Communication and Chess

12,598 characters2009.09.12

At times, people put to me a question in different ways: in communication, how do I view or handle the status relation between the two sides of a dialogue? For instance, in speaking with teachers and elders, must one inevitably look up to them, or, correspondingly, when speaking with juniors, does one unconsciously have to look down from a position of superiority? This is especially so lately with some younger students who communicate with me: they cannot help but face such a contradiction. They expect some kind of equal dialogue and do not wish always to be in a weak position, yet to try to counter my own forcefulness in the exchange does not seem easy either. So what should be done? Where does the problem lie? A common explanation is that one’s thinking is insufficient, one’s experience too shallow, one’s reading too poor, and so on; thus it seems one ought to go home and cultivate oneself for a few years before coming back to speak with me. To such thinking, I have long since expressed my opposition: although academic accumulation ultimately always depends on individual cultivation, “communication” is a living relation, and it must be sustained through continuous investment. Once communication is interrupted, it becomes even harder to reconnect it.

Besides this, another reasonable explanation is to lay the blame on one of the interlocutors—perhaps I am too haughty, too dismissive of others, or, to put it more gently, perhaps I subconsciously look down on the other party, regarding him/her as a younger scholar who needs encouragement and guidance? Or perhaps it is the other interlocutor who lacks confidence and backbone?

If one were to pursue these explanations, perhaps none of them would be wrong. I do not wish to argue that in any exchange I never adopt some posture of looking down or looking up, rather than, as in the ideal case, meeting eye to eye as equals. And in my view, these “unequal” postures are extremely necessary in communication: the posture of “looking up” is conducive to listening and feeling, while the posture of “looking down” is conducive to pouring out and expressing. As the saying goes, “guide according to the terrain” (因势利导): in communication one must establish an appropriate “configuration” in order to guide thought and expression, allowing them to flow vividly; only then does communication show its meaning. If from beginning to end the posture is one of flat equality without distinction, then it is nothing but a stagnant pool.

Equality is the precondition of communication, not its result. The crucial point is that one must not regard “configuration” as a dead thing: so-called “equality” is merely the starting point of communication, and can never be its background. In the process of communication, the configurations of both sides will change from moment to moment; the final state may still be one of balance, or it may be a deadlock in which each side is entangled with the other, impossible to disentangle; or one side may withdraw midway; or perhaps one side will completely dominate the other… This shifting of configuration in the living process of communication is precisely where the pleasure of communication lies.

For serious academic exchange, no analogy is more apt than that of a game of chess:

At the opening, both sides of the dialogue should occupy a posture of equality, or as close to equality as possible. If this is a spontaneous exchange (in the masculine sense) rather than a contest undertaken for some utilitarian purpose, then “equality” as such a convention is a natural demand, because a confident participant must necessarily demand an equal opening, so that his final victory may be regarded as an honor.

However, given the particular nature of certain games of chess (the theme of the exchange) themselves, the opening position may already create a serious inequality between the two sides—for example, in gomoku, the first mover holds an overwhelming advantage, even to the point of a guaranteed victory. In such cases, one needs further spontaneous constraints to limit the first mover’s advantage, such as the setting of “forbidden moves.” For example, in certain exchanges between seniors and juniors, or experts and laymen, owing to predictable factors, the advantage of the “first mover” becomes too obvious—for instance, a philosophical senior can bring out a whole pile of literature and obscure terminology, leaving the junior dizzy and disoriented; a scientific expert can produce a whole mass of dazzling formulas and a whirlwind of symbol manipulations that make the layperson recoil. In such circumstances, the setting of “forbidden moves” becomes necessary. “Forbidden moves” are certain seemingly unequal constraints placed on the one who moves first—for example, you cannot scare people with a whole pile of resources they have not yet encountered. Such conventions are still aimed at achieving a certain balanced opening, and are the result of mutual weighing by two confident parties. Setting forbidden moves does not necessarily diminish the value of communication, nor does it necessarily reduce its interest. When a philosophical senior tries to explain his insights in plain language without relying on obscure texts and jargon, or when a scientific expert strives to explain his theory in accessible language without relying on cumbersome symbols and formulas, such communication is surely also full of meaning and interest. When such communication unfolds, both sides can still be regarded as equal—if the first mover cannot continue the game without using a double-three, then he has lost; likewise, if an expert cannot continue the dialogue without specialist terminology, that too is his failure. As for which forbidden moves should be set, that is not something self-evident by nature, but something gradually tested out in ongoing play—with “fairness” and “interest” as guiding principles.

Once a game truly gets underway, the situations of both sides continually change with the back-and-forth of communication. Take chess, for example: in the opening stage, both sides first devote themselves to arranging their own formations—whether advancing the rook pawn, developing the bishop, pushing the central pawn, and so on. At the very beginning, both sides are almost entirely unfolding according to their own logic. Although on the surface there also seems to be mutual attack and defense (for example, I advance the rook pawn and you jump the knight), these are not genuine face-to-face clashes. Both sides are merely responding superficially to each other’s moves, while fundamentally still laying out their pieces according to their own routines. This is especially true of the first mover, who in the opening stage is almost entirely absorbed in his own pattern, building up his own “configuration,” until one side can no longer resist and breaks into the other’s formation to create disruption—such an intrusion may be perfectly timed, or it may be unexpected. In academic exchange, too, at the initial stage both sides always stick to their own routines, at most giving a distant response to the other’s actions, but seemingly only perfunctorily, so as to interfere as little as possible with the rhythm of their own deployment. The offensive and defensive moves in the opening are often merely feints: for instance, if I advance the rook pawn to capture a central pawn, you may jump the knight to defend it, or place a rook to capture a pawn, but you may also remain unmoved and move another piece; I, too, will not rashly send the rook across the river in earnest, because my purpose in advancing the rook pawn is to arrange my own formation, and whether you jump the knight or not is likewise for the sake of arranging your formation. The apparent offensive-defensive dialogue does not reflect the true substance of the matter. Both sides have a kind of silent tacit understanding that allows—and attends to—the other side’s unfolding of its preferred pattern. Thus, when a serious academic dialogue has just begun, to the most superficial onlooker they appear to be coming and going with great delight; but from a slightly deeper perspective, one can see that in fact they are going in opposite directions, merely being perfunctory with each other, each devoted to his own routine without any substantive collision. And in fact, this stage of mutual perfunctoriness is necessary for further deepening of the dialogue. Perhaps the more one is a martial-arts master (to borrow Gu Long’s way of speaking), the more painstaking and effortful this stage of stalemate before formal engagement must be—both sides merely plant themselves in their own place, or move about at their own pace, remaining constantly alert to the other’s posture, yet having to appear indifferent to it so as not to fall into a passive position, until one side finally reveals a flaw.

Of course, some dialogues stop here—that is, they remain on the surface, exchange a few formal moves, and quickly come to an end. But deeper communication must never stop at the opening. Once one side has revealed a flaw (perhaps deliberately), or the other side can no longer restrain itself and thus breaks into the opponent’s formation, the direct contest truly begins. The chess player’s aim is very simple: on the one hand, to keep his own formation as orderly as possible (whether on the offensive or the defensive); on the other hand, to disrupt the opponent’s deployment as much as possible. That is to say, the communicator must still, by every means available, unfold his own line of thought while finding every possible way to disrupt the other side’s line of thought, even drawing the other side into his own pattern. At this stage, from the surface or in terms of result, both sides may still be in an equal state (for example, in chess, both sides may have equal pieces), yet “equality” is not necessarily “equilibrium.” At this point the two sides’ configurations begin to rise and fall noticeably. The side that better maintains its own pace will clearly exert greater force over the side that has been thrown into disorder. Of course, even the active side can no longer proceed as self-willed as it did at the opening; it must constantly adjust according to the opponent’s responses. To disrupt the opponent’s rhythm, one must first enter into it; that is to say, on the one hand one responds in accordance with the other’s rhythm, while on the other hand one uses that very accommodation to lead the other’s rhythm into one’s own. The same is true in academic exchange: one must probe into the other’s line of thought to seek openings, and ultimately steer it toward one’s own line of thought in order to gain the active configuration. And when one probes into the other’s line of thought, one must both follow the other’s trajectory and maintain one’s own rhythm at all times, lest one be led astray by the other instead. Of course, what is sought is not necessarily that one’s own force field completely overwhelm the other’s; strength is not always an advantage. If one can infiltrate the core of the opponent alone, that may well be more advantageous than suppressing the opponent on the surface. In short, the struggle in the middlegame appears as the mutual pulling, interpenetration, and collision of force fields.

In the course of a match, “interception” is an effective strategy for unsettling the opponent: that is, when the other side is smoothly operating its own routine, one suddenly intervenes and forces the opponent, in some unexpected way, to interrupt its own rhythm and deal with the new situation, or at least to be distracted for a moment, thereby disturbing the cadence of its thinking. But one must not confuse “interception,” which arises from within the game itself, with “interruption,” which jumps outside the game. For example, when the other side is busy attacking one’s own old base, to catch him off guard with a counterblow—even if one cannot checkmate him, one can at least make him temporarily shift his attention away from my own general’s head—this is a truncation internal to the game. But if, halfway through a game of chess, one opens one’s mouth and asks the other side what his mother’s surname is, that is an “interruption” external to the game. Even if the effect in both cases is to distract the other side, the nature of the two is obviously very different. In academic exchange, however, the line between the two is not so clear. It is the same “speaking of the east while meaning the west”; how is one to tell what is a reasonable strategy in dialogue, and what is merely a clumsy evasion? In the abstract, the rule is still the same: “a move must have roots” — every move in a match is not isolated or abrupt; it must take root in the overall layout. Some moves may seem irrelevant or far off topic, but in fact they contain considerations that govern the whole situation, and they can still be followed by the next move. That is a brilliant move. A move without roots—one that has nothing to do with the scene currently at issue and also lacks a broader overall consideration—such a move is either wrong or bad.

Finally, the endgame is the confirmation and harvest of the result. Although there are often unexpected turnarounds, the advantage for victory is usually already established in the opening and middlegame. Of course, academic discussion is not like a game of chess; it rarely yields a definite result of victory or defeat. But broadly speaking, there are still some corresponding standards of winning and losing. First, there is the gomoku-style standard: whoever first achieves a certain formal pattern wins. Second, there is the chess-style standard: whoever first breaches the other side’s main camp is the victor. Third, there is the go-style standard: competition is measured by the expansion of the force field. These correspond exactly to the three elements contained in academic discourse: form, theme, and force field.

In addition, to say that an academic exchange is like a game of chess means that the two sides involved must first immerse themselves, immersing themselves in the world of this board, while temporarily separating this platform from the world containing “what’s for dinner tonight,” “what’s your mother’s surname,” and all sorts of “outside the game” questions. Although academic discussion certainly does not have a fixed and unchanging platform like a chessboard, but unfolds on a more fluid and open one, this does not mean that it can altogether disregard the confirmation and positioning of situation. Philosophical exchange is like playing gomoku on an infinitely large board: although there are no boundaries, around the placement of the first move, every particular game will never stray too far from the point.

September 12, 2009