Infinite Horizon

When I refer to games, I’m not just talking about football or chess. I’m talking about high-stakes games that we live our lives by: the business game, the finance game, and the political game to name a few. Some of us are at the top of these games and benefit substantially in terms of status and income. Others of us are recruited as players who mostly support the players at the top. The store-level employees of a big box store chain are playing the retail business game. The rules are that they have to show up and do their job and they’ll get a paycheck in return. They don’t get to set the rules like the upper management does, nor do they benefit as much if the store does well, but they can try to work their way up the corporate ladder if they want. That’s part of the game.

These kinds of games where the goal is to win (make more money, move up the corporate ladder) and you’re chosen to play (you’re hired and promoted by others) are called finite games in the science of game theory. They are also called win/lose games because the goal at the end of the day is for everyone to agree on who won and who lost.

The infinite game

There is another kind of game, called the infinite game. Its goal isn’t to decide who won and who lost, its goal is to keep the game in play. If something threatens to end the game, the players change the rules to keep the play going. The game of life is the infinite game. We want to go on living as long as possible, and if something threatens our life, like a disease, we change the way we play in an attempt to keep playing.

“The infinite game—there is only one—includes any authentic interaction, from touching to culture, that changes rules, plays with boundaries and exists for the purpose of continuing the game.” — James P. Carse

We’re used to thinking of the game of life as a finite game we play as an individual or a family or a nation; we win what we can at the expense of others so we can live. But we can no longer play finite games and expect to live: the life on Earth is so interdependent that either we all win at the infinite game, or the game ends for all of us, and we all lose. The infinite game viewed through the lens of all life on Earth is the only game that makes any sense now.

“Take the initiative. Go to work, and above all co-operate and don’t hold back on one another or try to gain at the expense of another. Any success in such lopsidedness will be increasingly short-lived. These are the synergetic rules that evolution is employing and trying to make clear to us.” — R. Buckminster Fuller, Operating Manual for Spaceship Earth

The infinite game is a powerful analogy for the kinds of social dynamics that we need to move toward. Instead of playing the finite, zero-sum, win/lose games that we’re currently engaged in, more of us need to join the game in which everyone wins and the goal is to keep playing indefinitely. I say that more of us need to join the game because it is already underway; it is the game of life.

Staying on the right path

The concept of the infinite game can help guide you if you’re not sure what you’re doing is really taking humanity in the right direction. I called this pattern “Infinite Path” because I feel that the infinite game defines a way forward, a path that we can follow. We can’t really know what’s ahead on the path, but we can see if the things we are doing now are along the path or if they’re steering us in some other direction.

The main indicator of being on the infinite path is that everyone wins. If you’re competing with others, or if what you’re doing allows or incentivizes anyone to gain at the expense of another, you’re probably going off course.

Also, even if your direct actions are infinite, but they support someone else’s finite game (e.g. you’re building a program within a larger corporation that is playing a finite game), you’re not really playing the infinite game. You can play finite games within the infinite game, but you cannot play infinite games within a finite game.

Therefore: