The Game of Life
“The Game of Life, The Game of Life, you will learn about life when you play The Game of Life.”
--1960’s Milton Bradley commercial
Everybody wants to win. We have no choice. It’s one of those instinctive legacies from our primitive cave-dwelling past. “Winning” used to mean getting more food and sex than the next hairy primate, and therefore passing down more genes that would someday become a regular feature of the human race.
When we play a game, like Scrabble or Monopoly, we play to win, because winning feels good, but we know it’s just a game. We read the instructions, figure out how to accumulate points, and try to get more points than the other hairless primates at our kitchen table.
Sports are games, too. We know they’re just games, but we forget sometimes. That’s why brawls break out between English soccer fans, and domestic violence calls increase when the local NFL team loses.
And then there are the games we never really think of as games. Accumulating “likes” and “re-tweets” on social media is just a way of accumulating points. So is day-trading on the stock market, or racking up steps on our Fit-Bits. These are the games we play because someone figured out how to leverage our love of winning, and turn it into profit. Winning gives us a dopamine hit, just like any drug, and if you can give someone an addictive way of winning, you can monetize it.
The problem with playing someone else’s game is that they decide how we earn points. The more we want to win, the more those points are what we value. When we accept someone else’s game rules, we give them the power to choose our values for us. That might be fine if the game-makers had our best interests at heart, but mostly they don’t give a damn about us, except that we help them make money. Sometimes, we end up in games where our drive to win leads us to adopt crappy values, which results in twisted goals. Like a politician lying to score political points. Or a billionaire destroying the environment to earn a few more millions. Or invading Ukraine just to prove how big your dick is.
So, how do we stop playing these games? The Buddhists recommend that we stop wanting to win. Actually, they recommend that we stop wanting, period. I don’t know about you, but for me that’s a tall order. I do my best, but winning is pretty seductive, and my will power isn’t always that strong.
I think the more practical approach is to change the point system. It’s okay to try to win if the points that get you there reflect the values you want to live by. What if we started awarding ourselves points for turning off our cell phones, or expressing gratitude, or noticing moments of delight? What if we reprogrammed our Fit-Bits to count how many times we laughed each day or admitted we were wrong?
Figure out what games you’re currently playing. How do you accumulate points? What values does the point system reflect? Who’s making money off of you whenever you play? Then take the game board and upend it. Send the dice and the tokens flying. Make up new rules. Assign points for things that really matter.
You don’t learn about life when you play the game of life. You learn about life when you rig the game of life. Re-engineer it the way you want to live it.
