You cannot build half a bridge.
A bridge that only reaches the middle of the river is not a project: it is a monument to failure. Yet, most systems change efforts are currently trapped in “Tin Cup” mode, raising just enough to survive another month while the bridge to a life-serving civilization remains unfinished.
In my latest conversation with Jim, we performed a forensic audit on the chronic underfunding of Game B. We explored why these projects fail and how to build the financial plumbing required to move the needle.
The Tin Cup Trap
The majority of social change projects fail for two reasons: insufficient capitalization or internal decoherence.
In Game A, we understand that a startup requires a specific “activation energy” to reach the threshold of viability. Game B projects often ignore this physics. We buy the land but forget the mortgage. We start the farm but ignore the sewage system. This is what Jim calls the “Tin Cup” mode: a cycle of constant, small-scale fundraising that drains the most scarce resource we have: time and attention.
To build the exit, we need a “Game B Foundation” operating at the scale of hundreds of millions. We need to tap into Game A “guilt money” and the next generation of billionaires to fund experiments with enough redundancy to survive the valley of death.
The Human Filter: Institutionalists vs. Soulsets
Money is a necessary condition, but it is not a sufficient one.
The “Great Filter” of social systems is often internal decoherence, or what Gregory Bateson called schismogenesis. Projects die because the team cannot maintain coherence. We have found that success requires a delicate balance between two types of people:
The Institutionalists: Those who can build a profitable organic farm and a working sewage system.
The Personal Change People: Those who focus on the “Soulset” shifts and the relational health of the membrane.
If you have only the former, you build a corporation. If you have only the latter, you build a commune that starves. You need both, and you need them to meet face-to-face.
The 10x Multiplier of Presence
We have observed that trust and coherence happen ten times faster in person than in the virtual space.
High-dimensional relationship management is a primate heuristic. In the early days of Game B, we flew the team together every six weeks. It was expensive, but it was the magic that created the synthesis. We must stop trying to save the world solely through Zoom. We need to dance around the fire, share a drunken dinner, and look into each other’s eyes to see if we are “Fair Witnesses” or just more assholes in disguise.
The path to a new world requires both the rigor of a spreadsheet and the vulnerability of a shared meal.
