1st
Two facts and a question
Wittgenstein knows!
Consider for example the proceedings that we call “games”. I mean board-games, card-games, ball-games, Olympic games, and so on. What is common to them all? — Don’t say: “There must be something common, or they would not be called ‘games’ “-but look and see whether there is anything common to all. — For if you look at them you will not see something that is common to all, but similarities, relationships, and a whole series of them at that. To repeat: don’t think, but look!
Fact #1: I remember being deeply moved at age fourteen by a Sex and the City episode called “Games People Play”. It dealt with the ways in which people manipulate themselves and others in order to calibrate the amount of control they have in romantic situations.
I did not have any experience in romance, and the parts of the episode that moved me were the ones in which Carrie sat alone in her apartment thinking about stuff. The content of the stuff was less important than the visual portrayal of her sitting there. I had a tremendous amount of experience in sitting around.
But. The episode introduced me to the idea of games in a romantic context, which idea would recur again and again in magazines and movies that I absorbed over the next few years.
Fact #2: There are few things I enjoy more than games. Actual games. When I am with family we spend maybe 40% of the time playing backgammon or hearts or gin rummy. My childhood can be neatly organized by the progression from Chutes and Ladders to Othello to Stratego to Monopoly to Boggle to Parcheesi. When my younger brother grew old enough to consistently beat me at games, our relationship graduated from one of domination/subordination to one of mutual respect. I still meet my mom once a week to play backgammon.
Question: How did the concept of a game become this catch-all term to describe self-interested romantic maneuvering? It is completely the wrong word and the wrong idea.
A game has rules to which every player agrees. The back-and-forth exchange of control is material and evident. A game is made up of conventions and takes place in a circumscribed area. Most importantly, the stakes are understood.
None of these things applies to a relationship or even a flirtation. A game is the opposite of a relationship! “Games People Play” are not games at all— a person can’t play a game with someone who doesn’t know his hand has been dealt. The people in charge of such things have got to think of a new term in order to eliminate this imprecision.
