I have a quote of the day thingy, and this is from today:

A chess genius is a human being who focuses vast, little-understood mental gifts and labors on an ultimately trivial human enterprise.
- George Steiner

I think we can sub in "go" in that quote . Of course, I'm not conceding that either chess or go is trivial--at least not in every sense of the word.

EDIT: fixed embarrassing typo ("god")

That's pretty conceited. It assumes that there are some human enterprises that are not trivial.

You don't think there are?

I like Kawabata's quotation of Sanjugo Naoki: "If one chooses to look upon Go as valueless, then absolutely valueless it is; and if one chooses to look upon it as a thing of value, then a thing of absolute value it is."

That's a nice quote -- is there a reference (e.g. book name, etc.) ?

Let's just assume that he meant trivial as in trivium. Learning grammar, logic, and rhetoric isn't useful in the way that learning to navigate a ship and survey farmland is useful - that is, none of the three are part of a vocational-technical education. But they're still some of the most fascinating activities that human beings engage in.

It's in Kawabata's "Meijin" (Master of Go) - when I read those lines I had to write them down. Because it's a fictionalisation of real events I don't know weather Naoki actually said/wrote it though...

It's Chapter 26 of Master of Go.

Naoki Sanjugo was an interesting chap. Although famous as a novelist he was a go nut, and so has his place in the story. He began a habit of using his age as his name and changing his name every year. He started with 31. At the time of the Shusai-Karigane game in 1926, which he covered, he was still not well established and was calling himself 35 (Sanjugo). By 1927 he was established and he then stuck with that. I’m tempted to speculate that he may have done this because coverage of this game gave him name recognition he didn’t want to lose.

Despite his odd naming habit, he's most famous in the go world for daring to criticise Kitani for playing with a style of brute force.

Is this a picture of him?

Don't forget the word "ultimately" Since, ultimately, the sun will vaporize the Earth, you might say that Go (as well as almost any other human activity) is ultimately trivial. The most common meaning of trivial, of course, is "of no importance". So it really depends on what is considered important. Go and chess are not useless. Both have proved fruitful testing grounds for artificial intelligence programming and for understanding how the human brain works. And don't forget the artistic aspect. I think we all appreciate the beauty of a well-played game. But whether any of that is not trivial is, I suppose, a philosophical question which, as such, has no definitive answer.

Thank you. It's been 9 years since I read it; time to revisit.

From the evolutionary perspective, the ultimate purpose of most behaviors of non-human animals is survival and reproduction. Certainly human intelligence and consciousness, as a mechanism of controlling behavior, evolved for the same purpose. I think what George Steiner means by "trivial" is that being good at chess does not affect your or anybody else's chances of survival or reproduction - at least, that's the only way I can make sense of that quote. I wonder if he thinks music and the arts are trivial enterprises.

We need to get you imagination exercises. I doubt it, unless this is a different George Steiner: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_Steiner.

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Occupy Babel!

Critics, particularly of a chosen field, tend to view their field as the 'highest art' and look down upon other fields.

For instance, Roger Ebert famously said...


Painting with a broad brush, he indicts video gaming of being an empty venture. So too will there be ever those who point to go, swordsmanship, and even literary and artistic ventures as being empty and ultimately 'trivial'.

The truth of the matter is that value is what you make of it. Go is a study of patterns, logic, and game theory. These things can be applied outside of Go, as much as swordsmanship is a study of movement, reaction, and planning, and can be applied outside the movements you make with a sword.

I would argue that any venture which does not actively put food on your table is only of the worth that you assign it.

If tomorrow, leaping out of airplanes became the most important thing in the world to me, then I would likely defend the art of parachuting as vehemently as I defend go and video gaming, and swinging a stick and pretending it's a sword.

But is there a value for these things beyond what I assign? They do not contribute to my being fed, nor my financial stability (in fact, my financial stability is often threatened by my hobbies), but I find they have a mental value, that nothing else can replace, an emotional centering, and an emotional release.

Thus, I'll keep doing what I enjoy, and ignore quotes like Mr. Steiner's and Mr. Ebert's, who have been fortunate enough to incorporate ultimately trivial pursuits into the pursuit of getting food.

What makes food (or your table for that matter) an exception?

My post is based on a broad oversimplification of Maslow's Heirarchy, which says that human beings are motivated by various things. The most basic needs are of course, the ones we see to first, food, water, breathing, and sleep being the most important pursuits to a human, followed closely after by sex and other biological needs. it is not until all our basic needs are met, that men turn to pursuits such as problem solving, game playing, artistic concerns, etc.

A person could argue that these 'higher' concerns are ultimately needless, and that seeing to the basic needs of humanity are the only valuable pursuits.

I myself disagree, but I'm a liberal American who was fortunate enough to be born in the current age of entitlement.