Game1: Vision and Collaboration

Of the traits that friends sometimes have, one that I consider most invaluable is their willingness and ability to collaborate on a better, truer shared vision. (I consider this something very different than knowledge share.) The best explanation I have for how essential I consider this is a metaphor I learned from a program on Shark Week. (That's a Discovery Channel week of shark-only content that American nerds compete to obsess most about.)

During WWII, a ship was torpedoed and sank in the Pacific. The waters were shark-infested, and while the men did have rubber life rafts, they were the kind which is just a raft-sized inner tube you hold onto. They were no real protection from the sharks, and the men were unable to do anything as hours turned to days and, one at a time, men would disappear, dragged downward. With death all around them, it became increasingly important to *do something*, in order to give it all meaning. Some of the men drank the salt water, and went crazy, and started shouting and twitching before they died. Others just gave up, let go and sank. And one group, wearing life-jackets, found some comfort by striking out in a single-file line, slowly swimming one after another, each man pretending that he knew--and somehow at the same time, really believing--that there was an island up ahead. And to keep things fair, they took turns at the front of the line, where they could see the open sea, and where they would have to keep up the pretense for the others' sake.

That wasn't much of a shared vision. It was completely false, and it required the men to exert energy swimming when they should have stayed still to conserve their strength waiting for rescue. But it kept them together and gave them purpose in the face of fear and death, and so it probably kept some of them from drinking the sea water, or just letting themselves sink. If you consider the circ**stances they were working in uniformed strangers, surrounded by fear, by the sudden death of shark attack, and by the slow death of dehydration. So maybe it was actually quite an accomplishment, considering.

In comparison, considering our situation of relative ease, our own shared vision, and our willingness to work together to build it--despite our occasional volunteer work or that one time we read a feminist magazine cover-to-cover--well, we might come off to a disadvantage. At any rate, among my friends I especially treasure those who are committed to building a better, truer shared vision. Whether it's a woman friend asking me to consider if claiming things were better in the US a hundred years ago (when American women couldn't vote or sue their husbands) is downright offensive, or a friend stubbornly dragging me outside to experience the simple joy of gardening, I feel elevated by these friends when they take the time to find out about my beliefs, and to show me the respect of disagreeing with me, and trying to change my mind for the better. That feeling of elevation in a shared project is one of the best in the human repertoire, and both a great tool for getting groups of people to work for change.

It's also a legitimate goal in itself, if only because the sharks, while they are sometimes further off, are never really gone.

To play Game1:
http://www.urgentevoke.com/profiles/blogs/game1-play-power-evocation