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“The Happiness Lab” https://www.happinesslab.fm/ is my go-to podcast when I’m not sure what I want to listen to, and I don’t feel like choosing. It’s still a choice, but instead of choosing between the dozens of podcasts I already have on my rotation, I only have to decide between:

A) the podcast about happiness; and B) everything else. That decision pretty much makes itself.

Today’s episode was titled “Choice Overload.” Reading through the description, I thought I already agreed with the premise that avoiding decision fatigue increases happiness, but I wanted to hear someone else’s take on it.

As I was listening, I was playing Hearthstone on my iPad, and I gradually noticed the irony of it. Here I’m thinking about the value of reducing decision-fatigue, while I’m playing a game that requires me to make many decisions every turn, and the  more I progress, the more difficult the decisions get.

I’ve made a point of simplifying my life (and presumably making myself happier) by reducing decision fatigue. For example:

• I’ve reduced my wardrobe choices by getting rid of everything that didn’t quite fit right, or was too much work to maintain. Now most of what’s in my wardrobe are clothes I know I like to wear every day (and the t-shirts I’ve borrowed from my teenager);

• I work out with a trainer at my gym on the same days every week – no more slacking on fitness because I don’t want to decide when to go to the gym, or what exercises to do when I get there. If I’m at the gym, I know it must be Tuesday or Friday, and I’m doing whatever exercises my trainer tells me to do – even the ones I don’t like; and

• I’ve even started doing most of my grocery shopping online and having them delivered, so I don’t have to face all those seemingly infinite choices at the grocery store – including deciding whether something I want to buy is worth the effort of carrying 3 blocks home and up 6 flights of stairs.

If I’m always thinking about ways to reduce decision-fatigue, why am I choosing to play a game that’s all about making decisions?  Am I drawn to games like this because subconsciously I know they help me improve important skills? After all, there are only so many ways to simplify – I still have to make decisions about all kinds of other things every day, and getting better at that would be valuable.

Does that make Hearthstone an “educational game?” Apparently it is for me. Isn’t that the best kind of education – the kind where you’re just having fun, and you’re not even aware that you’re being educated?

Climate change protestors tied up rush hour traffic for hours in my city yesterday. How much extra carbon dioxide emissions came from all those idling cars? How many passengers were discouraged from using public transport after being trapped in overcrowded buses and trams? This seems counterproductive.

Even more disturbing was the extinction rebels who joined in, splashing bucketfuls of red paint (“blood”) everywhere, declaring that next time it will be real blood. I’m having flashbacks to last year when animal rights activists were quite literally terrorizing local farmers, with threatening phone calls and burning farmsteads.

I’m concerned about the escalation of rhetoric and the increasingly frantic media coverage. It’s not enough to predict disaster within our lifetime anymore. Now they’re predicting catastrophe by the end of next year. This is how movements turn violent – it’s all fun and games until they call out the riot police… or someone makes a bomb.

The point is that all these protest marches and slogans on t-shirts and signs are so last century. Today’s young people are the “internet natives,” right? I’m very sure they could be more effective in contributing to actual solutions if they would join in collaborative work online. They all have access to social media and google. That’s a perfect platform for exchanging ideas and building solidarity and commitment, and a much more promising use of all that youthful energy.

I live in Sweden, where Greta Thurnberg (of school climate strikes) is being venerated as a modern-day national hero. I understand why Swedes want to be recognized for their leadership in environmental issues – that’s one of the reasons I live here.

But I don’t have much faith in Greta’s methods. I’ve been an environmental activist too, and I know it feels good to protest and raise awareness and call for urgent action. I also know that in the many years I’ve been doing it, very little has changed. If world leaders could solve the climate change problem, they would have done so by now.

A better approach than demanding that others take action on the environment might be to take action ourselves, not just individually, but collectively – gaming for climate change.

Gamers understand the power of millions, even billions of people with a common interest. With over 7.5 billion people on the planet, I’m sure there are a lot of ideas that haven’t been considered yet. What we need is to design games for collecting and “gaming out” ideas, hypotheses and scenarios – combining, testing and revising.

Climate change is complicated, with a lot of interdependent variables – that’s what computers are good at. It’s going to require massive amounts of cooperation, dedication and teamwork – that’s what gamers are good at.

We know how to design games that are engaging and fun to play. The next step in the evolution of gaming is to design fun, engaging games with a purpose – social change on a global scale.

I came across an article by Deb Montague at Blizzard Watch, “If you could play an NPC class, what would it be, and how would it work?” That got me thinking about the game-life vs. real-life divide. Deb mentions a book that I’ve been reading too, “World of Warcraft and Philosophy,” that poses the question: what if you didn’t have to play a combatant – what if you could play a diplomat, for example, or a craftsperson?

I’ve thought about that a lot, although not so much about playing an NPC. I’d still want to be on the combat team, but I’d like to have the option to play a non-combat role. Even in war there’s usually someone trying to broker peace, or at least form alliances or exchange prisoners.

That’s the one thing I feel really awkward about when I’m talking with my non-gamer friends. We’re all dedicated pacifists, and war games aren’t usually my thing – with the exception of World of Warcraft. They all know I’m a gamer – I’m an evangelist about how important games are. It’s just that the names of the games I play rarely come up. That’s good, because too much information can lead to a situation like this:

…(discussion about what we do on a regular basis to keep ourselves grounded)… most of the responses are along the lines of: meditating every day, taking long walks in nature, meeting weekly with a faith group, journaling…. I could make something up, but I believe in saying what I mean, even when it’s awkward. “I keep myself grounded by playing World of Warcraft.”

There’s a long uncomfortable silence. I know it’s about the “war” part. It’s right there in the name – warcraft – and there’s no getting around it. I feel like I have to explain.

“I usually play a holy paladin. It’s not so much about waging war as it is about stopping oppression and championing the innocent and defenseless. It makes me feel grounded because it connects me on a deep level with the battle maidens and valkyries of my Viking ancestry.”

They still don’t quite get it, but it’s good enough. They’re not judgmental – just confused. Saying I play a diplomat would probably go over better. I can’t say I would always choose playing a diplomat over a paladin, though. I suspect then I’d be playing World of Peacecraft, and to be perfectly honest, that doesn’t sound like a game I’d go for – it just doesn’t get my heart racing the same way.

When we refer to our own belief system, we call it our philosophy or our religion. When we talk about our own culture’s past, we call it our history. But when it’s some other faraway culture, then we call it mythology, and we put it together with legends and fairy tales – stories for entertaining children.

Even the root word “myth” is used somewhat derisively – as in, “Let’s take a look at that myth and see if we can find the reality.” We equate myth with fallacy – a false belief.

It brings to mind the textbook image of humans evolving from apes. There’s the primitive proto-humans with their mythology, gradually evolving into today’s humans, who have left all that foolishness behind. Now we know better – we have science.

I’ve heard that much of what we call science today was once called magic. I try to imagine some distant future people talking about us. They’re saying something similar about our beliefs and what we think is important.

I guess that means we could be living our own mythic lives right now. Maybe we should pay more attention.

We could help shape the future through gaming. When we play games we get to create a version of ourselves that could be mythological. We could move beyond pure fantasy, and play through scenarios where we are experimenting with our own lives – but with the benefit of replay-ability. We could essentially be living all of our past and future lives at once.