Finite and Infinite Games
Odd Company -- August 2, 2021
Dear Friends, Family, Neighbors, and Those of You I Don’t Yet Know —
I should confess at the outset that I am short on sleep today due to one of the best Sunday brunches I’ve ever eaten. Four delicious courses with wine, followed by a couple of cups of strong tea at around 4:00 in the afternoon, since by then I was falling asleep. The upshot was that when I actually went to bed, I was wide awake, and I stayed that way till the wee hours. So here I am, somewhat bleary-eyed and slow. My apologies. But oh boy, so worth it!
Today, instead of starting out with a piece of music (since I can’t seem to settle on one), I want to begin with a poem by the Israeli writer Yehuda Amichai. After last week’s edition, which was about sitting down and talking with someone whose views differ from our own, a friend and Odd Company reader sent me this deceptively simple piece of verse. It’s an observation about our natural (and very human) desire to be right.
The Place Where We Are Right1
by Yahuda Amichai
From the place where we are right
Flowers will never grow
In the spring.
The place where we are right
Is hard and trampled
Like a yard.
But doubts and loves
Dig up the world
Like a mole, a plow.
And a whisper will be heard in the place
Where the ruined
House once stood.
One problem with “being right” is that it leaves no room for disagreement. Rectitude is hard-packed ground. It can’t change, and nothing can grow from it. When we say, “I’m right,” it’s a very short step from there to, “You’re wrong.” And it’s an even shorter step from, “You’re wrong,” to “You’re stupid and evil.” It’s a game stopper. Winner-takes-all. Because, after all, what can a stupid, evil person possibly add to a conversation?
But wow…that’s a pretty conceited attitude, isn’t it? One of the things that’s hard to dig up in the packed dirt of “I’m right” is the truth. The truth exists regardless of what we think, and if we ignore or deny it, sooner or later we get into trouble.
Consider poor ol’ Galileo Galilei, the 17th-century Italian astronomer and physicist. These days, we celebrate Galileo as one of the fathers of modern science, someone who believed in detailed observations and changed his mind when observations contradicted his theories. He was a great fan of the truth. But in 1615, the Roman Inquisition found his claim that the Earth and other bodies in the solar system circled the sun so outrageous and threatening that they convicted him of heresy, imprisoned him, and forbade him to continue his work on heliocentrism for the rest of his life. A good many of his geocentrist scientific contemporaries agreed with the Inquisition. They were right, and Galileo was wrong. Not. Recognition of the truth — that the Earth circles the sun — was delayed by a hundred years. Who knows what great astronomical discoveries might have been made in that time if so many people hadn’t been so convinced they were right and he was wrong and evil! Eventually, the Church had to eat crow.
Now I have to ask you to bear with me as my somewhat addled brain heads off on one of its usual tangents. I’m not completely nuts, I promise; there is a connection here. If I can just remember what it is. Years ago, Tai Chi teacher Dan suggested the book Finite and Infinite Games, by James P. Carse to me. Dan suggested it because it ties in nicely with Tai Chi, which, in its most elegant form, is an infinite game.
Carse was a professor of religion at NYU for thirty years, but really he was a Renaissance Man. His interests overflowed the boundaries of his academic field. He taught classics, philosophy, and political theory, among other things. In Finite and Infinite Games, a deceptively slender volume that I spent months reading and studying, Carse theorized that we humans spend a lot of our time playing games with each other. These are everyday interactions of the type we all know, in which we try to outwit others or come out on top somehow, often by being “right” or winning arguments, or by getting more of what we want.
The book begins with this paragraph:
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 purposes of continuing the play.
Carse goes on to explain that in a finite game, somebody wins and somebody loses, and at that point, the game is over. The players stop, and one side gloats, and the other feels ashamed or angry or vengeful. The usual list. Political contests and maneuvering would fall into this category. Now that I think of it, the Olympics are finite games. But so are minor acts of retribution — little fights we have because we’re mad at someone or want to “get even” or prove we’re better than they are. In light of compassion studies, this means that in a finite game, there’s always a loser and the loser suffers. I think it’s reasonable to say that finite games create suffering. Unfortunately, most of the games humans play are finite.
Infinite games, in contrast, have no beginning and no end, no winners and no losers. The players can’t tell you when they started playing, and they don’t care, because it’s not important. What’s important is the joy of the game. Infinite games have no rules; or rather, the “rules” are constantly changing, just as the world is constantly changing. Since enjoyment of the game is the whole point, the object of an infinite game is to keep playing. If somebody wins, the game stops. So whatever rules the players agree upon are designed to keep the game going…forever. A lifelong friendship or love affair is an infinite game. Maintaining a wood lot or a favorite house is an infinite game. Running a business can be an infinite game. A leisurely interlude of bocce played with informal rules and a bottle of good wine on a mild afternoon can be an infinite game. We can choose to see life as an infinite game.
Imagine a conversation. If you begin with the belief that you are right and the other person is wrong, it’s a finite game — one you’re playing because you want to win. There will be a loser, and the result will be suffering that might otherwise not have happened. A conversation with someone whose ideas are different from ours can turn into a worthwhile relationship if we see it as an infinite game.
And now, I’d better quit while I still have a few functioning brain cells left — assuming I have any now. I wish I could send you off with a new poem or a piece of music, but I can’t muster any more coherent thoughts. So I’m off to dreamland. Have a brilliant week!
From The Selected Poetry of Yehuda Amichai, Viking Penguin Books 1987, edited and translated by Chana Bloch and Stephen Mitchell.