h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Conversations regarding this, you can hear a quick and possibly passionate answer. It is done with the enthusiasm of someone saying a saying. There is a mixture of feelings going on.

A definition of anything has to be universal. Some are playing their way through their life, I believe the rest pick from what life deals and interact with those opportunities, and are sometimes creative. People are mostly just taking the best of what they see.

The mixture of feelings people have on the saying/statement are best heard when commiserating. I'll wait for replies on that...

A result of subscribing to the idea, is being seriously hampered with complaining about anything. Envy of a shrewd person or dealing is common instead of fear of them/it.

The common belief that only a few are self-motivated is a direct contradiction, and itself is a false and damaging belief.

There is a lot to say about it. It is a very important setting in the mind.

"By the flickering flame of Mount Olympus, Cocky, it's great to be back in the game!" --Sir, in "Roar of the Greasepaint, the smell of the crowd."

"We'd be so grand at the game,
So carefree together that it does seem a shame
That you can't see your future with me
Cause you'd be, oh, so easy to love
--Cole Porter, in "You'd be so easy to love."

I can't rule out the idea that maybe, to an extent, life really *is* a game, adjusting for the obvious difference in perceptions of what the rules are from one person to another.

In "There are so many things to remember," from "Roar of the Greasepaint," the character named Sir lays out his philosophy:

"When I think of the good things that life has to give,
I'm reluctantly forced to agree
That the number of people who know how to live
Is restricted, quite simply, to me.
For life is like cricket. One plays by the rules,
But the secret which few people know,
Which keeps men of class well apart from fools
Is to make up the rules as you go."

As you live out your life, you're going to find yourself dealing with people who do think that life is a game. You might not have to play their game, in which case you can walk away. But maybe you do have to play it. It's worth your while to find out what the rules are and try to get the best you can from the situation.

I've always been very taken with the philosophy from the theme song for the wild west movie, "Slaughter Trail".

http://youtu.be/oSBCTtJ3Yeo

You can't trust anyone except me and thee, and sometimes I wonder about thee.

Very well aware of that. But the reasons for most.......

Go on, I'm listening.

I don't see any difference being made by treating life as a game. There used to be convention that a game was by definition a trivial thing, but look at the lifestyles of tennis, golf, soccer players. Look at the study and kudos attaching to chess (in those countries where it is taken seriously). The sixteenth century Book of the Courtier described chess as the one thing it was most honourable to be mediocre at, because being really good at it meant hours of study, at the end of which all you had learnt was a game. That is not the current attitude!

professional athletes seem to take the "games" they play seriously. But they can be forgiven because of their relative youth.

I'm worried about people who feel life is a "zero-sum game". They feel that if they are to win, someone else must lose.

Some of life actually *is* a zero-sum game, but most of it can be something more congenial. You can get a bigger slice of the economic pie by making the pie bigger!

Zero-Sum - yes I agree that is a bad idea.

Answers to this really are centring on people and in capitalism. Monty Python's Meaning of Life did embrace others and that are not human, such as leaves and fish.

There is a lot to say on this topic, and it should be the easiest thing to have a good view on but it clearly isn't.

If you realise we are only doing the best of what they see possible, that is the basis of it. It includes non-human life.

Another idea that is damaging is the belief that humans are never satisfied. Again, heavily stained by religion and right wing - believing that no good can come of the masses if left to their own choosing. The reason people seem to not be satisfied even if safe and secure in everything, is because of the superior knowledge that threats can still emerge. Few reach that level of security, and so always seem to want. Why scorn? Lack of understanding and brainwashing.

What has changed is not so much attitudes to life but attitudes to games. When you examine business software for instance, it becomes patently obviously that business is an extremely dull game.

Attempts to make it more interesting only yield spectacular crashes, it seems.

Two verses from the 246 verse poem Villagers (Strangely at Rhyme), a group of film extras talking in my imaginary depiction of life on a film set during the making of the 1960's TV series The Prisoner. By the way, there is an animated speech series of videos for the poem on YouTube.

Not trying to play a game, it is simpler than that. Powerful people are, but not others really and more than people exist.


I've begun thinking of nature as a sandy beach...
And wildlife, as a crow's call or gull's screech.
These sprawling brambles... have me in reach.

Advancing, everything is, until meet one another,
And a bargain is made – one, or the other,
Or both. Or we make our mark - uproot or smother.