A Magic Lesson

A Lesson from Magic

            There is one, big, giant, massive, important, quintessential, fundamental, totally un-perfunctory, etc., etc., lesson to be learned from playing the incredibly dorky/fun “Magic the Gathering” card game that emerged in the early 90s and which my parents initially kyboshed under the auspices of “You spent all your baby sitting money on what?” but which I recently picked up again under the auspices of “My parents are no longer the bosses of me!”

The lesson in question emerges some time after you lose your first game and you have the following thought: all I need to be able to beat the opponent I just lost to is “X,” where “X” is some card or cards that would either: (1) get me around whatever their primary means of defense were (e.g., “If I just had more flying creatures...”; (2) allow me to stop them from being able to carry out their primary means of attack (“If I just had more counter spells that target green creatures...”).

Now, if there were not going to be any more games after the first one, e.g., if I were only allowed to play the same opponent once, then the above “following thought” wouldn’t even pop into my head, but I am, and it did. Secondly, if my opponent weren’t capable of modifying their own deck as a function of having exactly the same post first defeat thought as me, i.e. had to, for whatever reason, play the same deck every single time, then my efforts would most definitely be successful (but I would probably get bored playing real quick, unless I took some kind of sick pleasure in defeating my opponent...), but they are capable of modifying their own deck (e.g., “If I just get some protection from black, then...”); thus, any and all of my efforts to get around their primary means of defense and/or stop them from being able to carry out their primary means of attack are going to be, eventually, countered, at least insofar as they want to continue playing against me and aren’t satisfied with having their asses handed to them day-in, day-out.

The only other thing that might potentially stop our tete-a-tete is a shortage or funds or lack of willingness to spend more money on cards (which I’d chalk up to loss of desire to play), which, ultimately, aren’t that expensive (Dear Mom and Dad). OK, so maybe there is more than one lesson here, but the primary realm in which I’m thinking about applying any/all lessons from the above is the following: the current debate about airport security vs. terrorism in which exactly what I seem to be describing above seems to be playing itself out, “Oh, so you’re going to hide bombs in your underwear? Well then we’re going to search every one of y’all’s underwear!” Hegel’s name for such a dynamic is “bad infinity”...