Another idea that is rocking my world at the moment, also in the healing/growing/conflict/psych fields, is a small book called Finite and Infinite Games by James P. Carse. Imagine if everything was a game, well here is the rule book. I keep recommending it to people but have found it hard to say what its about. I guess, fundamentally, it’s a paradigm, a lens you could apply whenever you felt like it. Basically its about maximising creativity and play, but of course games are also a lot about conflict. There are sections on war, health, sex, society, culture… and its old too, from the 80’s! Its not exactly easy to read, but i have found the ideas very useful and I’ve been applying them pretty frequently. I want to lend the book to everyone, but at the same time I can’t quite let go of it.

Heres a sample:
Because infinite players prepare themselves to be surprised by the future, they play in complete openness. It is not an openness as in candour, but an openness as in vulnerability. It is not a matter of exposing one’s unchanging identity, the true self that has always been, but a way of exposing ones’s ceaseless growth, they dynamic self that has yet to be. The infinite player does not expect only to be amused by surprise, but to be transformed by it, for surprise does not alter some abstract past, but ones own personal past.
To be prepared against surprised is to be trained. To be prepared for surprise is to be educated.

(...)

Since a culture is not anything persons do, but anything they do with each other, we may say that a culture comes into being whenever persons choose to be a people. (...) A people, as a people, has nothing to defend. In the same way a people has nothing and no one to attack. One cannot be free by opposing another. My freedom does not depend on your loss of freedom. On the contrary, since freedom is never freedom from society, but freedom for it, my freedom inherently affirms yours.

(...)

The infinite player in us does not consume time but generates it. Because infinite play is dramatic and has no scripted conclusion, its time is time lived and not time viewed. (...) Time does not pass for an infinite player. Each moment of time is a beginning. Each moment of time is not the beginning of a period of time. It is the beginning of an event that gives the time within it its specific quality. For an infinite player there is no such thing as an hour of time. There can be an hour of love, or a day of grieving, or a season of learning, or a period of labour.

• Kristen (not in the kitchen making dinner) said on 08/04/21 at 09:17 AM.....

  Tod bought a copy of it. It is hard to read, but I think there are good ideas buried in among the deep writing. I ought to wade through it, then somehow simplify or summarise it.

• sushi zume (Tokyo) said on 08/04/21 at 09:39 PM.....

  I may be in love with James P. Carse. I love every word and all that it stands for and creates for me. I want to (need to) read it over and over again. Am on the look out for a copy.

  Thanks for the comments over at sushi zume. To be honest I had a bit of a crush on Linda Hamilton in Terminator 2 - those arms when she did the chin ups on the bed in the hospital (??) wow - so your comment was a big compliment to me thank you. Hooping has it’s bonuses!

• j-ster (under the pile of tissues) said on 08/04/21 at 10:35 PM.....

  Kuri, if you could summarise it I would be very glad! But it gets easier as you go along and get familiar with his point of view. And the bits you don’t get, well you have something to digest next time around!

  Ms. Sushi, copies are less than $5 new on amazon.... I couldnt pass it up! I feel like I will have to read it again and again too, I certainly couldnt let go of it for very long....
  (and I always had a crush on Linda Hamilton in that scene too, her arms were just awesome, much like yours!)