Life Lessons From Mah Jongg

  A clip of Julia Roberts talking to Stephen Colbert about mah jongg recently resurfaced. 

Her explanation of the game is not revolutionary,  but rather succinct:

...the concept of it is to create order out of chaos based on random drawing of tiles.

I hosted mah jongg at my house this afternoon. I'd sent the clip to several of my friends who play, including the ones coming over. We all agreed that her description is spot on. 

But isn't that kinda what  all card and tiles games are about...establishing order within the framework of random tiles or cards? You're supposed to play the hand you're dealt, working with ordering what you have into a hand that conforms to a rule or, as in American mah jongg's case, to a hand detailed on the card from the Mah Jongg League. 

But that's neither here nor there. The lesson one learns in the complexity of games like gin, Rummikub, canasta, or mah jongg, is how to manipulate chaos in your hand. Whatever you are dealt, you have to work with it. You can't say, let's have a do over, you have to use what you've got.  Cards or tiles are arranged in your hand, passed or discarded, and perhaps picked up by another player. Rules govern the action, but you grok the rules pretty quickly and get on with playing. 

The more skilled you are as a player, the better you are able to track what is passed or thrown, what is in the pile (canasta) that can wipe you out or give you the win. There's a lot of decision making that goes on in one's head... but the goal is to create order out of your chaos. Even if you don't win a hand...there is some satisfaction when one is a card or tile away from success. 

The lessons learned at the table are actually useful. You begin to see potential for order in chaos, that no morass is really completely unorganizable. Your brain gets used to processing what you see in terms of what you can manipulate. Eventually, it becomes a standard tool in your mental toolbox. My mother, a lifetime mah jongg player told me that when was I was a little kid just learning how to wash the tiles and build the walls; I would watch over her shoulder to see how she moved the tiles around on her rack, trying different configurations until she decided on one, and even then, the apparently useless tiles were in order for discarding. 

Order. It was all about order. 

If you look to game theory as a way to explain all this, it's right there at the top. In the simplest of explanations, Professor Avinash Dixit of Princeton explains:

Game Theory studies interactive decision-making, where the outcome for each participant or "player" depends on the actions of all. If you are a player in such a game, when choosing your course of action or "strategy" you must take into account the choices of others. But in thinking about their choices, you must recognize that they are thinking about yours, and in turn trying to take into account your thinking about their thinking, and so on.

I find that the older I get, the more I strive for order. Unfortunately, we are facing a whole lotta chaos in the years ahead of us. 

To date, the incoming administration has treated the gravitas of our government as a joke. The president-elect is a sentenced felon even if he escaped actual punishment. New reports describing his malfeasance during the last election will be released shortly.  The cabinet nominations are mostly under fire for behavior unbefitting a high ranking official, including, like their would-be boss, criminal activity. He sounds increasingly like a crime family boss than a public servant....and that's another thing. WE, THE PEOPLE are the boss of him, not the other way around. 

When a president-elect, not even president yet, begins talking about how he is going to annex Greenland and the Panama Canal, it sounds kinda like some other leader who insisted the annexation of nearby countries was necessary because his country needed Lebensraum. Oh, you don't know what Lebensraum is? Allow me to remind you. From Wikipedia:

[Lebensraum] is a German concept of expansionism and Völkisch nationalism, the philosophy and policies of which were common to German politics from the 1890s to the 1940s. The most extreme form of this ideology was supported by the Nazi Party and Nazi Germany, the ultimate goal of which was to establish a Greater German Reich. Lebensraum was a leading motivation of Nazi Germany to initiate World War II, and it would continue this policy until the end of the conflict.

 

Following Adolf Hitler's rise to power, Lebensraum became an ideological principle of Nazism and provided justification for the German territorial expansion into Central and Eastern Europe.The most extreme form of this ideology was supported by the Nazi Party and Nazi Germany, the ultimate goal of which was to establish a Greater German Reich. Lebensraum was a leading motivation of Nazi Germany to initiate World War II, and it would continue this policy until the end of the conflict.

Add to that his bizarre ramblings about Canada, and even the Canadians aren't laughing and they have a pretty good sense of humor. Elizabeth May, the leader of Canada's Green party took issue with Feckless Felon Elect's suggestion that Canada join the United States:

 

Greenland, apparently, isn't enthralled with the idea either since their 600 year association with Denmark is a rather happy and successful one. They don't want to be part of the US either. Nor do the folks in the Panama Canal Zone. But that seems not to matter to Feckless Felon-Elect. According to the LA Times...who really has a whole lotta other things to be upset about... stated:

...he would bring all three territories under U.S. control through economic coercion, but did not rule out using force to seize Greenland and the canal.   

It sounded like a revival of 19th century gunboat imperialism, or at least a throwback to the global system that dominated before World War II — “spheres of influence,” in which great powers dominated their regions and smaller countries knuckled under. 

As so often with Trump, it was hard to know whether to take him seriously.

When  game theory is applied on the most basic level, the actions of Feckless Felon-Elect make no sense whatsoever, and appears to the the antithesis of sanity. Annexing Greenland, Canada, or the Panama Canal are not necessary for survival in the real world. None of those are actual threats to the United States. This becomes a threat only in its promise to induce chaos. 

For the record, there is some consensus amongst historians that lebensraum was a reckless policy that played a significant part in the military defeat of the Third Reich. It was unsustainable in terms of land management and required the disposal of too many local populations. In his book, War Land on the Eastern Front, Vejas Liulevicius wrote:

The regime used modern techniques for the goal of a terrible future utopia which classical modernity would not recognize, seeking space, rather than development. While the Soviets retreated, “trading space for time,” the Nazis gave up time to gain space—seeking an everlasting, timeless present of destructive expansion in their vision of the Ostland. 

As the old saying goes, those who refuse to study history are doomed to repeat it. Throughout history, reckless expansion has never worked. Canadians, Panamanians, and Greenlanders are not going to sit back while this clown attempts to annex their countries. 

Frankly, I prefer Elizabeth May's idea, eh. Kosher Poutine for all!

The Wifely Person's Tip o'the Week

This one comes from Princess Leia herself:
"The more you tighten your grip...the more galaxies will slip through your fingers."