Cultural deviation does not return us to the past, but conti...

Cultural deviation does not return us to the past, but continues what was begun and not finished in the past. Societal convention, on the other hand, requires that a completed past be repeated in the future. Society has all the seriousness of immortal necessity; culture resounds with the laughter of unexpected possibility. Society is abstract, culture concrete. — James P. Carse, Finite and Infinite Games

— James P. Carse, Finite and Infinite Games

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It is necessary to share meaning. A society is a link of relationships among people and institutions, so that we can live together. But it only works if we have a culture — which implies that we share meaning; i.e., significance, purpose, and value. Otherwise it falls apart. Our society is incoherent, and doesn’t do that very well; it hasn’t for a

Maria Popova • Legendary Physicist David Bohm on the Paradox of Communication, the Crucial Difference Between Discussion and Dialogue, and What Is Keeping Us from Listening to One Another

“Because finite players are trained to prevent the future from altering the past, they must hide their future moves. The unprepared opponent must be kept unprepared. Finite players must appear to be something other than what they are. Everything about their appearance must be concealing. To appear is not to appear. All the moves of a finite player ... See more

To be serious is to press for a specified conclusion. To be playful is to allow for possibility whatever the cost to oneself.

James P. Carse • Finite and Infinite Games

“To be playful is not to be trivial or frivolous, or to act as though nothing of consequence will happen. On the contrary, when we are playful with each other we relate as free persons, and the relationship is open to surprise; everything that happens is of consequence. It is, in fact, seriousness that closes itself to consequence, for seriousness ... See more

Here is where culture enters the picture. I mean“culture” in its anthropological rather than artisticsense. What values and practices can hold people to-gether as the institutions in which they live fragment? My generation suffered from a want of imagination inanswering this question, in advancing the virtues ofsmall-scale community. Co

Richard Sennett • The Culture of the New Capitalism

This is the origin of the modern love of progress. In this view, strangely, the future is our mythical creation point—our beginning. We believe this without knowing it: the future is where the gods live. This is an inversion from of almost every human culture, where the gods live in the origin—the mythical past.

open.substack.com

“Education discovers an increasing richness in the past, because it sees what is unfinished there. Training regards the past as finished and the future as to be finished. Education leads toward a continuing self-discovery; training leads toward a final self-definition. Training repeats a completed past in the future. Education continues an unfinish... See more