Catalysing an Infinite Game Theory

This article argues that prevailing societal and conceptual applications of Game Theory are structurally misaligned with the relational and processual commitments required for an ecological civilization. While Systems Theory, cybernetics, and enactivism treat agents as emergent from networks of interdependence, Game Theory presupposes fixed agents, payoffs, and rationales. Game Theory’s limitation to the Finite Game framing underwrites rivalrous socio-economic dynamics by exploiting and eroding what it cannot measure within psychological, sociological, and ecological domains—resulting in dynamics that help drive the contemporary meta-crisis. Drawing on Carse’s distinction between finite and infinite games, second- and third-order cybernetics, Social Constructivism, and Buddhist and enactive accounts of agency, the article develops an Infinite Game Theory in which agency is contextually interdependent and distributed across concentric scales of concern, from the individual to the biosphere. An Ecological civilization must aspire to an infinite game and aim for the ongoing flourishing of life, rather than optimization. The article then contrasts the dominant Product Economy—organized around reified selves, property, and representational value—with a Process Economy grounded in meaning, commons, participation, and persuasive rather than coercive power. By reframing leverage, motivation, and coordination in terms of resilience, redundancy, and relational processes, the article provides a meta-cybernetic framework for redesigning institutions and value systems. In doing so, it offers a conceptual foundation for ecological civilization that is both normatively oriented and structurally compatible with living, autopoietic systems.