Mr. Stanley Burns

They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety.

-Benjamin Franklin


PART I

Sullivan Francis Dewey believed in ghosts.

He stood at the podium in the City Hall in Oslo, Norway, on a cool late summer evening and felt not the presence of the many living souls sitting in the hall that night, dressed in their finest tuxedos and gowns, but the approving whispers of the vapor clad dead.

He began.

“Your majesties, excellencies, Prime Minister, Madame President, Mr. Secretary General, members of the Nobel Committee, distinguished friends all:

I stand here deeply humbled, breathing the free air, and speaking to you with profound thanks in my heart for this honor you have bestowed upon me and my team. Our work of the past decade, the efforts being recognized tonight, has, as its antecedent my efforts as a Mesoamerican anthropologist. By the time I arrived on the scene, so to speak, I stood on the shoulders of those who had toiled in jungles and deserts to map pyramids, roadways, and the royal courts of the societies that came before ours in what was once quaintly referred to as the New World. That work, while arduous and detailed, left many questions unanswered.

With the MacArthur Foundation grant I was awarded I was able to expand that work using what, at the time, were the most powerful supercomputers available running complexity theory and game theory algorithms to map out how those ancient societies developed and progressed down to the individual family unit level. With our tongues firmly planted in cheeks we began to describe ourselves as ‘quantum anthropologists’. But, really it was not at all very different from what paleontologists have been doing for half-century now that is observing lions and other predators in their native habitats in order to theorize about T. Rex behaviors. We just added a bit more granularity, if you will.

Before I get too deeply into the weeds though of how we transitioned into what became known as “peace gaming”, I want to share with you a little story from my childhood.