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"Let no one, therefore, expect from us a complete history and theory of the Glass Bead Game. Even authors of higher rank and competence than ourself would not be capable of providing that at the present time. The task must remain reserved to later ages, if the sources and the intellectual prerequisites for the task have not previously been lost. Still less is our essay intended as a textbook of the Glass Bead Game; indeed, no such thing will ever be written. The only way to learn the rules of this Game of games is to take the usual prescribed course, which requires many years; and none of the initiates could ever possibly have any interest in making thee rules easier to learn.These rules, the sign language and grammar of the Game, constitute a kind of highly developed secret language drawing upon several sciences and arts, but especially mathematics and music (and/or musicology), and capable of expressing and establishing interrelationships between the content and conclusions of nearly all scholarly disciplines. The Glass Bead Game is thus a mode of playing with the total contents and values of our culture; it plays with them as, say, in the great age of the arts a painter might have played with the colors on his palette. All the insights, noble thoughts, and works of art that the human race has produced in its creative eras, and all that subsequent periods of scholarly study have reduced to concepts and converted into intellectual property - on all this immense body of intellectual values the Glass Bead Game player plays like the organist on an organ. And this organ has obtained an almost an unimaginable perfection; its manuals and pedals range over the entire intellectual cosmos; its stop are almost beyond number. Theoretically this instrument is capable of reproducing in the Game the entire intellectual content of the universe" (Glass Bead Game, p14)The total italics serve the text nicely.
Damn, this thread made me take out my Benjuka board. Thanks for bringing me back to this addiction, guys.
Ajokli! Welcome back. I hope life wasn't too taxing?
Quote from: MadnessAjokli! Welcome back. I hope life wasn't too taxing?Life's a garden and I'm just trying to dig it