The Board game: Social Logic
The board game is the height of human interaction. It is the ultimate defense against boredom and blandness, standing up there with the icelandic family huddled around the fire, recounting their imaginative sagas. It is as powerful as the very idea of narratives and stories which will always remain in our human psyche. The board game, for all of it's development throughout the millennia, is nothing more than the very primitive experience of the hearth, around which are gathered friends or family. On top of all this, it is also tapping into that most fundamental human experience - intelligent games and play. A board game is a complete experience of touch, sight and smell (mmm, cardboard!). It is quite a shame taste has not yet been incorporated yet, but I am sure it is on its way. This is a combination of 'nature', here defined as direct sensory experience, and 'civilisation', the abstract higher-reasoning of logic and imagination.
You must meet the board game half way, becoming engrossed within its artificial world, for most of the time it is not given to you on a plate. Yet nothing feels more natural than immersion, that unique ability we have to turn little bits of cardboard, plastic and a few dice into something active, and dare I say it - alive. Hanging over the pieces, so simple in our world of microchips, electronics and engineering genius, are the rules. These are laws which are to be placed on top of the physical aspects of the game world like a sheet of snow. They are entirely imaginary, abstract laws which must be interpreted and then applied to make the pieces move and carry out the objectives (it's quite an obvious thing to say really, but then again my level of philosophy is often just stating the obvious!). We become so accustomed to the rules being part of the physical aspects of the game that we come to associate the knight with his leap, the queen with her multi-directional fury, the bishop with diagonality, and so on. These moves are contained not in the actual pieces themselves, but are completely separate, operating in a world of logic within our minds. Nowhere in life can we be more assured of purpose and function then upon the board, where disputes still arise, yet an appeal to logic and a powerful code of 'ethics' can be drawn upon! It is meaning itself, contained in that wood, plastic and paper - even if it is illusory.
Take this in contrast to the world of television and the video game. In front of a digital screen the rest of the body evaporates, leaving a pair of floating eyes and ears, with a disembodied hand clutching at a joypad or a remote control. If the human being is a complete entity, experiencing reality through all of its senses, with this mind-thing on top of it, then the degradation of the natural body cannot be a good way to become 'sensate' - a total bodily intelligence. This is the latest form of sociality plaguing my generation (sorry about that everyone, not that your generation was any better though - our problems are just different to yours). The faces are turned away from other human beings, hyponotised by that alluring cobra we call the screen. Millions of pounds are funnelled into each project, to feed this snake so wretched, and the more there is at stake, the less risk they will take, creating an overall taste in the video gaming world of microwaved baked beans which have been left in the fridge for too long (and have gone a disturbing shade of grey). In terms of getting the logical part of our brains ticking, there is little to be found in the digital world. That is not to say it does not exist, for there are always gems which deserve to be sought out, yet fundamentally social logic belongs more to the humble board.
Which brings us nicely along to the next point. Namely, that sociality and logic may seem like opposites; the difference between the stuffy mathematician and some form of inane socialite, but they are fused together perfectly in chess. This is the most obvious example of social logic, where the extent of seriousness and challenge is determined only by how russian ones opponent is!
If we shift out focus back onto the outside world, we can see some parallels with our chess boards, for our own world is itself a game, with its artificial laws of varying utility. To dredge up an old cliche, life is one massive (board) game, or at least it might as well be. The outcome of this game is not determined by the number of actual pieces available, anymore than putting a thousand chessmen in a pile will change anything, or mean anything. The game is determined by rules which organise how the physical pieces are arranged, and it is this arrangement which makes the game; its laws, its objectives, and all of the informal rules which accompany it (see custom). Eventually, the rules and logic of the game become nature itself, tied in to the otherwise meaningless components that make it up. Naturally, it is a game skewed in the favour of the rules-writer in real life, who will appeal to the 'always true' realms of logic and/or nature to justify themselves, but we won't go into a crypto-anarchist rant just here. The good boardgame at least is different in that the designer has to balance their creation, ideally in a way where everyone has a chance to win, sometimes individually and sometimes cooperatively, with no particular favour incurred on any party (see the bourgeois management class and their political cronies!). Perhaps then the board game is a true representation of logic, which incorporates a fairness and reciprocity (that is, a mutual exchange of one thing for another) within it, for the mutual benefit of all parties involved. You cannot, after all, truly win anything if you cheat. The useless and selfish designers of life's board game could learn a thing or two from chess to say the least.
One cannot be alone with a boardgame. Just as ideas come to fruitition when they are brought out into reality and discussed, so too do we come to life as social animals in a mutual environment. The board game staves off boredom like a ward. Imagination is what truly enriches life, drawing from a well of infinity, filling us up like protein-rich bread. It can also fuse all of this with the challenge of logic and puzzle, which other forms of interaction do provide in all fairness, yet in lesser quality and quantity.
Selim 'Selim' Talat
The Philosophy Takeaway 'Logic' Issue 45
