Marcus -
> Steve writes:
>
> < It seems like an elaboration of "constraint provides form"? >
>
> Here I'll admit I just have no interest in games, puzzles, and most sports.
> Just what IS the point?
> I think it is the same kind of psychology at work: Let's create some
> artificial thing that can be mastered or at least measured and that a group
> can all relate to in an straightforward way. For reasons I just can't get
> my head around, people just love this stuff.
I don't know that I feel the same for the same reasons, but I do have a
resonance with this kind of rejection of artificial "games". While I
have been willing (even interested) in playing at various games in my
life, they rarely capture me the way they seem to for others. For me,
the interesting aspect of a game is the opportunities for exploration
and discovery it provides. For others it *seems* to be about a
false-mastery? Learning enough tricks idiosyncratic to that game and/or
their level or style of play with it, to be competitive/dominant. An
acutely contemporary and relevant (political) example of this is Trump's
allegedly elaborate style of cheating at Golf. I believe there is a
book out, elaborating the details of his myriad modes of cheating.
FWIW I found a great deal of my formal education to suffer the same kind
of gratuitousness... When assigned 'all the odd numbered problems in
chapter 11' I was willing to do as many of them as I felt helped me
recognize the pattern of the principle being taught, but would often
stop at the point I had learned what I needed to, leading me to have
more than a smattering of B and C grades in subjects which I felt plenty
competent in (and usually got A grades on the tests). Some
teachers/profs seemed to understand that and accommodated while others
took it as a sign of laziness and/or disrespect.
I've heard your reference to things like "that a group can all relate to
it in a straightforward way" in other posts, and am empathetic with it
myself. I might seem to try to define groups (or activities or ideals)
which *I* want to be associated with (and measured/contested
against/amongst), but that might reflect a "lesser of evils" than
anything. I found formal education (at all levels but maybe more
acutely through the 6-14 levels?). Early and late in my education I
felt a stronger sense of "play" and felt I was at least not interfered
too much with as I "explored" things not directly in the curriculum,
with a few notable exceptions.
> Playing by the rules is a Good Thing, whereas finding the weaknesses in a
> set of rules (e.g. hacking or using yet-to-be-identified performance
> enhancing drugs) is a Bad Thing.
But more recently elevated back to a "Good Thing"? Most of MY extended
peer group seems to honor a certain amount of hacking (whether it be OS
Kernals, Network Security, Kitchen Skills, or their Own
Bodies/Performance).
> Manipulating a market is a bad thing, but gaming it is Good Thing.
> What? The form is JUST a social form, not a universal form. If the system
> is to be cheated shall elect an authoritarian to do it. (Nixon replies,
> "Well, when the president does it, that means that it is not illegal.") Duh.
I think the catch 22 (or is it 333 or 666 in this case?) of this kind of
thinking is not that what the head of the executive branch does is by
definition not-illegal, but rather simply not-enforceable in our system?
>
> < The admonition that liberals engage too much in "identity politics" is
> probably an exposure of this difference. Taking up the cause of those
> who are *superficially* different from me in *similar ways* is one way
> for me to expand my scope of identity and empathy. >
>
> What I'm pitching here is not to extend identity, but to annihilate it.
What little Buddhist/Meditation affinity/practice I have suggests that
it is an illusion which on a good day is fully ignored ("but by whom?"
the paradox asks). To the extent that *most* everyone I know presents
to me (or I apprehend them as such) as an ego-centric individual, I
don't know what it means exactly to annihilate our identities. Perhaps
you are speaking more of the social norms of crafting or projecting a
pseudo-identity from a buffet of "reserved identities" and building a
meta-game around them of "how one should (inter)act" with that milieu
looking a lot like the "games" you notice you don't enjoy playing.
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