Finite and Infinite Games

by James P. Carse

Consumption is a kind of activity that is directly opposite to the very form of engagement by which the title was won. It must be the kind of activity that can convince all observers that the possesser’s title to it is no longer in question.

The more powerful we consider persons to be, the less we expect them to do, for their power can come only from that which they have done.

indolence.

We display the success of what we have done by not having to do anything.

Key

“Conspicuous abstention f...

pecuniary ach...

consumption draws attention to itself by the length of time it continues.

The amount of property we have is measurable according to the length of time we remain conspicuous, requiring others to adjust their freedom of movement to our spatial dimensions.

It is apparent to infinite players that wealth is not so much possessed as it is performed.

Boom key

The more effective policy for a society is to find ways of persuading its thieves to abandon their role as competitors for property for the sake of becoming audience to the theater of wealth.

poietai

theatri...

theatricalization must be taken with great seriousness. Without it there is no culture at all, and a society without culture would be too drab and lifeless to be endured. What would Nazism have been without its musicians, graphic artists, and set designers, without its Albert Speer and Leni Riefenstahl?

While societal thinkers may not overlook the importance of poiesis, or creative activity, neither may they underestimate its danger, for the poietai are the ones most likely to remember what has been forgotten—that society is a species of culture.

Key. The fundamental built-in unavoidable risk and threat. The key to the eventual disruption and revolution and renewal

Plato did not expect his artists to compromise their art, but he did say that there must be “general lines which the poietai must follow in their stories. These lines they will not be able to cross.”

Powerful societies do not silence their poietai in order that they may go to war; they go to war as a way of silencing their poietai.

Boom yes

Alexander and Napoleon took their poets and their scholars into battle with them, saving themselves the nuisance of repression and along the way drawing ever larger audiences to their triumph.

museums are not designed to protect the art from people, but to protect the people from art.

Culture is likely to break out in a society not when its poietai begin to voice a line contrary to that of the society, but when they begin to ignore all lines whatsoever and concern themselves with bringing the audience back into play—not competitive play, but play that affirms itself as play.

What confounds a society is not serious opposition, but the lack of seriousness altogether.

Key

Art that is used against a society or its policies gives up its character as infinite play,

poiesis,

Beautiful definition

The creativity of culture has no outcome, no conclusion.

“Artists do not create objects, but create by way of objects”

Yessss key

We do not watch artists to see what they do, but watch what persons do and discover the artistry in it.

Key of art

The creative is found in anyone who is prepared for surprise.

Yess. Art == openness to surprise

poets do not “fit” into society, not because a place is denied them but because they do not take their “places” seriously.

To regard society as a species of culture is not to overthrow or even alter society, but only to eliminate its perceived necessity.

Infinite players never understand their culture as the composite of all that they choose individually to do, but as the congruence of all that they choose to do with each other.

where a society is defined by its boundaries, a culture is defined by its horizon.

Key

Because patriotism is the desire to contain all other finite games within itself—that is, to embrace all horizons within a single boundary—it is inherently evil.

Hmm

Who lives horizonally is never somewhere, but always in passage.

To enter a culture is not to do what the others do, but to do whatever one does with the others.

the Renaissance is not a period but a people, moreover, a people without a boundary, and therefore without an enemy.

A culture is sometimes opposed by suppressing its ideas, its works, even its language. This is a common strategy of a society afraid of the culture growing within its boundaries. But it is a strategy certain to fail, because it confuses the creative activity (poiesis) with the product (poiema) of that activity.

Key

Abstracted thought—thought without a thinker—is metaphysics.

The Renaissance had no ideology.

To keep its definitions clear a state must stimulate danger to itself.

“just as the blowing of the winds preserves the sea from the foulness which would be the result of a prolonged calm, so also corruption in nations would be the product of prolonged, let alone ‘perpetual’ peace” (Hegel).

Hmnm

War presents itself as necessary for self-protection, when in fact it is necessary for self-identification.

Key

Finite players go to war against states because they endanger boundaries; infinite players oppose states because they engender boundaries.

“Sometimes it is possible to kill a state without killing a single one of its members; and war gives no right which is not necessary to the gaining of its object” (Rousseau).

warfare has in it the contradiction of all finite play.

Just as Alexander wept upon learning he had no more enemies to conquer, finite players come to rue their victories

Key

The strategy of infinite players is horizonal. They do not go to meet putative enemies with power and violence, but with poiesis and vision.

Key

Poets who have no metaphysics, and therefore no political line, make war impossible because they have the irresistible ability to show the guardians that what seems necessary is only possible.

Boom

The danger of the poets, for Plato, is that they can imitate so well that it is difficult to see what is true and what is merely invented.

Boooom! Book key. Deep fakes as a liberating force for our collective psyche. Danger is misinterpretation as nihilism for the yet-to-be enlightened masses during transition

The poets are to surround the citizens of the Republic with such art as will “lead them unawares from childhood to love of, resemblance to, and harmony with, the beauty of reason.” The use of the word “unawares” shows Plato’s intention to keep the metaphysical veil intact.

Plato asks his poets not to create, but to deceive.

It is nothing other than awareness that poets—that is, creators of all sorts—seek. They do not display their art so as to make it appear real; they display the real in a way that reveals it to be art.