Backgammon, nard, billiards: games about overlapping narratives (part 2)
Part of the series Perceiving complexity
There is a game in about the same genre as backgammon, the Persian nard. Unlike the former, nard does not offer the possibility to suspend single pieces from the game. Also the starting setup is simplified, all the pieces are in the same point, farthest from the home board. This kind of reminds of some specificities of the Persian mindset, the man and the woman can enter in a state of mind in which both of them lose contact with the freshness and fluidity of the raw reality perspective. They are like in Do Panjereh (translation) of Googoosh, the man and the woman each on a barren satellite around a barren planet, they struggle to find glimpses of the raw reality perspective that would permit them unfold the psychological fluidity of their love.
Nard is something in this vein, it is not about annoyed masculine discovery of how his mental structures are not such a monolith he imagined. The start of the game is not with the pieces all over the place, but all of them in a monolithic block in the point farthest from the home board. He just wants to reach the home board, where he can bear them off and reach the desired liberation from the mental plateau. The game does not offer the possibility to hit vulnerable pieces, as the lack of direct psychological work with the raw reality fluidity precludes such approach. In backgammon you have available the raw reality fluidity and you want to maneuver your scattered organization until all your pieces are in your home board.
Nard is still about annoying overlapping narratives, only that it is rather about hindering the opponent, each point with a piece of yours on it is indisputably occupied by you, the opponent cannot use it. The thinking process is in terms of mental plateaus. If you manage to express a mental plateau about something as a first use of the raw reality about it, the other party is stuck with your plateau, they don’t have available the mental fluidity to do something about it, to find their own perspective about that thing.
The particular mental liberation supposed by nard may not be so healthy, as it is poised against the mental blockage in static plateaus. If you just want to get out of them, this means you respect these static plateaus, you set them as pillars of meaning in your life. They still continue to be the point of orientation in your life. Instead of such orientation, it would be more profound to immerse in the fluidity of what is going on in your mind, with responsibility.
This does not mean that it is bad to play this game. As you play it for experience, it is not entirely necessary to follow yourself its structure to create a mental liberation while still keeping the static plateaus as points of orientation in life. You may have some other personal perspectives and experience for the broader view about the psychological approach it supposes. You can play the game to get new insights and experience about how a human mind thinks. But if you really go along with the specific liberation it supposes, it is something like in Shabe Eshgh (translation) of Hayedeh. It is a such a great feeling, this is the kind of freedom and fluidity of the mind of someone who knows how it is like to get stuck so badly in static plateaus. However, it lacks organization of its own as your mind still orientates itself after static plateaus. In particular, Hayedeh had serious problems with alcohol and cocaine abuse to keep such a mental fluidity alive.
Listening this song enriches your humanity, but you need to pay attention to your responsibilities in facing that mental abyss the raw reality perspective supposes. A valuable example of Persian expressivity assuming personal responsibilities can be the music of the band Eendo, they have such a deep and valuable creativity, yet balanced and with personal responsibilities in facing that mental abyss. This is too about people who know how it is to be so badly stuck in mental plateaus, but look at what they could achieve with their own responsibilities. What a mental release with such a liberating and unexpectedly meaningful creativity in Hamin Lahzeh (it is not meaningful in the usual, expected ways, it makes your mind think and you feel the experience and the responsibility of these two artists in relating to the raw reality perspective).
Naghsh e To has such a valuable approach to the plurality of threads the feminine approach to raw reality perspective thinking supposes (the initial scattered organization in backgammon). It gives ideas to a masculine mind about its coherence and how you can work with it (not necessarily looking right away for a retreat into the home board like in backgammon). Something like in Mahabharata (versus Ramayana as an immediate quest for direct control of the personal narrative).
It is not necessarily about copying as a man the feminine structure, but to sense what it is about and see how you can relate to it. It looks like the psychological evolution of the humans benefited a lot from a to and fro exchange of perspectives between genders. When I bring to light these gender related psychological aspects, it is not in the idea that “women think like this” and “men think like this”. This would be a static plateau. It is about let’s see what to do from now on.
P. S. I wonder if the female singer Shadi Yousefian of Eendo is Persian, her name may suggest Jewish or Armenian background.
