The Games We Play

Life is a game... or more precisely, a heirarched series of games, each feeding into another, an amorphous field of games in which the individual human subject is the eternal participant. The ultimate sum of any game is zero. The game begins and the game ends. Even the winner, it seems, is left in remorse. Once the game ends, the field is closed. For all intents and purposes of the game at hand, all subjects die.

Life, as a whole, seems to express the purpose of evading death. On what level is this death to be affected? Of course one exists on the animal level, where death is merely the biological cessation of unified celluar activity. Yet one also lives on a series of more abstract levels: the individual genetic level, the tribal level (a corrolary to the genetic level), the ideal level (group identity by subscription to a shared intellectual horizon), and the species level. All animals exist within a varying degree to each of these levels, except of course the ideal level to which only humans and some of our more intelligent cousins have access. (The gorrillas' subscription to the ideal, for instance, can be seen in studies which demonstrates some tribes having greater access to certain learned tools and skills. While gorillas might not appreciate the ideal level of identity as fully as their human counterparts and in fact their appreciation might merely be a subsidary of their tribal bonds, to completely discount the possibility of an ideal identity would be both rash and unnecessary so long as we qualify that if an ideal appreciation does exist it is only on the most primitive levels.)

It is within these levels of life that we play our games. One man battles another, one tribe battles another, one ethnic group battles another, one cultural ideal battles another, one species battles another. As humans, it appears we have won the species game. Though this is a deception. For call it what you will... God, Mother Nature, Fate... constantly forces us to sharpen our collective wits in the sphere of science to ward off that final natural disaster which could be the end of our line. Of course, this cultural tool of science, while useful as such, has also been and is also being used to defend the life of individual, tribal, and ideal identities. As a game, it seems, this would not seem such a bad strategy. And morally speaking, there really isn't a major problem with this use of our cultural tools. Where the moral problem arises is in hubris. For these tools, when used improperly transcend their heirarchal imperatives and threaten the life of the species in general. It is here that sin is committed.

I don't need to explicate on the morality of all major traditions in West and East that have held pride to be the numero uno no-no. In the East this is more clearly seen in the correct heirarchies of Confucious, the Dao, and the Dharma. Regardless of the faith, the sin is the same... reaching so far to win the game of life on a lower level, that a higher level is in fact threatened. While the grander view shows to us the threats of nuclear, biological, and chemical weapons to the species as a whole, this sin is also visible in a culture such as America, in which the individual life is granted unchallengable supremacy over the dictates of the tribal and ideal games. What must be acheived, of course, is a set of rules which allow for the individual's survival on par with the tribal and ideal levels. A constantly shifting, self-correcting alliance which also feeds into the species game.

Or maybe we just need to love one another.