Life As A Game Of Chess
It's often been said either that Life is like a game of Chess, or that Chess is like Life. Sometimes, we nod our heads sagely and just accept that this is a truism (either because Life is so vaguely defined, or because Chess is defined so generally). But sometimes I lean back and look at life, chess and my library and I think about how true this statement is.
Some preliminaries first. Logically, it's quite clear that Chess != Life and vice versa. So it's OK to say that one is like the other provided we don't make the degree of congruence too high. Some people also think that it's a bit facetious to equate a game with something as important as Life. Some think that the only degree of resemblance is analogous to that between a leaf and the tree it grow from - some sort of magical similarity, so to speak. But all these just ignore the fact that until we state exactly what we mean when we say Chess is like Life, there is nothing to debate.
So, what exactly is the case for Chess being like Life? (And since I'm being kind, I will even add the ways in which I think Chess is not like Life.)
To begin with, historically, chess (or its ancient ancestor, chaturanga - the 'four-armed game') was designed to reflect one particular aspect of Life - armed conflict between two equal armies, one with the barest initiative, and the whole battlefield influenced by chaos simulated through dice. Points to note: the armies are equal to begin with; and the original game, the 'proto-chaturanga', used dice. The present version of course, is more deterministic - it doesn't use dice.
As Chess spread westward to Byzantium, the pieces began to take on the burden of archetypal perception - the King came to symbolise the Guardian of the Faith, the Bishops came to symbolise the Church and its dominion over moral darkness and light, the Knights came to symbolise the machinations and ambitions of the junior nobility. Chess was seen as a metaphor for the 'order of things' - with the King having the highest value and the lowly peons being cannon-fodder (or canon-fodder, if we are to believe Martin Luther).
Chess suffered a lot in those days though - games were played with little regard for strategy as long as they reflected the 'truth' of the world, that peons never get to defeat bishops, for example. Sets were designed to reflect Muslims vs Christians, with the Sultan on one side and the Emperor on the other. An interesting treatment of this situation can be found in Tim Powers' The Drawing of the Dark. At the end, the Western powers play a tremendous gambit in which the King takes to the battlefield and the Eastern powers are utterly routed.
At this point, we can safely say, as we stagger under the weight of historical evidence, that Chess is like Life at least because it was designed to reflect certain societal aspects of conflict, culture and community.
But is Chess something more than that? Are the philosophical underpinnings of the game anything like the reality of Life?
Sadly, no. Chess is bipolar; Life is multipolar. Chess is in black and white; Life might be monochrome, but in millions of greys. Chess assumes an ending, and its laws ensure this; Life occasionally asserts endings, but it goes on regardless. In Life, the pieces wield a vast continuum of powers, from the least to the greatest and the plain unclassifiable; Chess is contained, almost repressed, in its bare order of battle.
True, an understanding of the elements of Chess does give one an additional perspective on Life and problem-solving - but this is true too of any exercise of human ability, whether it's rock-climbing or forensic chemistry. We have to conclude that Chess is only superficially and crudely like Life, just as Star Wars is only superficially and crudely science fiction, despite its obvious SF tropes.
Then again, the literature of the chessboard is vast and beautiful, and it is here that one begins to develop a new appreciation for the ways in which human thought may express itself in chesslike fashion. Take for example Carroll's Through The Looking-Glass, in which the whole tale is a rather perverse game of chess. Or Brunner's The Squares of the City, in which the City itself is a chessboard on which its population works out a rather extreme game of living chess. My favourite is probably Tepper's The True Game, which will drive you insane while you try to figure out how come fantasy genetics could possibly lead to a whole world of players - and pieces.
What I propose to do, though, sometime in the next few days, is to dissect the workings of the school in which I live and move and have my being, and represent the major players as fantasy chesspieces. School - the collectible miniatures game. It has a sort of peculiar savour to it.
Some preliminaries first. Logically, it's quite clear that Chess != Life and vice versa. So it's OK to say that one is like the other provided we don't make the degree of congruence too high. Some people also think that it's a bit facetious to equate a game with something as important as Life. Some think that the only degree of resemblance is analogous to that between a leaf and the tree it grow from - some sort of magical similarity, so to speak. But all these just ignore the fact that until we state exactly what we mean when we say Chess is like Life, there is nothing to debate.
So, what exactly is the case for Chess being like Life? (And since I'm being kind, I will even add the ways in which I think Chess is not like Life.)
To begin with, historically, chess (or its ancient ancestor, chaturanga - the 'four-armed game') was designed to reflect one particular aspect of Life - armed conflict between two equal armies, one with the barest initiative, and the whole battlefield influenced by chaos simulated through dice. Points to note: the armies are equal to begin with; and the original game, the 'proto-chaturanga', used dice. The present version of course, is more deterministic - it doesn't use dice.
As Chess spread westward to Byzantium, the pieces began to take on the burden of archetypal perception - the King came to symbolise the Guardian of the Faith, the Bishops came to symbolise the Church and its dominion over moral darkness and light, the Knights came to symbolise the machinations and ambitions of the junior nobility. Chess was seen as a metaphor for the 'order of things' - with the King having the highest value and the lowly peons being cannon-fodder (or canon-fodder, if we are to believe Martin Luther).
Chess suffered a lot in those days though - games were played with little regard for strategy as long as they reflected the 'truth' of the world, that peons never get to defeat bishops, for example. Sets were designed to reflect Muslims vs Christians, with the Sultan on one side and the Emperor on the other. An interesting treatment of this situation can be found in Tim Powers' The Drawing of the Dark. At the end, the Western powers play a tremendous gambit in which the King takes to the battlefield and the Eastern powers are utterly routed.
At this point, we can safely say, as we stagger under the weight of historical evidence, that Chess is like Life at least because it was designed to reflect certain societal aspects of conflict, culture and community.
But is Chess something more than that? Are the philosophical underpinnings of the game anything like the reality of Life?
Sadly, no. Chess is bipolar; Life is multipolar. Chess is in black and white; Life might be monochrome, but in millions of greys. Chess assumes an ending, and its laws ensure this; Life occasionally asserts endings, but it goes on regardless. In Life, the pieces wield a vast continuum of powers, from the least to the greatest and the plain unclassifiable; Chess is contained, almost repressed, in its bare order of battle.
True, an understanding of the elements of Chess does give one an additional perspective on Life and problem-solving - but this is true too of any exercise of human ability, whether it's rock-climbing or forensic chemistry. We have to conclude that Chess is only superficially and crudely like Life, just as Star Wars is only superficially and crudely science fiction, despite its obvious SF tropes.
Then again, the literature of the chessboard is vast and beautiful, and it is here that one begins to develop a new appreciation for the ways in which human thought may express itself in chesslike fashion. Take for example Carroll's Through The Looking-Glass, in which the whole tale is a rather perverse game of chess. Or Brunner's The Squares of the City, in which the City itself is a chessboard on which its population works out a rather extreme game of living chess. My favourite is probably Tepper's The True Game, which will drive you insane while you try to figure out how come fantasy genetics could possibly lead to a whole world of players - and pieces.
What I propose to do, though, sometime in the next few days, is to dissect the workings of the school in which I live and move and have my being, and represent the major players as fantasy chesspieces. School - the collectible miniatures game. It has a sort of peculiar savour to it.
etched with acid at 3:12:00 am
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