Quotes from James P Carse

Oppressors themselves acknowledge that even the weakest of their subjects must agree to be oppressed.

The rules of an infinite game must change in the course of play. The rules are changed when the players of an infinite game agree that the play is imperiled by a finite outcome-that is, by the victory of some players and the defeat of others.

Any culture that continues to influence our vision continues to grow in the very exercise of that influence.

Properly speaking, the Renaissance is not a period but a people, moreover, a people without a boundary, and therefore without an enemy. The Renaissance is not against anyone. Whoever is not of the Renaissance cannot go out to oppose it, for they will find only an invitation to join the people it is.

For a bounded, metaphysically veiled, and destined society, enemies are necessary, conflict inevitable, and war likely.

Because culture as such can have no temporal limits, a culture understands its past not as destiny, but as history, that is, as a narrative that has begun but points always toward the endlessly open. Culture is an enterprise of mortals, disdaining to protect themselves against surprise. Living in the strength of their vision, they eschew power and make joyous play of boundaries.

Just as infinite play cannot be contained within finite play, culture cannot be authentic if held within the boundaries of a society. Of course, it is often the strategy of a society to initiate and embrace a culture as exclusively its own. Culture so bounded may even be so lavishly subsidized and encouraged by society that it has the appearance of open-ended activity, but in fact it is designed to serve societal interests in every case-like the socialist realism of Soviet art.

It is the desire of all finite players to be Master Players, to be so perfectly skilled in their play that nothing can surprise them, so perfectly trained that every move in the game is foreseen at the beginning.

A true Master Player plays as thought the game is already in the past, according to a script whose every detail is known prior to the play itself.

Art is not art, therefore, except as it leads to an engendering creativity in its beholders.

A finite player is trained not only to anticipate every future possibility, but to control the future, to prevent it from altering the past. This is the finite player in the mode of seriousness with its dread of unpredictable consequence.

Infinite players, on the other hand, continue their play in the expectation of being surprised. If surprise is no longer possible, all play ceases.

Surprise causes finite play to end; it is the reason for infinite play to continue.

Society and culture are therefore not true opponents of each other. Rather society is a species of culture that persists in contradicting itself, a freely organized attempt to conceal the freedom of the organizers and the organized, an attempt to forget that we have willfully forgotten our decision to enter this or that contest and to continue in it.

Education leads toward a continuing self discovery; training leads toward a final self-definition.

Artists cannot be trained. One does not become an artist by acquiring certain skills or techniques, though one can use any number of skills and techniques in artistic activity. The creative is found in anyone who is prepared for surprise. Such a person cannot go to school to be an artist, but can only go to school as an artist.

If we think of society as all that a people does under the veil of necessity, we must also think of it as a single finite game that includes any number of smaller games within its boundaries.

Some titles are inherited, though only when the bloodline or some other tangible connection with the original winner has been established, suggesting that the winners have continued to exist in their descendants. The heirs to titles are therefore obliged to display the appropriate emblems: a coat of arms or identifiable styles of speech, clothing, or behavior. It is a principal function of society to validate titles and to assure their perpetual recognition.

For this reason the rules of an infinite game have a different status from those of a finite game. They are like the grammar of a living language, where those of a finite game are like the rules of debate. In the former case we observe rules as a way of continuing discourse with each other; in the latter we observe rules as a way of bringing the speech of another person to an end.

A finite game must always be won with a terminal move, a final act within the boundaries of the game that establishes the winner beyond any possibility of challenge. A terminal move results, in other words, in the death of the opposing player as player. The winner kills the opponent. The loser is dead in the sense of being incapable of further play.

The rules, or grammar, of a living language are always evolving to guarantee the meaningfulness of discourse, while the rules of debate must remain constant.

The rule-making capacity of infinite players is often challenged by the impingement of powerful boundaries against their play-such as physical exhaustion, or the loss of material resources, or the hostility of non-players, or death.

Properly speaking, life and death as such are rarely the stakes of a finite game. What one wins is a title; and when the loser of a finite game is declared dead to further play, it is equivalent to declaring that person utterly without title-a person to whom no attention whatsoever need be given. Death, in finite play, is the triumph of the past over the future, a condition in which no surprise is possible.

Infinite players do not oppose the actions of others, but initiate actions of their own in such a way that others will respond by initiating their own.