Template:Standpoint capsule

Finite and Infinite Games as ever, a great metaphor for framing these battles of the past and present. For what is a “lived experience”, a “grievance” or a “standpoint”, if not an articulation of history?

The future contains unlived experiences. There are no grievances. Our standpoints, the margins and their intersections are unknown.

Being historical, a lived experience is permanent, and set it stone. It cannot be moved. It cannot be removed. It cannot be compensated for. It cannot be denied. It becomes a monument. A shibboleth. A sacred prophecy. But it is our imaginative construction. We choose our significant events. We build our own memorials. We choose to live beneath their shadows. But our present is a function of every point in the past, not just the ones it's suits us to settle on.

This is the empathetic stance. To adopt a historical narrative: to step into its shoes, to take sides, to exalt it and perpetuate its grievance.

But, look: standpoints iterate. As the present moves through spacetime, we lay down the tracks of future, each new decision we make contributes to our lived experience. We update our standpoints. The decisions of the past for all further away in time and significance. It is an inverse square.

The infinite game counsels us to look at where we are, see what we’ve got and make the best of it. It focuses on the decisions of the now and the possibilities of the future. It regards the past as informational and instructive, not constraining. If I once hit my thumb with a hammer, I know to be careful next time I have a hammer. It does not make me forever a victim of hammer abuse.