It has been stated by Thomas Szasz that what people really need and
demand from life is not wealth, comfort or esteem but games worth
playing. He who cannot find a game worth playing is apt to fall prey to
accidie, defined by the Fathers of the Church as one of the Deadly
Sins, but now regarded as a symptom of sickness. Accidie is a paralysis
of the will, a failure of the appetite, a condition of generalized
boredom, total disenchantment — "God, oh God, how weary, stale, flat
and unprofitable seem to me all the uses of this world!" Such a state
of mind, Szasz tells us, is a prelude to what is loosely called "mental
illness," which, though Szasz defines this illness as a myth,
nevertheless fills half the beds in hospitals and makes multitudes of
people a burden to themselves and to society.
Seek,
above all, for a game worth playing. Such is the advice of the oracle to
modern man. Having found the game, play it with intensity — play as if
your life and sanity depended on it. (They do depend on it.) Follow
the example of the French existentialists and flourish a banner bearing
the word "engagement." Though nothing means anything and all roads are
marked "NO EXIT," yet move as if your movements had some purpose. If
life does not seem to offer a game worth playing, then invent one. For
it must be clear, even to the most clouded intelligence, that any game
is better than no game.
- Excerpted from the book, The Master Game, by Robert S. de Ropp
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