Ludique: game-playing and fun

Marrying Strategic White Holes with Problematic Black Holes (Part #8)

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The argument above suggested a relationship between axiomatique and resolutique, with the former being strangely implicit in the latter. Another strange relationship meriting attention is that between resolutique and "irresolutique". As noted in relation to imaginatique , the "shadow" of the resolutique is what might be termed the irresolutique (Imaginatique and Irresolutique, 2007).

Whilst the resolutique may indeed be a "global approach at every level of societies within a global perspective to interactive solutions destined to solve problems", as a new enabling methodology, it also carries the challenge of resolve, resolution and political will -- and irresolution as the basic lack thereof. Whilst international institutions engender a plethora of "resolutions" in response to the global problematique, it is only too clear that this is effectively a form of game-playing with only token convergence on effective implementation. The dynamic could even be explored as an art form skillfully framed by blame-gaming of every form (The Art of Non-Decision-Making, 1997).

The earlier discussion suggested a relationship between irresolutique and game-playing amongst those mobilized in support of any collective project, as is typical amongst those within any institution, between its departments, or in any process of inter-institutional, inter-disciplinary or inter-faith "collaboration". This might be usefully framed with the term "ludique" in the light of the seminal text on the matter (Johan Huizinga, Homo Ludens: a study of the play element in culture, 1955).

It is difficult to overestimate the focal role played by playfullness and humour in sustaining meaning in daily life, even under the most disastrous conditions. Less evident is the nature of their role in other domains (Humour and Play-Fullness: essential integrative processes in governance, religion and transdisciplinarity, 2005). How does such a function translate into the enabling operacy of a resolutique? A central concern is why people worldwide enjoy humour, as variously explored (Matthew M. Hurley, et al, Inside Jokes: using humor to reverse-engineer the mind, 2011; Marvin Minsky, Jokes and their Relation to the Cognitive Unconscious, 1980). Does it function as an enabling catalyst for fruitful intercourse? The study by Hurley is relatively unique in asking what is hnmour for from an evolutionary perspective.

Such subtle possibilities of transforming the irresolutique into the resolutique need to be more effectively understood. Properly framed this may be more a matter of "guiding the canoe" than "pushing the river" -- an exercise in strategic aikido. It is more powerful imagery which could prove the best catalyst for such reframing, both amongst elites and amongst the wider public, and as a vehicle for the transfer of insights between them. The information tools generated by industrial society need to be adapted to capture insight, and to carry and present the wisdom of all ages, in a manner directly relevant to the strategy-empowering exercise required at all levels of society.

Whilst game-playing is felt to be very real, this is typically not rendered explicit in the articulation or assessment of that collaboration, or in the manner in which it was originally designed. It is an emergent dynamic which effectively functions as an attractor that is typically of greater significance than those of the explicit objectives associated with progress towards the resolutique. It is the stuff of daily office gossip and bureaucratic game-playing: who is "up" or "in", who is "down" or "out", and who successfully did what to whom, and the success or failure of any actions in revenge. It typically interfaces with unethical operations, whether minor or major, possibly even criminal in nature -- a form of "black economy". These rarely ever figure in any reporting of reasons for the problematic performance of a collective endeavour. It is "real" but "implicit" -- and may well be the "only game in town".

The question discussed separately is how fruitfully to relate these dynamics (Interrelating problematique, resolutique, "imaginatique" and "irresolutique", 2007). Clearly, imagination plays a central role in assessing play and the opportunities it represents. Irrespective of its cynical condemnation in any strategic initiative, it may well be that it is in terms of game-playing that opportunities are assessed -- hence the extensive study of game-playing in relation to the policy sciences.

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