A philosophy of life

What worked was thinking in terms of ‘games’ and ‘play’. To look at the nature of reality, for instance, we can think about game structures — about the type of possibility structure that players of any game face. And to look at issues of value and purpose, we can think about aesthetics. In all games, the players are able to distinguish desirable from the undesirable outcomes.

Intelligent play navigates the corridors of possibility successfully. It carries us to futures we’ll be glad to inhabit.

When we see life’s games clearly, we become better able to play them well.

The origin of the Path of Play

When Mark Davidson was a teenager, he became obsessed with philosophy and it became important to him that he was ethical. But a decade later, in another spell of deep thinking, he realised that he couldn’t justify his own ethical beliefs. He couldn’t find solid foundations for them. What, ultimately, provided the grounds for one thing being better than another? He couldn’t say.

He felt as if the ground was dropping away beneath him. He was overwhelmed by vertigo. He was only able to get on with life as normal by promising himself that he’d work towards a way to think about such things that actually made sense to him.

So he read anything that might prove relevant. He started meditating again. And he took up capoeira angola — an art that the mestre who taught him called a philosophy of life. The capoeira game is a kind of microcosm. It resonates with the games that make up our everyday lives.

This connected with Wittgenstein’s thinking, for the first sections of Wittgenstein’s final book talked about language games. Wittgenstein wanted a way to see the territory of philosophy where all sense of the philosophically problematic disappeared,¹ which was what Mark was looking for tool.

Game structures were everywhere, according to game theory.

It all came together.

The mission

The aim is to make game thinking accessible and helpful.

Coachwise

Coachwise helps people play their life games better.

• Self-coaching
• Coaching from coaches
• Coach training

Notes

1. “The clarity that we are aiming at is indeed complete clarity. But this simply means that the philosophical problems should completely disappear. The real discovery is the one that makes me capable of stopping doing philosophy when I want to. –The one that gives philosophy peace, so that it is no longer tormented by questions which bring itself in question.” Ludwig Wittgenstein, Philosophical Investigations, Oxford: Blackwell, 2001, §133.