Playing The Game

Playing the game called "America" is a long standing, popular phenomenon. Most everyone chooses to play. You can play "America" or you can play other games, or you can choose not to play any games in particular. Playing the game is optional and you are free to leave the game at any time; though relatively few do leave the game once they begin playing, regardless of lack of personal reward and in spite of great personal losses, up to and including their own lives. For those who play "America", nothing else matters. To them, non-players and their lives are deemed not important at all. In fact they are often perceived as a threat to the game. Nothing will stop the game. The game is everything.

A game by definition is a competition, so all players are competitors; and what is a competitor but an opponent? In this game everyone is your enemy, and you must live your life perceiving all others as either friend or foe. Those who are not friends are foes by default, according to game code.

The game I'm referring to is not much different than any role playing game you can play online. You must choose your identity and construct your physical appearance from available provided components, leaving you little flexibility toward making yourself unique. This is generally not a problem as most players don't desire to be unique. Quite the opposite. They are strongly motivated by the desire to be exactly the same as the others in their own sector of the game board; and a great many players desire to be exactly the same as currently popular generic/iconic public figures advertised by the game itself.

You can never be truly unique in the game because whatever components you choose to construct yourself with, will also be chosen by millions of others. The individual selection and reconfiguration of provided components lends the impression of uniqueness, but by design the game cannot accommodate true uniqueness. Being unique in the game is prohibited because it imposes unwanted challenges to the code and could overwrite the code. Overwriting the code is strictly forbidden and will not be tolerated. Attempts to overwrite the code will result in expulsion from the game.

You have chosen to enter the game to play the game, and that is what you will spend your every waking moment doing for the rest of your life. The only way you can truly excel within the game is by playing the game better than others in some way or another. Endless winning through endless competition is what lies at the foundation of your new value system, the value system provided by the game code. Because prizes are limited and quite hard to get, you understand that unless you become very skilled at playing the game you will never win more than what you need to simply stay in the game and keep playing it. For some that is enough, but for many it's not nearly enough. For all, the chance to win great prizes is what makes it all so exciting and desirable. It's the primary reason all gamers get up in the morning. Every day is another chance to win.

Like any game there are flaws in the program but you were told long ago to believe that if you see a flaw it is either not there and you were mistaken, or there is a perfectly good reason for it that fits within the parameters of the game which are beyond your understanding or need to know. There are no other possible reasons. Anyone who suggests otherwise is to be perceived as someone with a serious cognitive impairment or as being purposely dishonest to gain attention, which is a highly coveted prize in the game. You believe that and accept it to be so. The code is always right. And because you accept the code you are always right by extension.

When I, someone who is not interested in the game, run into you, someone who is fully invested in playing the game, there is an immediate interpersonal disconnect. A tangible flash-point explodes between our bodies; and you and I will not be able to communicate meaningfully. What I say lies beyond the parameters of your game code, and what you say is of little value or use to me in the non-gaming world. There is no way to apply 'give and take' to the situation. I have nothing you're willing to take, and what you have to give is the last thing I'm interested in. I am standing here being me, being real, but you are playing a game. The problem is that you don't realize you're playing a game. The game you accepted so long ago has become, for you, an absolute truth.

Once you enter the game atmosphere it becomes the only reality there is. You don't forget completely that there is an external reality but you don't care to spend any time in it or pay it any mind. It in fact becomes undesirable out there because there are no rules and the safeguards built into the game don't exist out there. There is pain outside the game. The parameters are not predefined and given to you. People say things that are not written into the game code and this is endlessly frightening to you. It is too hard to think for yourself. It feels unsafe to trust in your own critical thinking ability. You are dependent on the code to guide you at all times. Intrusions from outside the game are unwelcome. You don't like being interrupted or yanked back into the real world to deal with unhappy things outside of the game, you want to remain inside the game and play the game at all times.

The game world is much easier than real life because all rules and parameters are predefined and provided. Once you understand the parameters and operational possibilities, you are free to do whatever you like, achieve as much as you desire, test yourself to your hearts content; but only within the specific predefined parameters and rules of the game. Your existence is minimized and simplified because the entire spectrum of choices and possibilities has been erased from your life palette. All options are removed but one, and that is the one you take. You will deny that is true because the code says it gives you everything and you believe the code.

The payoff for playing the game comes at a basic level. Although additional elevated levels are shown you so that you may aspire to them, for the vast majority of people, the basic payoff is all the reward they'll ever get. By accepting the parameters of the game and following the rules of the game, you receive the basic payoff: limited inclusion in the game. It may be limited, but it's still inclusion and inclusion means acceptance and that acceptance is what you covet. Being accepted by the game means that you officially exist and are cleared and expected to play. Many insecurities and fears vanish overnight forever the moment you decide that you will enter the game and stay there forever.

Playing the game well means you know how to do it right, you know how to play and win big prizes. But just for playing you receive standard player status, though not officially, and small rewards and praise are passed around from within groups of standard class players. They don't mean anything beyond the clutch of standard players passing them around, but they are made out to mean a lot to the clutch.

The advertised rewards for playing the game seem vast but in truth, only the lowest hanging fruit is available for most players to compete over. Usually, there really aren't that many great official physical prizes to be had. There are various levels of subsistence prizes and various kinds of nice emotional rewards, and a great many consolation prizes in pretty packaging. A perceived increase in personal status compared to other competitors is the form of gratification that is most coveted. Those who obtain a perceived increase in personal status rarely reject it. It is hard to get and it lifts the winner up to pluck fruit from much higher, sunnier, more bountiful places on the tree. This is called winning, and that's what playing the game is all about.

The first and primary reward for all players is the total release from responsibility in creating a real world to live in. Playing the game is much easier and the rhetoric about why you should play is exciting and compelling, you never tire of hearing it repeated. It makes you feel like you're a part of something special. You'd have to be nuts to not take this enormous life short cut. To play the game is to be happy, they say, and playing it right means you are doing things right and you will be acknowledged by everyone else in the game for doing it so nice and right all of the time.

The game is supposed to be fun and pretty and perfect all the time, and everyone playing the game is supposed to be happy all the time, and never have serious, sad, or otherwise sobering, horrible problems. The game does not allow for those things, except under the most special circumstances. If you have only ordinary status within the game, any real life situations that intrude will likely get you rudely and automatically rejected from the game. You will only be allowed to watch, from a distance, but you will not be allowed to play anymore, unless you somehow manage to recover completely and can return triumphant, but that is often not the case.

As you walk down the streets of the game, you sometimes notice others on the peripheral edges who have been ejected or barred access from the game. You pay them little mind because they are not important in your game playing. Involvement with them at all would cost you points, lost time, and perhaps even lay a horrible burden on you that would slow you down and cause you to lose status and momentum on the game board. You tend to see the homeless person, the minority, the screwed, as having no one but themselves to blame because they refuse to play the game like everyone else does. You dismiss them with some disgust and sometimes you don't hide how you feel from their earshot and view.

To you, there is something wrong with them, they want rewards from the game without playing the game and you perceive that as repulsive. It would make you very jealous to have to share a single one of your hard earned points with them, or see anyone else but yourself benefit from your hard earned personal game status and playing skills. You'd rather see them die or at least beaten and dragged away to prison cells where such deviant types should end up.

They frighten you like nothing else in the game because they represent an unthinkable threat to you: the taking away of rewards that have come to you as a result of your acceptance of and adherence to the game code. It goes against everything you believe that others should be able to take away your winnings from you. Accumulating your personal winnings is the basic essence and meaning of your life. They are lucky the game feeds them at all, they certainly don't deserve the kindness. The kindness is not even appreciated. Yes, you have a very hard time even granting the right to exist to anyone who doesn't play the game you play. And in your heart of hearts you think that's the right way to see things. It would never occur to you that most of those scattered along the edges of the theme park are suffering there because the rules of the game specifically prohibit their participation. It's not their fault at all. But the rules lie and say all are welcome, so that's what you believe. You believe in the code.

All of your in-game thoughts and opinions are reinforced by many others in the game with you who will also see and think and believe as you do. That singleness of mind is in no small way a reward for being a player. A large part of the enjoyment of the game is the disconnected solidarity of the players, the shared experience of knowing the rules, accepting the boundaries and parameters, and trusting the code. Even those from many disparate parts of the game board will all enjoy hearing and repeating the game slogans and listening to the game theme songs. Everyone can feel welcome to play the game and believe that the benefits of playing are there to be had by one and all. All you have to do is suspend your soul and you too can play the game and have the best time of your entire life for the length of your whole life. As the saying goes, you can't win if you don't play. And you are not just a player, you are a winner, and you deserve to win.

You believe with all your heart that playing the game with all you've got is "the answer". You would never doubt that for a minute. The endless stream of errors and glitches in the code are all a part of the game, they mean nothing, and you believe they are always and only anomalies, no matter how often or dependably they repeat. In the game, doubting the code is the one rule that must never be broken. You refuse to doubt the code. You've been reassured countless times that the code is infallible and superior and that no better gaming experience exists anywhere. This is the best game in town and you love this game. You don't mind or notice that the rules are bent for the power players, and when anyone mentions it you tell them they are liars and to shut up. No one questions the code. The code is all. The code is perfection. Doubting the code is to be stupid and evil. Belief in the code is what makes the code the perfect, gleaming thing of beauty that it is.

Well, I question the code. I don't trust the code. I don't have much respect for the game. I don't like its obvious contradictions, cheats, hacks and fixed outcomes. I don't like the dark and gargantuan mechanical underground workings churning away while no one above knows they exist because the game denies they exist. I don't like that people are led to believe the game is real, not a choice, not a diversion, not a selective escape from reality. These are the things I can see from outside of the theme park. I know the bad results of the game which the game routinely buries and denies.

As I have no interest in the game per se, I care about what I care about, and what I care about is the reality I see around me and that I live in. To the game I am a vicious enemy, a doubter, a questioner, someone who does not believe the code is superior by virtue of its mere existence. I know the code is written by ordinary mortals like myself, who are without exception flawed and weak and error prone and not above writing the code to suit themselves. In fact by not playing the game and instead walking around the theme park, especially in the restricted access areas, I have come to understand what the game is and why it is being played and why it is so important to the theme park owners to keep people excited about the game, believing in the game and playing the game with all they've got, including all their money, their bodies, and every aspect of their lives.

What I see offends me. The game is rigged. I see mass blindness, ignorance, selfishness, cruelty, and things that fly in the face of reason. Things that deny the existence of reality. Which to me, of course, makes no sense at all. It does become surreal to have to argue the case that reality is real and that it exists, when I am surrounded by so many others who angrily and condescendingly tell me that there is no such thing as reality beyond the confines of the game board, and there never could be.

Well I know better. And I feel a good bit of trepidation about a future wherein reality is erased completely from the conscious workings of the game board, and is kept hidden from all of the players by the owners, operators and copartners who all benefit handsomely from propagating the myth that reality does not exist and that whatever seems to be reality beyond the board is a lie.

What I know that few players know, that few of the players can believe or accept or even listen to is the simple reality that this game is rigged. Completely and totally. It is not natural. It is not real. It is not necessary. It is flawed, fixed and evil. And while it is true that there are parts of the theme park that are allowed to be beautiful it is only a matter of time before those small patches of reality are excised and removed from the park or marked off limits and made into something to fear or not believe in.

Because I know better I can never give up trying to show you what I see. I am not making anything up. There is an entire universe beyond the game board boundaries, whether you choose to realize it or not. Your belief does not make the reality of the universe. The universe makes its own reality which you can either choose to participate in or do something else. If you were not at such dangerous, critical points in the game I wouldn't much care what reality you chose to believe in.
But your reality as well as mine is being threatened because of your game and your undying belief in the code.

The code is wrong. The code can lie like nothing I've ever experienced in my life, it takes my breath away and never ceases to outdo itself. I am in awe of the inhuman, wicked, convoluted, hypocritical deceitfulness of the code and the extreme viscosity it uses to perpetrate the illusions it sows. Those illusions are not sown for your benefit, they are sown to benefit others at your expense. They are sown to prevent you from ever having a chance at gaining true benefit from living a real life in a real world in a way that really matters and makes a difference. Those who own the game want nothing different. And they are the most frightening people on the face of this earth.

You can consider my words or choose to dismiss them without a thought. The choice is yours. But do ask yourself this. If I am not playing the game then what rewards could I possibly be seeking? The answer is none. What other motivation might I have to say these things that question the code and try to expose its hypocrisy and evil nature? To make trouble and seek attention from the game? I seek no attention from the game. Do you enjoy trouble? Well neither do I. I do not seek trouble. That leaves few other motivations than the one I have, which is this: it matters to me that everyone knows they are in a rigged game that predates them and will eat their young and destroy this world forever if it is not exposed and stopped.

It's really that simple. Why should I care? Why shouldn't I care? It is only within your game code that all others are enemies. It is not a universal truth. If that surprises you then rest assured, there are many more surprises in store. There is a better way to live than in the game and according to game code. The game is not "the" way. It is not the end all and be all of existence. From where I stand it seems silly to have to state such an obvious fact, but I know it is not obvious to you if the game is all you've ever known.

If you ever decide to investigate the realm beyond the game board, there's a very good chance that you will see that you could actually do much better out of the game than in it. The 'better' will be in different ways, in many different forms. "Winning" is not all. Unless you consider the possibility that there is more in the universe than playing in your game you will never have the opportunity to find out if what I'm saying is true. If it is true and you never bothered to at least take a look, how will you rest in your eternal sleep? What life will you have lived when you did not bother to check for another path which was there and would have served you, in your one and only life, so much better? I know it mattered to me to check. I know I'm very glad I did.

If nothing I've said has convinced you to look beyond the game for your own sake, then I will leave you with two truths to consider. Everything there is in the whole of existence lies beyond the borders of your game code, not within it; and nothing, absolutely nothing is ONLY what it appears to be.