[FRIAM] lurking

[Jon Zingale]

In my local Go club, I sit at just about average rank, fluctuating wildly
between 5 and 3 kyu. That said, there is a lot that is exciting for me
about Go and winning (as well as losing) at Go. Along the lines of
Steve's observation, there is an adage that another of our group likes
to recount relating three ancient board games:

"""
Backgammon is man versus nature.
Chess is man versus another.
Go is man versus self.
"""

I cannot speak for the first two, but with the third, I certainly agree.
That said, it feels good to win a good game and it doesn't strike me as
cringe to feel good or even boast about one's personal progress. When
one is speaking excitedly about successes, I figure, celebrate. We are
all in the club to study the game and at times it can be hard. Anyone
who plays Go knows that they will never be any good and so celebrating
each other's (ultimately minor) successes is camaraderie and support.

As the last point, I like that the game is a great way to check in with
myself. It is good to get feedback about the state of my analytic
reasoning, my instincts, and my memory. A good friend of mine and fellow
Go player passed away over the pandemic. He taught me quite a lot about
the game when I was first learning. He was older and mostly played the
game for the social experience to exercise his mind. It didn't take me
too long to become stronger than him, but doing so required a certain
competitive fire in me. Only after overtaking him was I able to
appreciate that his goals were so different from my own. I am happy for
the insights, however, they may come. All of the above could easily be
different if money were on the line.

As far as cringe, I cannot help but think about its arbitrary nature.
Some might think that being thrilled about one's modest success is lame,
while others might think that specializing to 9 dan is a waste of life[♫].
I tend to view such *offenses* as shruggable. In my experience, cringe
mostly arises as a response to deviation from a social group's imagined
social norms and effectively all error correction/growth takes this form.
To the extent that we identify acting cringe-free with dharma, I say that
it is often worth accruing the karma. Game on!

[♫] But whatever, even Wittenstein is right twice a day:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I5lgAUHVFC4&ab_channel=amerattila
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