Posted by
Boris Tiraspolsky on Sunday, April 26, 2009 1:54:24 AM
"In real life, the political and strategic games used by politicians and statesmen are in fact social games – requiring social intelligence as well as technical mastery of information. The skills of the orator, cultivated by ancient statesmen like Cicero and Demosthenes, or by modern statesmen like Benjamin Disraeli and Abraham Lincoln, require emotional maturity and the talent of seeing events through the eyes of others."
Lessons Taken from Strategy Games
by J. R. Nyquist
Games of strategy, like chess, teach many lessons that are transferrable to everyday life. What is valuable in a game, as opposed to a book or public idea, is the way in which gaming mercilessly punishes error. A book or teaching may be popular in society, but how does society discover its errors? In games of strategy, like chess, a blunder is quickly punished. But in society, which is governed by a “politically correct” regime that manages our perceptions, blunders are often masked and good ideas are blamed for effects caused by bad ideas. Erroneous policies can remain in place for decades, until society finds itself in a crisis. But in a strategy game, one is forced to confront one’s own shortcomings. The player who adopts a bad idea is crushed by his opponent – who is immediately rewarded for his perspicacity.
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