🏆Playing Infinite Games🏆

🔥Welcome to volume 000025!🔥

I’m Christian Champ. This is ☯️The Middle Way Newsletter ☯️. It is a place where I write, explore, share, and invite you along for the journey.

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🏆Playing the Infinite Game 🏆

We sometimes get our minds altered! You know, that moment we run into a concept that strikes us like lightning. It then changes the way we see the world. These quake moments shake our foundation. That is what happened when I ran into the concept of Infinite Games. The idea reached me while reading Kevin Kelly’s book What Technology Wants, which led to the source material, James Carse’s book Infinite and Finite Games. 

This concept offers a simple way to look at our lives, are we playing Finite or Infinite Games?

Finite games have defined rules and boundaries with clear winners and losers. Infinite games have no rules, no end point, no winners or losers and the goal of the game is to continue to play the game. 

Finite games look to maximize some measure that is weighed. Infinite goals look to maximize the playing of the game.

Infinite games have a multigenerational view. You want to keep things going into infinity. These games are generative and giving. If we play finite games we are trying to capture and defeat leading to the ending of the game.  

Infinite games are governed by abundance. Finite games are ruled by zero sum thinking. 

When we look at our scoreboards in life, all infinite game scoreboards are victories because all we care about is continuing to play. That game is the victory. Finite scoreboards make us clearly winning, losing or tied. We can’t win most finite games. Even when we do win, the next finite game starts.  

Carse created the concept and what a concept it is!  It is a simple guide to measuring your life. Are you playing a finite or an infinite game? In any of your endeavours in life, you can use this simple heuristic to put the game in perspective. The term game play is a perfect encapsulation of our lives. Meaning is self directed and we decide what games we want to play. 

There are easy games that we start playing that never end such as achievements, material items, homes, cars, titles and acclaim. We find ourselves stuck in these status games. We find ourselves stuck in blue team or red team political battles, though we believe our “team” is the good folks. All of which represent finite games. 

We do need to meet the minimums on Maslow’s hierarchy of needs and some funds to chase infinite games. We always will play some finite games, but they don’t have to define us. 

The ultimate infinite games are learning, giving and gratitude. Being open to the wonder and awe of life. Being open to experience the moments for what they are. 

We only get to do this once, so find the infinite games and play them.  

Are you playing Infinite Games or are Finite Games dominating your focus? If you mainly play Finite Games, how can you repurpose them into Infinite Games? 

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📓Articles to Read📓 

Ed Batista on How to Give Critical Feedback

• This article spoke to me as I give more and more feedback overtime. I want to think there is some wisdom in my words, but like practicing Tai Chi, there needs to constant introspection and refinement

  He starts by breaking down feedback:

We call feedback "a gift." (It's not.) [1]

We think anonymous feedback is preferable. (It's not.) [2]

We fail to appreciate how stressful feedback can be. (It is.) [3

and remembering…

But before we consider how to deliver our feedback, it's worth asking why we're motivated to provide it in the first place. As Peter Block has noted, "the wish to get others to be different is a wish to control them, which in itself creates its own resistance," and I see this dynamic frequently in my coaching practice.

Then offering four ways to give “supportive confrontation”

1. This Is the Effect of Your Behavior on Me

   The first step in supportive confrontation involves the simplest feedback model: When you do [X], I feel [Y].

2. Your Behavior Is Not Meeting Your Apparent Goals or Intentions

   The second approach to supportive confrontation is to show the other person how the particular behavior does not help advance his or her interests.

3. Your Behavior May Meet Your Goals, But It Is Very Costly to You

   In some cases the other party's behavior enables them to achieve their goals, but at a cost that goes well beyond our negative emotional response. Or they may achieve short-term goals at the expense of longer-term goals that are apparent to us but not to them

4. In What Ways Am I Part of the Problem?

 

Morgan Housel on Lots of Things Happening at Once (hat tip to The Balance for this reco)

• Our simple explanations and stories tend to make us feel good, feel like we know, but are most likely wrong

• There isn’t one single answer to most things and if we think there is we are the one that is wrong (hey COVID)

A patient is statistically more likely to have a few common ailments than a single big one. Lots of things tend to happen at once, so the push to find one underlying cause to a patient’s ills can lead to false precision at best, misdiagnosis at worst

Kanye and the Gap by Dan Runice at Triplet

• Just a great article on the history of Kanye and how he got from there to here

Yeezy is a brand that thrives on hunger. The hunger of its founder to prove he matters. The hunger of its customers to get products that others can’t. The hunger of the masses to hope they can one day get their hands on it.

But Yeezy’s Gap partnership flips this on its head. The billionaire founder has proved Yeezy can succeed. Customers aren’t as hungry as they once were. The only one “hungry” is the struggling retailer that hopes its former employee can turn the company around.

In Kanye West’s mind, he found a partner to make his ultimate dream come true. But maybe the real dream was the journey he took to get to this point.

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📚 Books to Read or Listen to📚

Robert Anton Wilson’s Cosmic Trigger II (Goodreads)

• Reality tunnels, hypnosis, BS (belief systems) and lots of brain smashing ideas make up this work

Whether one is transported out of one's habitual Reality Tunnel to the multiple choice labyrinth of Virtual Reality by marijuana or by Charlie Parker or by sexual orgasm or by meditation or by Picasso or by King Kong or by the Wicked Witch of the West, the experience has a quality of timelessness and liberation about it. One feels less mechanical and seems on the edge of grasping what the mystics mean by "Awakening;" sometimes, especially with Beethoven, one almost feels that one will almost never forget the "absurd good news," (as Chesterson calls it) of that Awakened state.

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🎙️ Listen / Watch  📺 

Jim Rutt podcast featuring Apalech Clan aboriginal Tyson Yunkaport on Indigenous Complexity (Spotify / Transcript)

Tyson: And I guess this last bit, the last decade and a half or so, two decades, has been understanding my identity and my culture more as a knowledge system, as a system of knowledge, but not just know-how about, “Oh, here’s where you get this medicine plant, and here’s how you catch a fish or whatever.” It’s not that kind of thing.

Tyson: It’s actually the ways of thinking and patterns of thinking and the systems of logic that have really taken me. And I don’t know, they’ve just made me into a sort of a better person who is sometimes worth listening to. Yeah.

Tyson: Well, I mean, we have a very different … In Aboriginal Australia here, we have a different paradigm, and it sounds similar. It’s just a very subtle difference. And instead of a growth-based paradigm, we have a increase paradigm.

Tyson: So we actually have annual increase ceremonies that we do to organize all those behaviors and get everybody on the right page with that, and also to be able to sort of create a model, I guess, a simulation, I’m trying to translate this into your language, a simulation in a ritual space of what needs to occur in the ecosystem for increase to occur.

Tyson: So now, increase is different from growth, because you don’t want the size of the system to grow, but you want the relationships within the system, the exchange within the system. That needs to increase. And you can increase that quite infinitely.

Tyson: So I guess it would be like, if you want it to get smarter, you wouldn’t need to grow a big brain. You would just have to make more neural connections. So it’s kind of like that. So it’s an increase.

Tyson: We’re not really interested in quantitative easing, this kind of thing. We’re not interested in the size of the economy, but we are very interested in the velocity of the dollar. You know what I mean? It puts that lens on it.

Krista Tippet interviews Paula Boss on Loss Without Closure ( Spotify / Transcript) and how the pandemic is creating its own loss (Spotify / Transcript)

• A timely subject given COVID and the unknowns we are currently dealing with. While we are not subjected to loss without closure, we need to currently lean into the unknown at a level we are not use to.

• Other subjects touched upon is meaning, everyone is different, suffering, living with paradox, and the five stages aren’t used appropriately, as some of us will never just get over it.

Boss:I think I’m in it with everybody else, struggling.

And I suspect I’ve spent 40 years studying ambiguous loss because I don’t like ambiguity. I remember when I first went to the University of Wisconsin in Madison, in one class or another, we were describing each other. And somebody called me decisive. And I took that as a high compliment. [laughs] I don’t, anymore. I’ve come to believe in both/and thinking, which I write about. I don’t like binary thinking, unless you’re working with your banker or someone like that. There’s a middle ground, a middle way to go, when you’re dealing with people and when you’re dealing with problems. We have huge problems right now. And to say that someone was wrong when the pandemic began, about what they thought about it — a scientist — and now they think differently, that’s binary thinking. And I can’t take it anymore.

And certainly, with science in my background, we never land on “this is the absolute truth, and nothing else will ever change it.” We never go there. And I don’t think the public understands that, that science is a process of finding the approximation of truth, and then somebody else will come along and perhaps improve upon it. That’s how it goes. And it’s not like you win or you lose. It’s not that way.

So I’ve struggled with that myself, and I think I’m at a place — gradually, working with the people who are suffering from ambiguous loss all these years — I’ve learned from them that you can live with it. You can, eventually, not embrace it and maybe not even accept it, but you can decide to live with it. You can decide to accept it. “Decide” is the main word there. And then you can live well, nevertheless.

Pauline Boss:We like to solve problems. We’re not comfortable with unanswered questions. And this is full of unanswered questions. These are losses that are minus facts.

Boss:Then we get some mastery by having which rituals we want and burying them where we want or how we want, whether it’s scattering of ashes or a burial in the ground. I think that’s very important. We need some control when we lose someone like that. But I think it also has to do with attachment. People want to come back to touch base with where this body is, or where the symbol of this body is. People of the missing, of course, come back to the memorials, like the 9/11 memorial or the ones in Japan after tsunami or wherever around the world, Holocaust memorials.

Boss:That’s part, again, of a culture of mastery, a culture of problem solving and wanting to move on with things. Elizabeth Kübler-Ross found those five stages to be relevant to people who are dying, who are fading into death.

Tippett:Not someone who’s at the loss end of that death.

Boss:No. She did not mean that for the family members. But, in fact, it blurred over into that, and I don’t know if that was her, or I think it was more so her followers. Today, the new research in grief and loss does not recommend linear stages. We like linear stages, though. The news media really likes it because, in fact, it has an ending. It has a finite end. If you start with stage one, and you move on through stage five, you’re done.k to the memorials, like the 9/11 memorial or the ones in Japan after tsunami or wherever around the world, Holocaust memorials.

Boss:So far, that hasn’t been made. [laughs] Depression is an illness that requires a medical intervention. It’s the minority of people who have depression. And yet, with the ambiguous loss of, let’s say, Alzheimer’s disease and 50-some other dementias, caregivers are said to be depressed. Most of the caregivers I have met and studied and treated are not depressed; they’re sad. They’re grieving. This should be normalized. Sadness is treated with human connection.

Boss:Yes. I think it might be a more Eastern way of thinking, actually. But, yes, the only way to live with ambiguous loss is to hold two opposing ideas in your mind at the same time. These are some examples: With the physically missing, people might say, “He’s gone, he’s probably dead, and maybe not,” or “He may be coming back, but maybe not.” Those kinds of thinking are common, and it is the only way that people can lower the stress of living with the ambiguity. Children learn it rapidly, and even adults learn it. It doesn’t take too long. It is not part of our culture, however.

We like finite answers. You’re either dead or you’re alive. You’re either here or you’re gone. And let’s say you have somebody with dementia or a child with autism, and they’re there, but they’re not always there. So once you put that frame on it, people are more at ease and recognize that that may be the closest to the truth that they’re going to get. To say either/or, to think in a more binary way — he’s dead or he’s alive, you’re either here or you’re gone — that would involve some denial and lack of truth. So the only truth is that middle way of “he may be coming back and maybe not.”

Boss:And we don’t like suffering. It’s a more Eastern idea that suffering is part of life. Our idea is that suffering is something you should get over — and, as you say, cure it or fix it or find some solution for it. That’s a good thing, by the way. It is probably what has made our society great and has made technology so wonderful and cures for diseases and so on. I don’t want to put that down at all. But here’s the crux: Now and then, there’s a problem that has no solution. Now and then, there are problems that don’t have a perfect fix. And then this idea of holding two opposing ideas in your mind at the same time is very useful for stress reduction.

Tippett:The search for meaning stays vital, but you don’t necessarily locate the meaning in that terrible thing. You have to find the meaning elsewhere in your life and let that be good enough.

Boss:Exactly. I like that term, “good enough,” Krista. In fact, I wrote a chapter on “good enough.” We really have to give up on perfection, of a perfect answer. There are a lot of situations that have no perfect answer. So let’s say the mother of a kidnapped child may then, in fact, devote her life to helping prevent other children from going missing. You see that all the time, where people who have terrible things happen to them then transform it into something that may help others. That’s a way of finding meaning in meaninglessness.

Deconstructing Yourself w/ Michael Taft featuring Erik Davis (Spotify)

• The city is allineation and modulating between large crowds with urban space now marred in allineation. The energy of the city is gone and replaced with the opposite of that given COVID.

• Finding things interesting, even difficult, makes them easier to deal with. Lots of interesting moments right now.

• This is a new historical period. You want it to be episodic, but it’s not. There are good waves in this, it’s not all negative. It feels like the historical moment in our lives. There is no going back.

• Humans can recreate some reality in any situation. We are doing that now to avoid the void. We are doing it to

• Erik asks “What do you really want back”? How do you redefine value? How can you appreciate more of your now constrained lives? How do we release our material demands and power demands?

• Conspiracy theories are now serving as the new religion, as old religion is no longer interesting. It is the gnostic psychology. You know the “real truth”. It is the “secret truth” and my feelings are confirmed. You have a special point of view and you are part of the people that know. You are on the good side and not a dupe.

• Most hilarious paradox is in this complicated moment, everyone in all sides of the media (mainstream and other) they know!

• The narratives all rely on there are the good people and they are spreading the news vs. the bad people. It’s evangelical. Good vs. Evil. An apocalyptic moment just around the corner.

• The mystical moment works because it is so crazy (like the body and blood of Christ). You have to buy into something insane to make the conspiracy theory work.

• Paranoid people keep putting themselves in paranoid places including Erik.

Bret Weinstein’s Dark Horse - Black Intellectual Roundtable (Spotify)

• This one has a lot of great thoughts and ideas around this current moment and where do we go from here. It’s challenging to do justice to all the powerful comments by not listening to the discussion

• Future Thinker’s w/ Nora Bateson - Healing a Disintegrating Society (Spotify)

• She took her kids out of school and did family learning together with her kids (after a couple months they were 3 years ahead of their classmates…). This hits on one of my favorite ideas because I've been learning capoeira, skateboarding and gymnastics with my 4.5 yo. The little man is also “teaching me” capoeira classes a couple times a week on his own and yes his pronunciations in Portuguese is much better than mine.

• How do you prepare your kids to not fail in the existing system and prepare for the new system?

• Making plans for your kids doesn’t work, it’s better to take a nap

• Tune into what is emerging and step into it or sit back and watch

• When we put seeds in the ground, we need to wait. There is something to being in the eternal with the spontaneous

• What is being fabriced into your relationship with your child by the stories you tell? How has your stories been embedded in you? How do patterns affect cultures or community?

• Nora’s mom says “but they are going to destroy democracy” and she replied but mom it’s all just a story, it doesn’t really exist

• What are the deep truths? What is eternal? They lie in paradox

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💣Words of Wisdom💣

Maya Angelou - “My mission in life is not merely to survive, but to thrive; and to do so with some passion, some compassion, some humor, and some style.”

Diana S. Fleischman @sentientist

"Mansplaining"-was a popular neologism for when a man assumes a woman doesn't know about a topic. Far more often, I see "opponentsplaining" where one person assumes, because your view differs from theirs, that you have only started thinking about the topic at that very moment.

Small Arcs of Larger Circles - Nora Bateson

Like a skateboard ridden by a stiff and brittle adult, the words slip from underneath us.

In Love With the World - Yongey Mingyur Rinpoche, Helen Tworkov

Acknowledge the wave but stay with the ocean. This will pass…if I let it.

Emergent Strategy - Adrienne Maree Brown

Interdependence is mutual dependence between things. If you study biology, you’ll discover that there is a great deal of interdependence between plants and animals. “Inter-” means “between,” so interdependence is dependence between things, the quality or condition of being interdependent, or mutually reliant, on each other.57 Decentralization: the dispersion or distribution of functions or powers, the delegation of power.

Bonnitta Roy@bonnittaroy

The holistic complexity of the brain, the immune system... doesn't stop at the body boundary. They interpenetrate the systems and life force of the earth.

SALT Summaries, Condensed Ideas About Long-Term Thinking - Stewart Brand

...every 11 cents that children get from government, the old demand and get a dollar. The concept of giving back is still foreign to them. If the now-aging Baby Boomers decide to reverse that, they’ll earn the title, “The Grandest Generation.” “What people really want, and what they’re going to get, is longer HEALTH span. We should be asking now, What is the PURPOSE of longer life?”

Free to Learn - Peter Gray

The predominant emotions of play are interest and joy. In school, in contrast, children cannot make their own decisions; their job is to do as they are told. In school, children learn that what matters are test scores. Even outside of school, children spend increasing amounts of their time in settings where they are directed, protected, catered to, ranked, judged, criticized, praised, and rewarded by adults.

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🙏Thanks for reading🙏

What games are you playing? Are they infinite games?

If not, how can you reframe or re-imagine them into infinite games?

Namaste, 

Christian