Wittgenstein, with all due respect, mentioned an anthropologist who wanted to learn the rules of a board game very popular in an African tribe. The players didn’t know how to respond to him. So, with endless patience, he observed the movements of the natives with the chips for days and gradually elaborated the rules of that game. Since that moment The society was divided into those who knew how to play without knowing the rules, and those who knew the rules but did not know how to play. It’s theoretical and practical. This division, which is surprising at first glance, appears in many areas of existence. Sometimes I listen to sports programs where experts criticize the strategies implemented by a football team. They often talk so passionately that it is incomprehensible why they are not actors. It’s not because they don’t have the practical skills needed to defend a goal or take a penalty. However they have ruthless theoretical knowledge that allows them to give great speeches about how to face a game. The player, on the other hand, may lack speech, but may possess some outstanding sporting virtues.
He read a lot of theoretical texts on art because I like his rhetoric. On the other hand, I have observed that there are excellent painters who can barely pronounce two suggestive sentences about their painting style. They know how to do it, but they ignore the rules. In any case, theory often lags behind practice. It is impossible to theorize about Picasso’s work before he existed.. This means that theory tends to fossilize while practice is constantly in motion. Its nature is trembling, instability, fluctuation, anthem. Hence the incomprehensibility of classical criticism against the avant-garde, hence the difficulty of distinguishing between authentic innovation and chatter.
Given the growing distance between the current political class and the citizens, expressed in the number of undecided voters going to the polls, I wonder who they are in this dialectic. those who know how to play and those who know the rules. Taxpayers, who in theory only need to know how to play, give the impression that they know the rules better than those who dictate them.