Playing Compassion Games for Global Unity

By Jon Ramer and Joey Crotty

We live in a time that may come to be known as the “Great Divide,” a chilling, winter-time of the human spirit permeated with disillusionment and fear. Yet, the human spirit is fiercely resilient, and ways of living that are in harmony with the deepest needs of human nature and greater Nature are simultaneously blossoming, available to us all.

How to Move from Winter-Time to Spring-Time?

The Great Divide can be visualized in the relentless frequency of images that portray our world in crisis. Yet this narrative is like a dark mirror of our humanity, reflecting back to us a distorted and incomplete version of ourselves and of our truest nature as human beings. These images in turn become a self-fulfilling feedback loop for more division and crisis as a paralyzed public-spirit dishearteningly believes nothing can be done to change it.

However, Navajo Medicine Woman, scholar, and mentor of Compassion Games International Patricia Anne Davis teaches that the heart of Indigenous wisdom has one purpose: to remind us of who we truly are. To remind us that we are whole, that we belong, and that we have beautiful gifts to offer others, a reason to live that gives us a sense of purpose and completeness.

What we need now are ways to actively remind us - as is even being overwhelmingly validated by science - that humans are fundamentally compassionate, playful, and cooperative beings and that our happiness and well-being depends upon these qualities to flourish in our personal and civic lives. In fact, our very survival depends upon these qualities being remembered, celebrated, and put into action in meaningful and captivating ways that positively address the challenges of our time.

Compassion Games: Survival of the Kindest & A Global Compassion Movement

In this spirit, we offer you a heartfelt invitation: join us in growing the global compassion movement by playing in the Compassion Games: Survival of the Kindest.

The Compassion Games utilize the best of human nature - the innate desire within us to play and to cooperate, to learn and to connect, and to be part of something bigger than ourselves - to catalyze compassionate action in communities around the world. Emerging from a global compassion movement inspired by the Charter for Compassion, the Games put the vision of compassion into direct action, catalyzing acts of service and kindness. In the spirit of “coopetition,” players challenge each other to strive together to develop the skills we need to be more compassionate toward others, toward the earth, and toward ourselves. By reframing the power of play and “friendly-competition,” we can unleash creative and fun ways to bring a culture of compassion to life.

In September, the Compassion Games is co-hosting the Global Unity Games: Tomorrow Together, in partnership with 9/11 Day, The International Day of Peace, and a prominent coalition of more than 25 nonprofits. Beginning on 9/11 and going through 9/21, the International Day of Peace, the Global Unity Games: Tomorrow Together launches a 5-year campaign with the purpose of bringing young people together from around the world to learn about and know each other, committing compassionate acts in a global expression of hope for a better tomorrow together.

The Global Unity Games are already gaining momentum. Louisville, Silicon Valley, Austin and Seattle are actively challenging one another to see who is the “most compassionate city in the world.” The world’s two largest interfaith organizations - the Parliament of World Religions and the United Religions Initiative - are also challenging each other in the spirit of compassionate coopetition, aiming to mobilize their vast networks to participate in the Games. In the Global Youth League, the Dalai Lama Fellows have challenged the University Innovation Fellows, the American Indian Science and Engineering Society (AISES), as well as the Global Issues Network. The National Association of Broadcasters (NAB) is a member of the Tomorrow Together coalition. How about the US TV talk show hosts challenging each other to engage their audiences to play and help determine: Who is the most compassionate talk show host in America? How about The Shift Network forming a team? Ready to play?!

Join us to go beyond our differences to create a unifying global culture that can respond to the challenges of the Great Divide. Learn more and sign up to play in the Global Unity Games: Tomorrow Together here!
 

Jon Eliot Ramer is an American entrepreneur, civic leader, inventor, and musician. He is co-founder of several technology companies including Ramer and Associates, ELF Technologies, Inc., and Smart Channels,as well as the designer and co-founder of several Deep Social Networks. Former Executive Director of the Interra Project, he is currently co-founder and Chief Technology Officer at Ideal Network, a "best in the world" B Corporation that functions as a group-buying social enterprise which donates a percentage of every purchase to a non-profit or school. He is also the designer and co-founder of the Compassionate Action Network, an organization based in Seattle, that led the effort to make the city the first in the world to affirm Karen Armstrong's Charter for Compassion. There are now 85 cities around the world that have started similar campaigns. Ramer is also the songwriter and lead guitarist in the band Once And For All.

The youngest of the Compassion Games team by at least a century, Joey Crotty utilizes his talents as a hopeless storyteller and writer, creative strategist, and rogue techy to elevate the evolutionary capacity of consciousness and compassion in the world. Joey is an undergraduate researcher and co-founder of the Consciousness Club at the University of Washington – Bothell.