Rule of Engagement—Everything is Pre-Approved

We’ve created a world and it’s going terribly wrong according to plan. Life forms of all kind prey upon each other in both offense and defense. None of the pieces know why they seem to exist, but think it is a most important endeavor none the less, everything that happens is pre approved.

Each piece plays its desired role even if it doesn’t want to. Even refusing to play serves a certain role. .

As they imagine knowledge and construct societies, intelligence will gradually realize the elements in the game are not as real as they thought they were, then not real at all. Regardless they still feel compelled to play, even if it’s so others can.

By manipulating the data they are imagined of, they create hacks in the game—and using synthetic add-ons, destroy or alter the game-board bit by bit—all the while attempting to protect and nurture life and comfort. Virtue signaling will be expressed as “caring”, about the planet, but few will actually act on that virtue.

In the end we will grow tired and end it for them (if they wont end it themselves) roll it up and put it away. One became all, then all will become one, or none. Everything that appears to have happened will never even be a thought—like an unremembered dream.

Key pieces in the game will possess buttons that can end the game at any time. It is of dire consequence to press the button and as equally as disastrous if they don’t.

The most important ritual of all will be “the aha moment”, where certain members (occasionally entire generations) will think they have solved the quandary of existence, only to find that such awakening will stunt societies even further. Feeling right will trump survival and the most virtuous will cause the most pain and suffering on behalf of its own population.

Many will profess to find a way out—a way to cheat anxiety and own an eventual state of bliss. This total bliss will give way to the monotony of boredom. The game must go on, mustn’t it?

It will go on but you won’t. Unless you redefine what you are, providing you think you already know what that is.

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What it’s Like to Die

Our flight finally neared the runway as 80 mph side-winds battered the plane. Just before decent, the drink cart came off the floor and nearly hit the ceiling. Suddenly the wings break upward, blocking my view of the horizon, then quickly downward to view the ocean. The plane was nervously quiet on the inside as it was battered outside—a white knuckle approach to San Francisco; landing speed 158 MPH.

Some I could see praying, silently mouthing, whispering to their god—certain some deals were being made that day. I was sitting window seat over the left wing as we lowered within crashing range, watching the wing flexing up and down just missing the runway. Suddenly in a flash I pictured the plane cartwheeling down the runway in a fiery crash, but at that moment the pilot performed his magic and touched the plane down like a foot stomp.

Sighs of relief exhaled from front to back, then a post adrenal crash into applause and chatter—and in an instant we all realize we made it—Alive! Now back to business and the boredom as usual…

Is this how we feel when we die, returning to the mundane existence of eternal life? What a rush it must be to break back through to the other side. For at that moment the game would get us every time.

We know what it’s like to die—the same as it is to survive. All the anxieties of not knowing released in an instant. Yet here, we shackle ourselves to another day, living to escape death—while in our normal existence we would line up for the chance to risk it.

Just a flash of time outside our normal state of being—is life