Stewart Brand invented a brilliant idea in the hippy era called New Games. Stewart realized that games played by individuals have a metonymic
relationship to war and international relations. Our games are small
scale training for our war making styles. He hoped that by changing
the games people enjoy it might change the macro-world war making
practices.
Stewart was indulging in the core hippy view of the world (everything, global, parallels inter-personal relations). Stewart may not have believed this core view himself but he was willing to give it a try, since he knew the hippies would love to play New Games. Stewart was right about the hippies. New Games was a hit and hippies loved it.
Trouble
is: even with a business that was set-up and designed to promote New
Games around America and around the world....the New Games are not one
of the hippy contributions that have been adopted by the wider society.
I have two explanations. First, inter-personal games (including chess) and team sports are metonymic reflections of national warfare practices, not the other way around. The warfare has to change first, not our games. Second, peaceful cooperative games are no damn fun. We Americans have a strong personal drive to compete, strive together and constantly improve our skills in a meritocratic environment. Games serve that purpose. New Games, non-competitive, didn't.
We do not live in a sandbox. There is no adult supervision in life. Each person has to learn to deal with others in power terms, not goody-goody, Quaker, pacifist terms.
For a good dissent see Scott in the comments.