Mission
Provide people with the space and atmosphere1 for the pursuit of happiness through play
Vision
Values
Play
- “The opposite of play is not work. The opposite of play is depression” – Brian Sutton Smith, psychologist.
- That’s because, he says (in his classic 1997 book, The Ambiguity of Play), play involves “the willful belief in acting out one’s own capacity for the future.”
- According to the WHO, depression is now the number one global disease. …it’s a shortage of what makes life meaningful – a shortage of play.
- TED: Play Helps Us Grow at Any Age
- TED: the Decline of Play
- The anthropologist David Graeber made an important distinction between games and play. In pure play, you really are actively engaged; the world is unbounded and anything is possible. ‘Play can be said to be present when the free expression of creative energies becomes an end in itself.’ In games there are rules. A chess piece can move in one particular way only. Your character in a wargame can only run and aim and shoot. (article on War Games in the Spectator)
Egalitarianism
- All people are equal and deserve equal rights and opportunities
- Governance through consensus: an elected board leading day-to-day and the vote of all members determining big decisions
Trust through Openness & Transparency
- Default to transparency: Be public (including the broader Burner community) with everything you can
Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion
Health & Wellness
- I can’t believe we really have to spell this out.
Culture
- We’re a cult because we’re building the kind of culture (world) we want to live in.
- Organizationally, keeping track of the details on ideas and roadmaps and ideation plans also creates a history, and preserving your history helps create culture.
Curiosity
- does this fall under “pursuit of happiness and play” or does it need its own section?
Ethical Hedonism
- yes, but what does that mean to you?
“…that’s just what a good hotel does: it simply provides you with the space, and with the atmosphere, for what it is you need. A good hotel turns space and atmosphere into something generous, into something sympathetic…”
— John Irving, The Hotel New Hampshire