Quotes About Boundaries

If I take my cock out, you aren't going to shout for help?

Why do I always feel like you're trying to staple my umbilical cord to the corner of your desk?

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.

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.

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.

Infinite players die. Since the boundaries of death are always part of the play, the infinite player does not die at the end of the play, but in the course of play.

The rules are always designed to deal with specific threats to the continuation of play. Infinite players use the rules to regulate the way they will take the boundaries or limits being forced against their play into the game itself.

Death is a defeat in finite play. It is inflicted when one's boundaries give way and one falls to an opponent. The finite player dies under the terminal move of another.

The world is elaborately marked by boundaries of contest, its people finely classified as to their eligibilities.

The time of an infinite game is not world time, but time created within the play itself. Since each play of an infinite game eliminates boundaries, it opens to players a new horizon of time.

A society is defined by its boundaries, a culture is defined by its horizon.

Because patriotism is the desire to contain all other finite games within itself-that is, to embrace all horizons within a single boundary-it is inherently evil.

If as a people infinite players cannot go to war against a people, they can act against war itself within whatever state they happen to reside. In one way their opposition to war resembles that of finite players: Each is opposed to the existence of a state. But their reasons and the strategies for attempting to eliminate states are radically different. Finite players go to war against states because they endanger boundaries; infinite players oppose states because they engender boundaries.

Infinite players die. Since the boundaries of death are always part of the play, the infinite player does not die at the end of play, but in the course of play.

Fields of play simply do not impose themselves on us. Therefore, all the limitations of finite play are self-limitations.

Strictly speaking, waste persons do not exist outside the boundaries of a society. They are not society's enemies. One does not go to war against them, as one goes to war against another society. Waste persons do not constitute an alternative or threatening society; they constitute an unveiling culture. They are therefore "purged". A society cleanses itself of them.

Occurring before a world, theatrically, a finite game occurs within time. Because it has its boundaries, its beginning and end, within the absolute temporal limits established by a world, time for a finite player runs out; it is used up. It is a diminishing quantity.

Just as it is essential for a finite game to have a definitive ending, it must also have a precise beginning. Therefore, we can speak of finite games as having temporal boundaries—to which, of course, all players must agree. But players must agree to the establishment of spatial and numerical boundaries as well. That is, the game must be played within a marked area, and with specified players.

What is preserved by the constancy of numerical boundaries, of course, is the possibility that all contestants can agree on an eventual winner.

To have such boundaries means that the date, place, and membership of each finite game are externally defined.

Just as infinite play cannot be contained within finite play, culture cannot be authentic if held within the boundaries of a society.

If finite games must be externally bounded by time, space, and number, they must also have internal limitations on what the players can do to and with each other. To agree on internal limitations is to establish rules of play.