Michael Garfield on Finite vs Infinite Games

Video via https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rNAx0jPqG7s

Description

"I'm reading James P. Carse's book Finite and Infinite Games, and one of the things that stuck with me that I just keep thinking about, talking about, is how he talks about: culture is an infinite game. There's no winner, you win by playing, the goal of the game is just to keep the game going. Society is a finite game where there are winners and losers. You get to a point and the goal of the game is just to preserve the history of the game, it's just to keep the people in power, they've earned it through their sacrifice, so we enshrine them in legend and myth and they've earned their merits and we all agree that these merits mean something... But what Carse was saying in that is that the finite game of society is actually happening within the infinite game of culture. That society is a culture that has forgotten that it is play."