What one wins in a finite game is a title.
A title is the acknowledgment of others that one has been the winner of a particular game. Titles are public. They are for others to notice. I expect others to address me according to my titles, but I do not address myself with them- unless, of course, I address myself as an other. The effectiveness of a title depends on its visibility, its noticeability to others.
Some titles are inherited, though only when the bloodline or some other tangible connection with the original winner has been established, suggesting that the winners have continued to exist in their descendants. The heirs to titles are therefore obliged to display the appropriate emblems: a coat of arms or identifiable styles of speech, clothing, or behavior.
It is a principal function of society to validate titles and to assure their perpetual recognition.
Titles, then, point backward in time.
Infinite players look forward, not to a victory in which the past will achieve a timeless meaning, but toward ongoing play in which the past will require constant reinterpretation. 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.
The joyfulness of infinite play, its laughter, lies in learning to start something we cannot finish.
I don’t live this life for recognition, for a title. No, that only shows what I have done in the past. What I’m really concerned about is the future. I live this life to know that the future is better off because I forced the universe to move in that direction. Let me live for hope of the future, not remembrance of the past.
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