Players Counter-Players & Non-Players, Page 3
Zaid Hassan
attachment to instrumentally engineering particular outcomes in the interests of facilitating a superior outcome, that which is the product of genuine collaborative play. They also take a pragmatic position that complexity cannot be commanded or controlled, instead another approach is needed, a facilitative approach.
Before taking office, Obama, clearly a player, early on somewhat simplistically spoke of the center, of transcending the partisan politics of Washington to forge a new bipartisan politics. In that, he failed. Interestingly though, the style he adapted, in the face of a hostile opposition, in the face of his failure to will a center, was facilitative. As one commentator in the New Yorker noted, “Obama, like many presidents came to office talking like a director. But he ended up governing like a facilitator, which is what most successful Presidents have always done.”
Over the coming decades we are bound to witness unimaginable challenges. Our systems are more entwined and coupled, so that a problem in one part of the globe has knock-on effects unseen in slower, less connected times.
We will witness both players and counter-players heaping blame on each other while at the same time coming to grudging acknowledgements that we have no choice but to work together. It’s in this white-hot crucible that the discipline of the non-player will be forged.
While we will always be called to throw in the towel for one side or the other, the fate of collaborative play may well rest with those who have the fortitude not to choose sides.
THE CHOICE OF HOW TO PLAY
If all of this sounds a lot like an invitation to choose sides, to cast your lot in with one role or the other – it is not. The desire to pick a side may well be the central fallacy surrounding what it means to play.
Play, at its best, is an exercise characterized by fluidity, by flow, by being “in the zone.” It is not an exercise that can be pre-scripted and pre-determined. When it is, then the quality of play seems fake, stilted, forced, sort of like wrestling on television. This is true of finite games but doubly true of infinite games.
The roles we play within the context of a game would ideally also be fluid and flow with the unfolding of the game. Our role within the game would change, depending on the state of play, pivoting on our awareness of the field.
There may well be times when we are called on to act as players but equally, there are times when we are called on to act as a counter-weight to the machine, to be counter-players and then there will be times when we simply cannot do either and must declare ourselves non-players.
The trouble, of-course, is that this fluidity is hard to achieve in practice. We are indeed being called on to declare our allegiances, to respond to the provocative and binary logic of “you’re either with us or against us.”
Once a side has been picked, it is hard then to escape the label. However, in the face of this binary logic, in the face of societal demands that we nail our colours to the mast and pick a side, it takes courage to say “no” to such demands for fealty. In this “no” however lies not a refutation, not a lack of courage but rather the space for birth, for the creation of new paths and the will to forge new ways of being.
The point of infinite games is not winning or losing but the continuation of play. If we have a true choice it is to play as finite players, focused on ending the game in favour of one side or the other, or playing as infinite players, focused on expanding the realm of play. Carse, reminds us,
“The paradox of infinite play is that the players desire to continue the play in others. The paradox is precisely that they play only when others go on with the game.”
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Before taking office, Obama, clearly a player, early on somewhat simplistically spoke of the center, of transcending the partisan politics of Washington to forge a new bipartisan politics. In that, he failed. Interestingly though, the style he adapted, in the face of a hostile opposition, in the face of his failure to will a center, was facilitative. As one commentator in the New Yorker noted, “Obama, like many presidents came to office talking like a director. But he ended up governing like a facilitator, which is what most successful Presidents have always done.”
Over the coming decades we are bound to witness unimaginable challenges. Our systems are more entwined and coupled, so that a problem in one part of the globe has knock-on effects unseen in slower, less connected times.
We will witness both players and counter-players heaping blame on each other while at the same time coming to grudging acknowledgements that we have no choice but to work together. It’s in this white-hot crucible that the discipline of the non-player will be forged.
While we will always be called to throw in the towel for one side or the other, the fate of collaborative play may well rest with those who have the fortitude not to choose sides.
THE CHOICE OF HOW TO PLAY
If all of this sounds a lot like an invitation to choose sides, to cast your lot in with one role or the other – it is not. The desire to pick a side may well be the central fallacy surrounding what it means to play.
Play, at its best, is an exercise characterized by fluidity, by flow, by being “in the zone.” It is not an exercise that can be pre-scripted and pre-determined. When it is, then the quality of play seems fake, stilted, forced, sort of like wrestling on television. This is true of finite games but doubly true of infinite games.
The roles we play within the context of a game would ideally also be fluid and flow with the unfolding of the game. Our role within the game would change, depending on the state of play, pivoting on our awareness of the field.
There may well be times when we are called on to act as players but equally, there are times when we are called on to act as a counter-weight to the machine, to be counter-players and then there will be times when we simply cannot do either and must declare ourselves non-players.
The trouble, of-course, is that this fluidity is hard to achieve in practice. We are indeed being called on to declare our allegiances, to respond to the provocative and binary logic of “you’re either with us or against us.”
Once a side has been picked, it is hard then to escape the label. However, in the face of this binary logic, in the face of societal demands that we nail our colours to the mast and pick a side, it takes courage to say “no” to such demands for fealty. In this “no” however lies not a refutation, not a lack of courage but rather the space for birth, for the creation of new paths and the will to forge new ways of being.
The point of infinite games is not winning or losing but the continuation of play. If we have a true choice it is to play as finite players, focused on ending the game in favour of one side or the other, or playing as infinite players, focused on expanding the realm of play. Carse, reminds us,
“The paradox of infinite play is that the players desire to continue the play in others. The paradox is precisely that they play only when others go on with the game.”
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