrs. Szabó cries and tries to get the floor back, but the representative keeps talking. And we will do everything we can to resolve the problem.

Whenever at least twenty people gather together, there is always a Mrs. Smith from the second floor. If all goes well, there’s someone there with the skill to fade her out like a DJ does with a club anthem that is just too long.

The parliamentary procedure is a French minuet of the rational and erudite minds. Mr. Jones raises a hand to signal he has something to share. The chairperson acknowledges it. Mr. Jones rises and reads his fine proposal in a flat tone to emphasize he speaks his mind rather than his emotions. The chairperson restates the motion. Mr. White has an objection. Mr. Jones and Mr. White debate the issue, Mr. Black, Ms. Green, and Mr. Orange chime in. The participants vote. The chairperson announces the result. One step closer to the truth.

Players get a wage for entertaining us with their graceful movements. “Graceful” here means to follow the rules. Rules represent the limitations. We all face limitations in life: I can’t cheat on my wife; you can’t kill the dog next door when it barks too loud every freaking night, you can’t kill your neighbor, either; he can’t push the old lady away on the escalator; she can’t be late from school, from church, from the office. We can’t fly, oh, God, we can’t. We’re willing to pay others to see how they overcome obstacles.

Election is a symbolic act, its purpose is not to influence the future of the country but to give you the illusion you’re in control. Your sole input is a check mark in a box every four years. Imagine raising a child in a way you can make a single decision once in a leap year — which school to attend, which person to marry. You don’t even come up with the choices, you only pick one of the three presented to you. Would you consider yourself a parent or a bystander, then?

Professional players have no other role in our lives but to entertain us. Don’t tell them, that would make them bitter. They wouldn’t believe you anyway. For them life is about unlocking the next level. Beat the champion in their current league, get to the top three, get promoted. They are so serious about it which makes it real fun for us to watch them.

They say a smart woman can make her husband believe he makes the decisions.

Parliamentary debate is a symbolic act. Participants believe they make decisions in the best interests of the citizens. We, the citizens, believe the same. Real decisions are made outside the play field, they don’t follow the rules of the game.

Democracy may be an imperfect system, it most probably is, there’re also flaws in how it’s implemented, we’re humans after all. But members of the parliament do represent us, otherwise they wouldn’t be reelected. It’s in their best interest to represent us. Participants look after their selfish interests, but here’s the beauty of the system: they’re incentivized to serve the common good. Abuse of power gets revealed and dictators are overthrown, well, most of the time.

The last two paragraphs are the red pill and the blue pill of our parliamentary democracy.

If you take the blue pill, you’ll want to improve the system. You value the basic idea of making group-decisions in a democratic way, we just have to polish the practice.

If, however, you take the red pill, you’ll be left with questions. How does the system work at all? How are large-scale decisions made?

Is it possible to write a rulebook for the messy ways we collaborate? Is it possible to take both pills?

(Thanks to Zsuzsanna Szvetelszky, Daniel Nagy, and Bruno Fuchs)