We used to play capture the flag as kids at the cottage. You divided the territory into two.

[applegrove]

Last edited Sat Dec 9, 2023, 06:20 PM - Edit history (16)

We used to play capture the flag as kids at the cottage. You divided the territory into two (in our case the property lines of two woodsy cottages on a hill that leads down to the water). You have a jail (marked out on the ground) where you put the invaders to your property when you catch them on your property. Being in jail on my parents property mean you got to eat freshly picked carrots from the garden. In jail at my cousins meant you got to watch and hear Chippy the chipunk torture and tease Ben the dog.

The rule is that there needs to be a "flag" hidden somewhere where at least part of it, maybe an inch, can be seen from the jail. You win when you find the flag on the other team's property, grab it and run it back to your property without getting caught. If you get caught you go back to jail and the flag (a plastic bread bag with orange markings in our case because my mom saved bags in the 1970s, so we could always find two alike in her recycling), goes back to its hiding place.

There were paths between the two cottages: the dirt road, the shared driveways, the path through the woods (the shortest route), the path along the water and then the lake itself. And then there was all the woods in between that you could not run through but sneak, stealthily, so not to be seen (or heard) by the other team whose property you were on.

There was a prison guard because if you made it as far into the other property as the jail, and touched your teammates in jail without being touched by the guard first, you and they were free. And you'd keep one free person in the jail while your team searched for the flag, or got caught by the guard or opposite team member, and brought to jail where you got free again.

We ran, swam, snuck and scraped our feet running through the woods or other frontier chasing each other. We took boats, snorkeled, crawled through the underbrush and sprinted down the road only to sneak in the other's property from behind. Sometimes simply freezing in the woods was a tactic to not be seen. Your job in prison, free or not, was to scour the woods to find that one inch of orange that was the hidden flag be it buried in mud up the hill or halfway up a sapling, or 50 feet away in a bush.

Then one day someone got strategic and said "let's not wait to get caught; let's free the jail as a first move". So we lined up on all 5 paths and when the game began (we on the one team with a plot) and all stormed the other teams jail all at once freeing it as step one. Then the freed would run around looking for the flag. This became the norm. The game went from from being individual attempts and journeys', to both teams lining up along the paths and running by each other at the start of the game. You would surround the jail like a swarm of bees looking for the flag. Even guarding was given up on. Both teams were on offense. The game got much shorter. We soon outgrew the game.

This is what the GOP is doing. They flood the US with so many flawed, mean, lying, syncopatic and personality disordered candidates and outrages that they cannot all be dealt with, the guardrails come down and politics is not about leadership or ideas anymore. A completely different set of skills and norms are being used. Don't give up the guardrails no matter how many loons are running and making noise and slurring others. Nail everyone. Hold everyone accountable. Don't get cynical. Be shocked every time. Don't give into the system of the GOP-Federalist Society-ALEC-Fox. Lead. Dream.

Human created systems have in the past destroyed civilizations if not genocided others and the GOP seem on par with that what with their denial of climate change and their embrace of a die off. I'd rather keep some paleo ingenuity/individuality and be able to see the group delusions for what they are, than follow a novel human created system that changes who we all are. Democracy was a system that worked, slow for some kiinds of justice, but has been tested for two centuries. Mesolitic people invented farming and hierarchy. The language of modern day man created personal politics, subjective reasoning, and group think in the modern age as well a trips into unreality and created human constructs. Don't forget the humanity before that, it is still within you or follow someone who still has the paleolithic side, where a tree is a tree and they see the forest for that tree too.

Begs the question how far are we as a people going to pursue corporate efficiency at the cost of people just living their best lives.

[callous taoboy]

1. Whoa!

Your CTF games were much more intense than the one we played at summer camp. We just had this huge open field with about 30 kids on each team. I remember it was big fun, and exhausting. The counselors, guys in their 20’s who were just giant kids, would also play and that made it even more intense.