Serious Gaming for Training of Future Leaders
Already 2500 years ago, Plato sought after well-rounded and morally mature individuals to lead society. We still do. And maybe technology is finally starting to make it possible to achieve at low cost and grand scale.
Imagine a role-based simulation, kind of like the coming metaverse, where the social physics engine is high-level cognitive functions rather than primal instincts and mammal-brain functions like Facebook and so many other social networks are built on today.
Instead of algorithmically enhanced feelings of desire, fear or laughter like todays digital social sphere we’d have much more advanced cognitive experiences.
It would rather be a matter of the comfortable and inspiring socializing with truly and deeply likeminded people or an opportunity to grow in social skills by practicing interaction with people of differing cognitive makeups than your own.
Social bliss or social discomfort. Heaven or hell, psychologically speaking.
To build socially cohesive communities, wether on micro-, meso- or macrolevel, people with excellent social skills are needed. Self-knowledge and a knack for seeing where other people are coming from.
It would be perfectly possible to train such individuals by creating serious games where the gamer starts with exploring the social-psychological universe of others sharing the same cognitive makeup in order to self-reflect and get inspired by likeminded people. Get a sense of belonging and learn to see constructive possibilities for future career or personal development.
And then gradually add the possibility to grow by adding systematic social-psychological tensions by letting the gamer interact with people of increasingly different cognitive makeups. The gamer would still be in his or hers actual role, but learn to spot and constructively engage socially with different types of people.
Having learned about self in at the first level and learnt about others at the second level the true challenge would come at the third level. Learning to switch cognitive setup with others and learn to appreciate those ways of seeing the world first-hand and to interact successfully with peoples of all kinds from the vantage point of someone else.
Ancient wisdom about what a well-rounded and morally mature human being could very well be integrated into cutting edge technology such as psycholinguistic NLP, VR-helmets and role-based simulations games to build the leaders of tomorrow and thus play an important part in building the more reasonable and just society we’ve come to dismiss as head-in-the-clouds Utopia since Plato wrote The Republic.
It is actually doable now. It will just take some time.
