Sometimes the full impact of an artistic creation takes years to unfold. That is precisely what happened to James P. Carse, and his 1986 book Finite and Infinite Games: A Vision of Life as Play and Possibility. Although it gained many devoted readers, and almost a cult-like following, the book didn’t reach the attention of a mass audience until 2019, when the Start With Why mega-star author Simon Sinek published his Carse-influenced book The Infinite Game.
Learn more about this influence in Sinek’s delightful ‘A Bit of Optimism’ podcast interview with Carse. In the written introduction to the podcast, Sinek relates: “Many people have theories, but what philosopher, Dr. James Carse, figured out is more profound. He articulated a basic truth about how the world actually works. His work has had a profound impact on me and my work. So much so, I wrote a book to pick up where he left off.”
Carse’s book begins:
“There are at least two kinds of games. One could be called finite, the other infinite.
A finite game is played for the purpose of winning, and infinite game for the purpose of continuing the play.”
“It was Carse’s book,” Sinek writes on page 4 of The Infinite Game, “that first got me thinking beyond winning and losing, beyond ties and stalemates. The more I looked at our world through Carse’s lens of finite and infinite games, the more I started to see infinite games all around us, games with no finish lines and no winners.”
I was heartened to see this recognition for Carse and his ideas, particularly because he passed away at 87 on September 25, 2020, a year after the publication of Sinek’s book. Although he was not a household name, Carse was far from unknown. He led a truly remarkable life as an author/professor/philosopher/broadcaster. He taught for many years at New York University, including as its Director of Religious Studies, and published a number of other books, including The Religious Case Against Belief (2009), The Gospel of the Beloved Disciple (1997), and even a mystery novel with an NYU-like setting, PhDeath: The Puzzler Murders (2016). Although I read and enjoyed Finite and Infinite Games years ago, my introduction to him was a much different, deeply personal, and beautifully written book of essays, Breakfast at The Victory: The Mysticism of Ordinary Experience, published in 1994.
The year before Sinek’s book, Niki Harré’s The Infinite Game: How to Live Well Together was published in New Zealand by Auckland University Press. Harré is a psychology professor at the University of Auckland who also started the Infinite Game Project. According to its website, “The project was inspired by James Carse’s book Finite and Infinite Games, a wonderful work of scholarship and poetry that offers a new metaphor to help understand our time.”
Her book won the 2019 Ashton Wylie Mind Body Spirit Book Award, from the Ashton Wylie Charitable Trust, in Auckland. According to the award’s website, “In The Infinite Game, Niki Harré asks us to imagine our world anew. What if we are all part of a different type of game entirely – a game in which playing matters more than winning, a game that anyone can join at any time, a game in which rules evolve as new players turn up. Deeply informed by psychological research and a life of social activism, Niki Harré’s provocative book teaches us all how we might live life as an infinite game.”
Carse’s work on finite and infinite games was also noted in Bill Burnett & Dave Evans’ bestselling design thinking book, Designing Your Life: How to Build a Well-Lived, Joyful Life. Learn more about that connection in the Johns Hopkins University Life Design Lab post by Patrick Brugh, “Finite and Infinite Games: Student Athletes.”
Carse also had high profile followers like Stewart Brand (Whole Earth Catalog) and the Long Now Foundation, of which Brand is a founding board member. It sponsored Carse’s 2005 talk “Religious War in Light of the Infinite Game,” available on YouTube. Of Finite and Infinite Games, Brand writes, “Readers become rereaders; the tiny book rewards close study. I used Carse’s ideas for the concluding chapter of my own book on long-term thinking.”
For additional information about James P. Carse, his books, and his influence on Sinek and others:
Carry the Fire: Podcast interview with Carse by Dustin Kensrue; November 4, 2019
Charles Wilson’s Blog: Winners, Losers and Those Still Playing: Finite and Infinite Games
Debbi Mack: The Crime Cafe Interview with James P. Carse (podcast March 1, 2017)
Farnam Street/fs: Finite and Infinite Games: Two Ways to Play the Game of Life
Human Systems Dynamics Institute: Finite and Infinite Games
Morning Brew/Alex Hickey: An Interview with Simon Sinek, Author of “The Infinite Game”
Owltail: James Carse 12 Podcast Episodes
Paula Gordon: Infinite Games, 1997 podcast interview with Carse
Taylor Pearson: Finite and Infinite Games Summary and Quotes
Near the end of Finite and Infinite Games, Carse writes, “Infinite players are not serious actors in any story, but the joyful poets of a story that continues to originate what they cannot finish.” As is evident particularly in the above podcasts, Carse seemed to be quite generous, personable, and good-humored. He is missed as a human being. But his output of creativity promises to keep us infinitely engaged.