The Game

"I don't want to play games." 

Do you say this? I know you've at least heard it before, particularly when it involves people and their relationships. The remark is idiotic. Life itself is a game. Why would you think that what it takes to date another person isn't a game? Our modern American culture has set the board up for us, and we might as well hunker our asses down Indian-style and choose our avatar. 

The games are all around us whether or not you have the guts to admit it. You aren't going to start a romance or even make a friend unless you play. There are rules, there are ways to win, and there are ways to lose. The game is built upon steps and objectives that require time and events to succeed. 

The bottom line is that we do certain things in order to get another thing. It's that simple. Think about it. You hedge your bets on yourself to go to college to get a degree. You plan and work on your studies to get a major to give you better shot at a job that you want. You meet the right people, network with the right friends, build your resume experiences--all to get a job. You get a job to make money and find some role in society. Your body is the piece and your brain and heart make the player. It's all a game, and once you realize that fact and understand what you need to do, you'll start winning. When you fail, you'll realize how to start over and what you need to do to get back up. Let's look at the example of a romantic relationship.

Your goal here is to make the person yours and you theirs. Even the naive, "I don't want to play" individuals have to admit this. The reality is that this is your victory requirement. If you don't get them, you lose. No cliche babble can negate that. 

• Pick who you are going to be. No seriously. Choose your character. Are you going to be yourself? Partially yourself? Someone different? Are you making some personality changes? Whatever personality crisis or identity issues you are having, you need to know who you are. You don't need to have all the confidence in the world, though the more the better, but you need to know some of your personal goals and beliefs.

• You have to choose the target. Yes this is obvious, but it is your first external objective to complete. This is effort is in two phases: 
• You MUST find someone and be physically attracted to them. I don't care what anyone says about beauty on the inside and needing to only have a "kind-soul". If you aren't attracted to them physically, it's not going to get started. 
• Then...if you actually think the person doesn't look like a troll, but someone you could actually sleep with an indefinite number of times and like to look at across a table...then gauge their thought-process and personality. 

• If things seem compatible with you, great; but you aren't done yet. They must also think you are compatible with them. You shouldn't be surprised how often people ignorantly think things are going well and the person is also into them, purely on one-sided evidence. Your objective is to get a feel for if they like you. Otherwise you're going to look like a moron and will  be wasting both of your time.

• You have to date them. It is your task to spend time with them and build experiences together. There's no getting around this. This step is simply the natural order of today's relationship. If you're lucky, you won't despise each other over the course of these dates, and you'll like one another more. If this happens, you've accomplished this objective.

• Build up your points. 
• Give compliments. Saying kind words is as easy as it gets. Mean what you say, and it goes even further.
• Be honest, but think before you speak. Just as you would a friend or family member, give your opinion when you are asked, but be wise enough to not say things that could hurt their feelings. If it might, it's probably worth keeping your mouth shut. 
• Remember what they say about their life, family, and friends.
• Make an effort. Be attentive. This isn't a how-to.
• Etc.

• Let all of the above objectives occur gradually over time. If you have made it this far after a few months, you probably already won. If they are crazy, they let you win earlier on. If you're crazier you let them win early on and potentially scared them off. Start the game over. 

If the person is being confusing and seems non-committal, assume that they don't want to work. They are wasting your time. This is the single-most important point. Your target will let you play the game together if there is potential. If in your mind you are doing the right things and objectives as above, and finding the person conflicting to it, they are for someone else, and you for another playmate. 

Yes-in-fucking-deed!

It's true, humans can truly be happy. I am sure of it; I think it's happened to me. 

'Things' aren't going to be great for many of us humans, and especially never all at the same time, but there comes a point where many of big 'things' are going wonderfully...so much that, it snubs all the lesser-negatives. 

Right now in my continual bliss, I have realized just how unhappy and unsatisfied I had been. I can see that now because of how positive and content I am with 'things' today. How did I get there? I don't know, piss off. I don't have answers. I tried to stay as optimistic as I could and just kept fighting the good fight. Due-diligence and part-and-parcel efforts to get what I wanted. Maybe that's the formula?

What I do know, is that I can't give myself much of the credit. In life, there is good fortune and serendipity that create successes, but can we attribute so much of it to that? Is some of it God? Is it just arbitrary blessings? Is it all God? I also know that as a rational human being, good things happening in my life make me feel happiness, and indeed, that is happening. But what I am finding now is that I feel this awe and gratitude for everything in my life--both positive and negative. If I am happy not only in my emotions, but in my heart, then I feel like by default I have to attribute it to something bigger and unfathomable. If I am thankful for the obstacles and struggles that I face, something seemingly non-human has changed in my logic. I then find it not only necessary as a Christian, but very reasonable as a human to give credit and praise to God for the blessings that I have.

L'Histoire du Monde!

Herodotus

Just a few thoughts on my favourite subject of history.

History is always going to be about perspectives in my opinion.  I find it hard to argue that there isn't a side or a bias in the research, teaching, or writing of the field of history.  Though I'm not convinced that this is a bad thing because there is always a goal, or answer that is being sought after in its pursuit, even with an agenda.  Yet this phenomena is a testament to how we remember our past.  We fill gaps and change details of the story with anything from what seems logical to simply how we want it remembered, and that alone tells much about the time and place in which we live.  

So you see my dear friend, history doesn't have to be a suffocatingly drawn out discussion about the details of what happened, where, who did it, why, and when...it can be useful to highlight overarching themes, and sometimes this is what is most useful in history's application to issues of today and the future.  It is easy for me to embrace this because I love history, I'm interested in it and find it fascinating.  To be honest I think those that don't heed it are either lazy, don't understand what history really is, are shallow, or are catamites. 

But we must keep in mind that different groups of people throughout the world developed at different paces, in different ways, and from different causes.  It would be flawed then to divide the world up into the traditional periods of time like we do, because it would unjustly categorize stories of civilization.  Take "Industrial Revolution" for example...I mean seriously?  Hello Mr. Enlightened European, meet American Indian with no concept of the wheel, user of stone tools, forager, and worshiper of ancestors.  Yeah, Running Bear should definitely be included during that era. Alas, we've come to expect the Eurocentric bias.

Yet I think that even though history as a field is flawed, what field isn't?  And it's fine going down the path that it is.  The field will continue to evolve and adapt; always churning along towards truths with more accuracy.  I think we must accept that it will never be perfect, but ultimately there is a reason the field has been delineated with time-periods, themes, and regions the way it is: for mere human understanding.  Our brains have been better at categorizing and sorting out the past with these approaches for at least the last 2,500 years (since Herodotus, "Father of History").  I just hope that history will find a way to gain interest for people.

SOLVS SVM

I'm Ryan, and I'm the only person that really exists.  Everyone and everything is an extension of my mind, created around me to be so complex and so unending that it all seems authentic and unique.  People seem like individuals but in reality they are figments with nothing but words and behaviors that are there for me to see and perceive.  They don't actually think or feel, they just react for me, a play preformed by my mind to create the illusion that I am not alone.  People out of sight, touch, sound, or smell are in a fog and not existent, only being recalled to keep my mind sure that the world is genuine.  A person on the street is there because my thoughts put them there, and as I pass them and turn around, they are still there because I've convinced myself that they should be there.  They walk into a cloud when I'm not looking and disappear until the next time my mind re-spawns them in an attempt to make me think they are real.  Surprises, accidents, and fortunes are made in direct order to seem like the arbitrary, but these events, like the people and animals are only in my perception to keep me sane, to keep me connected to something, to keep me breathing, to keep me hopeful.

So there I was...

Me: A serious question: Do you believe in destiny?  Fate?  Or just something that YOU are meant to do or become?  Let’s hear it!

Her: I still battle with this…But believing in destiny is absolutely just as irrational from an intellectual point of view as believing in God or in anything outside what you can physically see or experience. But if I didn't believe in either of those things, I would have to believe that my life were an arbitrary/coincidental/accidental occurrence. And I can't imagine why I would have my personality and my soul and my way of thinking if it weren't in order to fill some role that I am meant to. It's sort of like that Einstein quote about there being two ways to view the world: as if everything is a miracle, or as though nothing is. I don't know for sure, Ryan, but I am willing to bet on the first. Your turn! What do you think about all of that?

Me:  I differ on the perspective that it has to be either of two ways.  You, and many other minions, refer to the fallacy that something is irrational because it is not tangible.  Ask yourself anthropologist Jr., is it really irrational if human beings all around the world share the common notion that there is something bigger and more sacred than themselves?  That there are places where our ancestors and loved ones go?  Is that ignorant and irrational if there perhaps is a complex in our brain that wires us to imagine such a thing?  I think even atheists want to believe in something, they just need more proof.  I do not think that everything happens for a reason, but I feel that there are currents and flows that lead in a deterministic kind of way.  I don't know if we have destinies, and I'm glad that I don't know; it leaves more room for free will, but at the same time encourages the fact that we may have the ability to be parts of something significant.  And I think that is what humans want.  We want our lives to be significant...that our struggles, works, and experiences matter...to know we left a mark.  This ties back into the belief in something that you can't see, because since most of us are unsure that we are significant while we are living on earth, we hope that there is something beyond us that will resonate and give us the ability to look back and see that we did matter.  

Her: Wouldn't it be sort of nicer if everything were already set in some semblance of a plan? I'm on a date with Library, and this existential crisis is distracting me. 

I can most certainly see "destiny" from your perspective. Especially in terms of the idea of deterministic currents and flows... I don't mean to say that I think every little thing in my life is laid out in some master plan. Of course I can choose what I do on a day-to-day basis... but there's so much we don't have control over. Like, for example, the fact that we exist in the first place. I didn't choose to be here, and no one even told me why I am! But that doesn't change the fact that I am. So that tells me that I'm not the one calling the shots on a the most fundamental level. Which is in large part why I believe in God.
I don't disagree with you that it is part of the human ego to want to be significant and to feel the need to invent the notion of a "purpose" in life. However, in terms of our individual personalities and roles in the lives of others... I feel like everyone in my life has taught me specific things at specific times...  of course that could just be in retrospect that I can assign a role to all of them. But at the very least I think we choose our paths and tend to gravitate toward people on similar paths.  

Also, in nature there is order. Everything is logical and symbiotic on some scale, but sometimes it takes a microscope or an aerial view to see the way things fit together. We're just not able to see exactly how we fit into the grand scheme of things... and therein lies the futile quest to understand it all.
I think the reason I'm a pretty happy person is that on the whole, I think that what we do in life isn't nearly as important as how we do those things. So I try and make my "purpose" to live gratefully and be as kind to others as I can. And that's enough for me. 

Me: Everything you said is wrong.

Her: You just made me laugh out loud on my "date" and now some Asians are staring at me. 

Me: I like the way you think...yet you ran laps around my question without answering it. Do you believe that a person is meant for something or no? A destiny? I like your moral take, but are we just shaped by our experiences in our lives for anything? Or something in particular?

Her: To answer your question, I think we are meant to be the sort of people that we are, and then we decide what to do with that. And that's where a purpose comes along. I suppose that we decide whether to really make use of our lives or not. But the anthropologist in me wonders, would I be saying any of this if I were one of the first Homo sapiens just trying to survive and not get eaten by a lion? Probably not. But then again, life was simpler back then in the good old days.