[OSList] The OST Game

[Phelim McDermott]

Ive just spent some time reading the last few posts and have been deliberating whether i bring up the topic of finite and infinite games!!! I love it that i move onto the next email and Harold does it for me!! YES YES YES such a useful touchstone about to how to talk about "game" in a spiritual way. 

I also love that the people developing Carse's work online created Flickr by serendipty!!!! go seek if you are interested and a Carse's book is a real bible of provocation 

Best regards,

Phelim McDermott

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I generally pick up emails only at the beginning and end of the working day. I am currently aiming to respond the following day. If it is urgent please call me on 07956 187298. 
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@openspacer


> On 9 Oct 2013, at 14:29, Harold Shinsato <harold at shinsato.com> wrote:
> 
> Harrison,
> 
> Ok, I'll take your word from previous posts that I won't be in trouble if I risk going up against you again - or maybe it's just a hope that this thread won't be shut down due to misunderstandings.
> 
> The statement "OST is a game" actually doesn't work for me so much because it uncomfortably reduces all the ideas and philosophy (and practice) of OST into a word that unfortunately has for many negative connotations. But perhaps I'll invite thinking about OST *as* a game instead. Perhaps that can help prevent cognitive dissonance and allow for this conversation to continue.
> 
> My understanding of the word game as used by Daniel Mezick and others comes from game theory - and could open up many benefits.
> 
> The briefest way I think to hope to keep this particular door open for those in this community who might find the word game unpleasant would be to suggest the book "Finite and Infinite Games: A Vision of Life as Play and Possibility" by James P. Carse. Mr. Carse actually is a professor of history and literature of religion - and his thinking in that book is very poetic and beautiful. And it reminds me much of Open Space thinking - and I won't even attempt to dive into his thesis any more than to look at what I think sums up the thinking being the final sentence in the book. "There is only one infinite game."
> 
> The bigger game of Open Space is the game of life - the unending story - the "one infinite game". And an OST meeting or conference is a finite game which seems to open up an experience of the infinite game in a beautiful way. And yet, there's still value in seeing the finite game aspects of OST in that context.
> 
> Alas, perhaps this attempt will be futile. But I hold out hope that others won't be discouraged from this perspective on OST as a game and it's benefits.
> 
>     Harold
> 
>> On 10/7/13 1:25 PM, Harrison Owen wrote:
>> Dan – Using the word, “game” as you do, I guess it sort of works with OS, but I do confess a certain feeling of cognitive dissonance, which I suspect may be shared by some of my colleagues. In any event, it certainly would not be a word I would use. But that doesn’t mean a great deal. However, when you say, “Leaders choose to play OST. Or not,” I do feel called upon to say something like... Oh Yes?
>>  
>> Some people refer to the “Game of Life,” but it is scarcely a game you choose to play (or not). Not playing is called suicide, I think, and while some people do make that choice it is not a choice that most folks would considered good, useful, or positive. It is more like canceling all choices. Out of the Game, so to speak.
>>  
>> I feel rather the same way about OS, and for all the same reasons. OS for me is not a process we choose to do or not do – quite simply it is what we are --  Self organizing, and OS is only an invitation to be ourselves fully and purposefully. We can chose to be ourselves with distinction, despair, or something in between --  but so long as we remain on the planet in some viable form, we got no choice. We are what we are, what we are. Put a little differently, OS is not something new and different, it is just a small name change for what has been around for quite a while: life.  I guess you can call it a game, but somehow that seems to miss some of the nuances.
>>  
>> Harrison
> 
> 
> -- 
> Harold Shinsato
> harold at shinsato.com
> http://shinsato.com
> twitter: @hajush
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