~Adventures in understanding
These game-based adventures offer insight-generating experience, for conscious skill development & hands-on understanding of responsive systems (including “oneself”). Discussion & reflection may expand what’s learned from the play, with added levels of perspective & influence over later situational outcomes.
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Preface (Guide’s Intro): Welcome, friend. In a nutshell, this annex of the Bod L-O-L is dedicated to the art of productive play, enjoyable activity that helps wise participants up, starting with a sense of HOW WE ACTUALLY LEARN. HOW? By DOING, Trying, PLAYING, i.e., experience, practice, trial & error, re-trial & improvement. Whether from chance encounter or intentional inquiry, we learn most, if at all, by doing, paying attention, & making course corrections, i.e., from REPETITION & REVISION, as well as by EXAMPLE; models; REFLECTION; INSPIRATION; & GUIDANCE (or coaching) from others.
“The proof is in the pudding–i.e., the play experienced, along with the insight & subsequent focus (or increase in control) generated.” –Yours Crudely
This annex of the Bod’s L-O-L (On-Line-Library)offers both recipes & overviews. Recipes are the templates for how experience may be structured for maximum insight, learning & skill development, as well as for fun, enjoyment, & camaraderie. These should be especially useful to game-hosts & class managers (i.e., teachers). Overviews add insight & informed guidance to expand perspective for all– readers & thinkers, whether active participants or not. As Einstein’s thought-experiments showed, the mind can usefully imagine what is beyond its ability to practice, do or experience directly. It’s well known that athletes & performers can benefit from mental practice. Similarly, spectators may experience a version of muscle awareness simply observing others in action.
Whether for active performers practicing routines in the mind, or spectators observing performance in action, the mind remains the primary agency at play, both informing & informed by the body & experience. The point here is that visitors may derive some benefits simply by imagining the game-play or exercises described. The greater role mind plays in a particular activity, the greater benefits are likely derived from “virtual” play, i.e., simply imagining one’s choices (actions) & their effects. In many game situations (from tic-tac-toe, checkers, chess, go, on), actual players themselves act out (play) possible choices in the mind en route to choosing ones that seem best. Before a choice is registered, many possibilities co-exist, in other words, even before taking on some “weighting” appropriate to the particular situation. What some physicists may call “quantum field probability waves” collapse into the specific choices made or registered–whether made by conscious, deliberate choice; or, faster than thought, by reflexively informed muscle memory; or from some other variable.
As with an ice skater preparing for a routine, even muscle memory is to some degree subject to the mind’s influence, in other words, including “reminders” that may help focus muscles & attention at key points. For skill-sets that are part of doing, some doing likely helps, in play &/or for real, but so does something we may call “higher awareness,” ways of intentionally guiding one’s activated attention.
The two together–directly informative experience & overview awareness–represent the secret sauce brought to the table by certain amazingly effective game-based foundational exercises, starting with our first two “Adventures”: Dot-dash Challenge & Three-role Puzzle, shedding transformative light on personal & strategic points-of-view…. Given the choice, you’d get to experience these directly, as players, right now. Lacking a manager to set up & direct, you will have to set up & imagine playing for yourself, from the descriptions provided, playing both roles at once–teacher-manager & player-student.
Although actual directions for these two are in the Aha! Breakthroughs room (listed just below this one on the menu, top right, with later “Adventures” on other menu-listed pages further down), introductory background information on each can be found below, starting with #0 & #1.
Key Adventures —
Aha! Breakthroughs: Sudden, mind-opening surprise or your lack of $ back.
~~~0. Doug’s Dots (Douglas Harding’s dot-game & our Dot Dash variations) [in Aha! room];
~~~1: Pop’s Oral Puzzle (challenge to clarify writing, phoning, all directions) [in Aha! room];
~~~2. The Ultimate Advantage Game (key tournament for strategic success) [its own room];
~~~3. Thinking Like aMountain (experimental framework, circle of life) [its own room].
#0: Dot Game: a group challenge
Developed by the late British sage Douglas Harding (On Living Without a Head; Losing Face & Finding Self; et al.), this is about as simple a group challenge as there is, yet with the potential to blow your Aha! mind wide open on progressive levels, perceptual & conceptual, individual person & group, interpreting & integrating what’s learned from solution to the challenge. As starting point, it’s called Adventure #0 to clarify the receptive self, that conscious hole sensory input falls into, along with the lack of boundary between observer & observed. It has been for many (including Yours Crudely) one of the most profoundly transformative single educational exercises ever experienced, as well as the simplest. [Plan about 1/2 hour, +/- 15 minutes, to play & process. ]
~~~#1. Pop’s Oral Puzzle (oral writing, texting, showing) [also in the Aha! room].
A version of this adventure ought to be exercise #1 in every WRITING, COMMUNICATION, & MEDIA course. It may well be the single most effective exercise in any class repertoire, at almost any level, possibly junior high on. It should PRECEDE How-To writing assignments in high school & college classes, as it can give all students paying attention a ‘live’ sense of what works & what doesn’t in communication, particularly when giving directions or describing a sequence of events. It can improve writing performance by orders of magnitude, while sharpening observation & attention skills. Even more basic, it can help make communicators in all forms & media more effective, simply by improving one’s focus on “receiver awareness,” clarifying the receiver’s point-of-view. [Plan anywhere from 30 to 50 minutes, for puzzle & follow-up discussion.]
# 2. The Ultimate Advantage Game [up soon, or available on request]
I first adapted the famous “Prisoner’s Dilemma” format into the Ultimate Advantage game in the early 1970s, running dozens of tournaments over the years, ultimately with hundreds of players (sometimes 50 or more at a time), teen-agers at summer camp to experienced teachers at workshops. The directions & reproducible forms should allow you to run real & imaginary tournaments in the Ultimate Advantage format, with discussion to clarify how synergies can be encouraged in mixed cooperative-competitive contexts (groups & systems), i.e., many, if not most, situations. Players are in for some surprises, most notably in how they may become more effective agents for personal & group success. [Time: 15 minutes for match with small group to hour or more for full tournament with 50 or more.]
#3. Thinking Like a Mountain [incomplete, experimental framework only so far]
With title and central idea from Aldo Leopold’s famous essay, Thinking Like a Mountain, this experimental exercise is about becoming more ecologically aware–not just about separate entities or particular events in time, but also about relationships across time & orders of magnitude. Our little biotic-flow design is still quite primitive, not really a game at all yet, though the experience can shift one’s paradigm from within even so, as players start to feel the life-energy exchange flow through forms in an ecological whole, as distinct from the sense of life as something confined within individuals & their forms. In the field, “thinking like a mountain” involves observation, feeling, reflection, insight, & sense of relationship across entities, forms, orders of magnitude & time-scales. Players may adapt & develop the life-flow format as they see fit (but please share any worthwhile designs & experiences c/o bodlibrary2020@gmail.com. [Time: 5-30 minutes?]
~~~~~~~~………………under the radar AFTER-thoughts…………….
NOTE: The Adventures here were designed to encourage skill development, comprehensive understanding & dynamic insight for people in live groups. They’re collaborative in concept, origin & form, adapting elements pioneered by others. While in many cases best still played in groups, they may also be played as thought experiments, imagining yourself as both guide & participant. (Indeed, the effective guide almost always does just that, imagining from the participant’s perspective.)
The Aha! page starts with Adventure #0, along with a “Dot Dash Variation“ used to assemble sub-groups or “teams.” Based on one of Douglas Harding’s mind-opening, perception-clarifying, relation-deepening point-of-view games, as personally shared with me by him in the early 1970s, & passed on by me to countless others since–sharing what many have considered the single most transformative game experiences (while also one of the simplest.)
Dots has much to say (even without words!) about the relation between the unique individual & the functional group. The preparation & playing out need take no more than 5 or 10 minutes, with the main impact from insights triggered in the follow-up, which starts by asking the group, “What might we realize, learn or conclude from what just happened?” “What was the main point of it?” , to which there are a half-dozen or so key answers, some quite profound, especially the simplest. Harding’s personal experience in the Himalayas led him to degrees in Buddhist philosophy, which he found inadequate for transmitting the key experience, leading him to develop simple game-like exercises for that purpose. (There’s at least one website still dedicated to his work, with follow-up activities for those who want to pursue the Harding approach to “enlightenment” further.)
I consider the Dot Game Challenge as key introduction to awareness, in the form of clarified perception. The three-way POP’s Puzzle Challenge, then, offers a key introduction to communication, providing a framework for dramatically demonstrating differences in the the primary roles of communication, with invaluable hands-on feel for some basic differences between what works & what doesn’t.
Then we take the lesson up a level with materials for (& discussion of) the “Ultimate Advantage Game”–our adaptation of the game-theory classic usually mis-framed as “Prisoner’s Dilemma.” Our adapted format, developed in & out of formal settings over many decades, sheds light on how synergy may (or may not) emerge (be encouraged or discouraged) in self-organizing systems, providing a window on dynamic factors implicit in many interactions….
These “Adventures” are also key to courses offered at B-odd College (www.bodlibrary.xyz, same address as this except for the dash/hyphen between Bod & Library in site address). Our completely unaccredited tuition-free non-institution of higher learning without walls, ceilings or floors, is open to all, passing (&/or by-passing) entry forms in conjunction with practice at DIYU (Do It Yourself University). Currently, the course offered is for teachers (teaching themselves &/or others): ACT 101: Awareness, Communication, Thinking provides an activity-based, coordinated & progressive framework for skill-set development.
Games & play are so intimately involved in learning, only a small hyphen distinguishes Bod Library’s annex for game theory (i.e., here, www.bod-library.xyz) from B-odd College’s virtual campus (www.bodlibrary.xyz), where the course uses & expands on the games featured here. ACT 101, for example, is an acronym for Awareness-Communication-Thinking, three progressively inter-related skill sets that develop together from a partnership of overview & exercise, practice & understanding. The course represents a step-by-step adventure in clearer observing & reporting, thinking & writing, ways for expanding awareness, understanding & effectiveness, three distinct, but closely related kinds of intelligence.
Everything has effects, while effectiveness must be measured in quality of results. Although engineers may measure quality in microns while financial analysts use some other variety of numbers, the most important qualities aren’t measurable except in non-quantitative depths & heights of experience.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~Footnotes
#00: Past Passwords Puzzles (a footnote)
This page & the Aha! room each previously had password puzzle challenges necessarily solved for entry, based on “clue sequences.” These challenges were eliminated as a distraction. Though no longer necessary for entry, you can test yourself on them here.
Polly Wanna Password Cracker #1: previously for entry to this page:
hint a: Simply the simplest, 1st, uncapped PW that’s not a number.
hint b: Re-read hint a.
hint c: Re-read hint a again, until “a” sinks in.
hint d: Use a dictionary, if necessary, preferably one in alphabetical order; & start with the first entry or word. [I’m not sure about your dictionary, but mine starts with “a.“]
hint e: The answer may appear if you press shift key & then bring the cursor over the line below.
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If you’ve got it, Congrats. You’re in. Give yourself an A (but uncapitalize it). You’ve solved one of the simplest password challenges ever invented. It was not designed to keep anyone out, just warm the cockles of your noggin up & tickle your playful spirit. The next is almost as easy, though 4 times as long! Solve it & the real breakthroughs can start with Game Challenge #0, on the Aha! page (next up).
Polly Wanna Password Cracker #2 (originally for theAha! page (4 x harder but just as easy!)
Password to open the Aha! page:
hint a: Of the 4 required characters, the two in odd places (1st & 3rd) are the same one-letter words you already know, but–
b: The first of these two alone is capitalized.
c: It’s what you might exclaim when you realize the solution!
d: Doubling the last of its two syllables should give you a laugh (as in a “haha”).
e: The character in the last (4th) place is neither letter nor number, but an emphatic punctuation!
f: May the lighthouse at Exclamation Point shed its high light on thee!!!
g: Gee whiz, doesn’t Exclamation Point take your breath away?
h: Although there are 4 characters, “h” is the middle letter.
i: By now, by the Aye Sea, you must be saying Aha! (over & over).
[If you’re still having trouble &/or suffering from exploding head syndrome, you may not be quite ready for the Aha! zone.]
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