Discussion

        Coming back to the subject of learning-games in general, normally we follow their play with discussion.  One way to do this is for the gamekeepers to make authoritative judgments on the game.  But usually we use an open-interview process for the discussion, with its focus on representative testament and with both the gamekeepers and players active as interviewers.  Thus the “phase n+1” of any given game is not an amorphous muddle of talk, but an event with structure.

         The game itself is an ice-breaking drama in which all participate, and the gamekeeping of the discussion is designed to bring out the open-circle phenomena.  The gamekeepers may impose an order on the subjects of testimony, and indeed this often clarifies the expression of the gestalt. As members of the circle, they testify to their own perceptions of the game, and to their experience in it if they also played.  There is no ground for argument over disagreements, for each person’s experience is real and incontrovertible; and people are assumed to testify honestly. There is instead the correlations of a community’s multiple view: “I thought you …,” “it felt like …”  The process comes to proper closure when all has been expressed—which does not necessarily mean when all have spoken, for many may have had similar experiences, but rather when people have stopped bringing significantly new insight or experience to the mix.

        Thus each learning-game is actually a package of two: a game of experience, and a game-process for revealing the collective consciousness and understanding of the experience.  Each of these games has its own wholeness, and together they have another—the integrity of creating and exploring a world of experience together, which satisfies something deep in us.

        When played repeatedly by a small-enough group, Open Interview is perhaps the ideal discussion (seminar) process.  It can go on indefinitely, feeding on its previous sessions  and the environment like a ram-jet engine of learning.  Even so, it needs to be resparked periodically by an ice-breaking drama, which may only be a recapitulation of what the group has grasped to date, but may well be more experiential and intense.

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