Finite and Infinite Games Part 5

Culture

Deviancy, however is the very essence of culture. Whoever merely follows the script, merely repeating the past, is culturally impoverished.

There are variations in the quality of deviation; not all divergence from the past is culturally significant. Any attempt to vary from the past in such a way as to cut the past off, causing it to be forgotten, has little cultural importance. Greater significance attaches to those variations that bring the tradition into view in a new way, allowing the familiar to be seen as unfamiliar, as requiring a new appraisal of all that we have been – and therefore of all that we are.

Cultural deviation does not return us to the past, but continues what was begun and not finished in the past… Culture continues what Mozart and Rembrandt had themselves continued by the way of their work; an original, or deviant, shaping of the tradition they received, original enough that it does not invite duplication of itself by others, but invites the originality of others in response… culture does not have a tradition; it is a tradition.

The creativity of culture has no outcome, no conclusion. It does not result in art works, artifacts, products. Creativity is a continuity that engenders itself in others. ‘Artists do not create objects, but create by way of objects’ (Rank)

… Since art is never possession, and always possibility, nothing possessed can have the status of art… property draws attention to titles, points backward toward a finished time. Art is dramatic, opening always forward, beginning something that cannot be finished… Artistry can be found anywhere; indeed, it can only be found anywhere. One must be surprised by it. It cannot be looked for. We do not watch artists to see what they do, but watch what persons do and discover the artistry in it.

Culture is not therefore mere disorder. Infinite players never understand their culture as the composite of all that they choose individually to do, but as the congruence of all that they choose to do with each other. Because there is no congruence without the decision to have one, all cultural congruence is under constant revision… For this reason it can be said that where a society is defined by its boundaries, a culture is defined by its horizon.

More soon!