Games

It’s no surprise why a sense of purposelessness pervades our modern day society. When we design systems nested within even more complex systems, when those systems depend entirely on other systems, when we play countless minigames to win a bigger game, it can be incredibly difficult to realize what we’re even doing, to grasp what it is that we’re even trying to achieve. 

When the food we put in our mouths is no longer the same food we grew or gathered, when most of our social interactions are deprived of direct communication and consigned to lifeless text or audio, when we no longer need to trust the people beside us to merely survive, when the rewards or achievements that we attain are not wrought by our own hands, but abstracted and mediated by intricate social constructs hierarchies, when we try to piece together the disparate fragments of our actions and consequences, we so easily become lost. We are prone to losing our sense of direction navigating this labyrinth where we ceaselessly twist and turn to make sense of the world, vacillating between social convention and personal intuition.

From elementary school, to college, to work and career, to relationships, we play games. We play the standardized test minigame where we learn to master the art of rote memorization and implement test-taking techniques. We play the college application minigame and the resumé building minigame, where we try to prove our commitment to the game and show that we’re following the rules. And it goes on. The networking minigame. The interview minigame. The job minigame. The friendship minigame. The relationship minigame. The dating minigame and the dating app minigame within that minigame. It never ends. 

And it isn’t hard to realize that these games aren't fair. r/outside is an entire Subreddit dedicated to poking fun at these inane, ridiculous games we seem to play in our lives—some notable titles of popular posts: 

“TIL [Today I Learned] that the Somalia server is set to legendary difficulty.”

“Feedback to Devs: Increase the lifespan of companion class ‘Dogs’”

“PSA: DO NOT TAKE THE EXTRA CHROMOSOME PERK AT CHARACTER CREATION”

“My best friend quit the game”

The game of life is undoubtedly rigged. There are different rules for the game for different people. There are players who were arbitrarily given a head start. There are players that somehow have access to more content. There are players that have no choice but to play the game at hard difficulty. So we have no problem with those who hack, cheat, and hustle their way into beating this absurd game of life. 

But we often forget that there are many that are forced to play the game against their will, or not play it at all; for them, this doesn’t seem like a game at all. Grew up with negligent, irresponsible parents? Tough luck. No parents at all? Too bad. Part of a minority in an intolerant nation and a victim of systematic oppression or persecution? Short and ugly and trying to find a partner? Suffered a traumatic experience like sexual assault or a horrific accident that will leave you mentally scarred for life? Have an incurable disease or condition that will impair your ability to do just about anything for the rest of your life? Oh well. Many don’t have the privilege to play this game at all; those enduring abject suffering and injustice do not even possess the capacity to leisurely contemplate the absurdity of life in the first place. It is not possible to gamify life when you’re grappling with death itself, when the constant pain and suffering becomes so severe that ignoring it is no longer an option. 

A video spontaneously popped up in my YouTube feed last month, which gave me an introduction to nonduality. At its essence, it is the belief that the notion of the self or the broad concept of consciousness as a whole is illusory—that there is no division between a subject and an object, no distinction between the physical and the metaphysical, as the physical matter of the universe and the notion of being itself all constitutes an interconnected, ultimate reality. While I’m not entirely sure that I agree with the means by which non-dualists deconstruct reality, I can recognize its efficacy as one of the many tools that have been used to achieve “awakening,” or the means by which we can detach our perspective from the emotional commitments of our present lives and extricate our direct involvement in this game of life. 

There were many moments in my life (especially when I listened to the featured song of this post) where I entertained these thoughts and inched closer to this elusive concept of awakening—not in the exact form of nondualism, but rather this broader revelation that within the grand scope of the universe, within the incomprehensible scale of time and space and the unfathomable chaos out in the cosmos, perhaps, nothing really matters at all.

The opening chapter of Ecclesiastes, the book of the Bible closest to my heart, exemplifies this exact feeling:

“Futility of futilities,” says the Preacher,

“Futility of futilities! All is futility.”

What advantage does a person have in all his work

Which he does under the sun?

A generation goes and a generation comes,

But the earth remains forever.

Also, the sun rises and the sun sets;

And hurrying to its place it rises there again.

Blowing toward the south,

Then turning toward the north,

The wind continues swirling along;

And on its circular courses the wind returns.

All the rivers flow into the sea,

Yet the sea is not full.

To the place where the rivers flow,

There they flow again.

All things are wearisome;

No one can tell it.

The eye is not satisfied with seeing,

Nor is the ear filled with hearing.

What has been, it is what will be,

And what has been done, it is what will be done.

So there is nothing new under the sun.

Is there anything of which one might say,

“See this, it is new”?

It has already existed for ages

Which were before us.

There is no remembrance of the earlier things,

And of the later things as well, which will occur,

There will be no remembrance of them

Among those who will come later still.

It is this idea that my existence—all my hopes, my dreams, my fears, my joy, and my suffering—is more insignificant than a blade of grass is to a field, than a grain of sand is to a beach, than a water molecule is to an ocean, than a speck of dust is to the Earth, than an asteroid is to a galaxy; it is the feeling that if I take a moment to glance at my hands, hone into every sensation and every thought of being, begin comprehend this nature of consciousness and subsequently take a step back from it, I can experience true freedom. I can experience a life liberated from the constraints of the rules of the seemingly endless games that we play in our day to day lives. All our stories of the human condition—stories of pessimism and optimism, lamentation and celebration, ambivalence and reminiscence, unity and discordance, indignation and justice, shame and confidence, anger and forgiveness, conflict and resolution, frustration and catharsis, life and death—it all ceases to be. Everything just is. 

Without a distinct mindfulness, however, we can use nondualism or any form of spiritual awakening as an excuse to give up and as an excuse to hide. To view it all as some sort of a sick cosmic joke, an irrational absurdity, a senseless, futile battle against the entropy of the universe—this is a trap. We need to use it instead as an impetus to leap forward—to use it to equip ourselves with the freedom to do the work that really matters for the people that care. 

If more of us could just learn to let go—to not heed to the endless distractions, to not blindly obey the rules of the game, to not play the game solely to win the game—we can recognize that if we fail this test, if we’re rejected from this college, this job, or this person, or if we lose money or status, the world will still go on regardless. We could learn to recognize that all the games and minigames that we play—our material possessions, our conceptions of social status, our transient feelings and desires—perhaps matter a lot less than we are compelled to believe. 

We can remind ourselves that most of the decisions we make in our privileged, gamified lives are not as risky or life-or-death as we might make them out to be. But those whose lives are on the brink of life or death, whose lives are inundated with suffering and enveloped by pain and hardship, they are beckoning us to take that leap. No—they are begging us to take that leap. 

We can do so much more to help those in need. And we have to stop believing that we can’t.