The Long Game Poem by Marcel Aouizerate

How many times have you heard people praising "the long game", as if it was some kind of a game played by superior minds (such fondness being shared equally between the powerful and the powerless, between the decision makers and the conspiracy theorists) ?

And we sit here listening to the song of "the long game", mesmerized by the sounds, when the lyrics actually say: this issue will not get solved during your lifetime. So why bother? your participation to the discussion is optional.

Keynes said it better, as he dismissed the infinite amount of time, which unfolds after the disappearance of his contemporaries. When I hear references to the long game, I cannot help thinking about the longest game of all, that of the end of all times and its religious epiphanies, and it is very hard to tell just how close to religious rule one comes when invoking generations yet to come.

There is a wide space between the here and the now, and the end of things. This is where we live, it is wide but its field is short and one can often see its forward boundaries receding over time. There we play a shorter game, we play a human sport, and when the sun sets, the shadows of the tallest among us may indeed lengthen into darkness at the end of it. We cannot see this yet, but this is where others will change the rules, which, for better or for worse, we so cherished.