🌑 An invitation to Play_ for End Times
In this Newmoonsletter, we reflect on our journey so far, and explore how play might be what we need to match the absurdity of current end times.
The problem with tech ethics
About three years ago, we – Alja and Mat, that is – founded Tethix to make tech ethics more accessible and fun. Despite the 16 thousand kilometres or so that separate us, we found each other in cyberspace and realized we share a vision for crafting tools and narratives that close the ethical intent to action gap in product development.
But with the tech industry doubling down on breaking more things with unreliable AI implementations and increasing environmental footprints, we’re not sure tech companies actually care about closing the gap unless it’s legally mandated. It’s not that product development is done by bad people who don’t care. The people usually care, deeply.
But within the rules of the game of Monopoly we’re all being forced to play, good people don’t have the freedom and budgets to put their money where their heart is. And so the best they can typically do is to buy products and consulting that lead to checkbox-ticking compliance rather than meaningful systemic change. And there’s certainly a place for compliance and regulation, but that’s not what we created Tethix for – and our bank accounts reflect that reality.
It’s clear that deeper systemic change is needed to put us in right relation with our technology. “Aligning AI with human values” might be the latest buzzword, but it does nothing to challenge the conditions that incentivize exploitative business models and practices.
Our attempt at embracing the lunacy of tech
Which is why we’ve been gradually expanding the focus of our work together beyond just product development.
We’ve had fun poking at the lunacy of tech through the Pathfinders Newmoonsletter. We wanted to inspire collective pathfinding towards better tech futures by collecting and sharing seeds of inspiration from tech practitioners and researchers, and other inspiring humans.
But then tech billionaires started naming government departments after internet memes, scrubbing diversity and inclusion off websites, and calling for more “aggressive masculine energy” in tech – among so, so many other things. And we realized that the needle on the absurdity meter we have been using to guide our musings has broken off due to unprecedented levels of absurdity.
Left without a working meter, we have to accept that we have to go beyond embracing the lunacy of tech. We feel it’s time to match that energy somehow.
We did briefly consider smashing data centers – for legal purposes, purely hypothetically! – but quickly realized that wouldn’t solve our problems. Besides, we kinda need them to maintain the fire at our virtual campfire while our physical bodies remain continents apart.
So what else can we do?
We started exploring this question in the Black Moon edition of our Newmoonsletter. And our instincts pointed us towards our bodies, both human and more than human. And getting real, raw, and personal.
Finding acceptance in absurdity
After some additional playful bodystorming around our virtual campfire, a light appeared at the end of the tunnel. A spark. A title:
Playbook for End Times:
How to Embrace the Collapse of Civilization with Love and Smiles
And it just felt right. Though countless conversations we’ve been having, particularly in the last year, we feel the need to collectively process the anger, fear, anxiety that the current system is stoking. And what better way to do all of that than with a bit of playfulness. With love and smiles.
We see the Playbook for End Times as something worth downloading on your device. Something to read around the campfire in the evening on days when you get enough sunshine to charge your device. Something that will bring a smile to your face when you face the darkest shadows of our civilization, when Google and ChatGPT are no longer available to answer all your questions. Something to help you reconnect with your body, the bodies around you, and the body of the land in which you find yourself in during the end times.
Now, we are hoping we can get our sh*t together before it comes to this dystopian scenario in which we actually lose data centers and internet connectivity. But let’s face it, things are not looking good at the moment. Accepting how broken the current system is does not mean giving up. We see it as an invitation to dance with the absurdity, face the shadows, and collectively craft a better future on the ashes of systems that no longer serve us – if they ever did.
Is the Playbook an actual book of play? Does it take on its early meaning of a “book containing material for amusement”? Or the more modern meaning of a book of strategies in a game? Time will tell. For now, it’s a title and an invitation.
And it goes beyond what the pages of a book can even capture. It’s a broader invitation to Play_ for End Times, together.
What does it mean to Play_ for End Times?
It means…
… creating Play_lists that help you cope with end times, whether it’s music that lights a spark in your heart or puts a smile on your face.
… Play_finding paths to better futures in small, interconnected circles.
… Play_crafting a better future in your neighbourhood and local community.
… Play_shifting by starving nazzissists of attention and directing our attention towards each other, towards community building.
… Play_ing with hostile algorithms to carve out spaces for learning and healing together.
… Play_sharing the lessons from old stories or more recent histories and herstories to help each other remember and feel what has been forgotten.
… Play_learning by making science reports and forecasts easier to understand.
… Play_making by bending and breaking the rules.
… Play_grounding by following your intuition, your gut.
It means facing the end times from a place of love. It means a different thing on different days. On some days, it means rest and taking a nap, ignoring all the news. On other days, it means taking over the streets and shouting at the top of our lungs. It means nurturing well-regulated nervous systems so we can support each other. It means dancing, it means loving, it means imagining and questioning. It means not obeying in advance. It means being the positive deviants the world needs.
It means filling in the blanks with your dreams and hopes, with your imagination.
Why play when things are getting so serious?
We’re playing for end times to let go of our baggage. Of the expectations of perfection. We’re playing to help us embrace the messy, the weird, the woo. We’re playing to imagine rainbow mirrors because we refuse to accept the dark, bright, and grey mirrors as our only options.
As players, we have to train our imagination and find our fellowship to be able to face game bosses at increasing levels of difficulty. Through play, we get the chance to know ourselves and the role each of us can play in these end times. Are you a tank fighting on the front lines, a mage casting powerful spells from a safe distance, a stealth rogue working in the shadows, or a healer supporting the entire party?
Whatever boss you decide to face and whatever role you take on, the key thing is to form a well-balanced party with other players who share the same goal.
And if enough of us play our cards right, this will not be the end of all times, but just the end of the times that were not fit for purpose.
What does this mean for the Newmoonsletter? We don’t know. Let’s play and find out together, shall we?
This New Moon, we invite you to …
🐚 … listen to Veronica Lightning Horse Perez share some native wisdom by telling the story What to do with mankind?
🌳 …watch Lyla June talk about 3000-year-old solutions to modern problems.
🎸 … sing Stand Together by Seth Staton Watkins.
🌱 … read how Abdul Semakula is introducing collective imagination gatherings to residents of Kiwaatule to rebuild trust and revitalise a dense urban area.
🧶 … explore the Collective Futurecrafting website Mat has been working on in the past couple of months.
🧠 … read about how Alja used playful and embodied design to create an online place where people can have meaningful and action-inspiring conversations about Gen AI and climate action in tech.
💜 … listen to the latest episode of Pathfinders Podcast How do our human bodies fit into an AI-enabled future?
🔥 … join us for the next Full Moon Gathering to yarn about the question: What’s the role AI and digital tech could play in collective futurecrafting?
But even more importantly, find and create space for Play_ in your own life, in your communities.
With 💜 & 🙂 from the Tethix campfire,
Alja and Mat
This gives me hope :-)
More play_ together 🌱