The 64 Shades of Black and White
The chessboard philosophy
A man who has no imagination has no wings — Nas
The first time I ever saw the chess board was when I was in class five.
Outside Bethel Church, Mwalika Court, Sector 1, Komarock.
I remember being told the rules but never playing.
I then saw as the rest battled each other out, like gentlemen. Not brutally through guns, knives, and fist fights, but with calculated moves.
However enchanted I was with the game, football, regardless, was my mistress. She consumed most of my time such that the next time I saw another chessboard, and played, was when I was in my final year in high school.
After attending all the sports tournaments in the first and second terms, my leisure options dwindled to three: books, Ligi ndogo, and chess.
Patience was the word. I waited years before playing my first game. And when I played my first match, the audience thought I had always been playing.
The truth was I just remembered the rules and took my time before making moves. Patience can have that effect. It can make even the foolish ones look wise and experienced.
I never took the game seriously as the others did, but would indulge in it from time to time. Up until I played with one of our teachers, a physics teacher and an enthusiast of the checkered board.
His strategy was divide and conquer — divert their attention to the conversation, and laugh out loud making the opponent question their moves.
Plus, he was fast. He’d deliver finishing moves swiftly. I almost had the chance to beat him one time, but I was too blindsighted by his diversionary tactics. My colleague showed me how I could have delivered the final blow. But once the game was done, it was done.
From that point onwards, I have never looked at the game the same way.
The board vs the pieces
Ivar the Boneless, one of the sons of Viking legend, King Ragnar, was paralyzed from the waist down ever since he was small. He would move from one end to the other through crawling.
His blue eyes showed that he might have suffered from osteogenesis imperfecta, but surprisingly, had immense upper body strength. Building from his weakness from an early age, he knew how to maximize his strengths.
A master strategist, he would lead armies to victory despite his anatomically inborn constraints. He knew where to take the battle, when to strike, and how to subdue his enemies. He would do the same in conversations, often outwitting others with his sharp tongue.
The chess game is pretty much the same. I realized it the time I played one of our school’s great players — Brian Obilo. I noticed how he could torment a player using the knights. In signature L moves, he would narrow down an opponent until they took their L.
Checkmate.
Bobby Fischer was very much like Ivar the Boneless.
He would create a territory within the 64 squares. His core tactic was the opening. He focused on a small set of openings and became extremely good so that all his opponents played on his turf. Hidden territories in plain sight.
Just as Fischer, at a young age, challenged the grandmasters, I loved how any player could challenge the supposed arch pieces. A pawn could be just as mighty as any other player on the board.
It was also the dream of the pawn to get to the other side and transform into what is considered by many to be the most powerful piece — the Queen. Other players would dismiss this since the game continues after a queen is taken out of the game.
As Nas said:
A man who has no imagination has no wings.
I look at the board and the pieces differently.
My biased point of view tends to go to biology. Your body has skin, heart, and brain cells. The skin cells are like the pawns. They can be lost at the forefront of the battle at the expense of protecting the king, and his close associates.
The skin cells are easily renewable but once the brain and the heart are gone, the game is lost. Once the king is captured, the game is over.
The board also gives the life prospects of most organisms. The moment fertilization happens, the cell turns into an almost magical complex entity — it can transform into any known organ, including the placenta.
However, after the placenta forms, its abilities begin to wane. When you’re born, skin cuts can heal without scarring, but after you learn to run and start playing with other kids outside, scars start to show.
By the time you are getting to fifties, your body is not as strong as it used to be. The kind of fun activities you’d indulge in markedly reduced.
You had started with 16 pieces in your toolbox, but as time went on, the pieces reduced in number. The poverty of ability amplifies over time. But up until the king is captured, the game continues.
You can be admitted to the ICU on ventilator support and all sorts of venous infusions, but your King is still actively moving on the board. If it’s not captured, you’re still in the game — you're still alive.
That takes me to the chessboard philosophy.
Chessboard philosophy
Chess players suffer for their art. If art is symbolized by the beauty of a rose, then chess is the roots. There is definitely something curious there, but it is hidden from all but the gardeners and the nematodes. — Lisa Robinson.
Philosophers have often used the game of chess to explain their points, but I have yet to read a book that talks about the philosophy of chess.
The philosophy is simple:
- Know your territory.
- Know your toolbox — the pieces you have on the board
- Remember the goal — to avoid defeat.
- And most important at every stage — once you’ve made a move, there’s no going back. You have to make do with what’s left.
This last bit has always rang true every time I thought about the game. You can have your most mercurial player, the Queen, taken, but you have to continue playing with what is left.
I love playing with the rooks and the knights. Their right-angled moves can bend your opponent’s reality. On the territory, the chess board, there’s nothing like a 60-degree turn, but an unseen killer move looks like a 120-degree smooth tackle. All the while, the board is made of 90-degree angles.
For this reason, I try to equalize the pieces on the board. Any of them can stop you from moving. Any can win the game. It’s a team effort. It’s the toolbox that wins, not the piece.
In life, you play with the pieces you’re dealt with. I particularly like the chess board because it emphasizes the action of the player and less on the chaos of the world.
Organisms make the move, and nature finds ways of thwarting you. In that regard, you are the organism, and your opponent is your universe — harsh, unforgiving, and calculating.
In a single sentence, I have explained a core component of the theory of Organismal Selection — an organism, that strives to avoid annihilation, and the universe, that is hell-bent on killing all organisms.
The goal, thus, is to avoid annihilation. The board is your playing ground. You have to see how to play your moves right. That, in other words, is self-organization.
For some pieces, you can move forward and backward. In the genome, there are mobile elements. Some can transform from pawn to queen, as mutations are often touted to be irreversible.
The playing ground is constrained by rules. The bishop will always move diagonally. The king will only move one box at a time. Rules constrain.
The laws of physics constrain organismal movement. You can’t travel faster than the speed of light. You can’t even travel faster than Usain Bolt. Even Bolt can’t travel faster than his former self.
Even if you make it a 9 by 9 board, by adding an extra row on both sides, the rules will remain, and there will be little change. Numbers have little effect on systems.
The north star is the goal — to avoid annihilation. But once you’ve made a decision, you live with the consequences. You move on with what’s left. In black and white, that’s the philosophy of chess.
Philosophy, however, never ends.
As I close…
At the video end of the song, it is evident how everybody is invested in the moves that Nas makes on the chess board.
All your cells are like that — you move together. Disappointed or excited.
And as Nas mentions in the same song:
The limits in your mind are the limits that you create
Each player has 16 pieces.
No more.
With these pieces, you decide your fate.
The element of surprise sits right next to you. You can calculate the odds of every next move, but not know which one will be selected.
Life, however, is different. You can’t calculate the odds. You can try to prevent a market crash from happening after the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic, but you never know nature’s next move.
The mental model of chess helps.
When you think hard about it, it can turn into a philosophy
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