The Infinite Game
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The Infinite Game by Simon Sinek
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The JC is indebted to TED-talker extraordinaire Simon Sinek for the TED talk which introduced him to James P. Carse’s obscure but brilliant book Finite and Infinite Games, which provides the basic idea this, Sinek’s own book, The Infinite Game. But, alas, “basic” idea is right: Carse’s hypothesis is subtle, deep and many-splendoured. Its ideas continue to unfold on you, kind their own infinite game, months after you first ingest them.
Sinek’s reading, where it understands Carse at all, is superficial and monochromatic. But mostly, Sinek misses Sinek’s point altogether, and reads it as a kind of lumpen social democratic tract, which it absolutely is not. In his reading Sinek managez also to misrepresent Adam Smith, Shareholder capitalism, Evolution by natural selection, Friedrich Nietzsche and, most egregiously of all poor old Milton Friedman, whom Sinek paints as a kind if Randian Gorgon; something he emphatically was not.
Anecdotal, and ironically historical — it is very easy reconstruct an “infinite mindset” from a completed story. Not so easy to predict one.
“ to line a life of service”.
Pukesome moments
“if this book inspired you please pass it on to someone you would like to inspire”
Adam Grant