"People used to look out on the playground and say that the boys were playing soccer and the girls were doing nothing. But the girls weren't doing nothing—they were talking. They were talking about the world to one another. And they became very expert about that in a way the boys did not."
I found this quote by Carol Gilligan in the most unlikely of places: a self-inserting story slash seduction manual from the eighties I read when I was fifteen. Probably the fact that I still remember it and I was able to find it, talks more about it's importance than anything else I can add. Now that I think of it, my problem-solving skills have not changed much until then, if you have a problem, google the hell out of it. The quote was being used to illustrate that girls had developed a permanent gap during development in communication skills (verbal and non-verbal) and the guide was just a way to close that gap, justifying any kind of potential manipulation in the process of sarging as a tool of said communication network (which is inherently manipulative itself). The fact that I agree or not with that approach is more or less irrelevant today. What is relevant is that I think the quote points as the apparent vacuity of girls talking as "doing nothing" being a falsehood, it has the exact same defect of underplaying the role of playing ball in boys as something void of communication; just because it's language is alien to them.
I remember a post on tumblr or a web-comic or somewhere. Where a mother was flabbergasted at the fact that his son didn't know his son's best friend favorite color, or for that manner, any kind of factual piece of information about him. And mistake that for lack of knowledge or understanding about him. Even lack of interest. "Well." The imaginary kid said. "I know how he plays."
A game is not just a game. It's a microcosm of life, a playground where our individual idiosyncrasies take flight. The way we play, the strategies we employ, the roles we adopt, are all reflections of our innate personalities. Just as in life, in games too, we see the emergence of archetypes - the leader, the strategist, the risk-taker, the supporter, the quiet observer. These roles aren't confined to team games; even in individual games like Magic, we can see distinct archetypes manifesting in the form of different deck styles.
Look at a game of soccer, for instance. The boy who constantly pushes through tiredness, who doesn't give up even when his team is losing, is likely to be the one who stays late at work, who meets deadlines no matter what. Who grows, who plateaus, who will risk his physical integrity to archive the goal, who will on the contrary sacrifice the goal to make himself look good (which is perhaps not a bad strategy overall, because that's aiming towards winning the superseded game of games that contains it, and sometimes a recipe for individual improvement), who will be responsible about the ball, who will rally teams to start the game, who just mimics playing and who actually tries to understand the game, who plays differently when girls are present, who will blame others for shortcomings, who will persevere, who will reliably make or apply rules. This things matter. You are going to go to war with these people someday, and you will have to know who to depend on and how to use them to their strengths and weakness —or at least that's what some part of your brain things, so for our purposes that's what's going to happen, one way or another. The one who's always looking to break the rules, to find loopholes; isn't he the one likely to be the entrepreneur, the innovator, in the real world? Isn't knowing who can push through adversity, who can collaborate effectively and who is likely to cheat more useful than knowing someone's favorite color?
Because those behaviors translate themselves fairly well towards the spectrum of possible games. People that play a game very good tend to play other similar (and they usually are more similar than what we give them credit for) games very good, and also share through them other non so obvious characteristics. Past behavior is not a perfect predictor of future one, but it's still the best we have.
It reminds me of that edgy piece of dialog in Christopher Nolan's Dark Knight where The Joker tells some police officer that in the last moments of their life people reveal who they truly are, and how because he has witnessed some of these moments of his friends, he in a way knows them more who they are than the officer. While I don't personality as such a monolithic thing that exists outside of context and thus can be "revealed" in the correct a particular situation (in this case an extreme one of stress, you that could also be seen as "when alone" or "while playing an specific game" or "when interacting with a waitress") games have this tendency to overlap reactions and attitudes laterally towards them. So yes, in a sense sometimes I feel like I know you boyfriend of two years more than you do because I have played a couple of games of league of legends with him —which enters both the category of "a game" and "life threatening stress experience". Or at least, I know him in a way you don't, that may emerge later in other forms in other facets of our shared life, the same you know a lot of stuff and small interaction stuff I have no idea about. Exceptions still apply, by the way. In the context of highly competitive games, a lot of people just want to win, and they adopt play-styles directly opposed to their pathos in order to do so; although one may argue being able and willing to forgo personal identity in the pursuit of own goals is itself a very strong information about someone. Also certain games ruthlessly allure you into certain behavior, as a design decision or an unconscious one; like that game about the song "Love Will Tear Us Apart" in which halfway through the game you realize the game is unwinnable and you are hurting your partner and losing precisely because you have identified wrongly that this was a game for you to win; or like Civilization, where you slowly drift into becoming a godless capitalist murderous traitorous tyrant because the world demands you to be (and experience). Does that mean you would be a ruthless dictator if in real life you were to hold a position of power? Well, probably yes. But not because of the game.
In the realm of games, we observe an interesting process of hierarchy formation. For boys, it often starts with competition, with a display of prowess and dominance. This initial rivalry then gives way to collaboration, forming a cyclical pattern of competition and cooperation. For girls, the process is more continuous and subtle, marked by discussions, negotiations, and consensus. This approach is effective in certain contexts but might pose challenges in forming large-scale, long-term organizations.
That brings us to the concept of competition. In its original sense, 'competition' meant 'striving together', not against each other, but for a common goal. It's about improving together, about pushing each other to be better through simulated adversarial behavior. Where the definite line between that and the real really blurs. But unfortunately, in recent times, competition is often painted as a toxic, ego-driven pursuit. It's seen as a zero-sum game where one's gain is another's loss. But isn't competition just another form of communication, another way of understanding and learning about each other?
Yes. I mean. Of course, I am writing this. You expect me so say "no"?
The way we play games provides a window into our character, our values, our strengths and weaknesses. It's a mirror reflecting our personalities, a stage where we enact our roles. It's time we redefined 'play', from being a mere physical pursuit to a complex interplay of strategy, communication, and character development. After all, as George Bernard Shaw said, "We don't stop playing because we grow old; we grow old because we stop playing." Playing is not only character-building, but a (relatively) safe space to enact and experiment transformation. People come after a summer and sometimes you don't recognize them on the pitch. We run from the unintended constraints of constant social interaction and of learning to project sterile abstract symbols of who we are, and instead live them through action, try them on the actual world. Through tangible, impactful decision making. But the individual or group competing need not to feel or think about the deeper lever collaboration that is taking place. Such collaboration occurs by virtue of them trying to selfishly (if you must) accomplish ones goals. A push for direct conscious collaboration could kill the process of improvement, the same that a teacher also could would he too directly try to impart such wisdom in the form of direct lessons. Instead, he has to be a guide, if not a puppeteer.
In many games and sports, individuals or teams compete against each other, each with their own goals and objectives. However, this competition often leads to a natural process of improvement and collaboration. As players strive to be better, to win, or to achieve their individual goals, they inadvertently contribute to the overall improvement of the group or team. This unconscious collaboration can foster a more harmonious and productive environment, as individuals recognize that their personal achievements can contribute to the success of the group as a whole. Cooperation vs competition is in the end, like every similarly opposed concepts reveals themselves to be, a false dichotomy.
The key point here is that the push for direct conscious collaboration may not always be necessary or even beneficial. Sometimes, the best way to foster collaboration is to let individuals compete and improve themselves, to prove something, to destroy others, to feel superior, it doesn't matter; trusting that the process itself will naturally lead to greatness (and necessary lessons will be learned along the way with a bit of guidance, but not necessarily "instruction"). White magic words don't need to be learned from a preacher, but to be derived from their utilitarian raison d'être in the conquest of winning. Which is why we want them in the first place. We don't learn team-play because someone has decided that's morally right and wears it like a badge, we do it because it's the best way to fucking win, and you can't short-circuit this realization. We fine-tune masculine culture towards that goal. Confrontation, aggression, and competitiveness are not toxic traits of personality; they serve bigger a purpose. The ego is not something to be killed. The enemy is not always in front of a mirror. Conscious collaboration can sometimes disrupt the natural flow of competition, leading to a less effective or less enjoyable experience and marring the instinctual process of forming functional hierarchies and fulfilling niche functions. So the impartiality and clarity of metrics of achievement are vital to the success of development, and extraneous forms of forcing collaboration alienate competitors into a premature form of innocuous and complacent cooperation, constraining individual skill expression and competitive drive; that archives nothing but to feed the selfrightenousness of the instructor.
In some occasion, not that long ago, I said jokingly that I used to think that what someone said shouldn't be taken into consideration if they were unable to play chess. And I have broadened my perspective since then, but a general point still stands. It's not about chess itself, doesn't matter how actually variable are the capacities and value of someone that can play it or not, but about the general capacity to be able to learn how to play games at a certain level beyond learning the rules and beating someone less experienced. It's not a matter of direct correspondence between any particular game and intellect, nor about the actual level in that game in any way show a direct proportionality to any other aspect of life, but about the general emerging capacity from one's own virtues and idiosyncrasies to surpass obstacles and learn towards archiving a particular goal. Even if that goal itself has no meaning in on itself. Games are a playground for life. Hell, sometime it almost feels like it's the other way around. It's goals, not only instrumental goals but also representations. Harnessing things like your capacity to chain-though, imagination, inventive, memory, learning processes, focus and determination, generation or imitation of useful heuristics; and using them to actually reach tangible progress. That's fucking important to me still. And I think it is to everyone. I never feel like I can actually know someone if I haven't played a variety of situations with them, including them slamming face-on against the proverbial (sometimes even literal) wall. No matter how we value any of these virtues (or any others) individually but the ultimate capacity of the individual to navigate their way through hell and back to accomplish something no matter what, matters. Games matter. Players matter. And we all are.
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