Occupy Wall Street is, I think, a protest against Unsustainable Games (UGs).
When people say ’sustainability,’ they can be referring to a lot of different cosmetic concepts (monetary policy, geothermal energy, funding for education or manufacturing, urban gardening, solar power, vegetarianism, LED lighting, gender and sexual equality, etc. etc. etc.). In fact, we know this ‘multi-causism’ to be characteristic of the OWS scene. The meta concept is, for all these causes, the same: Are you playing constructive or de-constructive games? Zero sum or positive sum games? Are your games sustainable or not? OWS is, ultimately, itself a game, one designed to focus attention on the UGs of Wall Street.
The protesters arrested yesterday on the Brooklyn Bridge represent the most creative generation living in the most creative nation on earth. No doubt they have roots in every language, race, religion, culture, science, art form and evolutionary instinct in the human species. And daily, on Manhattan Island, they are forced to confront the 1-percenters who control 99 percent of the nation’s wealth, people who are, for the most part, not creators, but extractors. That’s what their games are designed to do—-extract. These people getting arrested on the Brooklyn Bridge? they’re doing it to point out the difference between where the money is and where it needs to be for us to get a bigger bang out of the creativity they represent. 99 percent of our creativity belongs to 99 percent of the people. That’s a biological fact, Jack. It’s the ultimate sustainable resource. The protesters know this and are calling it to our attention with one of the games they and their friends originated, flash mobbing.
The OWS players understand that if the ratio of ‘99 percent of the wealth to 1 percent of the people’ ratio stays where it is, we will never get out the doldrums economically, because we’re getting no Return on Creativity. No ROC. Because we are putting most of our money where 99 percent of our creativity isn’t. For the ratio to change, the game must change. The OWS players grew up on games. They are the gamingest people in the history of the world. You think they don’t know a bad game when they see one? Wall Street plays bad games. They want game change.
Game change will come about only when we find ways to invest in the creativity of the 99 percent. We cannot afford to have the most creative Americans sitting on the bench right now. We need them in the game. Just not the old games. New ones. The OWS players are screaming at the coaches to put them into a game they can play.
The old game, in addition to being unsustainable, has left a bitter taste in the mouth of the world. Those protesters sitting on the Brooklyn Bridge? They’re bitter too. They’re bitter because they have the ability to change the game and they know it. They understand the scope of the work ahead, and are in a hurry to get on with it.
They have good taste, let them cook with it, and bring the world to our table again. They have stories to tell that are not the same old stories, let them tell them. They have visions that are not blueprints of the past, let them build them. They hear music that has never been sung and have crazy ideas that no one else would even think of attempting. Let them sing. Let them try. We need that now. We need them. And every day the ‘1 percent to 99 percent ratio’ stays where it is, we are one step closer to losing them.
They are getting arrested for squatting on a symbol of America’s great creative past like birds who have come home to roost, when what they really want to do is fly.
Brands who emphasize consumption contribute to obesity, both mental and physical. They represent an ever-larger drain on the planet’s resources. They introduce a lot of useless crap onto the world by manufacturing illusory needs. They associate levels of consumption with status. The biggest of this. The most of that. The hardest. The shiniest. The latest and greatest. These brands pay for the audience’s attention. Most significantly, they define the relationship between the brand and the audience using numbers.
I, Customer, am an individual. One of a kind. All my friends are one of a kind. I got my thing, you know, just like you got yours, just like everybody’s got their own. I am basically awake 24 hours a day, because I got plates in the air, you know. My homies in Bulgaria are coding some tracks we’re going to run off a honeypot server for which we are getting paid by a new label in Atlanta call Tso-Tso that does B-Boy tracks for mall shows and competitions all over the Southern U.S., Australia and the Philippines. Shit is off the hook. We get a dollar per download, and already this month we’ve made five thousand dollars. First thing in the morning, I am catching a plane to Fort Meyers to work with some friends down there who have a band and play clubs at night, and weatherize houses during the day for twenty bucks an hour. I’m producing their next album and they are paying me by getting me a job weatherizing houses for the summer. And on the weekends we take out one guy’s girlfriend’s family’s boat and party like animals. Any brand that’s down for this scene is welcome to roll with me.
Our November GameChanger of the Month selection was a slam dunk. Barack Obama is going to be America’s first baller president, and he’s going to be its first Improviser-in-Chief.