The “rock paper scissors” of Philosophy.
• delayed gratification
• behaviorism
• no such thing as gratification
We need more opposing things like this in triads.
RochamGO!
Eternal meaning
Meaning ex nihilo
Meaninglessness
Broken clock randomly correct meaning
Intended meaning
Descent into madness meaning salad
The Glass Bead Game?
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Ordered. Been meaning to read it for a while now. Thanks.
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I would like to rephrase:
• functional analysis (& reframing to delay)
• animalistic behaviorism (instant gratification)
• zero gratification or function
I enjoyed that book. Thank you for the recommend!
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Glad you liked it! I read Glass Bead Game the summer before starting law school, and it was the perfect reflection on The Academy to take with me. Probably due for a re-read.
I’m a big fan of Herman Hesse’s other works as well. I read Siddhartha and Demian in high school and they’re a big part of the reason I go into philosophy. I didn’t like Steppenwolf as much, but I think if I’d read it in college I could have avoided some of my less pleasant learning experiences.
Back to the topic, I spent some time a while ago trying to develop a game that would do what I take you to be proposing here, but based on go rather than rock-paper-scissors. My idea was to make a game where two players take turns placing down stones of multiple colors, slowly creating an image. I find black-and-white go patterns beautiful, and thought that with the right sort of rules a multi-colored version could be neat.
I was thinking about it when NFTs were all the rage – images that you would ‘own’ that would be tied to your crypocurrency account. My idea was that the game would be done on the blockchain and the winner would own the image.
But that seems cringy in retrospect, and not necessary to the idea. I should revisit it.
Yeah, the pleasure of the game is not the winning or owning… but arriving at what is shared by everyone that you just can’t put a price on. We should call the game, ¡Eureka!
A game along those lines that I play with my kids is Ouisi. No winning or losing or really even rules, everyone grabs a stack of pictures and puts them down whenever, or by turns if you want, and then you can explain (or not) why they are related to other pictures that other people put down.
I find that my kids like it more than I expect, they are better at it than I am, and I like it more than i expect to. It’s a bit like a conversation about nothing, in the way that personality still comes through even though nothing really means anything.
I’m reminded of another series of books, The Book of Dust, the sequel trilogy to His Dark Materials (Golden Compass, etc.). There are plot devices that reappear especially in books 2 and 3 (i.e. 5 and 6) that seem to represent tarot and similar divination techniques that are related to kinda-games-but-kinda-not-games, and how they can be used as a scaffold for intuition.
I was surprised by the themes in light of the original trilogy, which I’ve heard described as ‘Narnia for atheists’. The author seems to have become a pantheist, and I found the transition narratively compelling, if not philosophically convincing.
Caveat that I’m conflicted about the resolution of the trilogy: I was not satisfied, but I think that might have been intentional. But the journey was fun.