Game Over

mistyscout2 said:Play itself can't be a symbol, though the word "play" might be. Like a logogram.

If play isn't capable of being a symbol of freedom, then "play as a symbol of the world" falls apart too.

I doubt Eugen Fink would agree with that logic.

We’re really starting to drift into the territory of linguistics and the philosophy of language here 🙂. It all comes down to that relationship between morphology and semantics. And honestly, it still hinges on how we define "symbol." If you view a symbol as a kind of metaphor—something vibrant and breathing—then sure, that works. But if you see a symbol as something static and dead, it just clashes with the idea of play being this constantly shifting, self-renewing force. I suspect Eugen Fink was leaning more toward the idea of a living metaphor.

What I’m trying to get at when we talk about "play as a symbol of the world"—which is almost like a Heraclitean logos—is that we’re picturing the world itself as a game. It’s dynamic. In this sense, the symbol acts as a metaphor, a sort of bridge that carries the shared meaning between play and the world. So, I think both you and Eugen Fink are right, but my intention wasn't to make a hard-and-fast claim; I just wanted to nudge the conversation toward the idea that the word "play," as a complex symbol or logogram, isn't quite the same thing as the actual reality hidden behind it—the signified.

The only thing that tripped me up was that word "symbol," mostly because lately, I've been viewing symbols as something pretty static and arbitrary. Thanks for reminding me about that other side of it, though—the "living" version of a symbol.

It might be more accurate to say that play inherently implies freedom. If play exists, but freedom doesn't, then the whole logical implication falls apart, at least according to strict formal logic 🙂. Then again, the beauty of language is that there's rarely just one way to say something. Now I'm left wondering: is there a real distinction between a symbol used as a metaphor (a carrier of information or pre-conveyed meaning) and a symbol used as an arbitrary mental shorthand, like how we associate an owl with wisdom or a fox with cunning?

I know I'm wandering a bit off-topic here, but hey, this is philosophy, and I don't think we should be putting any limits on how we think 🙂.

To put it more simply, we really need to draw a line between a symbol used as a literary device and a symbol acting as a sign—like you’d see in structuralism or just general linguistics.

It brings us right back to that nagging question: how can we use the exact same word for two things that are so fundamentally different? Is it just homonymy? Sure, maybe, but I suspect there’s something much deeper going on under the surface. If we take that symbol from Fink's sentence—the one that acts as a bridge between play as a symbol of the world and reality itself, which is pretty obvious if you think about it—and compare it to a symbol treated as an arbitrary category, what actually connects them? Nowadays, you hear people say "this is a symbol for that" all the time, but does a totally abstract symbol share anything at all with the thing it represents? I mean, once a symbol becomes completely detached from its content—basically "abstracting" away from its origins—it moves past pictograms, through ideograms and logograms, until it hits pure abstraction. A metaphoric symbol always carries a little piece of its subject within it, but by the time you get to an abstract symbol, it’s been stripped so bare that finding a common thread between the sign and the object feels almost impossible.

Anyway, these are just some wandering thoughts of mine, a sort of starting point for further questioning. I’m certainly not standing here claiming "this is the final truth and that's that."

Whatever, it’s all kind of pointless. I grew up on a Commodore and an Amiga, spent all my time playing them, just like everyone else back then. Honestly? Kids today are either way stupider or way sharper than us middle-class losers were. Every generation brings its own brand of chaos. Ebešga.

explanation:

The phenomenon I’ve described stems, in my view, from an expansion of one's subjective experience—essentially, an explosion of the human ego.

If the Renaissance placed man at the center of the universe, he has since shrunk until he is nothing more than a single point.

Everyone strives to become a Nixonian superman; consequently, it isn't just that they fail to reach that status, but rather that
their very human qualities have been stripped away.

From an early age, the impersonal authority of the system pressures the individual to succeed, to experience, to possess, to capture, to travel... Such an individual has no time, say, for play. They are far too important for play. They fear engaging in any interaction with a machine that could be calibrated to best reflect
the demands of their ego.

A multitude of such people creates a "social field of forces"
that, through its own momentum, continues to amplify those very traits.
In the end, everyone is intoxicated by themselves, yet the field of possible action
is actually constricted precisely by
this massive (and utterly senseless) competition.
Individualism, at its core, transforms into herd behavior—a form of collectivism equal to that of Hitler, if one were to
simply remove the leader and the unnecessary secret police.

But let us consider alternatives. Isn't the first step to take an inventory of the problem and unmask this new form of unfreedom?

Shall we shed light on the dark secrets occurring
in the billions of moments between waking up and heading to work?

What is it we actually want?
How do we reaffirm simple play?

Druid said:Could you please explain this a bit better? Thanks.

Every game's end is really just a fresh start for her

kahtani said:The end of every game is just its new beginning.

I suppose I'd call it the start of a different kind of game. Unless you’re suggesting everything happening to us—and around us—is actually one continuous loop, much like the concept explored in The Matrix.

Druid said:It might be more accurate to say that play implies freedom.

I actually quite liked this. Play implies freedom!

Even if we swapped out "implies" for "creates"—which makes sense, given that play itself is an act of creation—I don't think it's a tautology to suggest that play creates freedom.

By "play," I suppose I mean any form of human agency, ranging from philosophy to industry, art to science, parenting to warfare... basically anything that steps outside of established patterns and status quos.

Your question regarding the distinction between a symbol as a literary device and a symbol as a sign is more than interesting; it's actually quite challenging. I can't recall a single instance where those two things overlap (or at least aren't so close that the line becomes blurred), even though reading your post initially made me think it was a common occurrence. Or, taking the subject of this thread as an example, could we argue that play (whatever one defines it as) possesses a universal symbol in the same way a sign does?