Matthew Dunlap - Victory

I really like to keep track of what I am listening to while I write. What I am hearing sets my mood of my discussion. When I post I will use a header listing what played when I started to at least capture the initial feel.

[Listening to -|> Fuck Buttons - Okay, Let's Talk About Magic]

Now, victory. I am currently reading James P. Carse's Finite and Infinite Games, which is about viewing life in the paradigm of the games we play with other people. In this, the finite games are the contests we are in during our daily life, be it in business or in the bedroom. To win a game we must convince the audience of the game that we are victors. But to quote Carse:

"As with all finite play, an acute contradiction quickly develops at the heart of this attempt. As finite players we will note enter the game with sufficient desire to win unless we are ourselves convinced by the very audience we intend to convince. That is, unless we believe we actually are the losers the audience sees us to be, we will not have the necessary desire to win. The more negatively we assess ourselves, the more we strive to reverse the negative judgment of others. The outcome brings the contradiction to perfection: by proving to the audience they were wrong, we prove to ourselves the audience was right."

I found this to be a very interesting view on the desire to "win" at anything. Carse believes in infinite games, ones in which the only goal is to keep the game alive, and that infinite players also play finite games, but do so playfully. I am still unsure if I see his infinite games as actually existing or just the attempt to achieve another victory, that in the game of who has mastered games. What I am sure of is that whether infinite games exist or not, I will always be searching for their existence, because to exist purely in an endless cycle of competition is not a life to lead.