Early Visions | Bay Area 2020: An Infinite Game | We're at an Evolutionary Choice Point

1. We're at an Evolutionary Choice Point

Path A involves learning to transform our "finite games:" To understand the possibility of Path A, it is helpful to see Path B as a direct consequence of inadequate design of our social forms, especially our large organizations. By understanding how we have been unconsciously designing our organizations as finite games, we open the possibility of designing for wholeness, i.e., organizations as infinite games.

We can learn to design and transform our organizations so that they create rather than destroy global true wealth. No blame here. As a young species, we're simply at a very early stage of learning how to design complex living social systems (e.g., governments and corporations) that can approach the same efficiency, effectiveness, goodness and elegance found throughout the rest of nature.

Path B — Keep On Keeping On: We can continue to follow the path of least resistance. We can collectively leave the responsibility for dealing with the consumption-centric, poverty-perpetuating, species-killing, disaster-spawning, crisis-ridden aspects of our current global trajectory for our children and their children to deal with.

Our institutions have not been designed with the capacity to lead us from Path B to Path A. To shift to Path A will require a movement that both transcends this limitation and also supports these institutions in their transformational journeys.