FULL (Contact us to be on the wait list)
Strategy empowers us to understand and interact with situations and others in such a way as to achieve our goals. Because things are always changing, we can never get a complete view of anything and have to continually come up with an appropriate frame, or approximation of our circumstances, to lead us to the right action for the moment.
We use games to study strategy in three different ways. First we design games. We take an inventory of the games we know and modify them, or sometimes start fresh. Then there’s the strategy of group decision making as we decide what we want to do together. Finally, we play the game and discuss observations about ways to do well at it and what rule changes may be desirable. What can we say about strategy which applies to all three of these tasks – design, group process and performing well in constantly changing situations?
We also study strategy directly by sharing our own ideas and those of others who have help shape how we think about it. As facilitator, I’ve got a large variety of activities, topics, materials and exercises for the group to choose from to supplement those that participants bring in.
In order to come up with generally useful strategic principles and concepts, we explore games of all types in several senses:
- Traditional (such as Chess, Go and common sports) and made up games for physical, mental and social development
- “Games people play” to indirectly get what they want in social situations
- Models, simulations and role play as a means of testing out and training for possible scenarios
- The Game of Life, Competition and Cooperation/Individual and Collective
Some Inspirations:
A Book of Five Rings, Flow, I and Thou, The Prince, A Pattern Language, Transactional Analysis, The Art of War, OODA, The Tao of Physics, The Family Transmitted Book of Swordsmanship, The Gentle Art of Verbal Self Defense, Don’t Think of an Elephant, The Unfettered Mind, Small is Beautiful: Economics as if People Really Mattered, Tools for Conviviality
Some Key Words:
Metaphors, Memes, Chaos, Heuristics, Fractals, The Unconscious, Meaning, Training, Associations, Logistics, Systems, Boundaries, Trust, Creativity, Meta, Relativity, Translation, Negotiations, Relaxing, Specialization, Humanism, Evolution, Autonomous agents, Duality, Non-verbal, Tipping points, Technology, Maxims, Prepositions, Definitions, Experiments, Disciplines, Perspectives, Cross-referencing, Ecology, Framing, Focus, Reality, Outliers, Intuition, De-escalation, Love
This course will involve teacher-led instruction followed by child-led exploratory activities
Supplies to bring: Shoes to run in and whatever games you like.
Instructor: Stratton Salidis
Time: 12:00-1:30
Ages: 11+
Cost: $146
2nd Installment: $73
