Chen Jiaying: Playing chess is not a means of fun, playing chess is fun itself

§2

Playing chess is not a fun tactic

I play Go well, what is the purpose of playing chess? Coulee plays chess, maybe with a purpose, to win the championship and win a large prize money. Chess and excellence may indeed bring fame and fortune, but the old man on the street plays chess, hopeless to get any bonuses, and spend time and energy in vain. Educators may advocate the beneficial effect of playing chess, but that is the effect, not the purpose of my chess - even if playing chess does not help puzzles, he will still play chess, he just likes to play chess, just have fun.

The phrase "have fun" seems to give the street man the purpose of playing chess. I dig for money, and I play chess for fun, fun, and fun. However, the symmetry here is only literal. Playing chess is not a means of fun, playing chess is fun itself. (Parents who line up in long lines send their children to Go school mostly not because playing chess is fun, but because of other things.) I'm not interested in digging, I'm concerned with making money. I play chess, but my interest is in the whole process of playing chess. The fun of playing chess is so closely linked to the special activity of playing chess that it is almost inseparable from each other.

So, let's say that the purpose of playing chess is to win chess - to play Go, to play more squares, to play chess is to kill the opponent. But obviously, the purpose of winning chess is also different from the purpose of digging earth to make money. The chess line to the middle game, you are sleepy and want to go to sleep, I pull to prevent you from going, you say, no play, this chess counts you win. Even if you win, I won't be able to pull you down. It's not like I said before - I don't have to dig the foreman to pay the worker, and I don't insist on digging. Some activities, for the participants, have separate ends and means; some activities, where the ends are combined with the activities you achieve.

It is not so much that we play chess to win chess, but that we set the purpose of winning chess in order to play chess. Even if you always lose when you play chess, you still want to play chess. We should even say that playing chess is not in the service of winning chess, on the contrary, winning chess is in the service of playing chess. My daughter is going to race with me: Dad, you say where we set the finish line.

It seems that we had better distinguish between the purpose of digging up dirt to make money and the purpose of playing chess to win. The former may be called an external purpose - digging a ditch and making money are two separate things, you can make money by digging earth, you can also make money by carrying sacks, if you don't do anything to the contractor foreman to give money, you don't do anything. But you can't win without playing chess.

On the other hand, without the purpose of winning chess, this game cannot be carried out - I don't want to win chess at all, cars and horses go around randomly, this is obviously not called chess, in fact, no one is willing to continue to play with me. So we might as well call the purpose of winning chess a built-in purpose.

Under normal circumstances, fun and happiness are not the goal at all.

§4

Painting is neither simply effective nor merely a game

Human activities are not one-size-fits-all, digging earth is such a thing, the worker cares about how much money he earns by doing this work, the person who hires him to dig a trench is to bury the optical cable, whether it is from the person who does things, or from the way of doing things, we want only the result rather than the process, one day, the electronic signal is wirelessly transmitted, no one digs the trench to bury the optical cable.

Digging earth, carrying sacks, and pasting matchboxes are purely practical or simply effective. Here, the purpose is determined, and what needs to be considered is the way and means to achieve the end; the purpose lies outside the activity to achieve the end, so no matter what means are used, it is good to achieve the goal - no matter whether it is a black cat or a white cat, catching a mouse is a good cat.

Activities such as playing chess on the street are the opposite of simple effect activities, in which participants have no purpose and the activity itself has little effect. When we play chess, we want the process of playing chess. If there is any purpose in playing chess, this purpose is built-in, that is, the purpose is designed for activity.

Digging earth and playing chess are the two extremes of human activity, extreme things are relatively simple, we may wish to start from the simple model to think about a problem, however, a step further, we should see that the vast majority of human activities are neither purely effective nor purely games.

The vast majority, yes, almost all human activities are like this: painting, architecture, scholarship, education, medical practice, politics, business. We do these things to achieve a certain effect, but we also care about the process of these activities itself.

Let's try to illustrate it by taking drawing as an example. Painting is not the same as digging earth, which is quite obvious. Strong workers earn their lives by digging earth, and painters earn their lives by painting, and these two ways of earning are not the same. It's not that painters earn more — there are a few successful painters who paint like money, but many painters are poor, others don't say, Van Gogh is known to all of us; later, Van Gogh's paintings were auctioned at a sky-high price, but this money fell into the hands of collectors and auction houses, and Van Gogh only had a long life name, which was a lonely posthumous affair.

The most prominent difference between painting and earning a life from digging earth is that Zhuang Gong does not like to dig earth, and the painter paints, on the one hand, he earns a living by this, on the other hand, he likes to paint. Even if a rich man is willing to use a mansion incense car to offer Van Gogh, but from now on he will not be allowed to paint, van Gogh is probably still unwilling.

He earns a living by painting, but he doesn't just want to make money as a result, he has to paint the process; just like a chess player wants to win a chess game, he wants to paint a good painting, even if he knows that the good painting he thinks will not bring him more income, knowing that painting a less good painting can sell for a good price. If his paintings can sell for a good price, the painter is of course happy, but his happiness is not because he earns more, but because others recognize him for painting well, so he is willing to pay a big price.

There are many similarities between art and playing chess, and it's no wonder that people who explore art often compare art to games. But an analogy is an analogy, and if art is completely equated with a game, I am afraid that it will go too far. One of the fundamental differences between art and games, in my opinion, is that art is more or less effective.

People often ask: What is the use of art? The questioner is not necessarily out of trickery, and the art practitioners themselves sometimes ask themselves this question. Part of the reason for this question is that art is often like playing chess and playing ball, just having fun and not thinking about any utility.

However, if useful it is not specific to be able to eat and wear, many paintings are obviously useful. Christianity has traditionally used images to indoctrinate uncultured believers, although this tradition has sparked fierce controversy over alleged "idolatry." Before there was no photography, the functions of personal photos and family photos were handed over to portraits. A painting is hung on the wall for decoration, and a painting is painted at the mouth of the village for publicity. It is widely said that a painting is painted and the audience loves to see it, which is the "utility" of the painting.

Although painting is often effective, there are two points that need to be added.

First, painting is much broader than digging trenches, and we can't talk about the usefulness of painting in general. It is difficult to say what is useful for drawing things when meetings, not listening to reports, scribbling on notebooks, and at the other extreme, advertising posters can have a very clear purpose.

Second, when something works, we don't necessarily have to say it in one word or another. Practicing medicine, sending children to school, building houses, these activities are obviously not games, but activities that seek utility. But what are their respective utilities? The purpose of medicine seems clear: to cure the sick and save people. But forensics and IVF are also among the functions of medicine.

One of the purposes of sending children to school is to teach children to arithmetic and foreign languages. But children also learn to draw, sing, and do gymnastics. Putting these together, saying that it is a long skill, this answer is already very broad, but it still misses a lot, for example, she has a lot of playmates at school, even if I can teach her to grow more skills at home, I still send her to school.

Building a house certainly has a purpose and a utility. What is the utility? reside. But the effect of living includes a lot of content, shelter from the wind and rain, cold and heat, anti-beasts and anti-outsiders, with a bed stove inside, but also to consider lighting and ventilation, unlike digging a ditch, how wide and deep and how long to dig, generally it is quite clear.

Not to mention the various buildings outside the house, temples, memorial halls, opera houses, each of which has its own utility. The purpose or utility of most human activities is not singular. What is the use of philosophy? What is the purpose of art? We can try to answer these questions, but no matter how we answer them, we may find that these activities do not have a single purpose. "Practice never has one or some constant goal ... The various goals themselves are changed by the history of practical activity. ”

We may think that no matter how complex the purpose, the purpose or the purpose, we only need to decompose the complex purpose, for example, the purpose of building a house into one item after another to avoid the wind and rain, light and ventilation, and each item will be as clear as the purpose of digging a ditch.

This is not the case. Shelter from wind and rain, cold and summer, prevent beasts from outsiders from lighting and ventilation, these functions are set one by one, some are interconnected, and some are contradictory. Our lives are more or less like this, although sometimes doing this, sometimes doing that, they are more or less connected into a whole - including contradicting each other in the whole.

What is a Good Life?

The question of "how should I live" is not just a question at the beginning of the path of life, but a question that runs through a person's life. This question is not mainly a question of choosing the path of life, not the question of choosing the right or wrong path of life, but the question of walking - knowing what path we are taking, knowing how to take this road: whether we are walking in accordance with our true nature.

This book was selected as a recommended book for Shenzhen Crystal News World Book Day.

What is a Good Life?

Chen Jiaying

Shanghai Literature and Art Publishing House

Shanghai Literature and Art Publishing House

Shanghai Culture Publishing House

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