Editorial: Game On
I’m not a group person. This was made plain from a very early age, when I was kicked out of Brownies for organising a very vocal protest against arbitrary age restrictions on camping trips. The troop leader called my mother in and solemnly suggested that another after-school activity might suit me better. Start as you mean to go on, I suppose, but it’s always been hard to reconcile my love of people with my dislike of highly structured groups.
The notion of why we join groups and take part in movements has been brought home to me with great force with this issue. Traditionally, we join groups to find a sense of belonging and purpose. To align ourselves with their histories and ideologies, to feel tied to a thread that runs through past, present and future. We join groups because we believe that there is strength in numbers.
But as with so many things today the concept of ‘group’ is changing and I am indebted to Paul Hawken (p24) for his clarity and vision about the global group, the ‘movement of movements’ that so many of us have intentionally or unintentionally become a part of.
This movement, which is clamouring for environmental sustainability, social and economic justice and health and wellbeing for all, is a true bottom-up phenomenon. It is defined not by a charismatic leader, a catchy name, an ‘ism’ or ‘ology’, but by the unique non-traditional way in which it approaches the task of changing the world – with a focus on fluidity and connectivity, and the complex process of relationship.
If life is a game then the participants in this new global movement are helping to reinvent the rules of play to be more appropriate to the world we live in today and the complex problems we are tackling. No single group would be able to tackle effectively the diverse problems – CO 2emissions, a sustainable food supply, child poverty, animal rights, the destruction of indigenous cultures, crime and toxic chemicals in the environment, to name but a very few – that we are confronted with every day. Positive change can only be achieved through a fluid, connected network of groups and individuals able to see the smaller and bigger pictures simultaneously. And the concept of playing is appropriate – because, far from of being the isolated, backwards-looking Luddites they are often portrayed as, members of the new global movement find joy in embracing change because that’s the only way to keep the game going.
Contrast this with the games that most of us have been brought up with, the ones that define modern culture: economic growth, politics, war and exploitation of the natural world. All these games are built on the premise that there will always be winners and losers. Survival of the fittest rules OK.
People playing these kinds of games say things like ‘These are the rules’, ‘This is how it’s always been done’, ‘Nobody has ever complained before” and “We were operating within the law’.
But members of the movement of movements play differently. They love complexity. They see all the glorious shades of grey. They like to ask ‘Why?’ They are inclined to say ‘Show me how it works’, and when something doesn’t make sense they are not embarrassed to say ‘I don’t get it’. Most importantly, they aren’t afraid to suggest ‘Why don’t we try it another way?’
That last bit is important because try it another way we must. If we are to keep the most important game of all going, our habits, our relationships with each other and the world we live in must change – and be all the better for it. The people writing for this month’s Ecologist have all joined the movement of movements. But more participants are urgently needed, because saving the planet, preserving its beauty and fragility and complexity, really is the only game in town.
- This editorial first appeared in the July/August 2007 edition of the Ecologist.
