An ouroboros is an ancient Egyptian symbol depicting a snake eating its own tale. It can signify many things in both the ancient and the modern world. One of the significant things that it symbolizes is the circular revolution of life, such as birth and renewal. The ouroboros, much like any cyclical symbol, is often seen as never-ending, a dance among eternal compliments, a game.

Finite and Infinite Games: A Vision of Life as Play and Possibility, is just what the title implies: a vision—a possibility. It is a diagram of Carse's thoughts and explanations regarding life, reality, and culture.

But life feeds reality and reality feeds life much like the ouroboros swallowing its tale; and what is life but a dynamic web of captured, interpreted experiences.

Experience itself is, in fact truth. It may not be the objective truth that science and organized religion look for, but it is, nonetheless, a subjective truth that means more to the individual that any objectified theorem or hypothesis.

Soren Kierkegaard, the philosopher, is considered the founding father of existentialism. One of his most important contributions to the thought process lies in his discernment between objective and subjective truth, which he first set forth in his work Concluding Unscientific Postscript to the Philosophical Fragments.

To think objectively is to think in terms of universalism. Objective thought can only grasp that which can be universalized. Essentially our thinking elevates an object from particulars into the sphere of generalizations. To think is to abstract, and according to Kierkegaard, only that which can be conceptualized can be thought. This means that something like "existence" cannot be thought, since it can never be abstracted.

Is it not true that once you are finished describing everything about yourself, there is still one thing left over that cannot be explained? Your existence. Your existence cannot be thought. It cannot be pointed to. Existence is a form of doing, not abstract thinking; and according to Kierkegaard, this type of thinking—that is related to doing—is subjective thought.

Kierkegaard's conclusions on subjective thought ultimately lead him to the statement: Truth is subjectivity.

Objective truths are truths that are abstracted from reality, such as science, math and history. Objective truths are existentially indifferent. Nothing in your life would radically change should an objective truth be revealed as false.

Subjective truths, on the other hand, have no abstract criteria. These truths are existential truths. They relate directly to a person's existence. A statement such as "God is love" is a subjective truth. If a person believes this, it will show up in their actions accordingly. However, if this were ever to be proven wrong, or should your belief in this statement change, your actions will change also. This truth affects your self. It affects your very existence, and the manipulation of these subjective truths could very well change you into a different person.

Kierkegaard theorized that the only important truths in life were the subjective ones. These were the ones that directly related to one's existence. These truths cannot be thought. Instead, they must be—and can only be—experienced. Each person's life is subjective to him or her, and as such, experience is the key to uncovering and examining this subjective life.

"Culture, on the other hand, is a infinite game. Culture has no boundaries. Anyone can be a participant in a culture—anywhere and at any time." Carse may mention culture as the Infinite Game, but culture is the totality of socially transmitted behavior patterns, arts, beliefs, institutions, and all other products of human work and thought. This seems to be a collection of experience. Nothing more. Nothing less. And it is experience (subjective life) that must be examined.

Through this examination, if the subjective life (experience) is taken as the infinite game mentioned by Carse, then even the infinite game is subjective, only given true meaning through the individual experience, which, of course, can differ from person to person. Each game—each life—is subjective. If this is true, then where does that leave reality?

Reality, it seems, is nothing more than a "common ground." Don't we need common ground between us in order to interact? "No one can play a game alone. One cannot be human by oneself. There is no selfhood where there is no community. We do not relate to others as the persons we are; we are who we are in relating to others." Reality is what we, ourselves, construct in order to find a common ground where we can share our perspectives—where we can interact.

Carse mentions in his work a story that cannot be finished. This story can be argued as the continued construction of our shared reality. It is a "story" that began before us, and shall continue after us. Language, myth, history, culture—these are all tools with which we construct this reality, much in the same way that the Aborigine people construct their myths and life stories.

But is reality truly a construct?

Let us not forget the Copernican revolution of philosopher Immanuel Kant. Kant, in an attempt to put to rest philosophical questions of internal and external worlds, and the differences that lie therein, turned the world on its head in a similar fashion that Copernicus did by telling us that the Earth revolved around the Sun. Kant acknowledged that it is not reality that influences the senses, but it is reality, instead, that is shaped by the perceiving mind. This allowed Kant to resolve issues of what we know to lie outside the human senses, while at the same time influencing a trove of philosophers and scientists alike. In fact, the Copenhagen interpretation of quantum physics reads very similar to Kant's findings, and the Copenhagen interpretation is the most supported—and popular—theory by scientists to date.

According to Kant, it would seem that every one of us shapes the reality around us, since reality conforms to our minds. Can we not each perceive reality in a different way, though? If one person perceives one thing and another person perceives something else, which one is correct? What do we usually do in that situation? Don't we usually get another person's opinion? Does this not suggest that reality to the masses is a consensus opinion?

How is this consensus opinion formed? Even from our youth, we are taught to perceive things a certain way. We call this education. We are told what things are. We are taught a language. If we see things a different way, we are "corrected" by a teacher or a parent. Reality exists the way it does because our perceptions were trained since youth by those that came before us. Here we have what can be termed as the Mass Reality Theory, of which reality, in general, conforms to the consensus opinion of the minds of the masses.

Again, we see how reality is built up by interaction between entities in order to construct a common ground with which we can gain experiences that will help shape our lives—our subjective lives.

Reality is more fluid than we are taught. "The rules of an infinite game must change in the course of play." However, instead of being instructed on the flexibility of reality, we are instead ruled over by reality Nazis that want to tell us what reality is, and how we should perceive things.

Much of the problem with today's reality Nazis lies in the conservative clinging that result from historical and religious blinders that aren't necessarily placed on our eyes by institutions as much as they are put on by us in a refusal to see reality as a more flexible instrument.

This flexibility is constantly being rediscovered by various evangelists of philosophical and cultural importance. Our stout stance on reality has been slowly breaking down thanks to the human mind evolving to accept multiple perspectives. We are finally beginning to realize that "no limitation may be imposed against infinite play."

It could be argued that the onslaught of multi-perspective amalgamations resulting in this group reality is, in part, the result of the destruction of certainty.

Philosopher David Hume was a major forbearer of the skeptical way of thought. His works sought to destroy assumed cause-and-effect relationships, and show us an uncertain, possibly chaotic, world that we shape through our own assumptions and passions—a subjective world.

This awareness that certainty is an improbable goal led to the solution of collecting evidence through similar events or associations rather than relying heavily of absolutes; whether it's the scientific method, or simply interviewing three witness to gleam similarities that can be passed off as temporary truths.

I think what Ted Nelson was getting at in Computer Lib/Dream Machines—and let's remember that he was a philosopher, not a computer programmer, so Hume would have been influential in his statements—is that you cannot hope to find certain truth in any endeavor. In other words: Truth is subjectivity. All you can hope for is a collaborative reality that works for the moment until something else comes along that shatters that ideal and moves us in a new "accepted" direction—a new reality.

Ultimately, as our world grows and changes more rapidly with each passing year, and with the current light-year growth being spurned on by the accelerated creation and manipulation of technology, reality changes more often. In fact, it's been happening so quickly that worldly changes have been reclassified as paradigm shifts in order to ease people into the acceptance of their reality being changed. Reality has become a tool. It has become a tool for growth—a tool for the Infinite Game.

Grant Morrison's The Invisibles is an excellent example of the Infinite Game, reality shaping, and interactivity, at work. Interaction sometimes needs struggle. We often view struggle as a conflict of opposites. This results in an "us" versus "them" scenario—an archetypal struggle implanted into the Infinite Game.

But if the Infinite Games is life, then this struggle is also life; and if this struggle is life, and it is seen as something that is over and done with (like Morrison portrays it), then by destroying the "us" versus "them" paradigm, Morrison essentially falls into the existential conclusion that "we" are the sum total of all decisions that we make (something that philosopher Jean-Paul Sartre once concluded). "We" are in total control of our lives, and there is nobody else pulling the strings, or hiding in the shadows except for ourselves.

"It is an invariable principle of all play, finite and infinite, that whoever plays, plays freely. Whoever must play, cannot play."

We are constructing our own reality in order to build an interactive playground that is necessary for us to learn and grow. We choose are reality.

Morrison is not just introducing Dane to The Invisibles in his graphic novel. He is introducing us to them as well; and by introducing us, he is also introducing all the concepts, players, and tools of the Infinite Game.

"Truth speaks best in the language of poetry and symbolism." But both poetry and symbolism are interpreted disciplines. They are subjective. Morrison is suggesting (just like Kierkegaard) that truth is subjective as well, leading us to the conclusion that reality itself must be flexible, since subjective truth can only be discovered through experience—experience which is gained through chosen interaction and chosen perspectives.

Reality is just as subjective as truth is. Kierkegaard believed that subjective truth could never be taught, only objective truth could. As such, he spent much of his live teaching about subjective truth through what he called: Indirect Communication.

Indirect Communication "destabilizes the smug complacency" that stands between the individual and the truth. Forms of indirection communication include parables, paradoxes, irony, etc. The listener or reader to these words is forced to confront the full paradox of the message being presented, and thus is forced to confront his or her self.

Morrison uses some of these methods of indirect communication during the first half of Say You Want a Revolution in order to "destabilize" the reader’s conceptions of reality. Dane's initiation into the world of the Invisibles is also our own, and Morrison attempts to introduce all of us to the idea of a designer reality that is up for grabs.

Through Dane's experiences, we all uncover the subjectiveness of truth and reality. Morrison accomplishes this through conflict - through Dane's often complex and confusing interaction with the people and environment that surround him.

Reality is a necessary tool to initiate interactivity. However, one must always understand that this is a designer reality that we choose to participate in. These choices of interaction spurn experience. So it could then be suggested that interactivity is, in fact, the catalyst for uncovering the Kierkegaardian subjective truth of the individual. And it is the journey to finding this subjective truth that can be thought of as the Infinite Game.

Don't be mistaken into believing that finding the subjective truth is the ultimate end goal. It is not. There is no final ending to uncovering the subject truth. It is based on experience, learning, and perception. Subjective truth can change, and this occasional shift in perspective is what can lead to greater individual growth, and is what keeps the Infinite Game alive. In fact, according to Carse, these shifts in perspective must occur, since the Infinite Game cannot end.

We all hold the key to reality in the palms of our hands. We must learn to wield it like a tool in order to continue the never-ending story of our universe. But as we play the game in order to continue the game, it is the experience gained along the way that shapes the individual as well as the world. Truth is subjectivity. Subjective truth, experience, life—that is the infinite game.

"There is but one infinite game."