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3.6 AVERAGE
3.6 AVERAGE
A gentleman named Keram Malicki-Sanchez turned me on to this book back in '04, but I just got around to reading it this year. I'm glad I waited; eleven years ago I would not have been ready to receive this, and I know I got a lot more out of it reading it now at thirty-three. This book is less self-help and more an invitation to a different way of interpreting the world; I want to read it again in a few years and more clearly mark the passages that I think will be helpful for me in terms of my own growth.
It's not a bad book. Or even a wrong book. It just doesn't work.
The book talks about finite and infinite games and ascribes qualities to them, then tries to map life into games of various types. These are not games in the old economic Nash sense of the word -- they're about play, seriousness, roles, and rules.
It doesn't work. I don't buy it. I will accept that you can define various activities as games, but the sheer variety and scale of it all defeats the purpose -- if everything in life is a game, up to and including the Holocaust, then it trivializes life itself.
Time after time I would read a couple of sentences and double take. He couldn't have meant that. He couldn't have said that. And while from a certain perspective I could see that it was meant to be insightful, it looked to me to be looking at reality from the wrong end of the telescope. Making it smaller and less complex. More trivial. I read the word "play" and wondered whether he was describing lightness of spirit, or simply an escape.
Ultimately, I think that if you're going to talk about reality, you're going to have to talk about it on its own terms. Games are abstractions of reality. And you can't make reality an abstraction of a game.
The book talks about finite and infinite games and ascribes qualities to them, then tries to map life into games of various types. These are not games in the old economic Nash sense of the word -- they're about play, seriousness, roles, and rules.
It doesn't work. I don't buy it. I will accept that you can define various activities as games, but the sheer variety and scale of it all defeats the purpose -- if everything in life is a game, up to and including the Holocaust, then it trivializes life itself.
Time after time I would read a couple of sentences and double take. He couldn't have meant that. He couldn't have said that. And while from a certain perspective I could see that it was meant to be insightful, it looked to me to be looking at reality from the wrong end of the telescope. Making it smaller and less complex. More trivial. I read the word "play" and wondered whether he was describing lightness of spirit, or simply an escape.
Ultimately, I think that if you're going to talk about reality, you're going to have to talk about it on its own terms. Games are abstractions of reality. And you can't make reality an abstraction of a game.
Carse introduces an interesting way to frame life and play - as finite or infinite games, as dramatic or theatrical.
4+ stars for the new frame (core concepts are mostly covered in the first 2/3 of the book); 3 stars for the readability as I found this to be a bit too verbose and pedantic.
4+ stars for the new frame (core concepts are mostly covered in the first 2/3 of the book); 3 stars for the readability as I found this to be a bit too verbose and pedantic.
Somewhat in the style of Timeless Way of Building, eastern religion and cold war background, a short treatise on perspective and creation. Some parallel pairs to the title:
Society and culture
Theater and drama
Power and strength
Titles and names
Boundary and horizon
Moving and touching
Cure and health
Society and culture
Theater and drama
Power and strength
Titles and names
Boundary and horizon
Moving and touching
Cure and health