We need to have some experimental games running.

To test out whether James Carse is right to suggest cultures are different to societies in that they are boundaryless.

Borders and boundaries exist because of opposition, they are the result of protecting the past from corruption – often an ideal which never existed but, then, ideologies don’t have to have any foundation in reality.

Carse defines a culture as something people do together rather than something a person does. Of the Renaissance he suggests: ‘the Renaissance is not a period but a people, moreover a people without a boundary, and therefore without an enemy.  The Renaissance is not against anyone.’

Cultures, then, play with borders and, if Carse is right, they don’t obtain freedom by taking it away from others.  In contrast to the finite game often found in societies, the infinite game* desires as many as possible to play and for the game to be as open-ended as possible into the future.

Our hope lies in infinite games; here are some final thoughts from Carse:

‘A people as a people, has nothing to defend.  In the same
way a people has nothing and no one to attack.  One cannot
be free by opposing another.  My freedom does not depend on
your loss of freedom.  On the contrary, since freedom is never
freedom from society, but freedom for it, my freedom inherently
affirms yours. A people has no enemies.’

(*Hospitality is an example of a cultural game rather than a societal one; although an ancient practice, it is open-ended towards the future because of its subversive nature, reversing roles between host and guest.)