Husserl once said that modern Philosophy have lost his main historical power: to be the guide of mankind. Mainly because it has developed a so academic speech that 99% of the people don’t understand (mainly from XIX century, when Philosophy enclosed in Universities). But also because in these times a meme has more strength than a long essay.
In the Greek times, the ideal of Philosophy was to make a perfect government and for the mankind to achieve the perfect balance between truth, beauty and goodness. In the enlightenment times, Kant guided humanity to reach their highest potential through the use of pure reason. When Philosophy leads, the world seems to react in an interesting way. But specialization in knowledge was not as beneficial in Philosophy like in Science, since it nullified one of the primary philosophycal value: its holistic wisdom.
Taking about it, one could hope that Science would inherit the lead, as a natural evolution from Philosophy. Pitifully, it has not. The new leader is the market, who guides humanity into a random and self-destructive manner, following the selfish and hedonistic principles of the new king. An economical system based on self interest, either personal or business related, it’s difficult to achieve something based on common good.
Our social system, inaccurately called democracy, only takes care of local initiatives, which usually don’t extend beyond its legislature, and basically turns around the welfare state. Global issues like planet survival is secondary, and mainly because of external pressures such international treaties, none of them involving a big penalty if broken.
We need a global government. But instead assigning it to the political class, with its historical problems in terms of corruption and manipulation, I propose we all do it together through social actions.
Currently, the social actions which aim to change anything global are isolated initiatives that usually go nowhere. What is worst, we have fallen into the so called slacktivism, or empty activism, such as give facebook likes for a girl with cancer or sign petitions to stop a war in Nigeria. This not only solves nothing, but also hinder future actions from the people, as this things usually are enough for the, in a way of “I sign this and forget about it”.
Maybe we need the help of new technologies to make more sensible changes, like social networks, digital platforms and, of course, videogames.
Part of videogames’ magic is their ability to create better worlds. It’s not a surprise that gamers prefer to stay longer in these virtual worlds than in the real one. The game designer Jane McGonigal explained it in her book Reality is Broken: The isolation of gamers into videogames is not so much the problem as the symptom of something that doesn’t work in reality. Videogames fits perfectly into our learning process and problem resolution. Reality doesn’t. Videogames satisfy a basic need not covered by reality. Jane’s proposal is to convert reality into a game. Let’s go beyond, and use that game to change the world.
As she explain, if we have to chose the emotion we seek in every videogame, is Fiero, an italian word that points to the epic feeling of doing something great which impact into something even greater; the thrill of triumph against adversity; the need of getting out of the cave and conquer the world. It’s a call to the challenges still to come. To feel the masters of our destiny.
Let’s upload this feeling into the real world.
To achieve that, we need to think big. To create Epic Objectives. Things like making an economical system more fair with the planet and its inhabitants. Or colonizing the galaxy and exploring the universe. Or eradicating poverty and achieving an universal justice. Or knowledge and culture easily accesible by everyone. O potentiating human growth more than just pile up stuff. Or even designing the next level in human evolution. Really cool things. We just need a system that let us do small steps to achieve all these objectives.
Gaminds, after seven years of design, is the attempt of this humble gamer-philosopher to make it real.