Gamblers & Settlers

Last weekend I played the board game, "Settlers of Catan", with some friends for the first time.

The game board consists of a representation of an island divided into hexagons, each of which represent different types of landscape - forest, mountain, hills, fields and pasture. The first thing that struck me about the game was that each type of landscape also represents a "resource" - lumber, ore, brick, grain and wool respectively. There is also a 6th type of landscape - desert - which contains no resources and is hence treated as useless. The object of the game is to position your pieces in such a way as to maximally exploit these resources for the purpose of developing roads, settlements and cities. This development earns you "victory points" and the first person to acquire 10 points wins the game.

I'm a competitive person with a good mind for problem solving and strategy and I loved this game! These traits combined with a good dose of beginner's luck, meant that I also won on this occasion which of course enhanced my enjoyment considerably! I couldn't help noticing some uncomfortable comparisons with real life though:

As I've already described, the board reduces a large island - which in the real world is a thing of awesome natural beauty and splendour - to nothing more than a set of resources, which are to be exploited as aggressively as possible if you intend to win the game. Of course, within the context of the game no real islands are involved and so no damage is done, but ... what if people were to treat the real world in the same way ... ? You can probably guess where I might be going with this!

The game is necessarily one dimensional as games usually are - they are not intended to reflect or replace the fully-orbed and multi-dimensional nature of life in the real world. They can sometimes reflect the values that are prevalent in that world though, and some people do actually seem to treat life in a similar way.

This article on the BBC News website describes a workshop called, "Investment Heatmap", which took place this year at the World Economic Forum in Davos.  In this workshop - which was run for the benefit of some of the world's top financial "big-hitters" - each team of participants were given the task of setting up an imaginary investment fund in a particular part of the world. They had to think about what kinds of people to employ to manage the fund, local regulatory frameworks, the state of the market, etc. They also had to consider things like corruption, politics and environmental activism - but only in so far as they might help or hinder their monetary objectives.

This exercise was only a game, but it was a game with a purpose - to help people think about how to approach such situations in real life. It seems to me that the "real life" in which many of these people live though, is actually just the same as the exercise - where the ultimate consideration is the bottom line and all other interests become subservient. To underline this point though, just in case it wasn't clear enough, the room in which the workshop was held was carefully and deliberately laid out like a casino! If this is the view which the world's top financial big hitters have of our world and all of our economies, then it seems small wonder that both have ended up in such a state!

Destroying the Earth

I find myself constantly horrified by the damage that humans are doing to the natural world - here's an article I spotted on the BBC a couple of days ago:  http://tinyurl.com/32pufen

"The global abundance of vertebrates - the group that includes mammals, reptiles, birds, amphibians and fish - fell by about one-third between 1970 and 2006, the UN says."

The main point of this article is that biodiversity is being reduced to the point that it will soon have a noticeable negative impact on our economies.  My first reaction to this is that it's a terrible shame that it seems to be necessary to talk in terms of monetary value before business people and policy makers will consider the natural world to be worth taking care of.  It seems obvious to me that nature has an inherent value which is far greater than all of the money that could ever be made out of it.  However, since (unfortunately) this does appear to be necessary, I am glad that somebody is taking the time to do it.  At the same time though, I can't help thinking how stupid and short-sighted greed makes people - of course if you destroy your environment, on which you are completely dependent for life and raw materials, then your capacity for making money is sooner or later going to be reduced!  Not to mention your capacity for happiness and ultimately, for survival!

As a Christian I have less to fear than some, from the destruction of the natural world, but it hurts me perhaps more because I see in it an amazing reflection of the beauty, ingenuity and creativity of it's maker.  One day, according to the Bible, the world will be transformed - there will be "new heavens and a new earth".  I look forward hopefully to that day.  In the meantime though, we have a responsibility to look after the world we have now - for our own sakes, for the rest of humanity both now and in future generations, and for it's sake and the sake of God who made it and entrusted it to us.

Believing that this world is temporary, in no way excuses Christians for over-exploiting it - any more than believing that one day there will be no more sorrow, could excuse you for being unkind to someone!  Jesus once said, "Things that cause people to sin are bound to come, but woe to that person through whom they come."  A similar statement could (pessimistically perhaps) be made about environmental destruction.

Finally, just in case there any Christians out there who are still not sure about this, the following is taken from one of the judgement scenes in the New Testament book of Revelation (chapter 11): "The time has come for judging the dead, and for rewarding your servants the prophets and your saints and those who reverence your name, both small and great— and for destroying those who destroy the earth" [my emphasis]!