“Fancy what a game of chess would be if all the chessmen had passions and intellects, more or less small and cunning, if you were not only uncertain about your adversary’s men but a little uncertain also about your own […] Yet this imaginary chess is easy compared with the game a man has to play against his fellow-men with other fellow-men for his instrument.”
Mary Ann Evans, ‘Felix Holt, The Radical’
Music: Blue Jeans & White T-Shirts, The Gaslight Anthem
In a poorly lid table, tucked in the corner, an old man and a student are staring at a chessboard. A contemplative silence and a playful tension lingers with them. Outside two guys are trying to make fun of each other. Loud voices, thunderous laughs and there too, tension. The reason for this tension is obvious. In the middle of this mini-hurricane stands a girl. Both the centre and the cause of the tension. She is the one to be impressed. The competitive spirit is strong here. The barman sighs and says as I look up at him ‘it is great that this is happening again’. It is hard to imagine, that not so long ago, this bar was empty. Every bar was. The great illness of the early 2020ies made this place, and many others, fall silent. No chess, no girl, no competition.
Despite the death and trouble the illness brought, I also remember a sense of hope. A small yet ambitious hope, a hope that the illness would change us for the better, a hope for solidarity. A hope that we might end our petty squabbles and realize that our greatest challenges would only be overcome with cooperation.
I don’t know if any of this hope still persists, most of it must have crumbled by now.
Looking at the guys outside, it seems that competition is core to the human spirit. Competing for love or (not less likely) sex. We even invent games. To pit our wits, luck or athleticism against one another. We don’t merely prefer competition over boredom, we seem to love it. Our society is built on it. Competition over attention, over jobs and, most importantly, money. It makes me wonder what hope we had to begin with. Competition? Society demands it from us. Our hope didn’t stand a chance. No chance against our capitalism.
The student extents a unsure hand, puts two fingers around her pawn and slowly moves it forward. She looks up at her companion, not releasing her pawn. The old man smiles and shakes his head. The hand withdraws the pawn. This is a different competition. They compete yes, yet they play not to win, but to get better. It is graceful. It is competition partaken in not for the mere betterment of the winner but for the betterment of the loser as well. They compete not as proud stags but as wolf cubs.
This might be more challenging for the young lads outside. It is more of a zero-sum game. Assuming that the girl wants either of them, the chance that they are all good with sharing, seems to me rather slim. Perhaps if we see this as a repetitive game the problem isn’t as bad. If they compete enough they will end up being fine seductors. Then, when it really counts they might have great success. Though they seem to get better of each other’s backs. Are they getting better at seduction or merely at their own narrow competition? If it is the latter, then what is the value in getting good at kicking your friend down?
Looking at these young lads, I can’t shake the irksome feeling that it isn’t about the girl at all. It is about winning. When competition is practiced for the sake of competition, winning becomes more important than the price, the actual object of value is rendered meaningless. The value of competing turns self-referential. The contest emptied, the point void. It is, as so many things in life, like football. Football for me, is never just about winning, it is primarily about seeing the beautiful game. Good football, just like elegant seduction has value, regardless of its winners and losers.
This bar doesn’t play music, around the lads it is just the grey noise from the square, the whirring of modern cities. Inside the bartender hums a tune. A melody only occasionally interrupted by the sound of a chess piece on the move. In the world outside, money is the measure of the everlasting competition. A much needed tool for the poor, an empty price for the rich. Why do the rich get richer? Why would they want to? We are trained to compete, compete to win, to win for no other reason than for the competition. Money is what keeps the score.
If competition is in our core, so deeply that we can’t rise above it. Then maybe we can change it. Competing not against, but with one another. So we can grow from lads impressing girls into an old man playing chess. Find grace in our moves and generosity in our winnings. The great challenges of our time, the climate, the rise of the autocrats, rising inequality, it seems we can’t overcome these and keep competing as we do. If only we could outgrow our greed, our winning thirst, oh what am I talking about? Outgrow greed? In this economy? I fear that if there is any hope left it is only the hope of fools. Perhaps that is the only hope we will be given. The hope given by an old man, playing chess with a young student, in a poorly lid corner of the bar.
