Everybody's getting to work, right? How is the Spring Festival resting?
Uncle Oxygen's own Spring Festival is basically spent in crazy reading books, after all, this kind of time is rare. Then, the start of construction will bring you a book list recommended, I hope to bring you some different thinking, to start the new year's upgrade.
The book, called The Game of Finite and Infinite, is about a competitive world in the eyes of a philosopher.
"Limited and Infinite Game" has many fans in the business world, investment community, and Internet community. The author, James Cass, is a professor of religious history at New York University. Although the book is not long, it is not an easy book to understand. After reading Uncle Oxygen's interpretation, everyone who is interested can also find it and read it by themselves.
So, what is a limited game and what is an infinite game?
Why do we need to distinguish between the two?
What inspires our aesthetics?
01
What is a limited and unlimited game
"There are at least two games in the world. One can be called a finite game and the other is an infinite game. Limited games aim to win, while unlimited games aim to continue the game. ”
Doesn't that sound very abstract?
Society, for example, is a limited game. Finite games have boundaries of quantity, space, and time, and everything is precisely defined. Society, as a limited game, is about cards, reading, working, getting married, and having children.
Culture, which belongs to an infinite game, has no end, so it cannot be repeated, and it is non-repeatable. Just as Debussy could not write a second "Moonlight", Monet could not have painted two identical "Water Lilies".
Therefore, the limited game is a competitive mode, the purpose is to defeat the current opponent and achieve victory. For example, competitions, college entrance examinations, promotions, etc.; unlimited games are survival modes, the purpose is to continue, such as health, investment, family relations and so on.
Just like upgrading in the workplace is a limited game, starting your own business is an unlimited game; stock speculation is a limited game, long-term investment is an unlimited game, as long as you don't get off the table, everything is easy to say; plastic surgery is a limited game, and skin maintenance is an infinite game.
02
The mind of the subject vs free will
In the past 2021, everyone should feel the intensification of the inner volume. Under the influence of the epidemic, the real economy has shrunk, the unemployment rate has increased, and people's cash flow has become more and more tight.
Uncle Oxygen's own feeling is that throughout the past year, the frequency of aesthetic trend changes has also decreased. The first is the emergence of film and television dramas without super hits, the second is the fall of traffic stars, and the entertainment industry has also been affected to a certain extent, so last year, there was no typical super face.
Aesthetic convergence is getting worse. I have found that when people face aesthetic problems, they often fall into a kind of problem-solver thinking, which is a typical limited game mentality.
Just like Song Zhiya, who flipped over after a month of fire at the end of 2021. Her appearance is a product of the complete female competition model, to win in the current show, to quickly attract traffic, enclosure monetization. The result of winning the female competition is determined, take the best male guests and live in Paradise Island.
Her face will become a new makeup template, which will be studied and imitated by everyone. People are so hungry for a stylized template that can be used to copy homework.
The aesthetics in the limited game is that I want to become a beautiful woman in the current aesthetic context, get the title of beauty, and thus get the treatment of beautiful women.
Just like when we reach a certain age, we are asked: When will we get married? When to have a baby? This is all a way of thinking under the limited game of society, and it is a well-written script. The subtext is, are you going to be a married person? Ready to become a parent?
So are you going to be a beauty? Do you want to walk the pure desire wind, the hot girl wind, the little white flower wind, or the famous woman style? Do you have to whiten, nail, raise the top of your skull, and pick up eyelashes to qualify for the threshold of beauty?
Imitate a popularly certified beauty, imitate the way she dresses, the height of the top of her skull, the curvature of her hair, but it's just a parody show. You get the title of beauty, but the next wave of trends comes, and you have to start playing this game again, in order to get a new beauty title in the current time.
Hermès designed a platinum bag for her, but her favorite is the vegetable basket
The aesthetic of infinite games is that in order to become what I want to be, at this moment, I choose such a way to express myself.
03
Beauty is the self-exploration of an infinite game
Beauty cannot be equated with beauty. Beauty is a collective term, and beauty represents a special value.
An important point in Finite and Infinite Games is that in finite games, we follow the rules, and one of the most important things in infinite games is to explore boundaries.
That is, find ways to change the rules and expand the boundaries of beauty.
What fashion and art have been doing is exploring the boundaries of beauty
The characters who have truly become the benchmark have achieved real uniqueness, jumped out of the current aesthetic rules, and carried out their own aesthetic exploration with the proposition of "what kind of self I want to be".
The aesthetic logic of the individual, the style, grows out of the soul in this way.
A very typical case is Lu Xianren. This is an example of really having nothing and thinking that you can be a model and thus be a model. Let everything make sense on his body, even if the dress is made of plastic bags, he interprets it well, and it can be noticed by the public on social platforms.
If he had also used the mindset of a limited game and had to save money to sign up for a modeling training class first, I believe his aura would soon disappear.
Finite games value fatalism, while infinite games emphasize the free will of the individual. Finite games are zero-sum games, and infinite games are garden ecology.
Before Monica Bellucci and her daughter Deva Cassel co-produced the cover, many people complained that their daughter was not as beautiful as their mother, which is a typical limited game thinking. Why do two beautiful women appear at the same time, so they must be more beautiful than whom?
The aesthetic of infinite games is to constantly update yourself, not to defeat others. Not in the face value track, but on the road of self-exploration, another point forward.
If the clouds flow and the water flows, there is no certainty at the beginning, but it is often done in what should be done, and it often stops at what cannot be stopped.
Unfortunately, most people who prefer to blindly follow the trend are the majority. Most people's love of beauty is only a need for narcissism, and true beauty is varied, not because of the recognition or denial of ordinary people and change themselves.
In fact, there is only one infinite game, and that is your life. Death is an insurmountable boundary, and other boundaries are less important than that.
In the new year, I wish you all a lot of fun in your own infinite game, and do what you want without overstepping your bounds