There is a future society I'd like to be part of, but I cannot quite see its outline. I've gathered here notes for three societies, an ongoing exploration of different social values and of the rituals which might reproduce them. The rituals and games here have been tried, have been tested, their instructions refined. Many are played regularly. But the societies that could hold them together are not (yet) real.

Within each society grouping, the first games listed are good for beginners, then harder games, and lastly those requiring advanced training. A few of these rituals (as noted) are by other designers. A few appear in more than one grouping. -- Joe

Before you, in boxes,a library of rituals and group games

Rituals of Aspiration

A response to startup culture. Practices of doubt endurance, nobility, boldness, and escalation; aiming at a culture of nuanced, humble endeavors.

I travel between San Francisco--home of a naive and destructive optimism--and Berlin, with less naivete, but also less vision. Can we build a group with the advantages of both? I guess that this means being bold (willing to consider bold moves), doubtful (willing to examine all of your hypotheses about impact and society), noble (not trying to be special but to bring your best to each interaction), and escalatory (with the "yes and" instinct from improv theater so we can explore the consequences of silly ideas together).

--Joe

training

Cocounseling by Harvey Jackins

A timer is set, and one player expresses ("discharges") his current emotional state. The other gives him attention and prompts him if he starts to go into stories, analysis, the past or the future, anything that's not his current emotional state. The attending player may also prompt for bigger modes of emotional expression. When the timer dings, they swap roles.

Key values
doubt endurancetenderness
Play during
rendezvous

Hopeless but worth considering

A quadrant is drawn on a whiteboard. The y-axis runs from Hopeless → Hopeful, and x-axis from Dumb → Worth Considering Strategies. Players call out world issues or concerns that they believe are hopeless but worth considering. The group decides where on the graph these issues belong. The goal is to find a concern feels hopeless for those in the room, but also seems worth strategizing about by those in the room, the speaker gets a point.

Key values
nobility
Play during
group discussions

Clarifying Questions

Each player shares a concern or aspiration present in their life right now. The person to their left gets to ask ONE clarifying question, and the sharer answers. After ONE clarifying question, someone else presents a new concern/aspiration. If a player thinks a question is particularly insightful or shrewd, they might high-five the question-asker.

Key values
doubt endurancegrace
Play during
group discussions

Director by Author unknown

Standing in a circle, each person has a chance to describe an image or a scene they'd like to see enacted, and the rest of the group has a minute or so to try to create that scene.

Key values
roomfeel attunementtimingtenderness
Play during
group fun

Dream Teams

Players take turns sharing a concern or aspiration present in their life right now. After each person shares, another player responds with a “dream team” -- a list of either specific people or specific professions that would be useful in neutralizing the concern/fulfilling the aspiration. Players should take the concern/aspiration at face value and work to find a dream team that would help. They should not try to talk the sharer out of the concern.

Key values
boldness
Play during
group discussions

Inquiry by Byron Katie Reid

Group members identify the perspectives or beliefs behind their stress, and explore which stressful feelings come out of them, whether those perspectives or beliefs originated in childhood, and what life would look like without them. See thework.com

Key values
boldnessdoubt endurancenobility
Play during
rendezvous

inductions

In their memory

Players go around the circle, and everyone shares how they'd like to be remembered after they die. They may share the epitaph they want on their tombstone, the first lines of their obituary, etc. THEN, a player or two are randomly chosen and ritually killed. The rest of the group decides on a memorial object or action to create in memory of that player. The player gets to return later and experience their memorial. As time allows, another player is killed, and so on.

Key values
boldness
Play during
group fun

Applause Walk

Two people go for a walk in silence. When one player stops to notice something, the other player positions themselves besides them and they contemplate the object together. After a few minutes, they clap for the object. Optionally, one of them my modify the scene in someway and recontemplate. Otherwise, they continue and find a new object.

Key values
timingroomfeel attunement
Play during
rendezvous

recruitment tests

Reality prototyping

A stack of blank index cards goes in the middle of the group. A timer is set for 10 or more minutes. Everyone starts with a minute or so in silence, and then they pick up a card and write something that could be done, by one of the other group members, that they think would be interesting for the group. This instruction is written on a card and placed face down. After the first minute, everyone balances their time roughly equually between three activities: (1) looking around and appreciating whatever is happening; (2) picking up a face-down card and performing whatever instruction is written on it; or (3) noticing something else that it would be nice if someone did it, and writing a new instruction on a new card.

Key values
roomfeel attunementtiminggrace
Play during
group fun

Empowering Redesign Game

When the group wishes to practice empowering design, or the development of deep metrics, the following may be a good structure: Review the basics. Someone can go through the companion worksheet and gather from the crowd new examples of unnecessary concerns, weird thinking styles, and distorted ways of relating to people, to refresh everyone on the terminology we’ve found useful. It is also useful to remind the crowd that to design our lives and relationships through technology is an unfamiliar activity, very different from designing screens. E.g. "We didn't come here to do traditional design – laying out rectangles, interactions, or other things we’re already good at. This is a new practice.” Identify some lifestyle distortions. Some members of the group will volunteer to be “users.” These people will take a moment to write down a description of how their lives have been distorted by some software: whether they find themselves using software when they would rather be offline, or communicating and relating in different ways than they might like, etc. They use the “unnecessary concerns, weird thinking styles, and distorted ways of relating to people” terminology in describing these distortions. Circulate as designers and see how to repair the software. The remainder of the group will play the role of designers trying to repair the software and eliminate these distortions, aligning the users’ technology use with what matters to them. Designers may interview their user about their lives and usage and about how the user wants to relate to friends, what they want to think about, etc. Capture the best work. If promising designs arise, there should be someone in the group whose job it is to capture them, in paper prototype form, for the shared dropbox folder of the movement, and to notify others in the movement to tweet about them or to arrange things so that the redesigns are likely to be considered by the companies who make the redesigned software. Some members of the group may want to take on the task of further refining the designs for presentation in a gallery.

Key values
nobilitydoubt endurance
Play during
group discussions

core practices

Hyperactive listening

A game where people bring their hopes, fears, or plans, and a team of listeners does live, playful research and simulations.

Key values
doubt endurancegraceboldnessnobility
Play during
group discussions

Doubt Club

Structure for a monthly event giving business leaders a safe space for thinking and talking about possible negative impacts of their work, and their self-doubts.

Key values
doubt endurancenobility
Play during
group discussions

initiations

Nut or Fish

Contemplate a big life choice with a stranger, then make a commitment to one another and seal it by eating an almond or a sardine.

Key values
doubt enduranceboldness
Play during
group discussions

Rituals of Brick and Bone

Aiming at the reinvention of public space interaction. Focusing on timing, spacial attunement, and escalation.

Behind the cities that we live in and their pedestrian patterns, there is a sense of another, ideal city, where people may live and interact very differently. We are able to engineer glimpses, "the penetration of the everyday by the marvelous", if we manage to become: timing aware (open to finding something marvelous that fits into the situation or interaction); escalatory with strangers; and attuned to the feel of the rooms and spaces and social situations around us.

--Joe

training

Space Elevator

An unusual device, like an astrolabe or stream engine, is labeled with many tiny numbered flags. A binder is placed nearby with the heading "to operate the space elevator" and blank pages.

Key values
roomfeel attunementgracetiming
Play during
group fun

Conman Actor Training

Players are given a sheet describing different personality types of pedestrians. The hotseat player is approached by pedestrians pretending to embody the different personality types, and the hotseat player has to use their wiles to enroll the different personalities in a task.

Key values
grace
Play during
group fun

Sense Relaying

1. begin by standing apart 2. imagine that your feet are connected by some kind of magnet to the earth 3. imagine that, with everything you look at in the room, with every- thing you smell, you have the power to send your sense informa- tion down through your body and down through your feet into the earth, where the ancestor spirits can see or smell what you can see or smell out here 4. continue the practice of moving and sensing as if you were a re- porter for the ancestor spirits 5. dance

Key values
doubt endurancenobilityroomfeel attunement
Play during
rest times

recruitment tests

Free Critical Discussion

Just like free hugs, but different.

Key values
nobilitydoubt endurance
Play during
in public

Geoloitering

1. make friends with someone elsewhere in the world 2. using their longitude / latitude and yours, calculate the angle the two of your spines make against each other, and calculate the number of degrees below the horizon that each of you are at, rela- tive to each other 3. using an atomically synchronized timepiece, both of you can exhale at exactly the same time and stand together for 10 minutes

Key values
roomfeel attunementtiming
Play during
rest times

Notecard Parties

events where guests at a party are assigned precisely-timed tasks, distributed on little cards or via SMS

Key values
timingroomfeel attunement
Play during
group fun

Numbers by Ian Frasier

This is a super-simple game you can play at any kind of event. If you have twenty guests, pass out twenty slips of paper, numbered 1-20. The goal is to end the evening with the number 1. Announce that anyone can, if they find someone with a number lower than theirs, ask for a challenge. The challenge should be possible and ideally, fun. If they succeed, they get to trade for the lower number. What happens is that people make more and more creative challenges for one another, and the challenges become lightweight designed experiences that are reproduced on their own merits.

Key values
roomfeel attunementtiming
Play during
group fun

Breakfast Exchanges

Two people (ideally, strangers connected via a third party) make each other breakfast at the same time of the morning, each hiding the breakfast they've made in public in an interesting spot to eat it. The locations are texted to one another, and each finds the others' breakfast, eats it, and sends back a note about the experience.

Key values
graceroomfeel attunement
Play during
rendezvous

inductions

Applause Walk

Two people go for a walk in silence. When one player stops to notice something, the other player positions themselves besides them and they contemplate the object together. After a few minutes, they clap for the object. Optionally, one of them my modify the scene in someway and recontemplate. Otherwise, they continue and find a new object.

Key values
timingroomfeel attunement
Play during
rendezvous

initiations

Blind But We Find Eachother

NEMATODE. { blind but we find each other } Starting from separate locations, A & B blindfold themselves and ask strangers to lead them to the same park or public square. There, left on their own and without using sound or vision, they must find one another by touch. Twenty minutes after the achievement, go skinny-dipping.

Key values
boldnessnobility
Play during
rendezvous

Chalk Hives

A group of people, at minimum three but possibly hundreds, and each has a sidewalk chalk stick. Wander until you notice something interesting and write down a few words with the chalk that might lead someone else to notice it too. THEN, go find someone else's chalk note, and draw an arrow from their note to yours. Thus we can create a vast network of things to heed in public space quickly. Leave some chalk on side for people who come later.

Key values
gracetiming
Play during
group fun

advanced practices

Playing with Fear

1. begin with one person moving, the other watching 2. mover, project something you fear into the space and dance with it–imagine something or someone you fear is near you, and find an authentic response. when you become tired of this, give yourself a little break, but then shift to something or someone else that you fear, cast it into the room, and respond. 3. keep returning to something you fear, as if it were in the room 4. take a few turns moving and watching, then both of you can move simultaneously, and even in contact, embodying and representing one another’s fears.

Key values
timingtenderness
Play during
group rituals

core practices

Clandestine Film School

involves two decks of cards and a pack of hair clips, and is meant to be played in cafes where people work with their laptops and might like to work together instead. One deck is a deck of "role cards" -- "director", "actor", "star", "interviewer", "cameraman". The other has missions -- "a 6sec love story about mugs", "a 2min doco about lives of baristas", "a very subtle action adventure", etc. Someone gives out cards and those who have roles and need to join mission team wear the hairclips. Hashtags collect the media.

Key values
roomfeel attunementgrace
Play during
in public

Rituals of the New Herd

Leading humanity back to those grazing and flocking behaviors which are rightfully ours. Focusing on tenderness and spacial attunement.

My feeling is that our animal, emotional, and social selves want something very different from the society we've created for one another. When Mary Oliver urges us to "let the soft animal of [our] body love what it loves", what kind of society supports that? I've been calling these Advanced Grazing Behaviors, and I believe to cultivate them means being tender, escalatory, and developing a sense of cosmic timing.

--Joe

core practices

Defrosting ourselves

1. begin a duet in contact 2. periodically, hug your partner’s body towards a point on your own body where you feel you could use some love, energy, or attention 3. periodically, cup your hands and blow warm air into a point on your partner’s body which you feel could use love, energy, or at- tention

Key values
tenderness
Play during
waking up

Lines of Love

1. give your attention and love to a particular point or to a small area on your body 2. allow it to travel across the surface and interior of your body 3. in contact, continue to give attention and love to a point in or on your own body

Key values
tenderness
Play during
waking up

Underscore by Nancy Stark Smith

A group moves through a memorized series of ~20 physical and improvisational modes together over the course of three hours.

Key values
gracenobilityroomfeel attunementtiming
Play during
group rituals

Shady Shepherds

Takes place on a city grid intersection. Requires at least 20 players, there are four flocks of 4-7 sheep and four shepherds, one for each flock. Each flock plus shepherd starts on a different street corner. Each shepherd is given a small piece of paper which represents cocaine they are smuggling and must give it to one of their sheep. The sheep are told to cross the street to different adjacent corners, and to trade the cocaine when they find another member of their flock. The shepherd wins if he's able to keep track of which sheep has his cocaine.

Key values
nobility
Play during
group fun

training

Sense Relaying

1. begin by standing apart 2. imagine that your feet are connected by some kind of magnet to the earth 3. imagine that, with everything you look at in the room, with every- thing you smell, you have the power to send your sense informa- tion down through your body and down through your feet into the earth, where the ancestor spirits can see or smell what you can see or smell out here 4. continue the practice of moving and sensing as if you were a re- porter for the ancestor spirits 5. dance

Key values
doubt endurancenobilityroomfeel attunement
Play during
rest times

Thirds by Ruth Zaporah

Whenever you shift, you have three choices. You can: • Introduce new material, • Do what your partner is doing, by joining him or her in form and content, • Be still and silent, in pause. • Keep a balance between these three choices, generally 1/3 of the total time in each. So, 1/3 of the time you initiate, 1/3 you copy, and 1/3 you're still and silent.

Key values
graceroomfeel attunementtiming
Play during
rest times

undefined

Microperformance Potluck

This is a kind of event where people get together to eat and participate in eachother's projects. Each attendee brings a thing for the whole group to do together or to witness in less than 2 minutes. A timer is set and if any partipant uses more than two minutes of the group's time, they are tackled and carried out of the room by the audience.

Key values
graceboldness
Play during
group fun

recruitment tests

Breakfast Exchanges

Two people (ideally, strangers connected via a third party) make each other breakfast at the same time of the morning, each hiding the breakfast they've made in public in an interesting spot to eat it. The locations are texted to one another, and each finds the others' breakfast, eats it, and sends back a note about the experience.

Key values
graceroomfeel attunement
Play during
rendezvous

initiations

Memory Salad

MEMORY SALAD Gather lettuce, fresh dill, and vegetables. Construct a salad but add each peice individually, and with it name something that you remember wanting at some point. Dress and eat voraciously, together.

Key values
tenderness
Play during
rendezvous

Chalk Hives

A group of people, at minimum three but possibly hundreds, and each has a sidewalk chalk stick. Wander until you notice something interesting and write down a few words with the chalk that might lead someone else to notice it too. THEN, go find someone else's chalk note, and draw an arrow from their note to yours. Thus we can create a vast network of things to heed in public space quickly. Leave some chalk on side for people who come later.

Key values
gracetiming
Play during
group fun

Blind But We Find Eachother

NEMATODE. { blind but we find each other } Starting from separate locations, A & B blindfold themselves and ask strangers to lead them to the same park or public square. There, left on their own and without using sound or vision, they must find one another by touch. Twenty minutes after the achievement, go skinny-dipping.

Key values
boldnessnobility
Play during
rendezvous

inductions

Lost Items

LOST ITEMS. { never to be seen again } Both players prepare lists of sentimental items they have lost and share the lists and the meaning of each item as preparation. Then take turns: Player A gains a sudden faith about where one of B's items might be and takes B on a journey. But the item isn't there, instead the secret desire underneath the item is there. Find it. Alternate. Find an ending in melancholia or rapture or both.

Key values
tenderness
Play during
rendezvous

Foundation

A good start

--Joe

core practices

Doubt Club

Structure for a monthly event giving business leaders a safe space for thinking and talking about possible negative impacts of their work, and their self-doubts.

Key values
doubt endurancenobility
Play during
group discussions

inductions

Applause Walk

Two people go for a walk in silence. When one player stops to notice something, the other player positions themselves besides them and they contemplate the object together. After a few minutes, they clap for the object. Optionally, one of them my modify the scene in someway and recontemplate. Otherwise, they continue and find a new object.

Key values
timingroomfeel attunement
Play during
rendezvous

initiations

Nut or Fish

Contemplate a big life choice with a stranger, then make a commitment to one another and seal it by eating an almond or a sardine.

Key values
doubt enduranceboldness
Play during
group discussions

recruitment tests

Reality prototyping

A stack of blank index cards goes in the middle of the group. A timer is set for 10 or more minutes. Everyone starts with a minute or so in silence, and then they pick up a card and write something that could be done, by one of the other group members, that they think would be interesting for the group. This instruction is written on a card and placed face down. After the first minute, everyone balances their time roughly equually between three activities: (1) looking around and appreciating whatever is happening; (2) picking up a face-down card and performing whatever instruction is written on it; or (3) noticing something else that it would be nice if someone did it, and writing a new instruction on a new card.

Key values
roomfeel attunementtiminggrace
Play during
group fun

Breakfast Exchanges

Two people (ideally, strangers connected via a third party) make each other breakfast at the same time of the morning, each hiding the breakfast they've made in public in an interesting spot to eat it. The locations are texted to one another, and each finds the others' breakfast, eats it, and sends back a note about the experience.

Key values
graceroomfeel attunement
Play during
rendezvous

training

Inquiry by Byron Katie Reid

Group members identify the perspectives or beliefs behind their stress, and explore which stressful feelings come out of them, whether those perspectives or beliefs originated in childhood, and what life would look like without them. See thework.com

Key values
boldnessdoubt endurancenobility
Play during
rendezvous

Director by Author unknown

Standing in a circle, each person has a chance to describe an image or a scene they'd like to see enacted, and the rest of the group has a minute or so to try to create that scene.

Key values
roomfeel attunementtimingtenderness
Play during
group fun

Thanks for visiting the library. Contact me with any questions, send photos or comments if you play these games, and let's work together on these societies or on the societies that will come after.