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To: alt.magick.tyagi,alt.zen,alt.philosophy.zen,alt.consciousness.mysticism,talk.philosophy.misc,talk.religion.buddhism,alt.religion.buddhism From: I@no.self (!) Subject: Zen and Carse's Infinite Games smanning@INETWORLD.NET (Stephanie Manning): #My question was: #Would you please tell me a little bit about what you meant by "As a game #other than football (something infinite...) zen may be a direct #participation in the only game there is"? various out-takes from Carse; please compare with zen and alt.zen: A finite game is played for the purposes of winning, an infinite game for the purpose of continuing the play. Infinite players cannot say when their game began, nor do they care. They do not care for the reason that their game is not bounded by time. Indeed, the only purpose of the game is to prevent it from coming to an end, to keep everyone in play. There are no spatial or numerical boundaries to an infinite game. No world is marked with the barriers of infinite play, and there is no question of eligibility since anyone who wishes may play the infinite game. While finite games are externally defined, inifite games are internally defined. The time of an infinite game is not world time, but time created within the play itself. Since each play of the an infinite game eliminates boundaries, it opens to players a new horizon of time. For this reason it is impossible to say how long an infinite game has been played, or even can be played, since duration can be measured only externally to that which endures. It is also impossible to say in which world an infinite game is played, though there can be any number of worlds within an infinite game. The rules of an infinite game are changed to prevent anyone from winning the game and to bring as many persons as possible into the play. ...the rules of an infinite game are the contractual terms by which the players agree to continue playing. ... [the rules of an infinite game] are like the grammar of a living language.... The rules, or grammar, of a living language are always evolving to guarantee the meaningfulness of discourse.... The rules [of an infinite game] are always designed to deal with specific threats to the continuation of play. Infinite players use the rules to regulate the way they will take the boundaries or limites being force against their play into the game itself. The rule-making capacity of infinite players is often challenged by the impingement of powerful boundaries against their play -- such as physical exhaustion, or the loss of material resources, or the hostility of nonplayers, or death. The task is to design rules that will allow the players to continue the game by taking these limits into play -- even when death is one of the limits. It is in this sense that the game is infinite. This is equivalent to saying that no limitations may be imposed against infinite play. Since limits are taken into play, the play itself cannot be limited. ...infinite players play with boundaries. ...infinite players do not eschew 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. They embrace the abstractness of finite games as abstractness, and therefore take them up not seriously, but playfully.... They freely use masks in their social engagements, but not without acknowledging to themelves and others that they are masked. For that reason they regard each participant in finite play as *that person playing* and not *as a role played by someone*. ...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.... To be playful is to allow for possibility whatever the cost to oneself. Inasmuch as infinite players avoid any outcome whatsoever, keeping the future open, making all scripts useless, we shall reer to infinite play as *dramatic*. Dramatically, one chooses to be a mother; theatrically, one takes on the role of mother. Infinite players... contiue their play in the expectation of being surprised. If surprise is no longer possible, all play ceases. Surprise causes finite play to end; it is the reason for infinite play to continue. Surprise in infinite play is the triumph of the future over the past. Since infinite players do not regard the past as having an outcome, they have no way of knowing what has been begun there. With each surprise, the past reveals a new beginning in itself. Inasmuch as the future is always surprising, the past is always changing. Because infinite players prepare themselves to be surprised by the future, they play in complete openness. It is not an openness as in *candor*, but an openness as in *vulnerability*. It is not a matter of exposing one's unchanging identity, the true self that has always been, but a way of exposing one's ceaseless growth, the dynamic self that has yet to be. The infinite player does not expect only to be amused by surprise, but to be transformed by it, for surprise does not alter some abstract past, but one's own personal past. To be prepared against surprise [as in finite games] is to be *trained*. To be prepared for surprise is to be *educated*. Education discovers an increasing richness in the past, because it sees what is unfinished there.... Education leads toward a continuing self-discovery; training leads to a final self-definition.... Infinite players die. Since the boundaries of death are always a part of the play, the infinite player does not die at the end of play, but in the course of play. The death of an infinite player is dramatic. ...infinite players offer their death as a way of continuing play. For that reason they do not play for their own life; they live for their own play. But since that play is always with others, it is evident that infinite players both live and die for the continuing life of others. ...the infinite player plays as a mortal. In infinite play one chooses to be mortal inasmuch as one always plays dramatically, that is, toward the open, toward the horizon, toward surprise, whree nothing can be scripted. It is a kind of play that requires complete vulnerability. Although infinite players choose mortality, they may not know when death comes, but we can always say of them that "they die at the right time" (Nietzsche). ...the infinite play of life is joyous. Infinite play resounds throughout with a kind of laughter. It is not the laughter at others who have come to an unexpected end, having thought they were going somewhere else. It is laughter *with* others with whom we ahve discovered that the end we thought we were coming to has unexpectedly opened. We laugh not at what has surprisingly come to be impossible for others, but over what has surprisingly come to be possible with others. Infinite play is inherently paradoxical.... Because it is the purpose of infinite players to continue the play, they do not play for themselves.... The paradox of infinite play is that the players desire to *continue the play in others*. The paradox is precisely that they play only when others go on with the game. Infinite players play best when they become least necessary to the continuation of play. It is for this reason that they play as mortals. The joyfulness of infinite play, its laughter, lies in learning to start something we cannot finish. ...infinite players...have nothing but their *names*.... Persons cannot name themselves any more than they can entitle themselves [the latter occurring as a prize in finite games for the win]. However, unlike titles, which are given for what a person has done, a name is given at birth -- at a time when a person cannot yet have done anything. Titles are given at the end of play, names at the beginning. When a person is known only by name, the attention of others is on an open future. We simply cannot know what to expect. Whenever we address each other by name we ignore all scripts [the rules of finite games], and open the possibility that our relationship will become deeply reciprocal. That I cannot now predict your future is exactly what makes mine unpredictable. Our futures enter into each other. What is your future, and mine, becomes ours. We prepare each other for surprise. How do infinite players contend with power [a matter of deference to titles]? Infinite play is always dramatic; its outcome is endlessly open. There is no way of looking back to make a definite assessment of the power or weakness of earlier play. Infinite players look forward, not to a victory in which the past will achieve a timeless meaning, but toward ongoing play in which the past will require constant reinterpretation. Infinite players do not *oppose* the actions of others, but *initiate* actions of their own in such a way that others will respond by initiating *their* own. ...where the finite player plays *to be powerful* the infinite player plays *with strength*. A strong person is one who carries the past into the future, showing that none of its issues is capable of resolution. Power is concerned with what has already happened; strength with what has yet to happen. Power is finite in amount. Strength cannot be measured, because it is an opening and not a closing act. Power refers to the freedom persons have within limits, strength to the freedom persons have with limits. Strength is paradoxica. I am not strong because I can force others to do what I wish *as a result of my play with them*, but because I can allow them to do what they wish *in the course of play with them*. Although anyone who wishes can be an infinite player, and although anyone can be strong, we are not to suppose that power cannot work irremediable damage on infinite play. Infinite play canont prevent or terminate evil. Though infinite players are strong, they are not powerful and do not attempt to become powerful. *Evil is the termination of infinite play*. It is infinite play coming to an end in *unheard silence*. Unheard silence does not necessarily mean the death of the player. Unheard silence is not the loss of the player's voice, but the loss of listeners for that voice. It is an evil when the drama of life does not continue in others for reason of their deafness or ignorance. Infinite players understand the inescapabe likelihood of evil. They therefore do not attempt to eliminate evil in others, for to do so is the very impulse of evil itself, and therefore a contradiction [this last a qualite of finite games]. They only attempt paradoxically to recognize in themselves the evil that takes the form of attempting to eliminate evil elsewhere. Evil is not the inclusion of finite games in an infinite game, but the restriction of all play to one or another finite game. ---------------------------------------------------------- _Finite and Infinite Games_, by James P. Carse, Ballantine Books, 1986; excerpts from Ch. 1, pp. 1-42. __________________________________________________________ and inclusive of a specific mention of Zen: 32 No one can play a game alone. 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. This is not to say that we live in a fluid context, but that our lives are themselves fluid. As in the Zen image we are not the stones over which the stream of the world flows; we are the stream itself. As we shall see, this ceaseless change does not mean discontinuity; rather change is itself the very basis of our continuity as persons. Only that which can change can continue. The fluidity of our social and therfore personal existence is a function of our essential freedom -- the kind of freedom indicated in the formula "Who must play, cannot play." Of course, as we have seen, finite games cannnot have fluid boundaries, for if they do it will be impossible to agree on winners. But finite games float, as it were, in the unconstrained choice each player makes in entering and continuing the play. Finite games some- times appear, therefore, to have fixed points of social reference. Not only are there true and false ways of loving your country, for example, there is a positive requirement that you do so. It is this essential fluidity of our humanness that is irreconcilable with the seriousness of finite play. It is, therefore, this fluidity that presents us with an unavoidable challenge: how to contain the serious within the truly playful; that is, how to keep all our finite games in infinite play. This challenge is commonly misunderstood as the need to fine room for playfulness within finite games. This is what was referred to above as playing at, or perhaps playing around, a kind of play that has no consequence. This is the sort of playfulness implied in the ordinary sense of such terms as entertainment, amusement, diversion, comic relief, recreation, relaxation. Inevitably, however, seriousness will creep back into this kind of play. The executive's vacation, like the football team's time out, comes to be a device for refreshing the contestant for a higher level of competition. Even the open playfulness of children is expoited through organized athletic, artistic, and educational regimens as a means of preparing the young for serious adult competition. ... 101 There is but one infinite game. ----------------------------------------------------------- Ibid., pp. 45-6, 177. __________________________________________________________ EOF
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