Quotes About Infinite

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

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.

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 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.

We need a term that will stand in contrast to "power" as it acquires its meaning in finite play. Let us say that where the finite player plays to be powerful the infinite player plays with strength.

The death of an infinite player is dramatic. It does not mean that the game comes to an end with death; on the contrary, infinite players offer their death as a way of continuing the play. For that reason they do not play for their own life; they live for their own play. But since that play is always with others, it is evident that infinite players both live and die for the continuing life of others.

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.

Though infinite players are strong, they are not powerful and do not attempt to become powerful.

Although infinite players choose mortality, they may not know when death comes, but we can always say of them that "they die at the right time" (Nietzsche).

There is, however, a familiar form of playfulness often associated with situations protected from consequence-where no matter what we do (within certain limits), nothing will come of it. This is not playing so much as playing at, a harmless disregard for social constraints. While this is by no means excluded from infinite play, it is not the same as infinite play.

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.

Finite games can be played within an infinite game, but an infinite game cannot be played within a finite game.

Infinite players regard their wins and losses in whatever finite games they play as but moments in continuing play.

Infinite players have rules, they just do not forget that rules are an expression of agreement and not a requirement for agreement.

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.

It is the impulse of a finite player to go against another nation in war, it is the design of an infinite player to oppose war within a nation.

Because it is address, attending always on the response of the addressed, infinite speech has the form of listening. Infinite speech does not end in the obedient silence of the hearer, but continues by way of the attentive silence of the speaker. It is not a silence into which speech has died, but a silence from which speech is born.

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.

The joyfulness of infinite play, its laughter, lies in learning to start something we cannot finish.

Surprise in infinite play is the triumph of the future over the past. Since infinite players do not regard the past as having an outcome, they have no way of knowing what has been begun there. With each surprise, the past reveals a new beginning in itself. Inasmuch as the future is always surprising, the past is always changing.

Let us say that where the finite player plays to be powerful the infinite player plays with strength. A powerful person is one who brings the past to an outcome, settling all its unresolved issues. A strong person is one who carries the past into the future, showing that none of its issues is capable of resolution.

Evil is the termination of infinite play. It is infinite play coming to an end in unheard silence.

infinite players offer their death as a way of continuing the play. For that reason they do not play for their own life; they live for their own play. But since that play is always with others, it is evident that infinite players both live and die for the continuing life of others.

For the infinite player, seeing as genius, nature is the absolutely unlike. The infinite player recognizes nothing on the face of nature. Nature displays not only its indifference to human existence but its difference as well.