Game Art

For some time now I have been pondering the essential similarity between chess and the Asian game called Go in Japan. Many who know this wonderful game might remark that the dissimilarities are more prominent than their similarities, as those partial to Go insist on the cultural refinement of their game to say nothing of the larger mathematical game-space.  To me these differences are attenuated by the fact that the difference in mathematical orders of magnitude is negligible in the context of human cognition.  A number followed by 40 zeros is a magnitude scarcely more conceivable than one followed by 80 zeroes - to the human mind.  I've also seen a difference of  10^50 and 10^172.  These numbers are large enough to render the human cognitive capacity helpless in some ways.  On the issue of culture, it is precisely the difference wherein we find the value of the comparison.  Again, I had been thinking chess playing could take some notes from classical Go playing.  And yet, the modern form of the Asian game suffers in a way that is more enlightening to modern chess, and indicates more clearly the similarity between the two games.  The great novel by the Nobel Prize winning author Kawabata, 'The Master of Go' contains the following very real observation of the historical trajectory as the ancient gives way to the modern:

“It may be said that the Master was plagued in his last match by modern rationalism, to which fussy rules were everything, from which all the grace and elegance of Go as art had disappeared, which quite dispensed with respect for elders and attached no importance to mutual respect as human beings. From the way of Go the beauty of Japan and the Orient had fled. Everything had become science and regulation. The road to advancement in rank, which controlled the life of a player, had become a meticulous point system. One conducted the battle only to win, and there was no margin for remembering the dignity and the fragrance of Go as an art. The modern way was to insist upon doing battle under conditions of abstract justice...” 

There is, indeed, a perspective from which the struggle for titles and rating points becomes a poisonous diversion from the deeper dimensions of art.  One might imagine the point valuations as indications of quality of art, but in fact the quality of art is not something quantified in competition, but rather something experiential, first and foremost; and second, the objective value is aesthetic in its beautiful mathematical rigor, in the way the nature might be beautiful in it's own mathematical way expressed as "natural law".  The competitive aspect is almost an accepted attenuation, which allows the art of contemplation to become a game between two people conspiring to create - only playing as a test of strength.  To echo the Tao Te Ching, the greatest strength is both effortless and weak - the soft overcoming the hard.

I think this warrants more study and reflection.  It's consistent with our notion of chess as being closer to music or poetry, and allows us to move away from the ego competitiveness and towards the true sources of inspiration that produce great art.