Finite and infinite games are cool tools

James P. Carse’s transformative look at how life can be viewed as either a limited competition or an endless game.

Do you think of life as a series of competitions to be won, or as opportunities for continuous improvement? In 1986, James P. Kahrs introduced a new way of looking at human activity through the lens of two types of games: finite and infinite. Finite games are played to win within set limits, while infinite games are played to continue play and invite ongoing participation.

This difference will make you think differently about politics, culture, work, leisure and relationships.

Four tips from the book:

On the Essential Nature of Human Play and Choice

Our identities and actions are inherently relational rather than individual.

“No one can be a person on his own. Where there is no community, there is no self. We do not treat others as who we are; we are who we are in relation to others. At the same time, others with whom we are in relationships are themselves in relationships. We cannot relate to someone who does not relate to us. Therefore, our social existence is inevitably changeable.”

About life time and time consumption

Infinite players generate their own time rather than being limited by external dimensions.

“The infinite player in us does not consume time, but generates it. Because an infinite game is dramatic and has no prepared conclusion, its time is lived time, not observed time. Being an infinite player, man is neither young nor old, since one does not live in the time of the other. Therefore, there is no external measure of the temporality of an infinite player. Time does not flow for the infinite player. Every moment in time is a beginning.”

On the transformative nature of gardening and technology

While machines work through us, gardens grow with us.

“While machines are designed to make changes without changing operators, horticulture transforms its workers. A man learns to drive a car, a man learns to drive a car; but man becomes a gardener. Gardening is not results-oriented. A successful harvest is not the end of the garden’s existence, but only a stage in it. Any gardener knows that the vitality of a garden does not end with the harvest. It just takes a different form.”

About the living nature of stories

Great stories are immortalized by our desire to share them.

“Great stories have one thing about them: to listen to them and study them is to become their storyteller. Our first reaction to a story is to want to tell it ourselves: the grander the story, the stronger the desire. We will go to great lengths and inconvenience to prepare the situation for its retelling. It’s as if history itself is looking for a reason to repeat itself, using us as its agents.”

11/22/24