Finite and Infinite Games: A Vision of Life as Play and Possibility
by James P. Carse
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Book Reviews of Finite and Infinite Games: A Vision of Life as Play and Possibility
Book Review: A personal revelation
Summary: 5 Stars
Finite and Infinite Games has been for me nothing less than a revelation. I first read this short discourse shortly after it was published in 1986, and have not gone a year without revisiting it both to understand and to use within my own life.What Finite and Infinite Games does is bring perspective. It empowers the self to understand and accept the finite rules imposed by ourselves or others and to decide if and how one plays around those rules or with those rules. It is a book of hope.
Alas, James Carse's book is not for everyone. Of the many copies I have given to family and friends, some half have not inspired the recipients. I suspect that one must either be looking for, desire, or already be aware of a little bit of the infinite to really understand the slightly abstract nature of this work.
For over a decade one of the top 2 books in my library.
Book Review: Beyond Winning and Losing
Summary: 5 Stars
It is hard to imagine reading Finite and Infinite Games without having one's perspective on life dramatically altered. Carse differentiates between two modes of thinking and behaving in the world - one mode is where we strive in an essentially humourless way to `win' within the same old meaningless games without ever questioning why we are doing it, and the other mode is where we play in order to be surprised, and where `winning' and `losing' become irrelevant. Carse sees the world as being utterly engrossed in the first mode, in finite games, whereas individuals engaged in the second mode, the players of the Infinite Game, appear very much to be a minority, generally ignored and often actively oppressed by the humourless finite game players. Carse-related psychology at <a href="http://www.radicaluncertainty.com">Radical Uncertainty</a>
Book Review: Game Time!
Summary: 5 Stars
I buy this book in bulk when I can and give it as gifts to people I care about. Carse makes a profound distinction between games that are essentially futile and games that support and maintain life and creates a beautiful little handbook for living. There are games that end in X amount a time with a clear loser and winner and there are games that are played for their own sake where competition is not a factor and all participants are winners. Carse's distinctions remind me of Eric Berne's concepts of Good Games and Bad Games. Carse's descriptions are much more general and are not as difficult to understand as Berne's -- they don't require the background of Transactional Analysis to understand making "Finite and Infinite Games" more generally applicable and useful. Pretty good work for a Methodist minister! :-)Book Review: meh
Summary: 2 Stars
Reading this book reminded me why I haven't read any philosophy in 10 years, and thus it'll be another 10 years before I try again (it'll probably be Foucalt's prison book next time). It's a mildly logical tract with some nice, pithy passages masquerading as a profound statement of truth. In the end, it doesn't tell us more about our milieu than we could have learned in 5 pages. The rest is fluff which might give the impression of profoundness and novelty.
I'm perhaps in violent agreement with hangedman's statement of the character of the book, differing only the conclusion about whether said character is a positive or a negative. If you want poetry which imposes a world view about human nature, there are many better places to look.
Book Review: Human Condition as Gaming Theory
Summary: 5 Stars
The author is a professor of religion at NYU but the book is not about religion. It is about spirituality as seen through the lens of gaming theory. I mean that in a very left brain, non-linear sense. It is not about any geo-political or historical materialist games that all dominant churches play. It is as visionary as Schrodinger's What Is Life?: with "Mind and Matter" and "Autobiographical Sketches" and as canonical as G. Spencer-Brown's Laws of Form. I write more about this book at http://www.transitionchoices.com/cgi-bin/article.pl?id=2