Today is Super Bowl Sunday, as you know unless you live in a cave. I quit watching all football after the CTE scandal made it clear to me that this is a deadly sport and that the people who make money by paying young men millions to cripple themselves are ethics villains who deserve to spend eternity standing in a boiling lake of guacamole.
I was never that jazzed about football as a game anyway, and knew that the NFL was the most ethics-free sports organization in existence even as the NCAA worked hard to catch up. In addition to being a mob game on the field and off, it requires no intellectual engagement at all and the values it teaches are few. Later today I will post on Chuck Klosterman’s recent claims that the game is doomed, to which I will only note now by writing, “Good!”
I like all games and most sports. I believe that there are seven special games that everyone should learn to play because they all require special skills that are useful in other spheres of life, and teach ethical values as well. Those are, in no special order,
- Go
- Poker
- Bridge
- Diplomacy
- Dungeons and Dragons
- Scrabble, and
- Chess
I will save what each offers us ethically for another essay or six. However the last, which arguably should be first, is the immediate topic here. They used to teach chess in Soviet schools; perhaps they do still. It’s a wise policy. If Americans spent the time they spend watching football playing chess instead, this would be a far healthier country with infinitely stronger critical thinking and life competence skills.
I recently learned that our smartest, quirkiest and most versatile Founder, Benjamin Franklin, was a chess enthusiast. Ben was the ultimate polymath and didn’t have the time or dedication to master a single pursuit that is necessary to become a great chess player. Heck, I don’t understand how he had time and energy to accomplish 25% of what he did in his life. Nevertheless, Ben did take the time to write down his thoughts about the game in the following essay, in which he proposes principles of chess ethics.
I offer it to you now as an alternative to gathering black marks on your soul by supporting the NFL and its sponsors today. Here’s Ben…
Ethics Alarms 
If there are any “Go” players reading EA who have love in their hearts for the spreading the play of Go, I would live to learn from you if you have time. Our local Go community dried up some years ago and online resources and books have been less than helpful when trying to learn and teach my children.
Are there any Japan Associations or Saturday schools for Japanese kids in your area? You might find someone that way.
I consider my realm to be Chess, Scrabble, and Dungeons and Dragons. I’ve not had the patience to really learn Bridge, though my father played (and worked on the Bridge puzzle in the newspaper every day). The closest I’ve come to Bridge is Spades…
If anyone is interested, I regularly play on Chess.com, and my handle is just my name here mashed into one word.
I’ve loved chess from childhood, from learning the game to being in chess clubs, to writing papers on the history of chess. I’m still only a middling player, since I don’t feel I have the time to dedicate to a detailed study of the wide variety of openings, gambits, and middle game tactics. (There’s the time I have spent on Dungeons and Dragons, which requires a fair amount of preparation if you’re going to provide a decent adventure for your players, and there’s the writing I once tried to spend more time on, and the playing viola, and trying to keep up with long-distance running, and now taking care of five girls while working full time. I feel like a prince who has a five-hundredth anniversary to plan, a wedding to arrange, a wife to murder, and Guilder to frame for it…)
Props for the Princess Bride reference.
My wife still has me banned from watching The Princess Bride. My offense is being unable to keep myself from quoting along with the movie…
Dumb Bunnies – an extremely short half-time show rant.
I’ve literally got the outline of a 20 page piece in my head, but I want to give the short summary here:
Conservatives fell for the bait, again. In what was ultimately a lackluster half-time show, for weeks prior, conservatives (often rightly, but mostly out of proportion) signalled their complete disgust towards the planned entertainment. Bad Bunny, like most celebrities have grossly warped at worst or terribly unthought out at best political principles, and air them out instead of doing what they should be doing – entertaining. Instead of quietly ignoring the the half-time show, they blasted it as the worst cultural thing to happen in living memory.
Bad Bunny, is still awful though. His lyrics, consistently hidden in Spanish, extol among the most vile and depraved lifestyle that appeals to the unrefined and appetite-driven masses of the modern era. There is nothing ethically commendable about his act. In fact – the occasional “good messages” are irredeemably marred by the drek. His political views are, unthought out because celebrities don’t really think much – they say what they need to say to make money and gain attention.
Progressives fell for the Conservative rage, again. I can’t count how many of my progressive contacts on facebook and in life, have, in the 12 hours between the dismal half-time show and now, have posted or commented an average of 4 to 5 times how awesome the show was. How unifying it was. How genuine it was. Parroting the party line not because they actually believe their lying eyes, but simply to show that they aren’t one of those curmudgeon conservatives.
I’m pleasantly surprised to see Dungeons and Dragons included on the essentials list, and I’m curious to read your thoughts on the game.
The Dungeons and Dragons star is actually waning, partly because of being infected by the woke virus (you touched on this back in 2020), and also because its competitors in the role-playing scene have become legion. The Dungeon Master in our gaming group has switched us to a simpler system, and it’s been a lot of fun.
What system are you looking at? I ran most of my campaigns in 3.5 (with some 3.0 mixed in). Recently I tried 5.0 (I never gave 4.0 a chance), and I’ve been frustrated with it. Oh, for the good ol’ days of THAC0 back in 2nd Ed… (Of course, as I alluded to above, I don’t think I have the bandwidth to pick up a new system… Though my daughters really, really, really want me to start a campaign with a system call Magical Kitties Save the Day, which is a very simple system geared towards a younger audience.)
I think Spades should certainly be on that list.
And for poker – it must be the Texas Hold ‘Em variety.
No, absolutely not. I view Hold ‘Em as a bight on poker. In fact, the most entertaining and educational poker games are the High-Low variety. Seven Card Stud High-Low is a whirl of strategy.
Probably the worst thought out comment in all 10,000,000 of your comments in the history of this blog.
Hold Em is levels more complex, drama filled, psychologically tactical, personality reading than any other form of poker.