The world behind the game 

By Geert-Jan van der Wolf Me-We game philosopher/ developer 

Introduction

The Me We game is a board game for up to 4 people. 12 players. The game was developed from the need to make clear that it is possible for people to create a world together in which people can live in joyful, peaceful freedom. While enjoying that freedom, they live in the abundance of well-being and prosperity. Well-being and prosperity that is present every moment of the day. For many people, this is a dream, a utopia. Where both dream and utopia evoke a negative experience. Dreams are deception and utopia, well, it’s just unrealistic.

We, as makers of the Me We board game, disagree with the generally used way of thinking about the world and people in particular. We believe it is possible. By playing the game, you can experience it for yourself.

There is a difference between experiencing and understanding. The difference is that you can experience things without knowing exactly what you are experiencing. Which in itself is fine in our opinion. For example, you can simply experience a film. By no means do you have to fully ‘understand’ a film to find it a fantastic, hilarious, incomprehensible, crappy or brilliant film? You can just experience the film. We believe seeing that movie changed your life. No matter how small that change is. We believe you can speak of your life before the movie and your life after the movie. In order to clarify how your life has changed now, at some point you will have to give words to the “Why?” you like the movie … This involves knowledge and expertise. Then knowledge areas such as cinematography (how do I use images to tell stories), dramaturgy (how do I tell an appealing, entertaining story), psychology, sociology, peasant understanding, awareness of one’s own self-image, etc. are needed to make that clarity, to gain.

It is exactly the same as the game. You can play it. After playing you will find the game fun, exciting, entertaining, stupid, worthless or start again right away. So addictive. You don’t have to do anything to gain that experience. However, if you want to clarify exactly why you think it is… you will have more to investigate. One of the things you have to investigate is “What worldview does the game actually use?” This text, this book (you), tells you about that world view.

Preface

A world view is comprehensive when it comes to the world as we know it as people. However, a world view is part of something. It is part of a life vision, a philosophy of life. A world view is bigger than the world because it also says something about the world outside the world. We are used, at least in the West of the world, to look at our lives and what happens in them as concrete, real events. Houses, food, people, clothes. All tangible and visible. We even recognize intangible things like poetry. However, poetry is ‘tangible’ again because it consists of words in a language. Sounds we can hear, the language we know. That’s why we (Western) people have a hard time with feelings. We will all effortlessly recognize that being in love, being angry, being happy affect how people are. That it affects how they act. But what exactly are feelings is a question. It is a question because we cannot see, smell or touch feelings anywhere. Medical technology has come up with all kinds of things through which feelings can be deduced from all kinds of changes in human physiology. Yet it remains impossible to take a photo of, for example, falling in love. At the same time, that is also incorrect. There are now many photos of people who are clearly in love or who love each other a lot. What we see are people who sit, stand, touch, and many more of those things in a certain way. When we hear all those signals, attitudes, words, we know: “They are (radically) in love!”. Yet we don’t “see” falling in love. Nor can we grab it with those people.

This digression about falling in love, about feelings, aims to tell that the creators of the Me-We game believe that feelings are important. Their importance lies in the influence they have on how people behave. The Me-We world is all about how people behave. That is the basis on which everything is based. The concrete visible behaviour of people. More on that later. Before the Me-We world can be expanded, it is important to mention a few other things. It is about insights that we as humans have gained. Gained because we have scientifically searched for it.

One of the scientific insights that play a role in the worldview of the Me-We world is Chaos theory. You may know this theory from the commonly used example: the butterfly effect. In that example of the Chaos theory, it is said that a butterfly in Mexico flies up from a flower. This event brings an air swirl into the air that eventually leads to a hurricane in China. In essence, this theory says that every event with every other event that follows is connected by cause and effect. However, it is so intertwined that it is (still) impossible for us humans to find the first cause of an event. Where the first cause was also a consequence of a similar chain of events. The makers of the Me-We game also consider this theory applicable to human behaviour. Everything people do affects how the world is right now.

Chaos theory also influences in another way. According to the creators of the Me-We game, all things people do are of equal importance. However small, an action by a person can lead to major consequences. We cannot determine that in advance. The consequence of this mindset is that all people are equal. That all people matter.

A second scientific insight that the makers of the Me-We game deem of great value are Complexity Theory. The complex comes from the Latin word complexus. Complexus means composite or intertwined. Complexity theory is used, for example, to understand the behaviour of birds flying in a flock. Complexity theory has given us human insight that every bird does not take the entire flock into account at all. Each bird only takes into account his / her neighbours. By adapting to this and also using their own flight path, the birds start to move as they move. Only from a greater distance do you see completely different shapes and movements. This mechanism is something that the creators of the Me-We game believe also applies to people in a community. People don’t consider everyone else in their community. They take into account the people they count as their “neighbours”. These can be physical neighbours, more likely they are their imaginary neighbours. People from their family, relatives, association, work, school and other groups that people count themselves to. In fact, people move differently within different groups. The behaviour of every person in the group creates group behaviour. Group behaviour is like a flock of birds. You can see, experience that behaviour. It is the composite, intertwined behaviour of all those people together. That composite behaviour of the group can again be the initial cause of a chain of events through Chaos theory.

The Theory of Complexity once again emphasizes the importance of the individual. Every person in the world matters. The behaviour that this person display influences the world as it is concrete. No one excluded.

These two scientific insights that we have acquired as humans are elementary in the Me-We world, the world behind the Me-We game.