I wrote a book about what a small-but-growing number of people call a metacrisis, which is different from a crisis or even a polycrisis. Because it is such a young neologism, I feel inclined to write about the metacrisis concept as an explorer without a map. My goal is to discover new territory, and be one of its cartographers. In short, I prefer to make the following distinctions:
Crisis: A crucial, life-or-death moment of sudden, profound transformation, and a bifurcation between two significantly different futures
Polycrisis: A specific set of crises with a large amount of overlap and interdependence
Metacrisis: A complex system with a state-space including all actual and possible crises.
To that end, I came up with the term “metarevolution” (a word which had been sparsely used before, but which I gave a fresh meaning in my work). Metarevolutionary theory is centered on addressing any metacrisis, and self-referentially applying holistic changes to the deepest underlying conditions of all change.
When the concepts of metacrisis and metarevolution are brought together, what becomes apparent (at least to me) is that there is an ongoing need to address the crisis which affects all other crises most dramatically. By focusing our attention on this “deepest” crisis at any moment, we are maximizing the impact of our efforts and using our limited resources most effectively.
These thoughts led me to consider a number of metaphysical questions. My thinking was: there is no crisis which is not affected by our worldviews and our relationships to the eternal philosophical questions—in particular how we connect with value, meaning, purpose, natural ethical laws, and the Good.
If we are nihilists, in the sense of rejecting the metaphysical claim that our universe really contains something called “meaning”, then the starting point for confronting any crisis is that it doesn’t actually matter, and is simply an opportunity to reconfigure power.
If we reject this, through the metaphysical orientation I call optimism, then it is easy to see why a meaning crisis is so fundamental to the overall state of a metacrisis. And, in that sense, it is a prime example of a crisis which interests metarevolutionaries: resolving something like a meaning crisis will have extreme effects on every other crisis.
My suggestion for how we might make progress in this domain is that we should play a game.
In my book, I sketched out some of the core ideas which, combined, made what I called a “symbol game”. Later, after publishing my book, I came up with the name “Symbonic”. I aspire to make this game real. Today, I’m presenting a skeletal version of it—not playable, but at least buildable.
Symbonic
Symbonic is a game of symbol-play which results in the discovery of meaning. It is an infinite game whose gameplay leads toward more perfect selfhood, freedom, meaning, beauty, wisdom, and love. Its name derives from sym + ballein + gonia, or “symbol begetting”.
It is conceptually married to the idea of a characteristica universalis (or universal language), in the spirit of Leibniz. And it draws inspiration from a long history of “serious play” which includes, for example, the Greek Olympic games, Hermann Hesse’s Glass Bead Game, and Buckminster Fuller’s World Game. In settings such as these, there is a deliberate mixing between “playing” and simply living. These past cases of culturally meaningful games inform my own belief that playing can be very serious business.
Symbonic is chiefly composed of the following elements, although its boundaries are blurry and the game extends to domains beyond these:
NFT creation arena - All symbols and ideas in the game are represented by unique digital tokens. Symbonic’s UI includes a market-agnostic dashboard from which anyone can create, buy, or sell NFTs from any major token trading platform. People play in this arena by creating or trading NFTs which they believe are valuable.
Prediction-decision market - all symbol tokens will generate standard questions which the prediction market will seek to answer. Example question: What is the likelihood that Symbol X is more ontologically fundamental than Symbol Y? Other questions are user-generated and may relate to counterfactuals such as “in regard to economic growth, what if idea X was made into law instead of idea Y?” The world in which Symbonic is situated is one where the discoveries and predictions of the game influence real actions and decisions at personal and social levels. And feedback loops will drive incentive compatible behaviors such as participating in further predictions.
DAO ecosystem - individual players can form or join Decentralized Autonomous Organizations. This allows, for example, collaborating with others in the NFT or prediction arenas. This is a space where collective intelligence comes to life through centauric relationships of multiple human and nonhuman intelligences. DAOs may be centered on any number of goals such as expanding a subset of symbolic content, creating new educational practices, or pooling knowledge and intelligence into new centers-of-centers.
Castalia - an open-access education platform named after the school in the Glass Bead Game. The courses are tailored toward creating more skilled Symbonic players. There are opportunities for metagaming and “serious play” within this space—for example through playing something like Rosicrucian chess or other games whose aims are at least coherent with the ethos of Symbonic, and at best could be deliberately created to further its development and perfection. The interface collects open-access educational materials from around the internet, and allows for the creation/curation of syllabuses.
Eleusis - a network of communal gathering places whose aim is ecstatic co-creation of symbols, ritual renewal of symbolic meanings, and talismanic experience of complex symbols and myths; named after the Greek place of transformation.
Global game board - every person, place, and thing becomes part of the game, the experience of the game and the experience of our daily lives should become increasingly inseparable. The goal is to have our buildings and institutions and art and stories reflect the discoveries from Symbonic, and for Symbonic to be reciprocally shaped by these global changes.
Purpose of core game elements
In my book, I go into great detail about why all of these elements are necessary, and about how they all interact. I won’t attempt to capture all of that here, but here is the short version of why these are the necessary core modules of the game:
NFT creation arena - NFTs are one of the basic “game tokens” within Symbonic because they are permanent and decentralized. This makes symbols and complex ideas part of a public intellectual commons.
Prediction-decision market - A prediction market allows gamers to profit from making accurate forecasts about complex topics. It can be tied to real-world decisions in such a way that the most useful NFTs become most valuable.
DAO ecosystem - A place for Symbonic gamers to come together to play in unique ways, and generate emergent properties like collective intelligence.
Castalia - The game is serious, challenging, and lifelong. And the presence of a “school for gamers” reinforces the idea that we can learn how to play better, every day, forever.
Eleusis - We need physical, communal spaces where transformative experiences can unfold. These spaces are vital for the personal integration of collective wisdom, and for the collaborative renewal of symbols.
Global game board - This is another way to say that the edges of the game are not completely fixed. The whole universe may be considered our field of play. Symbonic is played in specific ways and moments, but it permeates every aspect of our lives.
Looking ahead
I think it is clear that this is bigger than the average board game. The boundaries between playing Symbonic and simply living one’s life become increasingly blurry as the game comes fully to life. It’s all about the discovery of meaning—and when is that goal ever finished?
I am not totally sure what’s next, but I know it will take the efforts of all.
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