Saturday, July 10, 2021
What do you do after you win a game?
I remember the last time I finished GTA Vice City or Mario, I either played the same game again, starting from the very first mission or the first level, or, with my experience of winning in the past, I started a new game with an intention of winning again. The games that I couldn’t win or were left unfinished due to a variety of reasons were abandoned to start a new game again.
If Life is a game, how do you approach it?
Last night, while cursing the NCR weather, an exceedingly deep and weighty thought flashed through my mind, which forced me to open my laptop and write it down for today's blog post. Do you realize that the system we live in, makes us switch between Vertical and Horizontal lines? I know you didn’t get the idea behind this thought. Let me explain it in detail.
Remember the times when you were preparing for your board exams, or when you were preparing for competitive exams to get into a college. Everyone was in the same horizontal line. The rules of the game were same for everyone (For now let’s ignore the reservation schemes). Then came the day of the exam which rotated this horizontal line by 90 degrees to be converted into a vertical line. Your efforts, diligence and hardwork were the key factors which decided your place in that vertical line. You then got into some college based on whether you were leading or trailing that line. Once you got into the college, you were again standing in a horizontal line. Doesn’t matter if you were leading the line or trailing it, what matters now is to do well again in that horizontal line to distinguish yourselves from others. The system we live in makes this process iterative. What’s wrong with this approach? In a finite game, you have to sign yourself up for another one, and you must find a way to showcase your past winnings. Finite players have to parade around their wealth and status. They need to display the markers of winning they have accumulated so that other players know whom they are dealing with. These players spend their time in the past, because that’s where their winning is. Infinite players or infinite games, in contrast, look to the future. Because their goal is to keep the game going, they focus less on what happened, and put more effort into figuring out what’s possible. Unlike a finite game, in an infinite game you are always a winner, because you define the rules of the game. Even when you die, the game remains unaffected, you leave a legacy behind. The rules might change in the due course of time, but the winner remains the one who devised the game.
“What will undo any boundary is the awareness that it is our vision, and not what we are viewing, that is limited.”
Finite players need power, Infinite players need endurance. Finite players need training, infinite players need education.
Finite and Infinite Games by James Carse covers this topic in greater detail. Do read this book or else wait for me to read it and spam you with the summary!
See you next Saturday, until then have a great weekend :)
Cheers!
Some things that you may find interesting-
Movie of the week: A Beautiful Day in the Neighbourhood (Fred Rogers is one gem of a person)
Song I am listening to: Vanilla Twilight by Owl City
Quote I am enjoying: “No man chooses evil because it is evil, he only mistakes it for happiness.”
Thread of the week: Psychological Biases
Here are the last three posts if you were too occupied to read them:
If someone has forwarded this to you, please subscribe and start receiving updates directly in your inbox. It’s free. Your information is protected. And I never spam. Ever