In the late 60s I hung out at a coffee house in Berkeley, California called Hardcastles. It had about 25 tables. good coffee, and a lot of Bridge, Go and Chess players. One Saturday, while I was playing Go with a friend, a large group came in and proceeded to observe all the Go games being played in the room. This was unusual and a little unnerving.
I learned the group was from the Go club at UCB, and they were hosting players from Japan. After I was done playing one of the group came up to me and, through a translator, asked if I would play a game. I agreed to play, and found myself facing the 2nd best Go player in the world ... Jump beyond the fold a quick description of Go from Wikipedia, the outcome of my game, and some thoughts on the use of Go as a metaphor for our progressive struggle.
What is for dinner? How are you doing? What is on your mind. If you are new to Street Prophets please introduce yourself below in a comment. This is an Open Thread / Coffee Hour and all topics of conversation are welcome. Today's Coffee Hour is brought to you by the game of Go.
Go is played by two players alternately placing black and white stones on the vacant intersections of a 19 × 19 grid board. The object of the game is to control a larger part of the board than the opponent. To achieve this, players strive to place their stones in such a way that they cannot be captured, while mapping out territories the opponent cannot invade without being captured. A stone or a group of stones is captured and removed if it has no empty adjacent intersections, the result of being completely surrounded by stones of the opposing color.
The etiquette of this situation is that the stronger or more experienced player sets the handicap for the less experienced player. He gave me a handicap of over 18! This blew my mind. In all the games I had ever played the handicap never exceeded 13. I was allowed to place 18+ stones on the board before his first move. The handicap equalized the game and the vast difference between our playing skills.
It was an intense game, but far more intense for the Go master. I'm sure he played as hard game as he had ever played in his life. And when the game ended he had one more space under his control than myself. He won by one point or space.
Afterword, I found out why he asked me, rather than many of the other stronger players in the room. He said that I played like the rain, that was the challenge. This was a very satisfying experience and reinforced many of the lessons of Go for me.
Struggle or war is like CHESS. This metaphor’s assertion automatically invokes mental mappings and creates the framing for any discussions that follow. Let us consider Go as a different metaphor that could be used for struggle.
Struggle or war is like GO. This is metaphor for struggle may be new to the reader. So, for the moment just assume we now have two different metaphors for struggle.
Chess in the western mind is associated with war. By learning chess as a child we are building up models for war in our mind. We have a battle between two armies. Each army is lead by a King. The armies take turns moving. There is a hierarchical value structure in the differing pieces of the game.
Harry Potter and the Philosophers Stone entire chess game
The rules of play for chess are complex and there are special rules such as en passant capture. Pawns can, and are sacrificed so the king can win. As the game advances men are removed from board, presumably killed. The war has a beginning, middle and an end. Game is won when a king is “checkmated.” If you saw the chess game in the Harry Potter movie you know it can be very violent.
The "frames" of chess versus go are very different even though both are games of war or struggle.
Words evoke whole frames – whole mental structures. Those mental structures activate an embodied mental simulation, giving the words meaning. Neuroscience tells us the at the same region of the brain used for seeing is used for imagining seeing, remembering seeing, and dreaming about seeing; that the same parts of your brain used for moving are used for imagining moving, remembering moving, and dreaming about moving.
From George Lakoff’s the Political Mind – Why You Can’t Understand 21st-Century American Politics with an 18th-Century Brain.
Go, on the other hand evokes a differing set of frames. We have a battle between two armies. All the players are equal value. The game is won by creating and holding space not killing the other army. The game is played by adding stones to the game board. The rules of play are elegant with only 2 simple rules. There is a provision for capturing stones in the GO game, but they are exchanged at the end of the game. No one is killed in the game.
Surprisingly, for a war game the loser can end the game without losing a stone. The game is played until adding more stones to the board does neither player any good. Game is won by counting open “breathing spaces” surrounded by an army. Who ever surrounds more space wins.
In summary I have presented two different metaphors for war and explained that each one has different entailments as a consequence of their frame.
A metaphor according to Nelson Goodman, "typically involves a change not merely of range but also of realm. A label along with others constituting a schema is in effect detached from the home realm of that schema and applied for the sorting and organizing of an alien realm. Partly by thus carrying with it a reorientation of a whole network of labels does a metaphor give clues for its own development and elaboration... A whole set of alternative labels, a whole apparatus of organization takes over a new territory... and the organization they effect in the alien realm is guided by their habitual use in the home realm. A schema may be transported almost anywhere." (The Language of Art, 1976, p. 72-74)
All of us find ourselves in at times in a discussion with those of differing beliefs and values. Often, at the first suspicion that our position is being challenged we start planning how to react. And because all we can envision is a destructive battle, such as found in the Harry Potter chess game, we disengage quickly. Thus, we lose the opportunity to share our values by being silent.
The Republicans used 9/11 to frame our existence and survival on the metaphor of a “War on Terror.” From that moment on progressives lost control of our collective future, because even to talk about it reinforces it.
The administration’s (George W. Bush - 43rd U.S. President) framings and reframings and its search for metaphors should be noted. The initial framing was as a crime with victims, and perpetrators to be “brought to justice” and “”punished.” The crime frame entails law, courts, lawyers, trials, sentencing, appeals, and so on. It was hours before crime changed to war, with casualties, enemies, military action, war powers, and so on.
From George Lakoff’s don’t think of an elephant! – Know Your Values And Frame The Debate. 2004 Page 56.
America is still immersed in this "War on Terror" frame and as a result our progressive political struggle is overwhelmed by this frame. If we are thinking and acting in terms of a struggle against the oligarchs, such as the occupy movement, this chess frame dominates guides the struggle. Both in the occupy protestors and especially the militarized police forces that suppressed the movement.
In closing consider the discussion about the influence of Go or Wei-Ch'i as it is known in China on the Maoist Revolution
The Protracted Game: A Wei-Ch'i Interpretation of Maoist Revolutionary Strategy by Scott A. Boorman, Oxford University Press 1969
Boorman proposes that the methods of warfare chosen by the Communist Chinese during campaigns against the Nationalist Chinese and the Japan, particularly after the rise of Mao Zedong and the Long March, are based upon the same concepts as wei-ch'i. Boorman enumerates seventeen specific structural characteristcs of Maoist revolutionary war, among these are:
- the struggle is a protracted one covering many years
- the most valuable areas in the early stages are the periphery (corners and then sides)
- victory is determined by controlling the majority of the territory rather than specific locations
- areas of comparable size/value are interchangeable
- many simultaneous deployments in which larger number of smaller units are more effective that a smaller number of larger, more powerful units.
These characteristics are applied to at least two coexistent boards: the geographical and the social. Of these the social is significantly more important and ensures inevitable victory on the geographical board.
Source: senseis.xmp.net/...
Regards,
Jonathan Gordon
Geenius at Wrok did an excellent diary on Go and I recommend everyone read it for additional information on the ideas I'm trying to share: The Leading Hand: Winning Political Strategy in Black-and-White. Thanks Geenius at Wrok