Life is but a cruel game. Life is a but a cruel spectacle. Life is a absurd joke.
I like to describe life as a bitter game.
My favorite game is chess and a great deal of philosophers have illustrated that chess imitates life.
(So I shall use chess as my analogy for the rest of this thread.)
A game revolves around competition much like life.
In a game you have rivals and opponents much as life does.
In a game you have success or failure in it’s end much as a person faces in their end looking back at their life before they die.
In a game opponents or rivals constantly use deception amongst each other in order to gain the upper hand on one another much like life.
In a game opponents and rivals constantly try to control or defeat one another much like a game.
In the game of chess there exists stalemate, checkmate, and double overkill as scenarios that can happen during a play.
A double kill is where opponents or rivals kill each other simultaneously where noone wins victory.
It is where everybody annihilates each other.
A double overkill is the mentality where a opponent figures to themselves that if they are going down they are going to take their rivals down with them.
A stalemate is where a opponent becomes cornered and consequently surrenders themselves to their rivals in submission thus becoming a slave or servant to their rivals in their submission.
Checkmate is the goal of every individual. Checkmate is victory and success.
Checkmate means winning. Checkmate is conquest.
In checkmate a opponent defeats and smashes his enemies, competition, or rivals.
Checkmate is the ultimate goal of all players in that it means a player satisfies their goals, desires,aspirations, and dreams through their success or victory.
Much like how a game revolves around competition or conflict of interests it is the same for life.
Everyone is literally players born in a chaotic world of conflicting interests and competition much like a game.
Much like a game in life there is only success and failure, victory and defeat.
There is no middle ground in life to understand much as there is no middle ground in a game between players. I shall repeat there is no middle path beyond success or failure.
Either you win or you lose in life much as it is the same for any game.
( Life is a all or nothing type affair.)
Much like a game of chess in life you must play your pieces and resources carefully with a sound strategy in mind in order to achieve your ends.
Sometimes you must make sacrifices with your pieces or resources in order to achieve your goals but if you sacrifice too much you will find yourself surrounded by your rivals in checkmate.
Much like chess in life you have your kings, queens, bishops, knights, and pawns.
( The goal in life is to not to end up as a pawn.)
Life is life. I don’t like to give life much more meaning or assign any more adjectives other that the state of merely existing. Certainly life can be perceived as being cruel, but life itself doesn’t act in a cruel way. Social situations or emotional responses are different stories however.
I will not deny that you need money to get along in this world. Yet, it is not money which is the cause of happiness, just like it is entirely possible to have plenty of wonderful experiences without a lot of money. But I sense you would have none of it, so ill drop it off at that.
Agreed.
I love my culture of poverty. Give me an unconscious conditioning of enjoying that and I could care less. Give me an unconscious conditioning of enjoying wealth and I could care less. Consciousness is what I seek, and I don’t need money to enjoy that, maybe some to obtain it. Without the realization of the game you just mentioned, your life would be…whatever, don’t tell me you didn’t have fun or gain any enjoyment in typing this pretty long post.
What does it mean to win, “Whats the rat race really about,” (don’t know who really said it, I think it was Adam Smith)? If we all die in the end, and we haven’t figured out the elixir of life, and if you don’t believe in the afterlife, then what’s it all about? Social Darwinism? Make sure your kids are better equipped so that…
In regards to the ending, “The goal in life is to not to end up as a pawn,” couldn’t disagree more. Some people are just born kings, queens, bishops, and what not. The others, the masses, are all born as pawns with the chance to become any other piece, hence the strategy of taking the pawn to other side, if you so choose to do so.
I see life very similarly. I like to describe life as a big show. In my view we say our lines, play our parts, and leave the stage.
For some people it can be seen as an unwilling chess match, other people see it as an unfair chess match where they are a pawn against knights and queens
In truth we fight many simultaneous battles on different fronts, and we can fight some battles more than once.
Life is a collection of successes and losses, and it is our current struggle. We observe we cannot fight forever.
Is death the last chess match we inevitably lose?
There is indeed competition involved in life, the driving force of which is desire for victory, success, and the boons of pleasure, comfort, security and happiness which come with it.
These chess matches we play have varying degrees of competition involved. The consequences of losing vary, as do our advantages. We can sometimes pick our own battles, which gives us the success we want and we can sometimes avoid the battles with negative consequences we don’t want.
From what you have described, i would say that in these terms life is the inexplicable (or absurd) drive to engage in a series of chess matches which you will eventually lose.
Deception has great strategic advantage, in chess if you can pull a sneaky attack, your opponents will not be able to defend in foresight.
War for example involves deception, given that we are playing the game of war against each other. Here we play a chess game with our actual lives, where most of our battle fronts do not involve mortal risk.
This is a good way that you can see life as a or series of games rather than a single game.
[quute]In checkmate a opponent defeats and smashes his enemies, competition, or rivals.
Checkmate is the ultimate goal of all players in that it means a player satisfies their goals, desires,aspirations, and dreams through their success or victory.
Much like how a game revolves around competition or conflict of interests it is the same for life.
Everyone is literally players born in a chaotic world of conflicting interests and competition much like a game.
Much like a game in life there is only success and failure, victory and defeat.
[/quote]
i agree that there is only success and failure, but success depends on the interests of each person, and defeat depends on the fears of each person.
though we might be in constant conflict, there is a portion which does not conflict. Not every chess game is played against another person. Some are played with people on your side, and nature as the opposition.
In terms of the collection of games we both win and lose.
Would you compare the two at the end of your life to determine your measure of success?
I believe that a middle ground can exists so long as desires are mutually shared. There are many allies in life.
Napoleon said that there are only kings and pawns in life. A queen sacrificed may play the same role as a pawn, just with more dress.
I would say that aside from not being a pawn, your goal is to be a king. To simply work toward your own goals, not necessarily using other people as pawns (but in honesty that’s pretty much all that works) as an independent agent.
The way i see it we are given a certain amount if credits in life, and the game is spending those credits the best way possible.
As for the last chess match, death, i figure that as an independent agent if we can get all that we want and tire ourselves out with the credits we have, then death will be a welcomed adventure.
Simply live your life to the best of your ability, try your best, that way when you’re old and dying you’ll have no regrets.
You guys seem to have forgotten that when a pawn reaches the eighth rank it can become whatever piece it wishes. (King is generally an exception.)
So, being a pawn isn’t necessarily so bad. When a piece is a knight, the piece will always be a knight, it can never aspire to greater or even different things. The same goes for all other pieces on the board. Only the pawn can become any other piece, even a King in suicide chess.
Ironically, though, the pawn may not choose to remain a pawn.
If you think life is cruel, I have a few funny websites that’ll cheer you up; assuming a good nights sleep wont do the trick. And if that doesn’t work, I have a few knifes in my kitchen you could use to free yourself from this terrible, terrible place.
Anyways, heres an opportunity to drop a quote. soo OHHhh yeahh… ;D!!!
“People are hostile towards what they don’t understand.”
