Human Labor - 50 Points

Human Labor - 50 Points

Written December 25th, 2023

This is my first entry into a journey of writing prompt posts about the cards involved in this game. My goal is to pull one randomly each morning and spend 30 minutes writing about it. 

This card was actually one of the first incentives to deconstruct the popular game of Catan - referred to by some as “colonialism, the board game.” It is one game that follows a series of games that worked to embed a set of cultural values in kids and adults, sometimes playing as families, with the goal of shaping outcomes. As discussed in Playing Oppression | The Legacy of Conquest and Empire in Colonialist Board Games, By Mary Flanagan and Mikael Jakobsson.

I played Catan for the first time in the winter of 2022. My partner, as many, loved that game. He played the original board game so much that he eventually made his own game board (following an unfortunate spill on the original).

We were looking for something to do one night and he asked if I’d play. I agreed, and he warned me that I “might find it a bit colonial.” I did.

The following morning, I considered the categories, and gauged my sense of internal offense. Not from him, but from the tone of the game. It is simple, categorical, laid out well, and pretty easy to follow and get engaged in. Such things have raised flags of apprehension in me for years. 

Reveal: I probably don’t make enough time to chill out and play games…

The first thing that struck me as I considered the game was that there are no people in the actual game. The players are the people, but the entire context is on unnamed land, and it’s all about resource allocation, establishing trade routes, and settlements. Values are based on how much power and land can be accrued, and paired with pillars of influence.

Sheep as people. 

I decided that the lens this game was developed through disregards the intelligence and inherent traits of altruism in people - based on the philosophies explored, studies conducted, and arguments presented in A Paradise Built in Hell: The Extraordinary Communities That Arise in Disaster by Rebecca Solnit.

Sheep are the only living beings on the game board, representing a means of life for the players. Sheep mean food and clothing. A substantial number of sheep equate to power-holding for an individual rancher or land-holder.

I decided to change this category first, beginning with the shift from Sheep - to Human Labor, which isn’t acknowledged at all in the original game. 

This strikes a personal note for me. It took me a good two years in the Boise area to find work I found ethically aligned.* I wanted to devote my life energy, my physical time, brain time, creative time - to something meaningful and life-promoting, life-giving. I started out as a dishwasher and a member of a remediation crew rather than apply at design firms and marketing agencies, despite my career and experience, because I couldn’t find a steady job in the field that didn’t involve exploiting people, land, resources, or creatures in some way or another. I did attempt to start again as a freelance designer, but that’s hard in a town one has just a few connections in, regardless of spending the first half of a life in it. I eventually got a job as a graphic designer for a fraction of the pay I could be getting at “market value” for the work if I accepted the exploitative aspect as part of survival and my best interest. I was relegated to a jr. designer role as a permanent part time contract employee, possibly after challenging some notes in some widely published curriculum-based material that was still telling the old widely published version of Indigenous history in Idaho. Curricula that raises flags of erasure and misrepresentation based on themes of colonization.

That’s just my story.

When I think of all the roles in U.S. culture that are undervalued - if valued at all, I know I am not alone in my frustration. It is DAMNED HARD to find work that allows a person to plug into all of their talents, abilities, passions, and use those cumulative strengths to cultivate life and positive experiences, connections, energetic exchanges in our collective and individual communities. 

This viewpoint has been dismissed or challenged as an excuse to not look for work. The mere hint of that led me to get a dishwashing job. Maybe not the wisest move, I could have been a line cook and had some level of greater respect, but I wasn’t looking to build a career or long-term relationship with a restaurant (and I feel like a privileged ass just saying that, out of respect for those who hold those jobs that allow so many to seek relief from meal preparation, or just want to have a night out with a loved one—through COVID in risky f-ing times).

Roles that cultivate life, keep it going, make it livable:

• Childcare

• Elder care

• Education

• Preventative health

• House cleaning

• Food preparation

• Food cultivation

• Environmental stewardship

• Soil remediation

• Home balancing

• Cooking, cleaning, picking up after, organizing, streamlining, budgetary balancing, safe space creating

There are of course jobs in health care and emergency services that are very ethical in their initial presentation. Even heroic. In health care specifically, it is so unfortunate how it has gone. Emphasizing first that hundreds of thousands of lives are saved or preserved each day by the miracles of modern science. I am alive because I rely on thyroid medication, I don’t have one. I wouldn’t be here if that had not been identified in the early 80s when I was born, before they were regularly doing tests on this. I come from a medical family, which may have saved my life. That same family provided me the experience through table-talk that the healthcare industry continues to feel more and more like a production line for patients and practitioners. The relationship building part of healing and healthcare is continuously sidelined in lieu of processing more people through, more efficiently all the time. 

I’ve fortunately found work in food system resilience, specifically, seeds. I get to delve into the world of seedy wonder for my regular job, and I love that I get to devote my energy there. 

But, I think of all the people who might like to engage in their unique sets of skills, their inclinations, the work they do that makes them feel good, and how many of these don’t get paid for that. That’s the light version. 

Then, there’s the downright ugly side of exploitation, upon which this country depends, was founded, and continues with. That is outside of waging war all over the globe and continuing to drain our collective budget - ie taxes - for. 

Human Labor, 100 hours, ANY amount of hours, is a gift. Something to value, something to cultivate, something to relate to what allows us to live. Something to reconsider, and re-imagine.

Games allow for re-imagining how things can go. They’ve been used for the visions of empires, dictators, and fascists. Why not allow the people to use our collective imaginations for something…. better, egalitarian even? Sorry, not “allow,” create an opportunity for.

Independent design contracts I’ve had in the past 5 years have been a blend of reciprocally rewarding, inspiring, and in one case very purposeful. In most cases the amount of work available wasn’t enough to be able to build some secure long-term plans without over-burdening those orgs or businesses.

With a design background in a large corporation (my most secure job ever) I was “the original Chat GPT” according to a friend recently. I received the creative brief, the photos to work with, the copy to plug into the design template, the nutrition information to format per standards in the Nutritional Panel and ingredient listings. I didn’t have to edit the text, just follow the specs. I still adapt and do all kinds of things you can’t find on Canvaa, and so far, the AI image creators are churning out concepts that are limited by the algorithms alive on the internet up to a certain point - and last I checked, not generating editable type. But the days of being paid what I was told market value was in school for a logo or design campaign are eroding quickly. I know the framework underlying the tech to some extent… but yeah… adapt or… accept the preconfigured set of options set up in a cattle chute headed to… where exactly?

I know I am not alone with these fearful feelings. I know I am not alone in the desire to dream a different direction, and see a plentitude of possibilities and jobs that allow a human to work with nature and communities in reciprocal ways. Without having to take on a greatly increased amount of debt for accreditation that ages quickly, to get a job in fields that fall into the cattle yards of agencies that could be wiped out or greatly diminished by the stroke of a pen, facing a housing market that jumped far out of reach for so many so fast, with climate shifts that could level this whole game-round for humans. Work available to do with a good heart, filled with a sense of purpose and peace that can come from knowing all one’s talents and energies were poured into efforts that give back, live lightly, and support life.

Self-Defense and Dance

12/26/2023

It’s funny when this card comes up in gameplay — it usually elicits a giggle, followed by a considerate moment of what dance defense could mean.

Maybe folx are picturing a flash mob.

Maybe they are picturing a totally unpredictable and immediate free-flowing dance response to the delivery of an eviction notice - that is, if it comes at the hands of a person. If it arrives in the mail or posted to a door, then perhaps the person goes to the address and if possible, dances their defense in the visual presence of the delivering entity. OR if that entity is some corporation, one of many that has started buying up available homes and holding them vacant, or making them ready-for-market at exorbitant rental rates. In that all-to-common scenario, the person may gather with others quite visibly outside of some visual symbolic cluster of one of these areas, and dance their outrage, invite the press, cover it themselves, submit entries to independent media, to Zine makers.

Upload the images, the music, the words, to the Creative Commons - Wikimedia - Wikipedia Consider giving those orgs $5 cause they’re struggling, and the common spaces of information that can be utilized, collectively built upon, and scrutinized or held to account, are important.

Note: That particular scenario has not been freely mentioned in gameplay. I’m usually caught up in the moment of inventiveness and forgetting to record what great idea or commentary has been delivered.

The actual intention for this card - though I do not wish to impede creative responses here - was different. It was two forms of health and well-being and opening up access to these. Not only do forms of dance and martial arts offer a person great physical health and activity, but they also empower and free.

Many forms of martial arts are widely available in cities in the U.S. — including karate of various styles, some including weapons, many relying only on the trained muscle memory moves of the body. Not to mention boxing, kickboxing, and mixed martial arts.

Dance could be formal, could be fun, and could include hip-hop choreography led by an instructor. Could be ballet, though there seems to be an age limit on that. Down with the age limit, bring on the tutus. Seriously though, there is Barre, but the cost of it (last time I checked) is high. Ecstatic dance was a form I was inspired by and stuck with for some years. Worth looking into if you haven’t heard of it. It’s been around a while, and continues to create sober community spaces where it’s encouraged to move with the music and explore what our bodies are feeling and needing in terms of movement. There are parameters for interaction, a way to approach a dance partner and an understanding of the ways that approach can be accepted or declined. Many just dance independently, but there are usually at least 1-3 interactions of people playing and rolling around like kids. In Boise, I have to note, that the handful of Ecstatic Dances I’ve been to do not include a ton of diversity, those gathered are predominantly white and the crowd is small compared to other cities I’ve been in. I was introduced to it in Portland in 2009 and there was a great diversity of ages present, an entire old dance hall full of people on a Sunday morning, no talking, varied states of apparel (several people in pajamas), kids, elder folk, lots of adults. Perhaps the cultural diversity could be scaled there and be about the same. 1-6% of those gathered. This ratio carries on to Seattle, Olympia, and outside Farmer City, Illinois. Maybe the music selections and the wonder are representative of white culture. Maybe there are dance forms that are as deeply beneficial happening for communities of Color - or Culture - as Resmaa Menakem says. 

“I don’t say “bodies of color” anymore, because what I’m trying to do is, I’m trying to reclaim the idea that I’m actually a human.”

He also notes that for some work it can be unwise to bring multiple cultures together for generational healing work. I know I am not alone in seeing this form of dance as deeply healing. But pause when thinking about it in terms like it could work for everyone all at once.

Menakem “… then that is in some way gonna make it so we can all sing kumbaya together.” And this is why I don’t — when I do my workshops and I do my experiences, I do not slam white bodies and bodies of culture together, because it is unsafe. And we all know it.

We’re hurting each other. We’re re-wounding each other. Some of the things that we go to that are “supposed to” help and “supposed to” heal, really are re-wounding and are violent.” - On Being: Notice the Rage, Notice the Silence

Forwarding this thought process, Ecstatic Dance is a means of freeing, healing, and tapping into. In some communities at the circle-up times, a person conducts a guided meditation that harkens (back?) to times where people of European descent were aligned with the seasons and the movements of the land. Tapping into annual cycles, quiet dark reflection of winter, fiery spark of life in the fresh wet green of spring, the height of harvest mid-summer, and gathering and preserving the bounty in the fall. Dance can be a very healthy form of stepping out into the world and into ourselves and bodies, and connecting. Maybe preparing, clearing the way for response to navigating collective grief. I’ve relied on it to clear grief, find happiness, acknowledge grief, dance it. Come together after.

This card also exists because of Capoeira - my favorite form of martial art, as well as dance. It is one of the forms that is housed firmly in cultures historically oppressed. There is some variation in origin story, but the form and practices are very similar, and the benefits to the people are very strong. Capoeira Angola originated in Angola Africa, according to my Mestre of that form, Silvinho. It came with the people to South America in the area of Brazil where it continued to the present. It is low to the ground for the most part.

Capoeira Malês originated in Brazil, it is a form that has been adapted to higher movements, including a lot of kicking and flying through the air. Mestre Curisco may have adapted it and developed it. I obviously need to reconnect with my fellow students, and read up on the forms again. I have not found Capoeira in Boise.

Both forms carry a similar origin story and ongoing reality. They were a form of self defense developed by enslaved peoples of Africa. As I was told by another student outside of class, it was designed to allow the people to fight, even if their hands were still in chains. This is how my mind recalls this story-part anyway. The people hung onto this form of self-defense and it was a part of their liberation. It was also known that it was a form that was targeted by next waves of oppressive forces. So the form too had elements of dance. Actually, my mind is releasing the recall in fits and caffeinated starts this morning, it’s may have a basis in Samba dancing, lots of fluid movement. 

There are a couple of great documentaries to watch about it. In these, people walk the streets of Brazil, sometimes in clothes I’ve only seen in churches, but more colorful. They spar in these, and their clothes stay clean (I would have to practice many many years to be that good - and I am well out of practice). Maybe from early on it served to help generational healing. It provides community and a safe outlet for rage, grief, and defense to express itself, and in that, healing. 

Capoeira is a cross cultural space, and hosted by the Cultures that are sharing it with all peoples. This is supported by song, traditional instruments, and learning Portuguese - all while learning the moves. Hands down my favorite form. If anyone knows anyone in Boise offering this, please let me know. 

Zooming out a bit to the big picture view of the past years of women’s disempowerment as marked by the overturning of Roe V Wade. Marked by the increased violence globally, the marked suppression of girls and prohibition of their attending school. All of that is subjugation. Learning to use our bodies to defend ourselves allows us to be moving concealed weapons, and if we all embraced that practice or a great majority of us did, just think how different things might be.

Posted a couple of days after #InternationalWomensDay - originally drafted in the early winter.

Analyzing the Goose Template

Flanagan notes in Playing Oppression that games of Goose didn’t vary much over the past several hundred years. The mechanics of the games included some basic parts.

63 spaces, dice, and the game was a race to the end, winner-take-all format. What about everyone else? And where does this ultimately lead? It’s just a game tho.

The Goose game had several key spaces that continued throughout renditions and echoed through adaptations.

I’m looking at this as a template because it’s been overlaid on geographical areas, peoples’, homes of individuals, and delicately balanced ecosystems, including all non-human life residing in these areas.

Categories: Printable Board Games. Original image credit: patricia m on flickr. Permission:  Free for personal, educational, editorial and commercial use. This work is in Public domain. Attribution is not required but welcomed.

What strikes me about this particular rendition of the Goose Game is the depiction of people in the game spaces—casting as it is called in game design and mechanics. The farmers and laborers are where the player starts. Life looks like quite a bit of work. Age is something to dread, especially for women. Sure, there are some simple pleasures. Somehow, a goose is a prize… maybe they are tasty, may be they have powerful symbolic meaning… I seem to recall something about a Christmas Goose being significant in childhood stories.

Lots of beautiful women are waiting for the players to pass. None named, no significance other than their position on the game path in relation to the action space they accompany. I ask myself here “who is she in this space”?

Le Jeu de l’Oie

Vintage Board Game

Rules of the game :

This game uses two dice. Each player must have a separate mark to clearly mark the place where the points obtained have brought him. The players set the fines to be paid for the various accidents and place a bet.

Each throws the dice in turn, then counts, on the board, as many squares as points brought and places his mark on the last of these points.
The first to reach number 63 wins the game and collects the amount of stakes and fines. If you exceed this number, you double the point by retracing your steps.

Any player whose dice land on one of the geese placed 9 by 9, doubles his point until he encounters no more.

If from the first throw of the dice, we roll 9, by 6 and 3 we will place ourselves at n° 26, or by 5 and 4 at 53. If from the first throw of the dice, we bring 6, where there is a bridge, we will be placed at number 12.

Accidents – Whoever gets to No. 19, Inn, pays the fine and stays there until the other players have each played twice.

Whoever arrives at number 31, where there is a well, pays the fine and stays there until another player, arriving at the same number, takes him out: he then takes the place that this player just quit.

Whoever arrives at No. 42, labyrinth, pays the fine and returns to No. 30.

Anyone who arrives at number 52, the prison, pays the fine and stays there until someone else takes him out; he then takes the place occupied by the latter player.

Whoever gets to death at number 58 pays the fine and restarts the game.

Any player met by another pays the fine and takes the place that the latter has just left.

St Brigid's Well, Cullion, County Westmeath

First, I’m looking hard at the Well — and referencing some writings of Carl Gustav Jung — a collection of his writings titled The Earth Has a Soul. Jung’s exploration of the living consciousness of Earth. I don’t agree with some of his terminology, as it came to his observations and references to Indigenous peoples, or what everyone’s ancestors’ collective lifestyles were like before the stages of “civilization.”

That noted, I read his work with a hunting sort of fascination, looking for points that resonate with me.

It seemed he frequently found himself at the edges of the foundations of the consciousness from which he operated, pointing out the separations and fissures, the imbalances that sprung forth from them, and their connection to collective illness brought about by dissonance - the disconnection of our day-to-day existence with our living physical world. He would couch these thought processes abruptly - moments of observation in settling on what was lost, what was primitive, what remains largely unknown. He would note that our civilizing has brought us to the other side of things and limited us, our evolution as humans. As I interpret some of his writings, we (European cultures and those descended from these) have gone too far. Devolving to dependence on our thoughts and written words alone, and noting the limitation there. 

In one of Jung’s writings, he revisited the histories of sacred springs or Holy Wells all over Europe, Ireland, England, Rome, etc. And references the laying of stones fit with pipes in those sacred springs, and the erecting of churches near them. Where the springs then only served to cleanse those who sought it, possible baptismal fonts, perhaps the Holy Water as declared by a denomination who’d dominated the space. He refers to the spirits of those springs being displaced from them, but not destroyed, because energy cannot be destroyed. And he carried that thought to the other spirits of forests, of mountains, of places disturbed, developed, changed. 

I’ll settle on the point that wells were sacred to peoples all over Europe.

Yet in the goose game, they are a prison of sorts. “ Whoever arrives at number 31, where there is a well, pays the fine and stays there until another player, arriving at the same number, takes him out: he then takes the place that this player just quit.”

Good ladies

Flannigan notes that many games were used as a means of enculturation, which Merriam Webster defines as “the process by which an individual learns the traditional content of a culture and assimilates its practices and values.”

Then of course the prison space. “Anyone who arrives at number 52, the prison, pays the fine and stays there until someone else takes him out; he then takes the place occupied by the latter player.” There are many facts and outrageous truths that relate to the current prison system at work in the U.S. So far, in New SUM play, players are given additional points if they have studies and findings to share with the players at the table.

These are just two spaces in the race game that’s been leading people to outcomes that benefit a few and require the unequal distribution of resources, opportunities, and increasingly the rights to live lives free of serious impacts, environmental hazards being one that is at play in our region. I will assert that this trajectory feels like a Zero SUM outcome.

In my winter reading about cultures I’m descended from, I try to look for the strength in my lineage. Ancestral study is an act of conscious decolonization because it’s probably impossible to find a line of European family that isn’t somehow set in a place of advancement and benefit once landed on American soil and lumped together in the cultural category of White.

With this reflection, I am considering the bridge space. A roll of the dice lands a player on space “6, where there is a bridge, we (the players) will be placed (or moved ahead to) number 12.” Maybe in the gameplay, it could feel like a lucky set of circumstances. But stepping back from a generational standpoint, any ancestor that was deemed White not only benefited from some sets of cultural benefits in the early establishment of the Americas.

“Despite some similarities to enslavement, indentured servants ultimately attained their freedom once they completed their contract, while enslaved people were permanently denied their freedom unless they could obtain the means to purchase themselves or successfully escape.” - New World Labor Systems: European Indentured Servants | Low Country Digital History Archive

Many benefits of this “jump ahead” are still playing themselves out. Why the racial wealth gap persists, more than 150 years after emancipation. - Washington Post. This article provides some good understanding—and an opportunity to gain some points in this New SUM game as it continues development.

The bridge could become a different game dynamic that plays itself out along egalitarian terms— that all people are equal and deserve equal rights and opportunities — according to the Oxford Languages definition. Leaving it with the Oxford definition feels incomplete, even inappropriate—pinning that lovely set of words for now, and planning the study-hunt for tangible examples of truth.

Is hoping for egalitarianism jumping ahead conceptually?

Backtracking a bit to decolonization through ancestral study… there’s both strength in lineage and awareness. A bit of this is made available for discovery above. Deeper dives into one’s direct family history will uncover other details.

Reparative Geneology is a term that lines up with this trajectory, it is “the act of researching our heritage, acknowledging our connections to slavery, and daylighting the history of those our ancestors ...”

This next thing may be a warning to proceed with care, compassion, and consideration of possible risks - courage involves proceeding tho we know there is a sort of danger. I think this is a wall of fire that needs walking through to get to true egalitarianism. I have not explored my family history to this extent or explicitly along these lines — partly due to the payment gateway involved in the most prominent resource I’ve been aware of, and partly because most of the collected material records my matrilineal grandmother carefully assembled have been closed off to me. From what I understand, from a person I abstractedly know in their 60s doing this work, the process brings a certain amount of deep awareness building, which they don’t feel comfortable sharing with their kin.

In the winter, between gardening seasons, I study what I can find about times my ancestors regarded the land with as high a degree of respect as I understand Indigenous Peoples still do. In my study-hunt, I find pieces, parts, and heavily edited re-tellings. There are broken threads left of the archetypal women, woven into texts that serve as the basis for the myths-turned-fairy tales, appropriated saints, martyrs, scapegoats, and truly fearsome examples of how not-to-be. The fact they exist at all in some of these story-places, when they are named, speaks to just how firmly the people held them to their hearts.

Bad Lady? AKA Sheela-na-gig AKA Freyja, by the local people

“Although Eddic poems and the sagas have relatively little to say about […] goddesses, English researchers found evidence that Freyja had been venerated in a Viking settlement in Wiltshire. In the mid-12th century, this community still spoke Norse and used runes, “even for ecclesiastical inscriptions,””… - Max Dashu, Witches and Pagans | Women in European Folk Religion, 700-100. Völuspá chapter.

William Morris illustration of Chaucer’s Womanly Noblesse, a page in his “pocket cathedral,” created 1891-1896.

How does all of this apply to this game development as an art piece?

For me, the gameplay and analysis are providing a way to collectively contend with patterns that seem common in places this template of enculturation is overlaid. From a visual arts standpoint, I feel it helps to put it together in a way that we can interact with it in the “it’s just a game” approach as these games have been presented to generations of people the world over—while gaining understandings that resonate on multiple levels. Now with a built-in rewards system for active self-reflection and sharing.

Serendipitously ready to publish this post on #InternationalWomensDay #2024

Phyllotaxis Process

1/25/24

I’m starting to work from the inspiration of the tight, visually fascinating, mathematically described, ingenious construct of the seed head. However I can’t get my program to follow a spiral to radiate in the same way as the actual natural seed head. That’s ok—this is a fun and humble process, and Nature is a complex genius. I am choosing to leave the mystery of just how to replicate the perfect pattern undiscovered.

The final work may not even go this way. The goal here is to create a field of play to work through things cooperatively, hopefully between human and nonhuman life, in Nature.

Image from a cute little coffee table book, The Golden Section | Nature’s Greatest Secret by Scott Olsen, though I’m not sure where he got it. This image seems to be available widely in forums and books that marvel at (or try to figure out) parts of the math of Nature.

1/28/24

Working with this Gloriosa Daisy aka Black Eyed Susan from my own shared backyard.

Photo snapped 100 ft from my door.

An early attempt at working with the pattern. The available petals were scaling down maybe too quickly for pieces to sit on. But the result feels good from here.

The Flower of Life - On Accident?

1/20/24

I am working my way through the book Playing Oppression | The Legacy of Conquest and Empire in Colonialist Board Games by Mary Flanagan and Mikael Jakobsson, a book that came out in 2023. Midway through the book I’ve learned that Klaus Teuber, the designer of Die Siedler von Catan (Settlers of Catan) (1995), went through some iterations of the game in its 4 year development, he actually started with square tiles that players would flip. It was not his first game, he was already an award-winning game designer by that time, but had a hard time finding a publisher for Catan. Kosmos took it on, not expecting it to be successful.

In my other post exploring the Underlying Pattern of the Flower of Life in the board design, I was working with the assumption that Teuber had intended to use it. I don't see the same pattern in considering the use of squares in any arrangement.

I can see how he came to a hexagon though. Though its not noted in the book as to whether he started with 19 tiles or not. Without the outer shape, the blocks look like no more than a disembodied bit of brick wall.

I will try to let other minds wonder if Teuber found the pattern and recognized it, or if the pattern was part of why the new format seemed to “click” with people—and cruise away from that idea in this creative process.

One of our fellow EGG artists shared a great podcast from MIT featuring an interview with Flanigan about a week before our group show at MING in the spring of 2023. It was eye-opening, on the level of acknowledging that there is a lot of dissonance to work through in living life day-to-day if one isn’t living in oppression every day. Also to learn that the history of nations using board games to instill oppressive ideals and encourage exploitative and violent practices had been a long-running process.

Players of popular board games that model these practices are probably largely unaware of this because key indicators have been played down or reworked in the evolution of these games’ designs and playing mechanics. However, the book highlights several modern games in circulation that gravitate to themes that many find nostalgic, though all kinds of sources—that give voice to the perspective of peoples and cultures left out of the player cast of these games—have been challenging some of these narratives consistently for generations.

A giant game of Catan being played at Gen Con Indy 2003. This is one of many custom, extra-large Catan boards seen during demonstrations and tournaments at Gen Con. Image CCBY Alan De Smet

AFRICA Board Game Reiner Knizia 99% COMPLETE Gold Sieber Rio Grande 2001 OOP - ebay listing

1/24/24 Update

I finished reading Playing Oppression. In doing so, I quickly discovered that several games use the hexagon pattern. I also learned that games work from similar mechanical points, components, themes. That’s part of the encouraged study from this book, the challenge in overcoming the relentless re-play of colonial themes in board game design.

I come to this project from a graphic design standpoint, with some years of interdisciplinary study and some amount of applied learning since leaving school.

Graphic design does a similar thing. The practice works from the foundations of understanding. Brands, ads, packaging, websites, promotional materials — all follow some basis of familiar elements that people will recognize, so as not to ask them to think to solve the challenge before them of whether or not to make purchase. An advertiser is giving a person the impression that they are solving a problem for themselves when they buy the thing one is selling.

In my whole lived experience, I know that people turn to game time to relax and do something fun - and I hold the theory that they intend to come together and that some of the behaviors learned while in a state of community connection become values over time.

My study has shown that games have been used to build camaraderie between generations, while learning strategy, along with cultural values.

Die Kolonisten (The colonists) game - included in the form of an insert in Der gute Kamerad (1910/1911) - referenced in Playing Oppression. Image sourced from Board Game Geeks.

In the coming iterations of New SUM, I really considered working with the Flower of Life pattern, continued over a rectangle, consciously, and with the intention of treating it with greater respect…. in hopes that working together art observers can become players, who may be sincerely seeking to find solutions for whatever real-life challenges they bring to the community to play out together. It is a great relief in our time to be able to look at some of the overwhelming tragedies before us, and some of the opportunities that come, in an abstracted way, and imagine, even enact on some level, something different..

Where I see it in ancient depictions indicates that it may have been part of art carved into ancient reliefs used by cultures using violence and domination to overtake cultures that were either egalitarian, and/or had much older systems of existence established. In some others, placed on it’s own in a circle on an ancient stone wall in Egypt, perhaps only meant as a symbol to meditate on, then work with those illuminated thoughts.

DaVinci’s use of it as it associates with the human body and the constructs of our world is where I was leaning.

Decolonizing my thought processes is a live-action situation—the battle in my brain.

Avast ye* familiarity-lover, do something different. Don’t follow in the steps of who used the Flower of Life Pattern in ancient times as depicted on walls of conquering armies. Don’t lean towards the use of a symbol a high number of people deem powerful and sacred. Don’t do it, especially because you don’t understand it. Don’t.

Backing away from that inclination now.

Leaning towards patterns available to me, to all of us, in Nature.

*stop and pay attention - search results landing firmly in Talk Like a Pirate Day.

References:
Flanagan, M., & Jakobsson, M. Playing Oppression: The Legacy of Conquest and Empire in Colonialist Board Games.

The Underlying Pattern of the Game Board - Part I

Flower of Life

The symbol here is one that sparks a lot of different areas of inquiry, and debate on origin. So, modeling a practice I appreciate from Max Dashu*, I’ve collected some photos online - doing my day-off-damndest to find source material that can be credibly posted.

WikiPedia: This is a picture of one of Leonardo da Vinci's drawings of geometrical structures related to the ornamental structure named today “Flower of Life”.

Pattern shown in relief. Relief depicting Ashurbanipal in a chariot, inspecting booty and prisoners from Babylon. By Anthony Huan - https://www.flickr.com/photos/anthonyhuan/45769201572/, CC BY-SA 2.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=91473390

Chinese Guardian Lions in front of the Gate to Longevity Hill - Yiheyuan Summer Palance, near Beijing

█ Slices of Light ✴ █▀ ▀ ▀ Lion Paws

Inlaid in the floor-work of an ancient town Andrew Sweeney Flickr 24-05-06 Kourion - Ancient Town 0123

Kourion - Ancient Town

The victory stele of Esarhaddon, Ashurbanipal's father. The front side depicts Esarhaddon and the sides depict the two crown princes Ashurbanipal (on the side shown here) and Shamash-shum-ukin (on the opposite side) Pergamon Museum. File:Sam'al stele of Esarhaddon, 671 BCE, Pergamon Museum.jpg

Close up of figure with a wider-radii set of flowers, located next to the main subject of the source image.

And, haha, there’s some great visual material with no source in the great interactive image hoard of Pinterest, where sometimes it’s just nice to freely let my brain roam.

From these I jump over to the creator of Catan and the pattern he used to develop the geometric game board. Maybe he intended to use this underlying symbol, maybe not. In any case, I see it in there, at a slightly spaced out version of the Flower of Life I’ve seen used most in enlightening art, and new age writings and materials. I’m italicizing the term, however you want to put it, the current manifestation of spiritual systems at work, resonating at different depths and breadths. 

This symbol has been included through different eons of civilization, and it’s widespread in its use. The interpretation of its significance today is, well, fun to read up on and weigh out. The interpretation I resonate with the most is the “building blocks of life” telling. Beginning with the Vesica Pisces, replicated to form the Seed of Life, and then the Flower of Life. And outward from there.

Flower of life, triangular- With different radii. By Tomruen - Own work, CC BY-SA 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=46246836 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Overlapping_circles_grid#Triangular_grid_of_overlapping_circles

Letting go of the mechanics of the game I seek to deconstruct, and looking more at the components of the game board. If this meaningful symbol, even powerful icon, was co-opted and used as a geometric framework for the game board that has so effectively normalized colony building as a pass-time activity… I don’t see the harm in working with it as a basis for reconstruction thoughtful imagining. Co-opting it back? I can’t say “taking it back” because the symbol itself has no relation in any culture I am tied to, or one that I could call myself a member of for the past several generations. 

“Co-opting language and ideas to conform to the status quo is a long used, often invisible tool that White supremacy culture deploys to preserve its dominance.” Language Use - UpEND Movement A movement dedicated to keeping families together and abolishing the practices of surveilling and separating them.

Steps to mindfully not co-opting this symbol again, or plainly just taking something back into another corner of the system of supremacy called White, created by the amalgamation of Europeans in the US - homogenizing generations of millions of people and separating them/us from our historical connection to land, and colonization, either as the enactor, or victim, then repeater.
Oh, steps in that thought. 

Steps to not just repeating the pattern of colonizing to get closer to deconstructing the dynamic/mechanics at work in the game that started this.

1. To the best of my ability, acknowledge the history of where this symbol came from and what its meaning is. I think this series of visual representations, and maybe some identifying locations on a map might do a fairly good job of it.

2. Look at some of the meaning and associations that can be drawn from the building blocks of this geometric shape.

3. Hold space for the space created, the ideas generated in the loose versions of game play so far. Throwing off the rules of the original. Stopping at the beginning, analyzing after, doing away with parts, introducing new factors. Mostly, holding the space to workshop ideas.

Pausing at the thresholds wormholes and working from there. Wormholes? Or a complex flower of possibilities encased in overlapping circles, reframed as hexagons? The mechanic at work, or dynamic at play, may be where players’ intentions overlap when we come together with shared goals, or stated purposes for game play. Or, the shared intention to step away from the grind of a problem we’ve invested a lot of time, energy, and compassion in, for some part, some piece of social good, collective social benefit. Or, on the flip side, stepping up to the familiar icons as presented, and stepping into the feeling of the grind compassion asks of us, while playing.

Integral - integrating - with integrity, root “integer” and it’s back to math as some kind of neutral system of communicating. Art, looking at what we see in the pattern at work and considering. Leaving it open for those who would take it seriously, or not, or just play, or take the play seriously and work towards a thing.

Who knows?

Special thanks to Teal Gardener for answering my concerns that the games played in early 2023 felt like work—in our first rounds of the deconstructed version of the first New SUM.

“The "work of play" is a really interesting concept to me. Also, inversely, the "play of work" - like at the garden, there is so much play in the work. It is like inextricable from the experience. Just an observation.” - Teal

Gameboard template for Jordon

I realized it was there when I was putting together a template for creating a bigger version of the game board my partner had made for his use after spilling beer on the paperboard version of the original. He could create it for me, but needed the pattern. Some scrutiny exists around the origin of this pattern, a lot actually, and some would dismiss the spiritual significance of it outright. Noting that it’s possible that people just got bored one day and started drawing circles, and saw some fascination in the overlapping of circles and what exists there.  

I would argue, that even with vector building software capable of rotating points on an axis at a specific degree, it’s actually kind of hard to recreate the Flower of Life precisely. It is fun to try though. Attempt deemed good enough for now, shown here.

But, the existence of this pattern in an Osirian temple in Abydos Egypt, built by Seti and dedicated to Osiris - as noted by Drunavlo Malchezedek in his book The Ancient Secret of the Flower of Life Volume I. Take or leave the content of that book and source of information what you will. The style of the information presented in it, black and white scanned or xeroxed copies of film photos taken by a woman touring Egypt sometime around 1985-95. Due to the now somewhat archaic form of the book’s publishing, that photo series wasn’t made up in Photoshop, or MidJourney.

It is interesting to note how regularly a shadow covering one of the two visible flowers is also a part of the photos taken of this wall.
“Photograph taken by Ray Flowers and released to the public to use on Wikipedia without worry of copyright. No higher resolution available.”

The Flower of Life is an old symbol with significance from a very long time ago, and again now, in waves of writing about now-time interpretations through various meditative or conversational means of gaining information. “Building blocks of life,” “connection to the cosmos,” etc etc. An icon to play with, consciously.

*Max Dashu “founded the Suppressed Histories Archives in 1970 to document global women’s history. She is internationally known for her visual presentations, dvds, and webcasts.” She holds to a practice of showing images of ancient figurines, reliefs, manuscripts, and architecture. She has noted frequently, that much can be interpreted in just seeing these images themselves.

Sources & References:

1. History Stack Exchange. What is the origin of the Flower of Life symbol?

2. upEND Movement. (2022, April 7). The Power of Co-Opting: Language Is Changing, But Will It Change the Status Quo?

3. Melchizedek, D. (1999). The Ancient Secret of the Flower of Life, Volume 2. Light Technology Publishing.

Image Sources

1. İnfoCan. (2011, December 20). Girih compass straightedge example [SVG file]. Wikimedia Commons. https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=17744943

2. Serhinho. Window Apartments of the Crown Prince in the Topkapi Palace, Istanbul [Photograph]. Wikimedia Commons.

3. Tomruen. Flower of life, triangular- With different radii [SVG file]. Wikimedia Commons.

4. Wikipedia. Overlapping circles grid. In Wikipedia. Retrieved January 19, 2024, from

5. Anthony Huan. The victory stele of Esarhaddon, Ashurbanipal's father [Photograph]. Wikimedia Commons.