ABOUT THE GAME

The World Peace Game is a hands-on political simulation that gives players the opportunity to explore the connectedness of the global community through the lens of the economic, social, and environmental crises and the imminent threat of war. The goal of the game is to extricate each country from dangerous circumstances and achieve global prosperity with the least amount of military intervention. As “nation teams,” students will gain greater understanding of the critical impact of information and how it is used.

As their teams venture further into this interactive social setting laced with highly charged philosophical issues, the skills needed to identify ambiguity and bias in the information they receive will be enhanced and more specifically they will rapidly perceive that reactive behavior not only provokes antagonism, it can leave them alone and isolated in the face of powerful enemies. Beliefs and values will evolve or completely unravel as they begin to experience the positive impact and windows of opportunity that emerge through effective collaboration and refined communication.

In essence, as meaning is constructed out of chaos and new creative solutions are proposed, World Peace Game players will learn to live and work comfortably at the frontiers of the unknown.

About the World Peace Game
Students play the World Peace Game

The WPG is not a permanent system, but rather a temporary, internalized, flexible and renewable practice.

JOHN HUNTER

World Peace Game
World Peace Game
World Peace Game
World Peace Game

CORE PRINCIPLES

As an educational tool, the World Peace Game is based on several key concepts, including :

  • Contradictory elements can and should co-exist
  • Deliberate creation of an overwhelming sense of diverse complexity or fostering, in other words…chaos
  • Team-based solutions formed by deliberate pressures (i.e. deadlines), and a sense of urgency
  • The encouragement of complex problem solving in simultaneously collaborative, yet apparently competitive scenarios
  • Stimulating the development of genuine empathy and compassion by making the stakes high
  • Promoting the ability to hold and maintain multiple perspectives around an issue simultaneously, while withholding judgment

Slowing down the problem solving process, provides:

  • Depth over time – Stimulation of, and support for, long-term thinking
  • Increase in possible solutions
  • Appreciation of complexity, rather than denial or fear of life’s intricacies

Promote critical thinking via:

  • Discerning the natural inherent complexity and simplicity mixture in life
  • Directly engaging with complexity vs. avoiding or parsing–Facing the “Is-ness” directly
  • Promoting non-attachment to currently appearing phenomena. The acceptance of impermanence as a part of normal existence
  • Revelation of personal inherent skills in crisis simulations
  • The ability to cultivate and maintain acute problem-solving skills over time–-
  • Facilitation of Self-Reflective awareness through Self-Evident Assessment (SEA) an internalized evaluation
  • Creation of a reflective thinking log for exploration of personal mind habits
  • Showing, understanding, and appreciating the value of non-measurable outcomes.
  • Extrapolation of actions/reactions in multiple directions/levels/dimensions at once
  • No experts- Allowing expertise to arise as things change
  • Luxury to fail through support for learning “how to fail, to ultimately succeed”
  • Flexibility of thinking and attitudes
  • Elaboration to enrich basic ideas