Chess, relativity and knowing other people... #mondaymusical

Chess Stuff

So, I really enjoy the musical Chess. It is complex and weird and stupid and beautiful. I've been thinking about what it seems to say about knowing other people.

***Impending stream-of-consciousness warning***

Brief <over-simplified> synopsis:

The likable Soviet chess player (Anatoly) defeats the unlikable American chess player (Freddie) at a tournament and promptly defects from the Soviet Union to England. During the tournament, Anatoly and Florence (Freddie's...umm...girlfriend? Lover? Manager? Coach? All of the above?) fall in love and she leaves Freddie for Anatoly. There is a plot to humiliate Anatoly by distracting him at the next tournament (they bring his wife to confront him about having abandoned her) in hopes of forcing him to lose at which time he would be shuffled back to the Soviet Union in disgrace. Instead he wins and decides to go back anyways.

Like I said: complex/weird/stupid. Beautiful music.

Florence sings a song somewhat early in the show outlining what seems to be her life's philosophy. Basically, she believes that you can't rely on anybody, so why let other people rely on you. The chorus sections all have different words, but express the same basic idea:

Everybody's playing the game

But nobody's rules are the same

Nobody's on nobody's side

Better learn to go it alone

Recognize you're out on your own

Nobody's on nobody's side

...

Never take a stranger's advice

Never let a friend fool you twice

Nobody's on nobody's side

Never be the first to believe

Never be the last to deceive

Nobody's on nobody's side.

Main thought from this song: don't trust people; you can never know they won't hurt you.

Toward the end of the show, Florence sings a duet with Svetlana (Anatoly's wife) about how well they each know Anatoly. Florence has tried to convince Anatoly to throw the tournament so the Soviets will release her father from prison. Svetlana has tried to convince Anatoly to throw the tournament and come home because otherwise she and their children will be sent to (presumably) Siberia. 

[Florence]

Looking back, I could have played it differently

Won a few more moments, who can tell?

But it took time to understand the man

Now at least I know I know him well

...

[Svetlana (Florence in harmony)]

Looking back I could have played it differently

Learned about the man before I fell

But I was ever so much younger then

Now at least I know I know him well

...

[Both, sort of]

But in the end he needs a little bit more than me:

More security/He needs his fantasy and freedom

I know him so well.

It took time to understand him

I know him so well

What sticks out to me in this ballad is that they are declaring how well they know the man who they feel has betrayed them (or who they expect is about to betray them). Florence especially seems blind to her incompatible beliefs that people cannot be trusted because of their obscure interior motives, and that she knows Anatoly's interior motives well enough to not be trusted. Turns out that they are halfway there. He refuses to throw the tournament. Then he negotiates to get Florence's father released and returns to his family in the Soviet Union. So he fails them in exactly the way they expected (by not throwing the tournament as they asked) while also coming through for them (by getting Florence's father released and returning home to Svetlana).

What is interesting to me about this through-line (does it count as a theme?), is the conversation it is having about knowing/understanding other people and trusting them.

(lite) Relativity Stuff

I had an interesting conversation with a friend about a general belief in relativity. Although I think he was probably right that the main definition/idea as defined in philosophy doesn't fully match what I actually believe, I think it is the closest we have to language that can accurately express what I believe.

I think that there is a sense in which everything is relative.

A person who lives in Denver is not going to have the same view of the Rocky Mountains that a person in Seattle has. If a person in North Dakota and a person in Pennsylvania want to meet up in Illinois, they cannot follow the same directions (if they follow the same directions one might get to Illinois, but the other will end up in the middle of an ocean). It's a whole "Blind Men and the Elephant" thing. The elephant is a thing, but each person's understanding of the elephant is different. They are all right and all wrong simultaneously.

To put it in Christian-ish terms:each person's internal life and personal response to the leading of the Holy Spirit is what determines the path their lives take (and their final destination). And we cannot know a person's internal life.

Knowing Other People Stuff

To beat a dead horse, we have little way of truly knowing that we know other people well. But we still strive to. Even knowing that our understanding of other people (and their understanding of us) will always be flawed. Even after decades of knowing intimately.

And even in that knowing, some people will be less knowable to us than others because of our experiences. I will always have difficulty understanding the experience of black people in America. I will never truly understand the extent of sexual harassment of women in the workplace. The idea of a parent abusing their child is entirely foreign to me.

And not attaining a perfect understanding of another human is not a good enough reason not to strive for a better understanding of them.

Knowing me

If you are straight, you will never fully understand what it is like to be queer. There are parts of being queer that I will never understand. Don't take that to mean that I don't want you to try to understand me. Know that I will never fully understand what it is to be straight.

That uncertainty is beautiful to me.