Finite and Infinite Games

by James P. Carse

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 a life does not continue in others for reason of their deafness or ignorance. There are silences that can be heard, even from the dead and from the severely oppressed. Much is recoverable from an apparently forgotten past. Sensitive and faithful historians can learn much of what has been lost, and much therefore that can be continued. There are silences, however, that will never and can never be heard. There is much evil that remains beyond redemption. When Europeans first landed on the North American continent the native population spoke as many as ten thousand distinct languages, each with its own poetry and treasury of histories and myths, its own ways of living in harmony with the spontaneities of the natural environment. All but a very few of those tongues have been silenced, their cultures forever lost to those of us who stand ignorantly in their place. Evil is not the termination of a finite game. Finite players, even those who play for their own lives, know the stakes of the games they freely choose to play. Evil is not the attempt to eliminate the play of another according to published and accepted rules, but to eliminate the play of another regardless of the rules. Evil is ...