The premise...
Like a computer generated Mandelbrot set, our lives can be seen as nothing more that a game within a game..... Or as Shakespeare once put it:
All the world's a stage,
And all the men and women merely players;
They have their exits and their entrances,
And one man in his time plays many parts.
To enliven the analogy a little, let's ironically get the boring stuff out of the way first...
Definitions:
The Game...
You could define a game as having:
- Rules.
- A goal.
- An element of chance.
- Competition.
You could define the players as:
- Creators of the rules.
- Players following the rules.
- A referee (if not the players themselves).
- Cheaters (or those that 'bend' the rules).
Basic criteria might be said to be:
- Common experience.
- Equality (To start with, and therefore have an equal chance to win).
- Freedom (To play or leave the game).
- Activity.
- Diving into the world of the game (you ignore other things to immerse yourself in the game).
O.K. Now we have that stuff dealt with, let's get to the crux of the belief I wish to portray here.
I would like to say to you, that you are indeed playing your own part or 'acting' as a player in a game. You may not believe you are acting, but then a good performance never seems that way.
Rulers...
The game of life is a complex beast, and has subtle differences to the above commonalities with other games. Take for instance the 'rules'.... Well we all know these are in place and are being changed on a regular basis by 'rulers' to eliminate chance from their own lives amongst the rabble, but are the rules being changed by a legitimate source (a supreme being or game creator?) or are they really just 'cheaters' also playing within the game giving themselves a superior edge? Are they just pretenders at being those that are legitimate rule creators? That is for you to decide.
Then let's take the 'freedom' criterion. Maybe we had choice generations ago to play or not. How that condemned subsequent generations to have to play on I do not know. But if others are holding you to their rules, a game is certainly afoot!
Let's take a moment to reflect on our carefree days as a youngster.
Imagine an older sibling, an enemy at school, or just being someone who liked lying.
You could be playing a board game, or perhaps playing outside with sticks and imagination, and someone claims a change to the rules to their advantage.
They were never 'shot' with your stick weapon, someone takes more money than they should after passing go or a controller gets knocked out of your hands just at a crucial moment in the game.
So you got angry or maybe put up with it for a while because the game was more enjoyable than the boredom. Sooner or later though, the cheating in one form or another weighed heavily on the wrong side of the scales, and you 'spat the dummy' and stormed off home. You therefore took yourself out of the game as it was plain it was rigged.
This kind of exchange is easy to do when it's one-on-one or if a couple of mates gang up on the other, but neither strategy has as much impact when the game is played by a group, especially when things happen on a larger scale.
The cheater has to be a lot more careful now, they can't just say they were not 'tagged' when 10 people are watching them. It was easy to do when they could bully the only person who would play with them.
Getting annoyed by cheating is less likely now too. If everyone knows the rules, there will be less cheats than those playing the game correctly (as all have agreed to the rules) and the impact that would see you leaving the game through getting annoyed is much less, as there are more people and therefore your loss is not game-destroying.
You would find it very difficult to leave this particular game now though....
The cheaters have had to manoeuvre themselves into positions of 'rulers' or 'referees' (government/mafia/judges etc.). They can just say they change the rules and demand you bend to them and meanwhile they will 'take a cut' for little to no work (after all, its easier for a few to make an individual bend and acquiesce with their own thugs at the door, than to face a crowd in the street) .
Blimey message! I hear you shout. Wipe the rabid drivel from your mouth and get to the point... I would rather hear how as a kid you found the definition of a fart in a dictionary as a 'minor explosion between the legs' (yes ... really).
Back on track?
Well, 'O.K' sais I. Let me wrap this up in a bow for you so you can either open it and feast on its chocolaty goodness or crumple and discard it like you did poor nannas Hawaiian T-shirt last Christmas.
Imagine, if you haven't already, that what we were being told by Shakespeare/The matrix/crisis actor scenarios/the holographic universe etc. Is all true.
What if we are born into a game, but most of the good positions have been taken or created by those that found the information early on (like generations ago or like steemit early adopters.....hmmm) and moved their families into position to manipulate their experience of the game at the expense of all others who would be born into their manipulated version of it henceforth.
Subsequent generations are now not born to some sort of Amish/technology hybrid with ethics for helping fellow humans intact, but are born to work at the bottom of the board continually sliding down the snakes, while those above the major traps the game could make them succumb to (due to power and influence) are free to generate further barriers to those below reaching their heights.
What if the Gypsies/Romanies/aborigines/native tribes seem to have it worse, but in actual fact could have the best way of life if they kept from conforming, when compared to ours? It must be a temptation indeed to see the gadgets and feel ones life would be better with them. But given the choice right now.... Would you live with the hardship of nature, only stayed by the hand of a like-minded community and few modern gadgets or would you stay with all the modern conveniences knowing you are a slave to a system that can only get more oppressive over time? Future generations will have less clarity if you chose modern society, like a photocopied page degraded because of it being multiple generations from the original.
Loss of power.
Perhaps we should have prepared when we realised both parents were being forced out to work, and sent one child to the system and one to a farm to learn of nature and natural sustenance. I still find it slightly alarming that when the power goes off I find myself having to think of candles for light and bring out a portable gas powered stove for heating water, while my child will use the remaining battery in his device and look around to offer the two word phrase that surely angers a generation of children-at-heart who once played in imaginary ground-dug forts. He states as though someone should actually care for his own personal dilemma, "I'm bored!".
I realise now I have failed as a parent from keeping him away from these all pervading devices the schools now seem to expect as standard, and await the similarly banal questions to follow while the power continues to elude us...classics such as :
"what's for dinner?"
"I cant see where I'm going"
and who could forget "Hey Dad! The TV's not working" ........
I really have no right to smile, as my own own experiences gained through time have taught me how to react....
Its still a good laugh though :-)