The Game Of War

[NOTE: These posts are an ongoing presentation, meant to be read beginning with the earliest and ending with the most recent. If not read in that order, there is a potential loss for the reader in an overall understanding of what is being presented. You have been warned.]

In the previous post we talked about what we might call the millennial war, the war between dominators and liberators that has been waged since the dawn of humanity’s appearance upon this planet. Now some folk might say that before human beings walked the earth, the “law of the jungle” was kill or be killed and that was the ultimate reality. It was a matter of survival and it was the strong who survived. And that’s true. For the animal kingdom, that’s true. But human beings are different. Where animals and other living things endeavor to survive, human beings also strive to succeed. In other words, we seem to have an innate drive to excel, to go beyond, to grow more than those who preceded us.

Here, some might claim that that drive is rooted in the desire to dominate, and that may well be partially true. But unbridled domination, while contributing to humankind’s successful achievements in a number of ways, has a price. And that price is a topic that we will be returning to quite regularly during the next month. Suffice it to say, in the long run, the price may be too high.

By and large, most human beings throughout history have chosen to work on positive levels of survival rather than paying the price for exceptional achievement. These are the people that provide the necessities that ensure the ongoing existence of humankind. For many of those who thrive on the “challenge,” these “settlers” are to be looked down upon for “not having what it takes.” But you see, if one is to successfully dominate, succeed, star, excel, or win, then there must, of necessity, be those who are dominated and those who will lose. We can’t all be winners through competition. And that’s what makes winning so appealing to many. To stand out above the crowd.

The so-called “American dream” implies for many, that anybody can win. And there is a good deal of truth to that statement. But, unfortunately, although anybody can win, not everybody can win. In fact, for every winner there are countless losers. There must be losers in order for there to be winners. At least that’s the case in a dominance driven world.

But what about liberation winning. Well, that kind of winning comes when one excels without doing so at the expense of others. It often comes through people helping people. It also is achieved when one is competing with one’s own limits instead of competing “against” others. These are the winners that society most often lauds, those who have striven to be the best that they can be rather than to be identified as better than others. That, I think, is what the American dream idea is probably really about. Unfortunately, the acceptance of the concept of opportunity for everyone has been a fertile ground for sidetracking other with hoping for a better future while those who desire to dominate others run free rein over their fellow human beings. Instill fear, promise hope in the future, and then have your way with them. But what would happen if we skipped the fear part and instead found ways of acting now upon the hope that we profess.

Over the years, it has always amazed me at how quickly people will find reasons to deny the validity of new ideas. Every new idea begins with an individual who is open enough and curious enough to discover that idea and convert it into a form in which it can be communicated to others. Ideas come through individual people, not through corporations, yet, if one were to look closely at the patents and copyrights as they exist today, one would find that the “owners” of these “rights” are all too often not those who were originally inspired to realize the idea that is now legally “owned.” They are people who have money and want more money and collect other people’s ideas in order to make more money. I mean, folks, they teach the kind of stuff that I’m telling you about right now in schools. If you want to make big money, the basic way to do it is through using other people’s money. And that usually comes about through games of domination.

Uh oh, a new word just entered our deliberations here. Did you catch it? The word was “game.” And that takes us into a whole new arena of consideration. One of the problems with the pursuit of domination is that is can be quite ruthless and that can cause groundswells of revolt that result in the dominator becoming the dominated, if not just outright dead. Another problem is how to keep the other domination-driven people busy enough that one does not have to worry about them being a constant challenge. Enter games. Games, the things that we play innocently as children. Cowboys and Indians. As we grow older we get involved in organized games or sports of competition against one another. And nowadays those competitions have become a huge business. Professional Sports.

Then there’s another gaming business. It’s games of chance, and in the past few decades this business has grown to a phenomenal size. I’m not just speaking here about Casinos. There are lotteries, drawings, bingo, and the granddaddy of them all (drum roll) the stock market. This is a game that everybody plays whether they want to or not, for through the shenanigans of various computer wiz’s, “playing” the stock market has come to be an extremely high stakes game that can even topple governments. The stock market is based largely upon speculation. I was once told that the Harvard School of Business had said “You would have better odds if you went to Las Vegas and put on a blindfold and threw your money on the table than you would if you played the stock market.” Friends, I don’t know if that quote is true. Personally, I find it kind of hard to swallow that it came from the Harvard School of Business. However, I do believe that there is some truth in what is being said. The stock market is one big crap shoot. And because anybody can play, it keeps us directly involved with the gaming part of it, the “fun” part of it, while ignoring the underlying belly of it that can be a destroyer of lives.

We’ll get more deeply involved in the economy in days to come, but, for now I just want us to realize how much “games” have become a part of our lives. Competition, competition, competition.

War has become a giant game. Business has become a game. Anymore, one judges how one is doing by reading the stats, by generating reports, words and graphic pictures to represent how the game is progressing regardless of the growing human cost that the game demands.

Well, I’ve been doing this blog long enough now that I need to pause for a brief aside. It’s time for a little housekeeping, some maintenance to be done. In other words, it’s time for a word from our sponsor. That’ll be tomorrow’s post and then we’ll continue onward.