The Millennium Simulation game turned out to be much harder than I expected.. Considering I play a lot of games and simulation games as well, this seemed to be one of the more realistic and challenging ones I have played before. In my first go around, I focused on keeping Fatou and Kojos’ health as high as possible. This meant allocating time and resources in order to make sure that they stayed healthy. Although this was a good strategy for a while and kept them alive, eventually this caused them to get sick anyway due to lack of money.. Also, I constantly thought I had finally found the right balance of allocating time for fishing, farming, gathering fuel and water, but everytime I found the right balance for a round or two, the simulator would tell me the next  round that the food or water needs were not met. This really shows that with the changing world, especially in a time where you are trying to stay alive, what you do one year will not always work the next time. It also really shows me the complexity of allocation of time and  resources, something that many of us in America and the world who do not have to worry about this allocation of resources take for granted sometimes.

Besides just keeping the characters alive and making sure they had enough wood and water (and it got continuously harder to do this), the thing I struggled with the most was earning money. No matter if I put more time into the small business, farming, wood collecting, etc, for some  reason I could never get it to bring in a decent  amount of money which was really frustrating. I thought I figured out which crops were better than the other, but then it  would tell me there was a really bad season of collecting crops, something me nor the characters I was playing as really had any control over. It really shows you that survival is not  always completely in your control, and trying to make money in such a rural setting is  very difficult. It also showed me the difficulty of needing to try to make money without having any funds to allocate in order to increase profit.

As I am sure was the point of the exercise, I at first found the simulator nearly impossible to do. Even when I started out only making small changes, if I forgot to check one box my crop yield would fail or I would sustain a loss in the market or one of my villagers would get sick. One of the hardest parts I found was that there never seemed to be enough money. Once I got the hang of the game and was able to make a good profit off of corn for a few seasons it still was not enough to install the infrastructure like indoor bathrooms, water pumps, or even a medical clinic that would have been a lot more effective in preventing the villagers from getting sick. Another thing I noticed is that the only way to keep the family and the village afloat was to have Kodjo and Fatou doing work on various things for all hours of the day. I tried at first having at least a few idle hours for them for their health but I soon realized that the only way to make a profit for the family and the village was to have them tasked out for every hour. Overall I think this simulator ties back to the podcast in many ways, one of them being that small changes, or ‘adjustments in habits’ like the human body example suggests, are the best way of facilitating change in a system. This is easy to observe once we are aware of it, as many problematic systems do not disappear overnight. Secondly, this simulator definitely illustrates the fact that systems cannot be lead by either a small group of leaders or a single leader. There were way too many variables for me to remember and each round I would always forget at least one small detail. As stated in the podcasts, systems are so intricate and have so many moving parts that they require a much larger group of leaders to effectively handle the task.

I found the simulation game fun and interesting at the beginning then I found myself getting really frustrated because I would be failing and by the time I tried to change it, it was too late. I also found that my corn yield was low or I did not have enough transportation fees for the cotton, which were two circumstances that I was not expecting to happen. After I failed the game about three times, I realized that I was making the mistakes that I had literally just learned about in the podcast and in the Dorner reading. I was being reactive, not proactive, to all of the problems that came my way. Maybe this is just a design flaw in the game because you do things like set how much corn you want to farm and then they give you the problem, but still I would wait to fully address the problem. I would try to push the limits of the crops and my family members to see if i could make it to the next session and have the money to send them to the hospital or to switch to cotton. However, this strategy never worked and I realized just how reactive and lazy I was being.

This homework assignment really got me thinking about systemic work and how I kept on trying to change a million big in the simulator when I should have been “redefining” them in little but crucial ways. Further, I also realized that things are not going to change over night or after one session of the simulation. It is interesting how I could not even understand that after the reading and the podcast until I had to put this kind of thinking into action. I am really interested in the criminal justice system and how as a system it is operating in an extremely flawed way. If we want to mend or fix or injustices it is going to take a long time and little important wins to truly fix it. In the podcast when Bezio said that change has to be looked at in a 10 year range, I was a little discouraged because it sounds really daunting. However, it is the only way to get real change done without cutting corners and doing it little by little. It is a good mentality for going through life by taking things a little at a time and not letting your emotions cloud too much of your thinking or rationale (which i do a lot).

After listening to Dr. Bezio’s podcast and the reading by Dorner for this week. I felt that I had a fairly good understanding of systems theory. Working together with more people rather than unilateral leadership with a single forge ahead mindset is the path that we as a society need to head down if we want to make changes for a better future. I found the example from the podcast that surrounded standardized testing in schools to be very interesting. Standardized testing is something that our generation has always known. I took my first round of state standardized tests in first grade. And while I agree that there was likely and still is a strong need to fix the educational system, standardized testing may not have been the best path. Though it was developed by “educational experts” and systems theorist who likely had good reasoning for their actions, the longterm commitment to it despite the perpetuation of educational inequalities is likely a sign that the systemic issues of education should be reevaluated. It is easier to ask less question and simply assume that the devised plan is going to work forever as the best option. However, I think we as a society need to ask more challenging questions. I think this applies to our university right now as I see the Board of Trustees as having the forge ahead mindset as the university has functioned with these building names before so there is no need to change them now. Yes that is likely oversimplifying the discussion, but I do not believe the Board of Trustees is asking enough challenging questions.

I played the Millennial Village simulator for a little over an hour. I would say that while I improved my score in general, I struggled to devise a long term way for both my individuals and the village to be successful. I took many approaches with dedication of labor hours, loan amounts, tax rates, and resources limits. The one idea that I did stick with was that taking out a loan and working to turn that into profit through small business and farming was the most effective way to help yourself and the village. A limit on fish and wood was also necessary because without it shortages began to arise. Yet by the end of the game I felt that whenever I thought that I had figured out a way to sustain my people long term, disease or drought would strike which became quite frustrating. Overall, I think  much can be learned from this game regarding systems theory in action and how complex it is.

As I read the reading this week by Dorner, I was reminded of Dr. Bezio’s podcast I listened to yesterday. Dr. Bezio discusses the way that we need to think of systems as overall processes. this was one thing that I felt like I understood and applied to my life either in sports or in school, trying to approach things from a long term perspective. However I had no clue how hard it is to do this in a poverty trap, like the simulation. For example, I really struggled to gain an initial foundation to even start to really develop some sort of solid life, even beginning with a propane stove. It was most evident when I tried to continually buy maize enhancer, but the profits did not cover the cost. If I could have purchased this, or been able to make a sizable investment in the small business fund, I could have really lived more easily. One other uncomfortable decision was that I had to refuse to pay for doctor’s fees for one of my family members in order to buy food. I had to think about the long term process, and luckily for me, my family member did not pass away, so I could eventually return to this situation. I spent about an hour and a half on the game, but really don’t think I did well enough to make a thorough assessment of the game. in general though, I was able to understand that you need money to make money. With this in mind, it is so hard to overcome a poverty trap because you literally don’t have the funds to make the investments necessary to rise up out of the situation.

One point Dorner made made that I thought was interesting is on page 3, it talks about the way our ancestors had to make decisions based on the now, not reflecting as much on processes.  with this in mind, it is so hard to stay true to these processes when basic needs can’t be met. at one point in the simulation I had to decide between feeding my family or sending them to a doctor to cure malaria. Decisions like these really showed me that good intentions are not enough. It is obviously most important to stay alive, and this has to be a momentary decision, but the simulation really showed me how interconnected these types of systems are, and how important it is to have a process of decisions planned out and avoid the temptation to make the emotional decision, when it isnt the right one

So, I know absolutely nothing about running a village, but the basis of my tactics came from a camp my parents sent me to that basically threw us into the woods with few resources. I died the first time because I did not know how much wood one would actually need and how the rainfall severely affects how much time you need for water collection.

I managed the keep the two in good health. The small-business was really not running, but they had sufficient resources for the two of them. Also, I hiked taxes on the town to 50% because it did not impact Kodjo or Fatou since they did not have much income. Basically just doing everything to survive and nothing more.

However, a little box popped up saying  “Attempt to have a child” showed up when they turned around 20/21ish… Well, we have been talking about kids lately at practice because our coach is about to have one, so I thought it would be a GREAT idea to full send one. This was one aspect that the camp did not train me for. Kids are just a liability. Fatou could only work 6 hours while preggo, and then Damba (new kid) needs 2,500 calories which is absurd, along with the girl not working. Only two years passed, and I had to take out a loan that did not even last us.

The major takeaway from this simulation is that kids aren’t ideal when it comes to just survival since they literally do nothing for at least their first 5 years. Granted, if I tried to run my small business and make money, I would have had the funds to support the child. So the takeaway for life, don’t actively try to have a kid unless you are financially capable of supporting it.

This game was a lot harder than I was expecting. In the first round, Fatou and Kodjo lost over 50% of their health. I didn’t really know what the right settings were, and what aspects to focus on in order to give them the best health possible. After the first round, what I did know was that I wasn’t doing it right. I noticed specifically, the water cleanliness was in danger. To be honest, I wasn’t sure exactly what settings to change in order to fix this, as well as make their health increase. After only playing with one setting in the next round, Fatou and Kodjo died.

What I then noticed was that I was doing it all wrong. Instead of starting off slow and making small decisions, I went all in in the first round and changed a lot of the settings. Part of me felt like because this was a game, I wanted to just see what would happen. Looking back, if this were a real village and system that I was interfering with, I definitely should have made smaller decisions. I think making smaller decisions in the first round would have allowed me to figure out what went wrong in the second round, to then be able to fix it. Another thing I recognized after playing the game was that I should have thought more long term when it came to my decisions. For instance, I should have thought about what my decisions would do if they maintained a homeostatic feedback loop. Would it be a good thing or a bad thing for the villages system?

To start off, I was very bad at this game. I think I got too cocky in the beginning before all the bad things start happening, but the first time, Fatou and Kodjo died pretty quickly. I eventually got the hang of meeting the sustenance and water requirements, knowing which crops to focus on, and then, further on, helping the village in addition to helping the family.

And the fact that “many of Africa’s challenges (such as HIV/AIDS) are not present in the simulation. Instead, the MV Sim purposefully incorporates only a select set of issues to make it a manageable educational tool that models challenges cutting across the disciplines of agronomy, public health, environmental science, and economics” (starting page of game) makes me realize how impossible it is to even fathom how different my wold is to Africa’s world. The MV Sim really does make me appreciate the complexity of meeting the MDG’s that are mentioned on the starting page of the game and how they are implemented in the game because it was really hard to meet them. Kind of a tangent but, I am reading a book called “Cold Tangerines” and the author visited Africa. She went on about how you have to be in the right mental state to visit the continent and how things you see there will be forever etched into your brain. I kinda shrugged it off as her being dramatic, but after this simulation, I am getting a bigger picture of just how intense, and kind of scary, Africa is.

One thing that really stood out to me was that both Fatou and Kodjo were 16. I know this may be typical of Africa to get married young, but as an outsider, and someone who is older than that and still had zero clue to how do the game/keep them alive, their age shocked me. And not because I necessarily care about how young people get married at, but because how can they survive and do business and work 12 hour days at 16? I don’t know, I just found their young age to be something that really caught my attention.

This was actually a super challenging simulation! I felt as though there were far too many different elements that lead to the success of a village that I had simply not considered before. Specifically, I realized that there were a lot of infrastructural luxuries that we, as members of a highly developed society, have grown accustomed to. For example, our society has a pretty traditional schedule that most working people follow every day. We get up, eat breakfast, go to work for a government regulated amount of time (i.e. minimum wage jobs can’t make you work for more than x amount of hours before having to pay you overtime), and then expect to have time to go home and rest before repeating this again. This schedule may seem bland and irrelevant to most people, but in reality it is one of the reasons we are as financially productive as we are. We, as a society, accept that making money is a huge part of our day to day lives, and as a result we have agreed to give everyone time to do that. In a rural village such as the one being represented in our simulation, has no such infrastructure. In fact, it was because of this lack of infrastructure that my village did not survive for very long.

Dorner believes that we as humans are using every bit of our brain power to achieve our tasks in the most efficient way we know how. A lack of success, then, can be denoted to the little “mistakes” we make every day that turn into bad habits. For example, I probably will have a lower GPA by the end of my college career solely because I never charge my computer and have to wait a few minutes for it to turn on before I start studying. In a village, however, making these little mistakes can be the difference between life, prosperity, and success, or death. In the case of my village, I just couldn’t get the hang of how much time I should spend collecting combustion fuel versus water. Over time, this lack of societal infrastructure lead to the death of both of my villagers, as they began to lack clean water and started to get diseases. Overall, crazy simulation.

This week’s podcast resonated with me in several ways, especially in the wake of the decision to keep the names of Ryland Hall and Freeman hall. I have had several conversations with people ranging from complete strangers to loved ones about racism over the past year. I have made it a priority to not just have difficult conversations but to educate myself outside of these conversations and be an ally in the fight against racism. As discussed in the podcast, it’s easy to assume that someone sees and shares the same beliefs as you. The fact of the matter is that most people don’t. Living in Richmond this past summer I vividly remember going on my daily walk down monument avenue and thinking to myself as I passed each statue, why is it that racism is being celebrated? In the blink of an eye the Lee monument was covered with various messages and in various colors, a call and demand for change and justice in the wake of George Floyd’s death. Many people, including those with who I lived with, failed to see the reasoning behind the need to take down the statues, often saying they are “part of history.” They became extremely uncomfortable when talking about racism. 

In this moment I recognized that both myself and society need to be better. We cannot just stand by and expect someone else to fight racism. It takes every single one of us to eradicate this hatred. These conversations are difficult but they are necessary to have in order to understand the situation at hand and to learn how to be an ally. The arrogance of my roommates and failure to even acknowledge the reasoning behind the need to take down the statues infuriated me. I realized that not everyone will see eye to eye, let alone be willing to listen. At the end of the day that is their choice. I learned that the most important thing that matters is that I am willing to educate myself and others regardless of their views and also be an ally to others in any way I can.  In the wake of the university’s illogical decision to keep the names of Ryland and Freeman hall, I am ashamed to be a student of this university. This place supposedly prides itself on making a difference and listening to its students. The fact of the matter is this notion is a lie. At the end of the day, the University does not care what we have to say or what we believe in. I stand with every single organization on campus and my friends who have disaffiliated and been hurt by the university’s actions. We as students demand change and expect more from the university than a heartless letter with no reasoning behind these actions.