Finite and Infinite Games. - Review - book review

Whole Earth, Winter, 2000 by Kk

The wisdom held in this brief book now informs most of what I do in life. Its key distinction--that there are two types of games, finite and infinite--resolves my uncertainties about what to do next. Easy: always choose infinite games. The message is appealing because it is deeply cybernetic, yet it's also genuinely mystical. I get an "aha" every time I return to it.

Finite and Infinite
Games
A Vision of Life as Play
and Possibility
James P. Carse
1986, 180 pages
$7
Ballantine Books

A finite game is played for the purpose of winning, an infinite game for the purpose of continuing the play.

Finite players play within boundaries; infinite players play with boundaries.

To be prepared against surprise is to be trained. To be prepared for surprise is to be educated.

The death of an infinite player is dramatic. It does not mean that the game comes to an end with death; on the contrary, infinite players offer their death as a way of continuing the play. For that reason they do not play for their own life; they live for their own play.

I can be powerful only by not playing, by showing that the game is over.

Infinite players do not oppose the actions of others, but initiate actions of their own in such a way that others will play by initiating their own.

Evil is the termination of infinite play.

No one can play a game alone.

There is but one infinite game.