In the paper today, tales of war and of waste …
We know they won’t win.
“Don’t Dream It’s Over”
Good news, sports fans: The game is not up, in this part of the cosmos.
From the Winter Paralympics in Beijing, where physically- compromised world athletes are currently competing with excellence, to the defiant, heroic fight for Ukraine — it’s clear. Long-game players, despite the odds, don’t give up easily.
One is Ukrainian President Zelinskyy, who refused to save himself at the cost of his homeland, integrity, or teammates old and young.
“Zelinskyy the former comedian has become Zelinskyy the hero,” declared Buddhist scholar Robert Thurman this past Monday, at the Tibet House U.S. “Unfortunately the Ukrainians are having to use weapons,” Thurman said, “but only to stand their ground. They are not aggressing against Russia … They are defending their country and lives.”
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These remarks by the peace-advocating Thurman, the Dalai Lama’s most prolific American translator, are insightful, because Buddhists do not condone violence. They teach goodwill.
So what does a peaceable people do when an aggressor takes over the game, so determined to dominate that he will wreck the entire field and all players without a twang of empathy or fairness?
Infinite unknownsReligion scholar James Carse, in his classic, ambiguous book, Finite and Infinite Games, theorized that humans were of two kinds. One played a finite game to win conclusively for himself — and thus end. The other played an infinite game, whose continuance was desired more than dominance. “A finite game is played for the purpose of winning, an infinite game for the purpose of continuing the play,” Carse wrote.
In desperation to control the outcome, a finite player may get frustrated and become a killjoy or “spoil-sport,” willing to cheat, dope his athletes or poison his opposition, to maintain imaginary dominance. Such a player can never actually “play.”
If a finite player still loses a contest (athletic, fiscal or political), he won’t concede gracefully and just get back in the game like humbler contestants. Such contenders can be happy to wreck whole nations and democracies, fund brigades of trolls, kill civilians or destroy any fair playing field.
Infinite players, by contrast, are willing to risk losing, simply to perpetuate the game of life. They may not control the game, but therefore they get to actually play. As Carse put it, “The finite play for life is serious; the infinite play of life is joyous.”
This difference in goals, I would say, currently affects the whole tournament of our biosphere.
Spring trainingLast week, I heard a muted, groggy, crickety noise after dark, from the thawing, late-winter pond. Could it be?! I tried not to hope too hard.
Yet the next night, these “crickets” had turned to shrieks of delirious, upward-pitched queries. “Eeee? Eeee? Eeee?” Yayee and yippeee!
I sprang through the screen door and squealed back with joy. “Hiiiie, witta peepuhs!”
Each year I hope to hear spring peepers, but don’t count on it. I’ve known places where these tiny early toads sang for generations — indeed, millions of years, biologists say. But then — blip — silence. Game over. They don’t come back.
In 2013, biologists were shocked to find that amphibians in North America were vanishing by more than 3 % per year. A lopsided playing field of agro-chem biocides, development, deforestation, climate change, unregulated toxic detergents, artificial perfumes and other poisons had been defeating our ancient friends.
It’s a stunner because these species had existed for hundreds of millions of years, surviving even the Ice Age. Nothing could force them out of life’s game, until humans forgot how to play fair.
More recently, a global biological inventory alerted us that one million ancient, valuable species of all sorts are now, in our lifetimes, facing extinction.
These creatures all are teammates to us, contributing to the resilience, beauty, intelligence and continuance of our whole life support system. Why knock them off the court and lose the big game?
“We are eroding the very foundations of our economies, livelihoods, food security, health and quality of life worldwide,” said British chemist Sir Robert Watson, regarding this predicament. But, he added, it’s not too late to turn the game around. If we “start now at every level from local to global, nature can still be conserved, restored and used sustainably.”
This current struggle for life to continue is not a spectator sport. Everyone is called to jump in the game. Helping one team helps the others. For example, to protect our mountain amphibians, which also helps many other native species, check out the suggestion box.
