Why do people get so defensive about life being called a game? Because it challenges their choices. They question the choices they have made, and thus they have to be able to convince themselves that they had no choice, or only restricted choices.

Because in a game “you” have to play it, and they really haven’t in life? Yes. They have attitudes that have made them neglect elements of the choice making process.

People talk about things happening to them and people doing things to them as if they have no choice. Emotional habits that would put them into the “poor sport” category.

It’s scary that people live like that, but you’re right. They counter with saying how serious it all is and they “have to” do these things. A person can affect you because of your choice to allow them to. If you decided that it was absolutely necessary to remove any contact with that other, you would take the steps to do it. A restraining order for a web of social pressures that would punish them for not leaving you alone.

So games are often thought of as limiting, but actually they provide the most freedom? Yes. You have shelter because of the limitations we call walls and a roof. You have a car because of the limitations we call a chassis and an engine, among other things. They are valuable because of their structure. They are useful because of their freedom. Is there anything that can’t be described like this? You create space by creating reference points, otherwise you are confined to one point, self. You create a game by creating rules, otherwise you are confined to one state, bystander. But the bystander is a bystander by choice.

That might be an interesting exercise. Write the list of rules you have made for your life game. I recommend it as a practice, and for my own gaming habits, I make choices of my tools and game preferences as a way of writing out my real life rules. Because the symbols other people generate are understandable for me, but I have a hard time with truly synthetic thought. Creating understandings from whole cloth. So your job, it’s a game. Your bills, a game.

They’re your pattern? Exactly. I can deduce patterns that people normally don’t see, and I do have emotions and desires regarding these patterns. For me, they have more immediacy than perhaps for others. So sometimes my rules seem strange to others. It’s only because of my participation in what in some circles they call the meta-game.

You’ve mentioned your rules are “if-then” while most have absolute rules? Yes, and they have done a study on that as well. The average person experiences a higher level of anxiety, and a higher degree of perceived failure (different from actual dysfunction mind you), because they establish rules of I must always / I must never. These rules are naturally and constantly violated.

Donald Trump comes to mind. The wildly successful are so because they do contingency planning well which is “if-then” rules. Yes.

My own tendency is to hyper-systematize my whole life, all of my experience. I go much farther than many others who share my problems, and have abandoned much of the defensiveness that would keep me locked into my own preferences alone. But I have been able to isolate moods in people, and situations in any given circumstance, that I can identify clearly and base an if-then statement on. This is why I seem to have such an excellent memory. I don’t actually try to remember anything, because I have identified an object to react to. Whenever I see that object, or experience that cue, it triggers a pre-determined response. So I don’t worry about much of anything, and I reflect only when one of my if-then statements has unanticipated outcomes.

I heard about a different game this week. The oil in Libya is part of a competition with China about influence in the region. Politics is a huge and very costly game, and it’s primary goal is influence peddling. Its teams are called nations.

Is there a goal or is it just to keep the ball rolling? Oh, the goal is to have it all. To have at the nations disposal all resources and all personnel.

The Chinese have a refinery there that was attacked, and 30,000 of their workers were evacuated. Libyan group responsible for the assault? That I don’t know. It might be kept a mystery as well, because individual people are not necessarily on their own nations team, and it could lead to protest or worse. This is how new nations are formed, and are perhaps even now forming.

I don’t like this game. I wish we could play something else. Indeed, it’s not a good game. It’s seriously broken, but it starts at the ground level.

Who can get to Mars first, or first to cure cancer gets a week on Mars. Those would be much better games. I heard an unequivocal statement from a respected scientist that Mars is without a doubt habitable, not automatically of course, but apparently terraforming is fully possible.

Your thoughts are welcome. Be well friends.

Travis Saunders
Dragon Intuitive
~science,mysticism,spirituality~