Book Freak 172: Finite and Infinite Games
James P. Carse's transformative perspective on how life can be approached as either finite competition or infinite play
Do you think of life as a series of contests to be won or opportunities for continuous unfolding? In 1986, James P. Carse presented a new way of looking at human activity through the lens of two types of games: finite and infinite. Finite games are played to win within set boundaries, but infinite games are played to continue playing and invite ongoing participation.
This distinction will make you look differently at politics, culture, work, leisure, and relationships.
Four pieces of advice from the book:
On the Essential Nature of Human Play and Choices
Our identities and actions are inherently relational rather than individual.
“One cannot be human by oneself. There is no selfhood where there is no community. We do not relate to others as the persons we are; we are who we are in relating to others. Simultaneously the others with whom we are in relation are themselves in relation. We cannot relate to anyone who is not also relating to us. Our social existence has, therefore, an inescapably fluid character.”
On Living Time Versus Consuming Time
Infinite players generate their own time rather than being constrained by external measurements of it.
“The infinite player in us does not consume time but generates it. Because infinite play is dramatic and has no scripted conclusion, its time is time lived and not time viewed. As an infinite player one is neither young nor old, for one does not live in the time of another. There is therefore no external measure of an infinite player’s temporality. Time does not pass for an infinite player. Each moment of time is a beginning.”
On the Transformative Nature of Gardening versus Machinery
While machines operate through us, gardens grow with us.
“While machinery is meant to work changes without changing its operators, gardening transforms its workers. One learns how to drive a car, one learns to drive as a car; but one becomes a gardener. Gardening is not outcome-oriented. A successful harvest is not the end of a garden’s existence, but only a phase of it. As any gardener knows, the vitality of a garden does not end with a harvest. It simply takes another form.”
On the Living Nature of Stories
Great stories perpetuate themselves through our desire to share them.
“Great stories have this feature: To listen to them and learn them is to become their narrators. Our first response to hearing a story is the desire to tell it ourselves — the greater the story the greater the desire. We will go to considerable time and inconvenience to arrange a situation for its retelling. It is as though the story is itself seeking the occasion for its recurrence, making use of us as its agents.”
11/22/24
