Schema & Ethos

We wish a community and activity respecting these values.

SERIOUS PLAY

“Serious Play” speaks to the benefits of adding some serious to our play, and also some play into our more serious work.

Animals play because it is a safe way to experiment and practice for real life challenges.  Play can reduce stress and exercise our brains and creativity.

So we gather not simply for fun, but also to seriously learn and grow—though individually we choose how.

In Club 2022, part of our play is pretending to be SuperHero-Artist-Agents.  This pings the ideas of thinking beyond oneself, and maybe even a bit about who we’d ideally be. Pretending in this way importantly creates a context and reason to do some learning, in addition to our just hanging out and having fun.

THINK BIG then BE REAL

Think Big…Be Real has been used to remind ourselves about not going too quickly with one’s first thought because it is often overly laden with habit, emotion, and bias. Think Big reminds us to put some effort into our thinking and our standards.

More generally, we understand “Think Big then Be Real” as description of a decision process moving from purpose and possibility towards action.

Ideally, decisions most important to us, flow first from having a purpose and possibility, are organizated, prioritizated and methodologically developed into a plan, to finally make a decision and take some action. 

For good reasons, public schools defer to parents, the largest scale value based schemas—often of a religious nature. Club Ideal seeks to create secular lessons on a lean set of top level organizing ideas in thinking, relating and staying healthy that have relevance in decisions, project teams and life perspectives.

In understanding steamHouse activity, Club Ideal is an aspirational ideal developing basic first principles, and can be thought of as primarily “Think Big,” while the real people Club Real is more toward “Be Real”. 

STRATEGY

If we are true to our highest purposes, we should also have as strategic and efficient a plan as can be mustered to achieve those ends.

Games and new activity are obvious venues to learn and practice strategy.

LEARNING

We are stagnant without learning. For life long learners, gains in understanding, wisdom and skills are exponential and ongoing.

Learning requires curiosity and grit. Learners ask “why”. Learning often requires effort, even discomfort including moments of being confused, wrong, or bad (at first) when doing something.

EFFECTIVE, REASONABLE and FUN

We assert there is broad desire among people to be effective, reasonable and fun.  One’s specific understanding of those ideals, or one’s personal nuance in their pursuit, aren’t critical to participation in Club Real.  In Club Ideal, however, some specifics, that strive to have broad and objective appeal, will be proferred.

Effective: Serve purposes as well as you are able.

Reasonable: Be reasonable and fair.

Fun: Create joy and contentment.

By describing ourselves as such, we hope to frame a code of conduct and general purpose for our activities.

The ethos above is shared by both Club Real and Club Ideal.

Club Ideal sees these elements as essential but not sufficient, and additionally suggests a “universal” set of personal policy planks that include value and cognitive based first principles.