Finite and Infinite Games

by James P. Carse

It is an invariable principle of all play, finite and infinite, that whoever plays, plays freely. Whoever must play, cannot play.

A finite player is trained not only to anticipate every future possibility, but to control the future, to prevent it from altering the past. This is the finite player in the mode of seriousness with its dread of unpredictable consequence. Infinite players, on the other hand, continue 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.

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.

To be prepared against surprise is to be trained. To be prepared for surprise is to be educated.

Evil is never intended as evil. Indeed, the contradiction inherent in all evil is that it originates in the desire to eliminate evil. “The only good Indian is a dead Indian.”

“We must learn the fine arts of war and independence so that our children can learn architecture and engineering so that their children may learn the fine arts and painting” (John Quincy Adams).

As such a phenomenon birth repeats nothing; it is not the outcome of the past but the recasting of a drama already under way. A birth is an event in the ongoing history of a family, even the history of a culture.

Inasmuch as finite play always has its audience, it is the audience to whom the finite player intends to be known as winner. The finite player, in other words, must not only have an audience but must have an audience to convince.

What can be explained can also be predicted, if one knows the initial events and the laws covering their succession.

A prediction is but an explanation in advance.

There is no such thing as an unnatural act. Nothing can be done to or against nature, much less outside it.

When machinery functions perfectly it ceases to be there—but so do we.

Genuine travel has no destination. Travelers do not go somewhere, but constantly discover they are somewhere else.