“To be playful is not to be trivial or frivolous, or to act as if nothing of consequence will happen. On the contrary, when we are playful with one another, we relate as free persons, and the relationship is open to surprise; everything that happens is of consequence, for seriousness is a dread of the unpredictable outcomes of open possibility. To be serious is to press for a specified conclusion. To be playful is to allow for unlimited possibility. . . . What will undo any boundary is the awareness that it is our vision, and not what we are viewing, that is limited.”

James Carse, Finite and Infinite Games: A Vision of Life as Play and Possibility, 15, 62

Not many people think of what they do in life as involving “games.” We think about games as activities for playgrounds or Olympic sports. Or for activities relegated to the electronic worlds of Nintendo or Fortnite. But if I were to tell you that the last conversation you had with someone had game-like aspects, what would you think?

Maybe it was a great conversation where the game of “you listen attentively, I listen attentively” played out well in a pattern across the discussion. Then again, the conversation may have involved the game of one person only listening to parts of what the other person says that interested them. Maybe there was a game of looking to critique or debate some part of what the other person said the minute they opened their mouth. Or, as Kristin Wiig’s character Penelope used to perform on Saturday Night Live, perhaps the game of one-upping the other person at every turn was played.

There’s lots of other examples of the “games people play,” which you can explore further here, by diving deep into game theory and its offshoots, or just by visiting a good local therapist.

The Game of War

While some people think play and games have nothing to do with the main business of life, we are playing games all the time. The worst game that human beings play is war. Think about it. There’s typically “sides,” some rules of engagement, and a deadly form of competition, often rhetorically advanced as “the only way” to relate to different others. Since war is not an inevitable game, Buckminster Fuller once wondered what an opposite game of realistic peace-making could look like in international affairs.

We could also break down the game-like aspects of unfettered nationalism, hyper-partisanship, or other ideological game-playing. Whether you want to read intensely on the subject or just go watch Hamilton, you’ll find that for all their flaws the founders of the U.S. generated a different form of politics than their British contemporaries by essentially asking, “What new game shall we play here?” And the subsequent history of social movements, protest, and especially civil rights advancement have all been engineered to recast aspects of that original game to better serve its actual population, not just a sample of people.

Source: “Bucky’s World Peace Game,” Pacific Domes

Regaming Communication and Leadership Practices

In Improv for Democracy, I discussed a need to get beyond “reframing” to start talking more about “regaming,” putting a focus less on the meanings we create in communication than the ways we coordinate in game-like fashion with one another.

When I have students or participants engage in improv games, I like to highlight that we’re already playing games in life. These are simply games that get us to practice other more expansive, effective, and ethical communication and leadership practices with one another. They create spaces for new performances of, for instance, speaking in a way that others want to listen and listening in a way that others want to speak (to paraphrase a saying). This is why Joey Novick and I think every candidate and public figure needs improv training.

Let’s take this one last step further. In one of the top five books I’ve ever read, James Carse lays out an illuminating case for understanding the games we human beings play. Collapsing divides between the playful and serious, he outlines how straight up “evil” is committed by a certain kind of “finite” vs. “infinite” game that we can choose to play. Here’s some quotes from the book that I’ve stitched together:

 “There are at least two kinds of games. One could be called finite, the other infinite.

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. Surprise causes finite play to end; it is the reason for infinite play to continue. To be prepared against surprise is to be trained. To be prepared for surprise is to be educated. The finite play for life is serious; the infinite play of life is joyous. . . . Evil is the termination of infinite play. . . . Evil is not the inclusion of finite games in an infinite game, but the restriction of all play to one or another finite game. . . . Infinite play remains invisible to the finite observer. Such viewers are looking for closure, for the ways in which players can bring matters to a conclusion and finish whatever remains unfinished. Finite players stand before infinite play as they stand before art.” (1, 32-33, 69).

Toward Infinite Games

There’s a lot to unpack in the previous passages, and Carse’s book is full of historical and political examples on these points. I’ll leave you with one implication. The difference between finite and infinite games is the difference between communication and leadership that opens space for learning, growth and development, and those that imagine that there’s no edges or anything beyond the boundaries.

In the process of creating meanings and coordinating life together, finite games assert that there’s no mystery left. Infinite games are always played in the knowledge that there’s more to be known. To go with the art example Carse ends with, imagine someone saying that Guernica or a Van Gogh painting has only one meaning with no space for other interpretations or mysteries that could keep a discussion going. (As a side note, some suggest the ending of the TV series The Sopranos will forever live on in fans’ imaginations because of its open-endedness).

Similarly, to back to the Framer’s example, if no room for further debate, dialogue, deliberation, and amendments were possible from their founding political documents, the nation would be playing a finite game. Look to The Handmaid’s Tale for an example of what a truly finite game looks like in politics.

It’s the infinite game, with the offer to continually play, make mistakes, learn from one another, and keep building and co-creating into the future that offers the very opposite of Carse’s phrase: a world where an imperfect and worthwhile goal is the advancement of infinite play.