In the future, if we all share resources equally and divorce them from fiat currencyFiat currency is a money backed by a government but which does not have any intrinsic value nor useful purpose on its own, like paper money, the only work there will be any point in doing will be that which we all deem "essential." Under the best circumstances, "work" and "play" will be indistinguishable from one another. Scarcity is a myth, and we must learn to cooperate to share resources sustainably so that we might not only survive, but thrive.

To work towards that goal, we can start to organize today to engage in or invent cooperative recreational activities. Cooperative sports and games can help community organizers illustrate ways in which people might cooperate rather than compete. These activities can help us manifest ideas about collective laborCollective labor envisions a future in which workers have rights and all collectively own and control the tools of conducting their business, economics, and even social life.

Playing and watching sports can be fun and healthy. But the world of professional sports as we know it is inextricably tied to the systems of oppression which spawned it and continue to profit from it.

These games are rooted in capitalist and feudalist narratives of competition and war, and they perpetuate these attitudes. The sense of community and civic pride fostered by team spectator sports is corrupted and twisted by a machine that drives useless consumption, violence, addiction, and disengagement with society. Even the solidarity in rooting for the home team has been broken with the advent of fantasy leagues.

Professional athletes are bought and sold, pushed to their physical limits, and left with permanent damage to their bodies and minds. Even recreational competitive sports sometimes have unnecessary, negative effects on stress levels for children and give them false hopes for futures that only offer rare and fleeting success.

But the physical, social, and mental benefits of recreation can be achieved without pitting people against one another.

The growth of recreational activities in recent years like escape rooms, dance, surf trips, yoga, pilates, Dungeons and Dragons and live action roleplay games, the recent show ”Floor is Lava,” cooperative multiplayer video games and esports, jigsaw puzzles, cycling, kayaking, and backcountry snowboarding and skiing each demonstrate ways to invent new recreational activities that prioritize working together towards a common goal. The documentary series “Challenger” likens the astronaut training program at Johnson Space Center to a cooperative sport, with participants readying themselves to take on dangerous endeavors together in the name of discovery, learning, and exploration. Rock climbing and other mountaineering pastimes, like hiking and ultramarathon running, are perfect examples of sports which require cooperation for not only the success of the athletes, but in many cases their survival. Sports and physical activities which safely pit teams and organizations against nature, chance, or themselves (non-competitively) can still entertain while encouraging healthy lifestyles, progressive accomplishments, and, of course, collaboration. Organizations like Outward Bound and the Black Surfing Association are dedicated to promoting healthy lifestyles and personal growth while communing with nature. Outward Bound specifically challenges their students to use teamwork in order to deeply transform the way they think about themselves and learn from future experiences. Most of these activities and sports also have low barriers to entry and can be either low cost or even free in some cases.

There will always be competitive personalities in civilization, but who is to say that personal fire, that drive, cannot be harnessed into something that benefits all of us? Oceanic and space exploration, physics, engineering, the arts, and even storytelling and entertainment can all harness ambition for positive social uses.

Gather friends together who you think might be interested in cooperative play and discuss ideas with them: create a youth-led, accessible and free application that comprehensively charts hiking trails and wilderness areas, investigate and solve a local mystery that someone wealthy doesn't want you to expose, invent and maintain a new folk hero and have her incessantly humiliate authorities and the powers that be, build nearly-impossible guerrilla structures to provide free wifi to the community, produce a stage play that radically breaks the fourth wall and takes the audience out of the theater and into the streets to engage in mass direct action related to the subject of the screenplay, arrange new music and use performance as cover to hack secrets of whatever tech company is committing the most egregious oppression against the people that week, embark on a voyage by bicycles to trace a political demand across a map, or anything else you can dream up. Play the games that are won together.

Next: Start a food cooperative