Our minds play games with each other without our knowledge.
Life is a game, indeed a complex of games of various levels.
Each elementary action is part of one or more games, and each game is part of one or more larger games.
By “game” I mean a cybernetic program that can be active in a mind, i.e., an organic complex of forms and rules, stimuli and responses, obligations, prohibitions and margins of freedom, rewards and punishments, i.e., a complex of actions and reactions (i.e., interactions) endowed with relevant meanings with respect to the satisfaction of the players’ needs.
I believe that a relationship between two entities consists of a set of “games” that these entities intend (or agree to) play together, with their respective specific rules (logical, formal, syntactic, semantic, energetic, etc.).
A relationship is thus made up of “games,” which in turn are made up of “interactions,” and these are made up of elementary transactions (meaning habitual and non-random relationships, games, interactions and transactions). In this sense we can say that transactions are part of interactions, that interactions are part of “games” and that “games” are part of relationships, and that no instance of these categories can exist without a hierarchically superior instance.
If we do not know the games of which a certain action is part, we cannot understand the meaning of that action.
Man does not need transactions (active or passive) per se, but to participate in particular natural and social games that involve certain transactions with certain meanings. Knowledge (both scientific and humanities) that focuses on transactions and interactions without considering the games of which they are a part does not meet human needs.
What games do I need to participate in, and in what roles? What games do my stakeholders need to participate in, and in what roles? Who do I feel like playing with, and who do I not feel like playing with? With whom do my interlocutors feel like playing, and with whom do they feel like not playing? These should be some of the questions asked by those who want to live consciously and in good relationships with others.
Perhaps today’s man has lost the sense of play and does not even know that he needs to play. Perhaps today’s man is sad and bored because he has given up playing, and he has given up playing perhaps because the games of the past are no longer suitable for current situations.
In order to get out of the existential crisis and nihilism, we must then invent together and practice new social games, such as to meet our needs in today’s (scientific, technological, economic and sociocultural) reality.
It is therefore worthwhile, from time to time, to do a “metagame”; that is, to try to understand what games we are playing, with whom and with what rules, and possibly negotiate with others new games or modifications to known games.
