Nguyen is a Philosopher and game player who explores how the seemingly overlapping scoring systems of games and bureaucracy create such different outcomes. Why do games with rules and scoring systems bring fun and freedom, while metrics used for bureaucracy end up feeling dehumanising and distorting? Since I enjoy games (though not as much as Nguyen), I found the book interesting and insightful.
Nguyen starts with an example from his own career as an academic philosopher. Two lists, of top journals and top schools, came to dominate his professional focus. He was so focused on publishing in top journals and getting posts in the top schools that he drifted away from love of thinking about big questions. The metrics (the lists or tables of top journals and schools) ended up taking him away from the fundamental reason to do philosophy.
“The very clarity and universal comprehensibility of metrics seduce us into value capture, even when it makes us miserable. Metrics are understandable, interconnected, and perfectly transparent. And this clarity is a kind of trap. We become beholden to what everybody can understand. Games are isolated, disconnected and unimportant. The joy we take in them is often private and opaque to others. And that opacity gives us the space to be free.”
[In his explorations of the difference between games and metrics for real life, Nguyen often seems to be exploring distinctions similar to McGilchrist’s right and left hemisphere attention. Introduction to The Master and his Emissary – Jots and Scribbles What makes that especially interesting is that he does not reference McGilchrist, so it seems like he has reached overlapping conclusions from a different starting point.]
In chapter 2, Nguyen clarifies a distinction between striving play and achievement play. Achievement play is all about winning- and in many ways is closer to the real world metrics that Nguyen contrasts with games. Their in game goal is the same as their purpose in playing. What Nguyen really values in games is the striving play, the enjoyment of the process of play. This might be fly-fishing, climbing, chess or charades. The in game goal is aimed at to achieve the real purpose, the delicious struggle along the way. There is something in the process itself of working within limitations to try and achieve a goal that is pleasurable and worthwhile. You need a goal you are really aiming for. You need the limitations of the game- fly fishing is not the most efficient way of obtaining fish, but then most fly fishermen release the fish after catching anyway. But in seeking to work within the limitations and seeking to achieve a goal, we can enjoy new awareness and experiences. The details noticed in fly fishing, the bodily awareness of climbing, the shared social interactions of charades, the moments of spotting elegant ways forward in chess. Striving play aims strenuously for the goal, but the real pleasure is not in the winning or the ranking, but in the process.
Applying this Christianly
Nguyen is certainly not the first to notice the way metrics distort activities in ways that may take us away from our true goal. But his concept of striving play seems to me to have some relevance to the Christian activities of Bible reading and prayer. We can do these activities in an achievement mode- ticking the box for quiet time done, chapters of the bible read, lists quickly prayed for. But Bible reading and prayer time is not the end goal. The end goal is the delicious struggle to engage with God, to hear him speak, to pray in a way that catches us up into God’s heart and purposes. To rush these things to tick them off is to achieve goals but not the true purpose. The true purpose of Bible reading and prayer is living relationship with our creator, which may mean pondering one verse slowly, or prayerful worship, or sitting quietly with a Bible truth or situation.
Jots and Scribbles 