Life is a series of nested games. The overarching game is the game of survival. The rules are simple: don't die.
We've all been playing this game for millennia, so we've almost beaten it. Most of the other animals that were once threats to us are now locked up in cages or eating out of the palms of our hands. We just need to conquer death once and for all, and that will be it. We're not sure how far away we are from that, but we'll see.
Some people are still playing the survival game so they can't partake in the other games.
The way to win a game is to achieve the objective. But when you achieve the objective, the game ends! That's no fun, so we start again.
So if simply ending the game is not fun, then what makes the game fun? It's play! You have to play the game. Otherwise, you become an NPC.
But what are these other games?
The business and money game: Stack numbers in digital accounts until they're big enough to buy you out of all the other games. The rules are deceptively simple: create value, capture value, repeat.
But the meta-rules are written in invisible ink—network effects, regulatory capture, and compound interest create advantages that compound exponentially. The objective appears to be financial freedom, but the real objective is the game itself. Money is just the scoreboard. The element of play lies in the puzzle-solving, the strategic thinking, the chess match of markets.
Except you can't stop playing once you start winning, because the numbers could always be bigger. The house always wins, but occasionally it lets you think you're the house.
The entertainment game: Consume content until your dopamine receptors surrender. Create content until others' dopamine receptors surrender. The rules are attention economics—whoever captures the most eyeball-seconds wins.
But the rules change faster than you can learn them, because the platforms rewrite them every quarter. The objective is engagement, but engagement with what? The answer keeps shifting.
The element of play is pure addiction mechanics disguised as fun—variable reward schedules, social validation loops, and the endless scroll of possibility. The algorithm decides who wins, but nobody really knows what the algorithm wants. Plot twist: the algorithm doesn't know either.
The social game: Signal your worth through carefully curated fragments of your existence. The rules are unwritten but universally understood: authenticity must appear effortless, vulnerability must be strategic, and timing is everything.
Break these rules and face social exile. Follow them too precisely and face accusations of inauthenticity. The objective is status, belonging, and recognition—to be seen as valuable by the tribe. But the real objective is the neurochemical hit of social validation.
The element of play is performance art meets psychological warfare—you're simultaneously the actor, the audience, and the critic. Collect validation tokens from strangers. Everyone's performing, but nobody's watching—they're all busy performing, too.
The friendship game: Find your tribe in a world of eight billion people. The rules are unspoken social contracts—reciprocity, loyalty, and emotional availability.
Show up when it matters, remember what matters to them, and never make them feel like an option when they've made you a priority. The objective is deep connection and mutual support, but also the insurance policy of not facing life's catastrophes alone.
The element of play is the beautiful gamble of vulnerability—revealing yourself piece by piece, hoping the other person won't use those pieces against you. Victory looks like having people who'll help you move furniture and listen to your problems without offering solutions. The rules keep changing as everyone moves, grows, and forgets to text back.
The status game: Climb invisible hierarchies while pretending hierarchy doesn't matter. The rules are ancient primate dominance patterns dressed up in modern clothes—who has the better job title, the nicer car, the more prestigious address, the more impressive social connections.
Signal your position through carefully chosen markers while appearing modest about it. The objective is to rank higher than others in whatever hierarchy you've chosen to play in, but admitting you're playing immediately disqualifies you.
The element of play is the elaborate dance of competitive signaling disguised as casual conversation—every story you tell, every humble-brag you drop, every name you mention is a chess move in a game everyone denies they're playing. The irony is that the people who claim to be above the status game are usually just playing a different version of it.
The game of mating and dating: Evolution's cruellest joke disguised as recreation. The rules are written in ancient biological code—attraction, courtship, pair-bonding—but executed through modern interfaces designed to maximise engagement, not outcomes. Be interesting but not desperate, available but not easy, yourself but your best self.
The objective is supposed to be finding a life partner, but the game is optimised for perpetual searching. The element of play is the intoxicating mixture of hope and risk—each interaction could be nothing or everything, and you won't know until you've already invested. Swipe right on possibility, left on probability. The house edge belongs to loneliness.
The family game: Create humans, then spend decades trying to turn them into functional adults without accidentally breaking them. The rules are whatever your parents did, plus whatever you swore you'd never do, minus the parts that obviously didn't work, multiplied by trial and error.
There's no instruction manual, but everyone acts like there should be. The objective is raising healthy, happy, capable humans who won't need therapy to undo what you did to them. The element of play is pure improvisation—you're writing the script while performing it, hoping your character development leads somewhere meaningful. The only winning move is realising you're still playing your parents' version of this game while trying to invent your own rules.
The spirit game: Search for meaning in a universe that offers no warranty or instruction manual. The rules depend entirely on which rulebook you choose—or whether you choose to write your own.
Ancient texts, modern gurus, psychedelic insights, meditative revelations—pick your poison, er, medicine. The objective is transcendence, enlightenment, or at least inner peace, but the real objective might just be having an objective bigger than yourself.
The element of play is the ultimate act of faith—believing in something unprovable because the alternative is unbearable. Some players pick ancient rule books, others freestyle. The game never ends, which is either terrifying or liberating, depending on your difficulty setting.
The mind game: Think about thinking while thinking about not thinking so much. The rules are paradoxical—to win, you must stop trying to win. Observe your thoughts without being controlled by them. Be present while planning for the future.
Accept what is while working to change what isn't. The objective is mental clarity, emotional regulation, and cognitive freedom, but the moment you grasp it, you've lost it.
The element of play is the infinite recursion of consciousness examining itself—like holding two mirrors up to each other and watching the reflections disappear into forever. Optimise your consciousness, while consciousness optimises itself. The only way to lose is to forget you're playing, but forgetting you're playing might actually be how you win.
The dream game: Eight hours a night of uncontrolled narrative chaos, where your subconscious processes the day's games through fever-dream logic. The rules are written by your unconscious mind in a language your conscious mind barely speaks—symbolism, metaphor, and emotional association trump linear logic.
Sometimes you're the player, sometimes the played, sometimes the game itself. The objective is psychological integration, memory consolidation, and creative problem-solving, but most of it feels like random firing of neurons having a conversation you weren't invited to.
The element of play is pure surrealism—anything can happen, physics is optional, and your dead grandmother might show up to give you life advice. You can't choose to play, but you can choose to remember. The objectives are written in a language you forgot you knew.
The body game: Inhabit this flesh prison and try to make it do what you want for as long as possible. The rules are written in genetic code and rewritten by lifestyle choices—eat, move, sleep, repeat. Ignore entropy at your own peril.
The physics are non-negotiable, but the software is surprisingly hackable. The objective is supposed to be health and longevity, but the real objective is the constant negotiation between what feels good now and what serves you later. The element of play is the daily relationship with your own biology—convincing your muscles to grow, your metabolism to cooperate, your cravings to chill out.
You're both the player and the game piece, the trainer and the trainee. Victory is not defeating your body but befriending it, even as it slowly betrays you with time.
The game game: Playing games about playing games while playing games. The rules are self-referential loops—every rule references other rules, which reference the rules that reference them.
Break the fourth wall, acknowledge the artifice, then pretend you never did. The objective is to understand the nature of games themselves, but understanding changes the game, which changes the understanding, which changes the game.
The element of play is pure meta-cognition—you're simultaneously inside and outside the experience, playing with the very concept of play itself. Meta-levels stacked on meta-levels until you're not sure which game you're actually in. The most honest game of all, because it admits it's just a game.
It: The game that contains all other games. The rules are existence itself—physics, chemistry, biology, psychology, sociology, and whatever lies beyond the edge of current understanding.
You can't break the rules because you are the rules. The objective is not to win or lose, but to play—to experience, to participate, to be.
Winning would end the game, and ending the game would end everything, so the objective is the playing itself. The element of play is consciousness experiencing itself through infinite forms and possibilities—every thought, every breath, every moment of awareness is the universe playing with itself. It has no rules because it is the rules. It has no end because it is the ending.
It has no winner because everyone who plays it becomes it. You can't stop playing it, because stopping would still be playing it. The house always wins because you are the house.
Have fun :)
Aug. 2, 2025, 12:42 p.m.
Written bY CYril 