Imagined play, imagined rule (c. 2014)

-Can we say that there is a law that governs play?

-Old question. But let's see how it will turn out when we ask another: and what governs the law that governs this play?

-Another law that governs another law? If a law is governed by another law, it wouldn't be a law.

-That seems right. It is like saying the rightness of my statement depends on the rightness of the basis of rightness.

-That terribly sounds circular. If I have determined that this play is governed by a law which is in turn governed by another law, then the first is really just another play.

-That would be the play of law, and not the law of play, if you like.

-The "play of law" sounds too loose, doesn't it? If the law is just part of play, doesn't that reduce it to nothing but a moment of that play? That is, if we treat "play" as something different, even opposite of, "law."

-I would agree, as long as we keep this distinction on a purely semantic level. In the end, the real question we should ask is, How is it even possible that we can make this distinction to be able to relate them after? What amazes me is that we can talk about one and the other, when they should be mutually exclusive. Can the universe really accommodate them both?

-Language does. So perhaps it would be hasty to conclude against it. But if all plays have rules, then rules too must have some governing logic that shapes them.

-Well, maybe we should say "games" for smaller species of play, just to avoid the confusion that your new phrasing might create. Games have rules, play has laws. What rules do for a game is to create a space of signification where ends and means, start and finish, right and wrong, error and correctness, skill and inexperience, failure and success, etc. gain a meaning. Games provide us with a concrete platform that enables these concepts to attain a tangible dimension. Needless to say, without this tangible aspect, we wouldn't really know how these concepts would work, even if we already know what they could possibly mean intellectually. Without a tangible dimension, we would only be able to form emotive valuations where we prefer one term over another. It is easy to say I prefer good over bad, but we wouldn't really know what they would imply practically speaking until we see how we would relate these valuations to an evolving concrete platform.

-But wouldn't that make it appear that the rules we impose on games are based on what we value? The highest performance in the least of time or effort, the best marriage of force and form, and so on, all implying the elimination of an adversary who loses by contrast, but who makes possible the attribution of superior value to another.

-It seems so that way. Which would lead us to ask, What law determines what values we value? Is it the product of a collective desire or whim, in which case, what we value can change any time; or is it based on something else beyond us, something more permanent? In the example of form, what determines the criteria that assign a superior value to one form over another? For example, when we say it is "very polished," we confer the value of gems and shiny surfaces to another object, hinting at the way we transfer one value system (jewellery) to another. But this, too, hints at another value system, the evolution of matter towards a "perfected" state beyond which it cannot proceed further. Gems are generally like that. A circle cannot be more perfect than itself. The seeming immutability of these objects places them outside time, giving them a status that contradicts everything else that is time-bound, us, and the universe. 

-Are you implying that a value-system may just be founded on a linearist metaphor? That's not a very original conclusion.

-It isn't. But it does make us understand why athletes, for example, have the value given to them. The athlete represents the attainment of a certain human limit. This is why athletes become idols, literally and socially. This happens to many human figures, of course. And although limits can be broken or exceeded, the rule remains the same. Anything that attains a certain preferred level of "perfection" is valued, since this state comes closest to either a maximum point of evolution or to a point where an object, organism, or practice can no longer evolve further, that is, at least not toward states we would not like them to evolve into.

-I can't really disagree, now that you phrase it this way. Wouldn't that be one of the laws, if not, the law of play?

-You can say that, why not. But won't that also mean that the law of play is actually based on a value that assigns the highest premium on the end of play?

-Now you're playing with words. What you actually mean is putting a premium value on the metaphorical end of play, if we concede to the idea that this value is founded on a metaphorical transfer of values. To shake this off, it would just need us to ask if this transfer is a valid movement, or if there is any validity in putting gems, art, and athletes on the same side of the coin.

-Coins? That reminds me why counterfeits, imitations, and parodies have inferior valuations. You cannot duplicate an object already in a perfected state. It does help the value of minted currencies to have idolized figures on them.

-And when someone who just cuts and pastes copies of mundane textual material from one page to another comes along claiming that this duplicative or replicative process is already the perfected state of language today, we know that this is symptomatic of a reversal in the laws of play.

-Sounds dramatic. We actually don't really know what a perfected state means in this universe, apart from those moments to which we sometimes prefer to give this nominal state of affairs. If we are going to be stricter about it, we have to consider what will happen to the earth--house of perfected object-states it claims to be, after hundreds of billions of years. It is true that the material base of an art object may already be dust, and that a digital copy of it may be on a spaceship hard drive, making copied states superior and more everlasting. But those hard drives, too, will probably decompose with all the baryonic states in the universe, unless there is another storage medium that transcends all universal processes.

-Like a hyper-dimensional database you mean? Sounds like good stuff for science-fiction. If that technology is even available, what would prevent the future from actually re-instating the initial or original state of the material and formal reality of our perfected object? And what if our dear objects are now indeed just futuristic molecular restorations of the original? We're just not aware of it.

-You are indeed at warp speed now with those ideas. It's my fault. But you can write that if you want, with today's molecules, of course.