Games We the People Play
by John Kendall Hawkins
See if you can play the hero
.
it is the game of dropping
off the skyrocket of courage
and landingwith you head between your knees
- Lou Hammer, "28" The Book of Games (1986)
.
Way back in my scholarship Grottie days, a mild blue-eyed blond boy vouchsafed me with the wisdom of the German-born Swiss novelist Herman Hesse in the form of his Prize-winning novel, Magister Ludi -- Master of the Game -- aka, The Glass Bead Game. He must have seen something in me. At the time I was wont to lay on the Circle (a lawn at the center of the campus of Groton School) and look up at the stars, even in the daytime, and listen to old man Gammons (retired ESPN sportswriter Peter Gammons' dad) play "Take Me Out to the Ballgame" on the Chapel organ.
Or I would amuse myself watching a pal in the smoking room light his farts on fire with a Bic lighter, eschewing his dares to do said same, one of the other boys (it was an all-boys school then) comically warned people were known to blow themselves up with this activity. I thought of Charles Fort, who a friend had told me about days previously, and the notion of spontaneous combustion. After I dropped out of the school, my pal would turn me on to a "signed copy" of the I Ching. Wouldn't you know it, I drew hexagram 56, The Wanderer. I've been getting it up the ole yinyang ever since in my travels. Sometimes I feel I should have risked everything with that Bic.
Anyway, I was thinking about Magister Ludi recently. Got to thinking these wise guys get together once a year and play a game with beads that reveals, as they play, esoteric patterns of the world that they themselves are stoically disinclined to engage in. Know it all think-tankers back at a time when the Canon was still extant, and so they were imbued with the mystical powers that sympathetic magic brings. (You remember Christmas morn as a starry-eyed kid, the radio playing "I Saw Mommy Kissing Santa Claus," wishing it were true, imagining Dad packing.) Postmodernism has dealt such wise guys a vicious backhand blow, and, frankly, nobody really reads Herman Hesse anymore, except me, as far as I know.
I got a notion to produce a screenplay out of the book; update it. Saw Silicon Valley faces -- Musk, Bezos, Brin and Zuck -- their gatherings on football field-length yachts to discuss the future of all of us, without our input, of course, as they know best, it's not a democratic process, and, consequently, it's none of our business. One of the a**holes is putting implants in pig brains with a view to controlling behavior -- making you think, inevitably, of what might have happened in Orwell's Animal Farm had Napoleon and Mr. Smith got hold of Snowball before he managed to trotsky away. Another quack wants to build gated neighborhoods in outer space. Zuck's in charge of the hivemind. Brin's bringing quantum to the table.
I thought for sure my kids would be keen to join me in writing The Glass Bead Game. But I was wrong. They just looked at me. So, to hell with it. But it did get me further thinking about the games people play. Or, rather, should play, to negotiate our understanding of global doings, to hone our defensive skills, and to beat the snot out of these fools when the sh*t hits the fan for realz and they try to weasel off to New Zealand. If they sneak out, we can arrange for some Maoris to meet them, at their private airport, with the haka and show them what a rugby scrum is when the ball is made of silicon. Try and try their noses into the ground.
While we're waiting for the Great Demise as if it were the Great Godot, it may behoove us to be ready for the rolling pearlharbors ahead. That's what RAND does, what all think tanks do; you're a think tank, if you wanna be. Or you could just let them think for you. Have representative thinkers giving us the poop the way representative government looks after our interests. It's up to you, fellow demo. Me, I hooked up with some "mates" on Zoom (natch) and we played games, bored games (Monopoly and Risk), mind games (Tony was insufferable with his "You're Made!" - a variation of tag - every 15 minutes), and generally talked turkey, finally drawing the conclusion that the following games were worth pursuing as the World Ends ("and a new one begins," yelled Teddy, cup half full), and we passed a virtual bong around from zoomroom to zoomroom until our minds went badaboom and our mouths were non-stop -- really f*cking with the Zoom shifter..
Tony, Teddy, Rhonda, Joy, Carla, and Richard Head all checked in and we got going. I explained the rules (none) and how we were to review together some games each of us had come up in preparation for the world's end, and to play a round or two to get the gist. Wouldn't you know it, Dick just had to tell us about the time he played a survival game with 6 others at summer camp. They had to choose which one would have to stay behind while the others were saved. Dick told us for the upteenth time (he'd related it before) how he immediately shot his hand up and said, "I'll stay." Someone, I think Tony, called him a d*ckhead. One of the women said, "Well, in this survival game, you get to be the only one who leaves. So hoof it."
Then we watched a training video together. In a separate survey, we'd all agreed there would be violence and blood -- especially between coppers and people protesting the end of the world. There were training tapes left over from the '60s. Here, children choose roles -- protester or cop. A surprising number of the youngsters wanted to be cops. I guess, because of the allure of batons. Here it is. Dig it:
After we checked in with each other, to make sure no one was triggered by childhood bashings by cops or parents or other Twinkie-thieving bullies who you want to diediedie, Rhonda kicked us off with her review of Six F*cking Hats, literally, a lateral thinking game so lame that the Zoomsters took turns making obscene gestures as she explained. Except for Teddy, who said, "I suspect it's useful still. I certainly wouldn't discount its value." Yawn.
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