Wisdom's Play

Finite Games

Finite Game Rules Finite games require a winner. A winner is declared when all the players agree who the winner is. A principle of all play, finite and infinite is that play is volitional. A finite game must have a precise beginning and ending. Further, it must be played within a marked area, with specified players. Spatial boundaries must be obvious and understood in every finite game from the simplest board and court games to world wars. Finite games require numerical limits. Players are selected for finite play.

Selection of Players Both opponents and teammates elect to join in play, but not everyone who wishes to play can play for or against, for example, the New York Yankees. (Neither can everyone be electricians or dentists by individual choice without the approval of colleagues, employers and competitors.) Just as finite players cannot select themselves for play, there is never a time when they cannot be removed from the game, or when the other contestants cannot refuse to play with them.

Boundaries or Limits of Finite Games Numerical boundaries sustain the liklihood that the contestants can agree on a winner. If players could walk on or off the field of play as they wished, the resulting confusion would make winning impossible. Delared boundries mean that the date, place, and membership in each finite game are external and defined. For example, when referring to a contest that began on September l, 1939, one is probably alluding to Germany's invasion of Poland. A finite game is played in a specific place, with specific persons. The world is marked by borders inviting contest with its people classified as to their eligibility.

Winners and Runner-ups Only one person or team can win a finite game, but other contestants may be ranked. For example, not everyone can be corporation president, although other competitors may be assigned lesser offices. Many people enter games with no expectation of winning, but for ranking.

Internal Limitations If finite games must be externally bounded by time, space, and number, they must also have internal limitations on what the players can do to and with each other. Agreeing on internal limitations establishes rules of play. Rules differ for each finite game. By knowing the rules, the players recognize the game. The rules establish a range of limitations upon the players. For instance, each player must start from behind a white line, or make payments on debts by the end of each month.

Rules and Laws Rules are not laws since they do not mandate specific behavior. Rules only restrain the freedom of the players, while allowing room for choice within the restraints. If the restraints of the rules are not observed, the outcome of the game is threatened. The rules of a finite game are the terms by which a winner may be determined. Rules must be published and agreed to by the players prior to beginning play. Rules are valid only if and when players freely observe them. However, there are no rules that require players to obey rules. The rules of a finite game are unique to that game. If rules could change during play, it would be a different game.

A Critical Distinction The changing of rules during the course of play distinguishes finite and infinite play. Thc rules of an infinite game must change during the course of play.

Finite Players Unaware of Their Freedom Theroretically, whoever plays a finite game plays freely. However, finite players may be unaware of this absolute freedom. Finite players tend to think that whatever they do, they must do. There are several reasons for this: Finite players must be selected. So, while no one is forced to remain a lawyer, the role is surrounded by ruled restraints and the expectations of others. Lawyers cannot do whatever they please and remain lawyers. Since finite games are played to be won, players make every move in a game to win. Attentiveness to the advances of their competition leads finite players to the belief that every move they themselves make, they must make. Without prizes for winning finite games, life is meaningless.

Serious Life Games Players play their roles by choice even in conditions of slavery or oppression. The price for refusing to play the role may be high, but even oppressors acknowledge that their subjects must agree to be oppressed. Unlike infinite play, finite play is limited by the environment. The limitations must be chosen by the player since no one is under any obligation to play a finite game. The conditions of play do not impose themselves on people. The limitations of finite play are self-limitations. To account for the disparity between the actual freedom of finite players to withdraw from play at any time and the experienced necessity to stay in the game, it must be concluded that finite players veil their freedom from themselves.

Self-Deception Some degree of self-deception is present in all finite games. If players do not disregard the voluntary nature of their play, they lose their competitive spirit. From the outset of finite play, each part or position must be assumed with seriousness. Players must see themselves as lawyers, quarterbacks, or mothers. In the proper exercise of their roles, people believe they are the persons those roles represent. More importantly, they make those roles believable to others. In a way, it is acting. For example, when an actress plays the role of Shakespeare's Ophelia, the audience does not see acted emotions and hear recited words. The audience sees and hears the fictional Ophelia's feelings and speech. To some degree, the actress does not see herself performing. She means the words and feelings that belong to the role. The craft of acting requires the actress to keep her own person distinct from the role. The person she is has nothing to do with the persona, Ophelia, and must not enter into her playing of the part. Of course, the actress never forgets that she has veiled herself to play the role, and that she has chosen to forget that she is herself and not Ophelia. Neither does the audience forget they are an audience. Even though they see the actress as Ophelia, they never doubt that she is not. They are complicit with the veil of the actress. While the audience allows the performed emotions to affect them, they do not forget they are allowing it.

Finite Playing of Life Roles Playing the role of Ophelia is the same for all finite life roles. Only willingly can one step into the role of mother. Persons who assume this role must suspend their freedom with a proper seriousness to act the required role. A lawyer or a mother's words, actions, and feelings belong to the role and not to the person. Some individuals veil themselves so studiously that they make their performance believable even to themselves. They overlook any distinction between a mother's feelings and their own. The crux of the matter is not whether self-veiling can or should be avoided. Finite play is impossible without self-veiling. The issue is whether the players are ever willing to drop the veil and acknowledge that they have freely chosen to face the world through the mask of a persona. When the actress playing Ophelia leaves the stage, she doesn't give up acting, but merely stops playing one role and begins playing another. Masking one's self is not a moral issue. The issue is rather that self-veiling is a voluntary suspension of one's freedom. Successful veiling does not undo the contradiction of self-veiling. If no amount of veiling can conceal the veiling itself, the question becomes how far will people go in their seriousness at self-veiling, and how far will they go to ensure that others will act in complicity?

Games Within Games Finite games can be played within an infinite game. Infinite players do not avoid the performed roles of finite play. Rather, they enter into finite games enthusiastically with the appropriate self-veiling. However, infinite players do so without the seriousness of finite players. Infinite players engage in finite games playfully. They freely use masks in their social engagements, but not without acknowledging that they are masked. Infinite players regard each participant in finite play as that person playing and not as a role played by someone.

Seriousness Seriousness is always related to roles (abstractions apart from the whole). To illustrate, police officers are taken more seriously when seen uniformed and performing their official roles rather than when observed putting on their uniforms. Seriousness requires an ordering of events done outside and beyond the range of awareness. When engaging others, people are more playful if there is no telling in advance where their relationship will lead, that is, when there is no outcome imposed on the relationship apart from the decision to continue it.

Playfulness Playfulness is not frivolous or without consequences. Everything that happens is of consequence. People are playful with each other when they relate as persons with free will, and their relationship welcomes surprise. Seriousness produces anxiety over unpredictable consequences. People are serious when they desire a specific conclusion. Playfulness allows for other possibilities.  There is a form of finite playfulness where regardless of what one does, no serious consequence will come of it. However, this is not true playfulness. It is playing at, with a disregard for social constraints. Finite playing at is not the same as infinite play.

Scripted or Unscripted Role Playing Since finite games are scripted or conditioned by social mores, religious dogma, or competition, and performed for an audience, finite games require conclusions. While the script and plot are not written in advance in finite play, the path to victory suggests the winners knew what to say and what to do. Since infinite players avoid any outcome by keeping the future open, scripts are useless to them. To illustrate, in finite play, one assumes the role of mother. In infinite play, one chooses to be a mother.

Rules and Scripting of Finite Games One obeys the rules in finite games to play, but playing does not consist only in obeying rules. The rules of a finite game are not a script. A script is composed according to the rules, but is not the same. The script is the record of the actual exchanges between players (acts and words). In finite play, scripts are composed during the course of play. Finite games are scripted during the game because every player has a preferred ending. Master players of finite games (such as Jesus), play as though the game is already in the past, following a script whose every detail is known prior to the play itself.

Surprise Surprise is an unwelcome element in finite games. This is because, if a player is not prepared to meet each move of an opponent, the chances of losing are greatly increased. Players who know what moves are to be made have a huge advantage over unprepared players. A finite player is trained to anticipate every future possibility to control the future. The finite player is serious because of the dread of an unpredictable consequence.

Preventing Loss To prevent loss (or the future from altering the past), finite players hide their future moves. An opponent must be kept unready and off balance. The moves of a finite player are designed to be misleading through the use of feints, distractions, misinformation and misdirection.

Titles A title is the acknowledgment of others of games won in the past. Winners expect others to acknowledge their titles, as this conveys superiority. The effectiveness of a title is contingent upon its visibility to others. It is vital that the recall of titles won in the past be preserved. The numbers worn by great athletes are retired. Greater achievements are memorialized in sculptures. Some titles are inherited, suggesting that the original winners continue to exist in their descendants. Heirs to titles display the appropriate emblems such as a coat of arms or social behavior. A principal function of society is to validate titles, and to preserve their recognition and acknowledgment.

Timelessness and Death The timelessness of titles conveys the significance of death for both finite and infinite players, as well as the difference between the ways death is understood. A finite game must be won with a terminal move that establishes the winner beyond any possibility of challenge. A terminal move results (literally or symbolically) in the death of the opposing player. The loser is dead or ineligible for further play. Literal life and death are rarely the stakes in a finite game. The victor wins a title. Without a title, the loser requires no further attention. In finite play, death is the triumph of the past over the future. No surprise is possible in the past. There are two types of death in finite play. One is death in life (losers). The other is life after mortal death (titled winners).

Death in Life Death in life occurs when one ceases to play. Competition with others is abandoned. For some, death in life is the acceptance of a loser's status. For others, death in life can be an achievement, the result of a spiritual discipline intended to extinguish all traces of struggle with the world. It is a liberation from the need to struggle for titles.

Life in Death Life in death pertains to the titled. Since titles are deemed timeless, they may not be extinguished by natural death. The "immortality" of the titled is a necessary condition for maintaining the control of victory's rewards. Titled victors live forever, not because their souls are unaffected by death, but because the custody of their titles is protected. Egyptian pharaohs, Christian saints, and soldiers killed in battle achieve life in death. Winners of finite games do not receive continuing existence, but some continuing recognition of their victories and titles.

Life and Death Games Some forms of bondage offer people the choice of staying alive or abuse and possible death for refusing to play. Slaves surrender their freedom to reflect their masters' superiority. They are emblems of their masters' victories. Another example of bondage is found in people who resort to extraordinary strategies for cures of life-ending illnesses. Similarly, people who observe stringent life styles designed to prolong youth and postpone death often suffer a harder life to gain more of the same. Just as with slaves, their lives are given to them by others. When life is viewed by a finite player as an award to be won, death represents defeat. Death happens when the struggle against it fails.

Paradox Finite players are competing for life. Life is not truly play for finite players. It is the result of play. Finite players play to gain more life and to defer death. This is the contradiction within finite play. Because the purpose of a finite game is to bring play to an end with the victory of one of the players, every finite game is played to end itself. Finite play is self-defeating. Death is suffered in finite play when one's boundaries give way, and one falls before the terminal move of an opponent.

Names Like titles, names are given. Just as people cannot entitle themselves, neither can they name themselves. However, unlike titles, which are given for what a person has done, a name is given at birth before a person has done anything. Names are given at the beginning of play. Titles are given at the end of play. A name places a person in play. A title removes a person from play. Generally, when a person is known only by a name and not a title, the future remains open. There is no way of knowing what to expect. When individuals address one another by name, scripts are largely ignored. Relationships can become reciprocal. The inability to predict someone's future makes one's own future with that individual also unpredictable. Both futures promise surprise.

Formal Titles and Names Titles are abstractions. Names are concrete, but if persons are known as winners, their names can have the force of titles. Names of master players such as Napoleon and Jesus became the equivalent of titles. Napoleon was a master player of the finite game of war. Jesus was a master player of the infinite game of salvation. The followers of Jesus live their lives in a manner that has been provisionally scripted for them based upon elevated standards of morality and brotherhood. Finite titles are scripted since they point backward in time having originated in an unrepeatable past. Every title has a specified ceremonial form of address and behavior for others. Titles such as King, General, Lord, Lady, or Bishop, signal a mode of address with appropriate deference and manners such as kneeling, saluting, bowing and ring kissing. The titled are powerful because those around them are expected to yield, and to conform to their will in the arena in which the title was won. Since titled people are no longer in competition, there is no way to deprive them of their titles.

Power The exercise of power presumes resistance. Power is not evident until two or more forces become opposed. Whichever force can move or bend the other is the more powerful. If no one contended for a title, that title would be powerless since no one would pay deference. The exercise of power is determined by the amount of resistance it can displace within given boundaries and finite time limits. The establishment of limits makes it possible to know how powerful one is in relation to others. The concept of power exists only in finite play. Power is not measurable until the game is completed. The power of the players cannot be determined during the course of play.

Characteristics of Power   To see power, one must look backward. If one has sufficient power to win before a game begins, there is no game. One is powerful only by possessing an acknowledged title, and by the ceremonial deference of others. This is an inherent contradiction in finite play. One can be powerful only by not playing. One has only the power the audience grants after completion of finite play.

Deference to Power Power appears to be a function of finite reality. Superior forces constantly impinge upon people from without and within. The power of things such as changes in the weather, acts of national governments and the transformations of time (the aging process) seem to confirm a degree of human powerlessness.

Nature of Power The perception of power is that no one can engage people competitively unless the players cooperate by freely joining in the game to win. Because power is measurable, it presumes cooperation. If people defer to titled winners, it is because they regard themselves as bested. Losers freely take part in the arena of power. The acts of government, nature, and of God, far exceed the ability of people to oppose, but people do not consider themselves losers in relation to such omnipotence. People are not defeated by floods or genetic disease or the rate of inflation. These are reality. People do not play against reality. Finite play conforms to reality. Weather or genetic influence are accepted as realities that establish the limits of play. If death is accepted as inevitable, one does not struggle against mortality. One struggles as a mortal. In truth, all the limitations of finite play are self-limitations.

Distinguishing Power and Strength A powerful person brings the past to a result, settling the unresolved issues of the past. A strong person carries the past into the future, showing that none of the issues of the past are capable of resolution. Power is finite in amount. Power is concened only with what has already happened. Strength is infinite. Strength is concerned with what has yet to happen. Strength cannot be measured, because it is a beginning and not an end. Power is restricted to a relatively small number of selected persons, but anyone can be strong. One is not strong because of forcing others to do one's wishes when playing with them, but because one allows them to do what they wish while playing with them.

Evil of Silence Evil is the termination of infinite play. Evil is infinite play coming to an end in unacknowleged silence. It is evil when the play of a life does not continue in others because of ignorance. Some silences can be heard even from the dead and the severely oppressed. Much can be recovered from a seemingly forgotten past. Perceptive historians can learn what has been silenced.

Conspiracy of Silence Some evil remains beyond redemption. The eradication of Indians by Europeans on the North and South American continents is an example. The cultures of most of the red race in North and South America has been lost. Evil is not the attempt to eliminate the play of another according to accepted rules. Evil attempts to eliminate the play of another regardless of the rules. Evil is the expression of power. Evil is the attempt to force the recognition of a title. This is the discrepancy within evil, for recognition cannot actually be forced. The Nazis did not compete with the Jews for a title, but demanded recognition of a title without competition. This could be achieved only by silencing the Jews. The Jews and their culture were expected to die in silence, without the world noticing.

Evil Evil normally originates in the desire to eliminate evil, for example in the adage, "The only good Indian is a dead Indian." Evil arises in the belief that the history of the past can be revised into a more favorable result. It is evil for a nation or a people to believe it is "the last, best hope on earth." 1 It is evil to think humanity's adventure will end with a return to Zionism, or with the Islamicization of all infidels. Unfettered capitalism and pretentious communism are fundamentally evil finite games. Limiting play to finite games is evil. 1 Abraham Lincoln's description of the United States, in his message to Congress in 1862, as the "last best hope of earth."