May 9, 2003

• Games for Fun and Profit

  
  

  I've written before about the game as a metaphor for life.  I've encountered this idea many times, but no one has articulated it with more clarity or just plain fun, than James P Carse, in his book Finite and Infinite Games.  I first picked up this little volume three or four years ago.  It didn't look like a heavy book, and I read it in the same way that I read and consume most lighter works.  I treated it like mental potato chips.  To be enjoyed, but not as a staple of the diet. 

  
  

  Imagine my surprise that even after years have passed, I find myself picking it up again and again and again.  The metaphor of the game has become a touchstone in my life.  Do I want to play?  Do you want to play?  Am I playing the right game?  Am I playing the same game you're playing?  Am I in danger of winning or losing (a sign that I'm in the wrong game) or is the play relaxed and well, playful.  A characteristic of all games is that there are rules.  It would be impossible to include or imply all the rules in a single Xanga blog, but some of the general outline would include:

  
  

  There are at least two kinds of games.  One could be called finite, the other, infinite.  A finite game is played for the purpose of winning, an infinite game for the purpose of continuing the play.

  
  

  It a finite game is to be won by someone, it must come to a definite end.  It will come to an end when someone has won.

  
  

  The rules of the finite game may not change, the rules of the infinite game must change.

  
  

  Finite players play within boundaries; infinite players play with boundaries.

  
  

  Finite players are serious; infinite players are playful.

  
  

  A finite player plays to be powerful; an infinite player plays with strength.

  
  

  A finite player consumes time; an infinite player generates time.

  
  

  The finite player aims for eternal life; the infinite player for eternal birth.

  
  

  We all have the choice whether we will play in the game or be a spectator.  That's another question I frequently ask myself, is this action a move in the game or am I just changing seats to have a better view of the actual players.  There's a big difference between warming a bench and executing the moves even though both players wear the same uniform.  That's one of the things I've had to learn in a visceral way, make no assumption that getting a uniform means getting to play. 

  
  

  From the outset of finite play each part or position must be taken up with a certain seriousness; players must see themselves as teacher, as light-heavyweight, as mother.  In the proper exercise of such roles we believe we are the persons those roles portray.  Even more: we make those roles believable to others.  It is in the nature of acting, Shaw said, that we are not to see this woman as Ophelia, but Ophelia as this woman.

  
  

  If the actress is so skillful that we do see Ophelia as this woman, it follows that we do not see performed emotions and hear recited words, but a person's true feelings and speech.  To some extent the actress does not see herself performing but feels her performed emotion and actually says her memorized lines - yet the very fact that they are performed means that the words and feelings belong to the role and not to the actress.  In fact, it is one of the requirements of her craft that she keep her own person, distinct from the role.

  
  

  So it is with all roles.  I can step into the role of mother.  When I do this I must suspend my freedom with a proper seriousness in order to act as the role requires.  A mother's words, actions, and feelings belong to the role and not to the person - although some persons may veil themselves so assiduously that they make their performance believable even to themselves, overlooking any distinction between a mother's feelings and their own.

  
  

  The issue here is not whether self-veiling can be avoided, or even should be avoided.  No finite play is possible without it.  The issue is whether we are ever willing to drop the veil and openly acknowledge, if only to ourselves, that we have freely chosen to face the world through a mask.  Consider the actress whose skill at making Ophelia appear as this woman demonstrates the clarity with which she can distinguish the role from herself.  Is it not possible that when she leaves the stage she does not give up acting but simply leaves off one role for another?  At which point do we confront the fact that we live one life and perform another, or others, attempting to make our momentary forgetting a true and lasting forgetting?

  
  

  What makes this an issue is not the morality of masking ourselves.  It is rather that self-veiling is a contradictory act - a free suspension of our freedom.  I cannot forget that I have made my performance believable to myself.  I may have convinced myself that I am Ophelia.  But credibility will never suffice to undo the contradictoriness of self-veiling.  "To believe is to know you believe, and to know you believe is not to believe." (Sartre)

  
  

  Finite games may be played within the infinite game, so infinite players do not reject the performed roles of finite play.  On the contrary, they enter into finite games with all the appropriate energy and self-veiling, but they do so without the seriousness of finite players.  The embrace the abstractness of games as abstractness, and therefore take them not seriously but playfully.

  
  

  Another way to look at this aspect is that the finite player in taking the role seriously, behaves as those she is bounded by the role.  The finite player in the role of mother, has not merely suspended her freedom but has abdicated it. 

  
  

  The infinite player knows that to be playful is not to be trivial or frivolous, or to act as if nothing of consequence will happen.  On the contrary, when we are playful with each other, we relate as free persons, and the relationship is open to surprise; everything that happens is of consequence. It is seriousness which closes itself to consequence, for seriousness is a dread of the unpredictable outcome of possibility.  To be serious is to press for a specified conclusion.  To be playful is to allow for possibility whatever the cost to oneself. 

  
  

  You can play with me in a finite way if you see me as quiltnmomi, Tim's wife, Michael and Tucker's Mom, Don and Liz's daughter, fugitive's sister, Christian, political Liberal, or any other role I may wear.  But if you remember that I'm not the role, I'm both more and less than any of the roles I play.  Then you can relate to me freely and I'll gladly meet you in the possibility of that freedom in which consequences are both real and unknowable.

  
  

  So I ask you, do you wanna play?

  
  

  

  
  

  *Infinite play may encompass many finite games, but no finite game can encompass the infinite one.  In fact there are almost an infinite number of finite games, there is only one infinite game. 

  • 9:46 am
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