An Introduction to Game B

Game B is a Vision

Stewart Brand, 1968:

“We are as gods. We might as well get good at it.”

Stewart Brand, 2015:

“We are gods. We’d better get good at it.”

Game A is everything humanity has been doing for the past ten thousand years. Now we are coming up against its hard limits. The existing order is breaking down.

Game B is whatever is going to come next.

In spite of today’s apocalyptic headlines, and the usual doom-sayers everywhere, we of Game B are convinced that a brighter future is possible. Sooner or later, a new set of social systems will emerge out of the chaos of today. We intend to make it the best we can.

Would you like to join us and help build a bright future?

Game B is a Community

Ilya Prigogene:

"When a system is far from equilibrium, small islands of coherence have the capacity to shift the entire system."

We at Game B are a community of all occupations: thinkers and doers, bodhisattvas and businesspeople, economists and ecologists, visionaries and pragmatists. Working together, we aim to create “islands of coherence” that grow to become a great attractor — a way of living that succeeds and spreads because it is resilient, sustainable, and more effective than the status quo.

Why do we think our non-hierarchic, bottom-up, self-organizing approach can work? Because this is the way the universe has been working for nearly 14 billion years. It’s how we’ve gotten where we are today.

Game B currently has working groups in economics, currency and monetary theory, the future of cities, political meta-modernism and nation-states, permaculture, parenting, and intentional communities. We also hold presentation events and social gatherings. As our community grows, there will be many additional working groups. Would you like to start one in your field of expertise?

Cooperation and collaboration both within and across groups are ongoing. We share knowledge, synthesize different viewpoints, provide resources and work together to bring our ideas to life. Out of the chaos of today we intend to forge a new “social operating system.”

You are invited to join us, and help build a world that we would wish to live in ourselves, and that we will be glad to pass on to our descendants.

Game B is a Solution to the Wicked Problems of Today

E.O. Wilson:

“We have Paleolithic emotions, medieval institutions, and god-like technology.”

No one of us by ourselves knows how to avoid the looming disasters that face us, or how to build a society of tomorrow that we would all wish to see. But we are certain that it is possible — if we come together and work together. Our certainty is grounded in hard evidence. Somehow, systems of ever greater complexity that self-organize from the bottom up have been emerging ever since the Big Bang. After fourteen billion years, there is no reason to assume that this process will stop now.  Evolution is not done with us. A next new order of society will eventually emerge.

That’s the good news.

The bad news is that periods of transition like today, when an old order is breaking down and the next new order is just emerging, are generally volatile. Turbulent. Chaotic. Even apocalyptic. In human societies these can be full-blown Dark Ages. We are in one of these apocalyptic transition phases now.  

But there’s more good news. We understand the processes of complex, self-organizing systems like never before. Today we have a handle on such processes as nonlinearity, second-order effects, probability, networks, holism, symbiosis and evolution. And, critically, we have more tools for self-knowledge than ever before. Our challenge is to use what we know to minimize the suffering during this time of turbulent change, and to maximize the beneficence of the next emerging world order.

The various systems we have tried in the twentieth century are not capable of tackling the new crises that face us. We urgently need to evolve new solutions while keeping the best of the old. Many possibilities are already being tried. Concepts such as cosmo-localism, new economic zones, the regenerative movement, charter cities and an understanding of game theory may provide a way forward, but they need to be tried and tested. In the Game B community, we experiment with these and more.

As yet no one really knows what will actually work, or how the next world order will unfold. We need to try out every good idea, find which ones actually work, and scale up. We have already begun.

Come play with us as we learn and grow wiser together.