Think’n Nuggets: Games of Life, Emotional Blindness, and Reading
5 tiny thoughts to tickle your brain.
Welcome to this week’s think’n nuggets.
I’m enjoying this experiment of sharing a range of linked thoughts in bitesized chunks, so I thought I’d continue this week too.
Enjoy!
I.
How to read a book
Over the last couple of weeks, I’ve been learning how to read books properly, by reading a book called How To Read a Book by Mortimer J Adler and Charles Van Doren. It’s a really good book. I think you should read it, but also be prepared to feel a little sad when you realise all the reading you’ve done in the past wasn’t as good as it could’ve been.
Adler and Van Doren are comprehensive - there are chapters for things like how to criticize an author and how to read philosophy, science, history, and imaginative literature. But my favourite parts were (1) learning about the different types of reading and (2) 4 questions to ask if you want to be an active reader.
First, Adler and Van Doren outline the different levels of reading:
Elementary reading is all about being able to understand the words, sentence structures and basic content of any book. What does the sentence say?
Inspectional reading is a superficial-level of understanding of the book. What is the book about?
Analytical reading is a deep-level understanding of the book. It’s where you make the book your own.
Synoptical reading is the ability to read many books on a topic, and synthesise the core arguments between the books, as well as come up with your own new ideas on top of them. It’s when you go beyond the books.
The sad truth is, most of us want to be at least analytical readers, but are probably doing little more than passive inspectional reading. So here are 4 questions you can ask to get a grip of the book you’re reading, and level-up to more analytical thinking:
What’s the book about as a whole?
What’s being said in detail, and how?
Is the book true? Or partly true?
What’s the point - why does the author think it’s important to know these things, and do you agree?
Let’s put it in practice with a book I read this week…
II.
Life as a set of games
This week I read a book called Finite and Infinite Games by James P Carse.
![picture of james p carse picture of james p carse](https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/w_1456,c_limit,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F6d7a066e-f62a-43b0-accf-fb5b19f890a0_468x700.jpeg)
What’s the book about?
Carse breaks down life into a set of games we play.
Some of these games are finite. This means that there are fixed rules, and eventually the game comes to an end when a winner has been declared for eternity. Society is an example of a finite game, where people abide by rules and select those who are “winners” or “losers” in the eyes of all the other players. CEOs, presidents, landlords, doctors, lawyers etc… these are all winning titles conferred to people, and only have meaning based on everyone else acknowledging them.
But the better games are infinite. Infinite games are ones where the rules can change over time, and the aim of the game is not to win (thus ending the game), but to play for as long as possible. Compared to the finite game of society, the game of culture is infinite. As Carse puts it:
“For this reason it can be said that where a society is defined by its boundaries, a culture is defined by its horizon.”
Culture is the infinite game where the rules change over time, and people play for the sake of playing - not for the sake of winning.
Carse comes to the final conclusion:
“There is but one infinite game.”
If there were 2 infinite games, then neither could technically be infinite. This game, I think, is the game of life. The one we want to keep playing for as long as possible, as well as possible, and for the fun of play, rather than for the sake of victory. After all, it’s a game we all lose in the end - we’re all gonna die.
What’s being said in detail, and how?
Through the book, Carse takes us through a meandering journey giving us examples of finite and infinite games in business, culture, sexuality, and also more abstract things like speech and language, and mythology. There are 7 main sections of the book, but overall there are 101 small chapters which have an almost illogical flow between these topics.
Is the book true, or partly true?
Partly true. I think the idea that we should try to play infinite games rather than finite games is a strong North Star. But sometimes the analogy doesn’t fit the scenarios, and leads to a bit of overstretching. There are also lots of vague and undefined terms - for example Carse says finite games are theatric while infinite games are dramatic, without ever really defining what these mean.
What’s the point?
Well, to be honest, the author doesn’t make it clear. It’s definitely more of a theoretical book rather than a practical one. Carse is good at showing how finite and infinite games are different, but he’s less direct about why infinite games are better. Overall, it wasn’t persuasively written, and the book wasn’t particularly well structured. I would say the language was also a bit dry, but that might just be a function of being written almost 40 years ago.
The most important thing I took away was to play more life games with an infinite mindset. I take this to mean:
Playing for the sake of playing,
Playing with long-term vision,
Accepting that there is no winning because that means the game has ended.
In particular, I think that having a more infinite game mindset with money and investing is definitely worth considering.
Speaking of money and investing…
III.
Simple and foolproof financial advice
This week on notes,
shared this golden nugget:It’s easy to get swamped in complex financial advice, but Denis essentially shares the first law of personal finance here, and it’s worth taking note. Of course being smart with money is easier said than done at the personal level, and incredibly difficult at a population level.
Population-level spending is on everyone’s mind as elections loom…
IV.
Pithy aphorisms on elections and herd mentality
As election season is here in the UK, and not so far in the US, all of a sudden everyone seems to have an opinion about everything political. This 4-5 year cycle of elections brings out the worst biases in people, and
never fails to deliver his witty takes that encapsulate the absurdity:And my favourite:
People start to take opinions for the sake of being Democrat or Republican, Labour or Conservative, but rarely on the basis of pragmatic and deliberate thought. It’s almost as if both sides become politically blind to the other.
I suspect that a lot of political blindness actually has its roots in emotional blindness…
V.
Emotional Blindness
Until this week, I didn’t know that psychologists had a word for emotional blindness - alexithymia. Alexithymia is relativley common, with 10% of the population having it severely. It’s also more common in men. To be clear, it’s not really a disease itself, but having alexithymia can be a contributor for other mental health problems and addictions. It’s almost like a base-level trait, similar to psychological flexibility.
I wanted to shine a light on alexithymia because I never knew about it until recently, and felt like it explained a lot about myself. Maybe it might help you shine some light on yourself too.
Alexithymia presents as an inability to describe or even notice emotions, even though the emotions are still there and driving our behaviour. It can lead to several problems:
Meaninglessness and purposelessness: We are emotional decision makers - so being emotionally blind also leads to indecisiveness, and feeling directionless as a result. Emotions are our guides, and if we are blind to them, we are blind to any path they may be lighting up for us.
Addictive behaviours: Alexithymic individuals have lower resolution on their feelings. I, for example, could roughly tell you if I’m feeling good or bad… anything more than that takes a lot of work and feels like guesswork. The trouble with this low resolution is that alexithymic individuals try to solve all negative emotions with the same, limited set of tools like food, smoking, alcohol, or other drugs. This can often be a driver of full-blown addiction. To invert the common phrase: if everything looks like a nail, the only tool you’ll pick to fix things is a hammer.
Relationship issues: Building strong relationships requires trust, honesty and openness. But it’s very difficult to be open and honest about how you’re feeling about a situation if you genuinely don’t know. Not to get stereotypical, but given that alexithymia is more common in men, it does explain the classic trope, when asked by their S.O. how they’re feeling, men just say “I dunno, alright I guess.”
The most fascinating thing about alexithymia is the second-order consequence. For alexithymic people that lack an internal emotional compass of purpose, they commonly look to externally derived motivations to do things. They need things like external pressure, deadlines, and external validation to choose what to do with their lives. Shaky ground.
Check out this video from Harvard Psychiatrist Dr Alok Kanojia giving us a lesson in Alexithymia 101:
That’s all for this week. Thanks for reading and see you in the comments!
Recommended reading from Substack
- on the multiverse.
- resurfaces his incredibly witty burnt eggs.
- encourages us to give up.
- reviews Apple TV’s Land of Women.
- defends heartache.
Song of the week:
I really enjoyed the bit about reading books. Since I started writing I have noticed the way I read has drastically changed. Writing (and studying philosophy) have helped me develop my reading abilities, and so, it was interesting to see this development articulated in these different reading stages.
Also, thanks for the shout out! :)
How to read a book + Finite and infinite games are both such solid books. You and I always seem to enjoy the same reads :)