The Glass Beads Game by Herman Hesse, winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Nobel_laureates_in_Literature and the astonishing novel is included on the 1,000 Novels Everyone Must Read list https://www.theguardian.com/books/2009/jan/23/bestbooks-fiction - 10 out of 10

  

The Glass Beads Game by Herman Hesse, winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Nobel_laureates_in_Literature and the astonishing novel is included on the 1,000 Novels Everyone Must Read list https://www.theguardian.com/books/2009/jan/23/bestbooks-fiction

10 out of 10

 

 

The Glass Beads Game is one of the greatest masterpieces one can read, inspirational, life changing, sublime, brave, prophetic and we could write a large number of attributes here for a complex Opus magnum that has awed, elated the under signed when he was very young, to the point where he would start using the name of the novel as a statement of aspiration, the goal to achieve, an inspiration to live not in Castalia, but somewhere close to that – to quote from the House of Mirth, there is the Republic of the Spirit – and the notion of this superb Game, which is combining in it everything that humanity has produced in the domain of the arts, mathematics, music – in particular the latter, which comes from Oneness and has a good many passages dedicated to it, the history, the magic associated with it, even the connection that ages of calm have with serene music, while agitated, tempestuous music is linked to periods of unrest and decay…is this what we are experiencing now, violent sounds and a terminal disease, what with Putin invading Ukraine and then threatening others with nuclear weapons

 

Notwithstanding the fabulous attraction that The Glass Bead Game has, there are many layers to the message and the architecture (which ‘established links between visual art and mathematics’) of the narrative could not be more enchanting and complicated, in that it involves irony and satire (and surely I did not get any of that when I first read this monumental chef d’oeuvre and had taken all as serious, but reading the introduction this time and finding how Thomas Mann speaks about the humor that readers will not get I got to be more cautious) and clearly the author wishes to criticize the aloof intellectuals, those who benefit from celebrity (especially in the sorry age of the feuilleton) while giving nothing in return for being pampered, but I for one would rather play the Game forever, indeed at the lowest level, I am trying now, when I retired almost completely from social life and read and write…

The image of the Music Master is one of the most impressive we can find and the serenity (now, to use the joke from Seinfeld) the illumination and magnanimity that radiates from this saint is awe inspiring, he seems to be the model to follow – I for one aspire to become more radiant, luminous, if not for other reasons, at least for the others to use the glow for practical purposes and then contribute a molecule to the Saving of the Planet with an unconventional energy source – and he is just one of the magnificent aspects of this glorious Opus magnum, which makes one wish to get into the Game, while at the same time puzzling about the significance of it all, is it something that we should aspire to ('It is a spiritual culture worth living in and serving ') which is my preferred take on this, or are we to see the warning, that if we become too isolated, trapped in the infamous (for me famous, and positive) Ivory Tower, the we lose touch and become scholars, or just humans studying for no good, practical purpose, vainglorious and self-interested, selfish in the pursuit of getting better, aspiring to be part of the Aristocracy of the Spirit, Intellect, which I do, but there are so many ideas to unpack here…

 

It seems to this reader that Artificial Intelligence and the progress of technology more broadly will make The Glass Bead Game more relevant in the future and not just possible, but it looks like this is the way we are heading…in my admittedly simplistic understanding, The GAME is a fusion of all possible elements coming from human knowledge, mathematics, the arts, music especially and as a jest, if not humans, computers or AI will surely be able to play this, given that they will become so sophisticated in the époque of Singularity that they will know more than all of us put together, past and present, maybe even future, unless of course there will be ways to get earthlings to assimilate some of the vast knowledge and computing power, by say implanting massive HDDs that will give humans all the information they want instantly, without getting the future super smart phones to get it – recently, somebody has sent a message or tweet, just by thinking about it, straight from the brain so to say…then there is the scenario proposed by Limitless http://realini.blogspot.com/2017/04/limitless-leslie-dixon-screenplay-and.html wherein there is a drug that makes the brain much more efficient and then the hero can learn Portuguese in an hour, to play the piano in about three and becomes just about as smart as many people put together and surely there will be ways to get into that

Besides, as a professor in university used to say, there will be massive progress in the domain of biotechnology and we will be able to incorporate that AI somehow – as we know, we have it already there, in our hand and we can talk to these systems and we get so much already, just by talking to Alexa, Siri and the others – and thus the Glass Bead Game might just be the thing we normally do, a synthesis between music, mathematics, high culture, positive psychology, I Ching and a brand of philosophy that will have merged the best of many systems and given each and every one of us some personalized concept that suits us best, based on algorithms, temperature, the parameters that will be available constantly and instantly – this being the way to Flow also, as Ecstasy, Optimal Experience – heartbeats, sugar levels and so much more, if not everything that is relevant…oxygen levels in the blood is just one other…

 

There are downsides and aspects to consider, for some are very worried about AI and as for the Glass Bead Game, Herman Hesse may have been ironical and skeptical about the ultimate justifications, and there is a sense that he thought it is best to get to the point where we aspire and get into this crème de la crème, aristocracy of the spirit, but he is also warning us in regards to the perils of becoming too detached and self-indulgent, disconnected and selfish…which is worrying for the under signed, who likes to indulge in the fantasy that he plays his little Glass Beads Game, but he is more involved in self isolation and reading the mocked feuilletons, than exercising any sophisticated meditation, contemplation or looking for the deep significance of life, but this falls more into the Imagine the Best Possible Future exercise – which is a happiness theme – or maybe one of the Games People Play – described by Eric Berne in his psychology classic http://realini.blogspot.com/2013/09/games-people-play-by-eric-berne.html - there is nevertheless the notion that one can set the Glass Beads Game as a goal, to try and learn more, become better and eventually live in a more accessible Castalia, one that is affected by the real world – take the war in Ukraine as one horrific example, taking place as we speak – but hopes to escape, evade towards Nirvana, a realm where one is close to the transfiguration of the Magister Musicae…