Is Chess Alienating?

Marcel Duchamp's good friend, Henri-Pierre Roché, an author/journalist, art collector/dealer and fellow dadaist, upon considering Mary Reynold's (Mary Reynolds, an art collector, had 30 yr. off-and-on affair with Duchamp) description of Duchamp as "debauched," responded that Duchamp could have gotten as many women as he wanted, even rich AND beautiful ones, but instead, "He preferred to play chess."
(gleaned from Picasso and the Chess Player" by Larry Witham)

Perhaps the question should be, does chess have the power to alienate?  And, if so, does it alienate from a weakness in the person, or through some inexplicable attraction.

I'm not sure but I think that applies to me too... 

I'm not so sure of that.  Of course people are part of the equation, but not the sum total.  Do Parchisi or Go Fish inspire such obsession? So not all games - in fact just a few games - have such followers, and just some people become such followers.  So a certain type of personality coupled with a certain type of game seems to produce a certain kind of alientating obsession.  I don't see how one part of the equation left out will give the same result.

Inanimate objects (and games are far different from object and shouldn't be lumped together) can cause plenty of human responses.  Analogoulsy it would be like saying cigarettes aren't addictive. People create addiction.  But few people become addicted to celery or beets. However, certain people are prone to addiction and could become addicted easily to a variety of things. But that doesn't say cigarettes aren't part of the equation for a person being addicted to them.

I became pretty obsessed about Black Maria (a variant of Hearts) in my teens.  I even dabbled with piquet.  I was quite wild looking back.

Depends how deeply invloved you get.

I guess if you dedicate your life to anything for long enough you risk alienating yourself from other people, to a point where only a select few really understand why you do it.

Certain personality types--highly analytical, introverted, and, too a less extend, competative--can be "sucked into" certain types of games. At a guess I'd say those games are characterized by relatively simple rules and situations (positions) that are rich but still amenable to useful analysis. Games like this tend to result in a strong correlation between skill and success. Chess fits the bill, as do Go, Shogi, Poker. I'm sure there are others.

That said, I'm suspect that if people prone to "alienation" never get absorbed by chess, they probably get absorbed by something else.  

Can science be alienating? Certainly a lot of, maybe even most of scientists, just like chessplayers are often seem as crazy, alienated people. And they often are, LOL! Could it be that had these same people pursued different paths they'll be more socially engaged? I think that's likely. Things like science and chess can take most of your energy and alienate you from the rest of the society. That can happen. One has to be aware of that. But it also does not mean that such an outcome is a decided certainty. There are plenty of scientists and chessplayers who are socialy engaged and friendly. Cheers!

There something about Felix the Cat memorabilia that seems not to attract many obsessors in spite of the fact that such an pasttime is innate and can neither add or detract from its obsessors.  Chess, on the other hand, also an innate thing, has many more obsessors in spite of the fact that it has no ability to effect it.

Dontcha think the nature of the object of obsession plays a role?

Anything, no matter how good, when pushed to the level of neglecting other important things, is capable of alienating. Even things you thought had no downside, like community service, when it consumes all your time and thought can definitly alienate.

I think it actually attracts the smarter folk and scares away the rest

Yet, here I am on a site called Chess.com alone with my dog.......nah! Nothing alienating about that!

It's only alienating if you aren't humble. You can do anything and be inclusive if you are humble.

Maybe the reason you can't get women is that you play chess?

Its an idol of the heart.

I think you've said the key words here.  Perhaps obsessive chess players are people who want to "lose" themselves.  When you lose yourself, you put yourself where others cannot reach you, thus alienation occurs.

When I was in high school, I had a biology teacher who had a thing against what he called Purposeful Statements.  It's what I would have called anthropomorphic statements. If I were to tell him that my tomato plant loved the bonemeal he recommended, he woul say, "Miss, we do not use Purposeful Statements in Biology class!"  Plants can't love or exhibit any human traits.  Of course, I knew that and perhaps in a scientific setting such exactitude has its place. But if I got the same reply from the man in the gardening store, I'd find a new place to shop.  Outside of biology class I would have called the demand an element of obfuscation.   When the intent is obvious and the concept clear, finding ways to cloud the issue in order to make a point that doesn't really address the issue, is obfuscation.  In some settings, those in which exactitude is uncompromising, the same situation may not be one of obfuscation, but in a casual setting it usually fits the bill.

Chess pieces don't conspire to alienate an individual.  That is obvious to most of us (I hope).  Let me be clear: pawns have no siren songs nor do bishops mesmerize. 

But certain pursuits seem to draw people in.  It could be video games, gambling, pornography, astronomy or chess.  Some things by their very nature are inviting to certain personalities.  Somethings, by their very nature don't have that same degree of attraction. It's all pretty simple.

But the intent of this posting, and thread title, was mainly to be a vehicle to present what I though was an interesting chess tidbit about one of my favorite personages, Marcel Duchamp. 

With no further ado, here is yet another-

Man Ray, in his "Self Portrait" wrote:
I had it from Picabia afterwards that things did not run too smoothly. After dinner, Duchamp would take the bus to Nice to play at a chess circle and return late with Lydie lying awake waiting for him. Even so, he did not go to bed immediately, but set up the chess pieces to study the position of a game he had been playing. First thing in the morning when he arose, he went to the chessboard to make a move he had thought out during the night. But the piece could not be moved—during the night Lydie had arisen and glued down all the pieces. When they returned to Paris, Duchamp told me that there was no change in his way of living; he kept his studio and slept there, while Lydie stayed with her family until they could find a suitable apartment.... A few months later Duchamp and Lydie divorced, and he returned to the States.

 [Lydie Sarazin-Levassor was Duchamp's first wife. Francis Picabia was a French artist and friend of Duchamp.]

Everything else is obfuscation.

I had a good friend who inspired me on a variety of subjects, including chess. He became quite obsessed with it, to the detriment of his real talent in inspiring not just me, but many people. He had an infectious energy which was very attractive. But he just got too involved in chess.

I look back at those times with bright and dark colours. Chess had a strange effect on him, peculiar to an aspect of his personality I was previously unaware of. I was useless in conveying to him how it affected me. But it was his life, so there wasn't much I could do. I don't know if I look at it as chess having changed him, or if chess disclosed him?

That's interesting, tkbunny: "...who lacks a larger goal in life than domination."

I know a guy who was diagnosed wth cancer. After a long hiatus from the game, he took it up again so he could spend large chunks of time concentrating on games or studying rather than allowing his thoughts to be dominated by the evil fog of his illness. 

I've never known anyone, personally, obsessed with chess... or with anything else really, at least of which I'm aware.   But I imagine that a person totally engrossed in a subject and be either extremely fascinating or a complete bore.