Rules of the Game

I see people as autonomous creatures, able to make decisions about themselves that can change the direction of their lives in dramatic ways. Then I look at what I think I see and realize I'm looking through a set of microscope lenses, zeroed in on humans as we imagine ourselves, one person at a time.

I talk to individuals, people like Charline, Frank and Terry, see myself through their eyes and wonder what they think they look like through my eyes. I use facial expressions, body postures and voice inflections.

I am human so all I'm doing in that case is what every human has ever done who can see and think.

In addition to what a body shows me I also use cultural clues such as language and clothing to untangle the knots that we form when we imagine what a person sees that we see in that person who sees what we think we see in ourselves as reflections as that person who cannot see what we really think we think we look like in that person's thoughts. And so on...

While all that happens, comets, asteroids and meteors zip through space not thinking at all, but reacting to other bodies just the same.

As we make decisions about what we're going to do, we do so on the assumption that 1) we're pretty much stuck on this planet, and 2) a comet, asteroid or meteor is not about to hit the planet and wipe out life as we know it.

Other than that, we have a wide variety of options available to us.

Yet we often act as if we're in a game with rigid rules, either rules set by others or rules set by ourselves for ourselves.

Do you believe in a set of rules? Do you act as if you have no control over what's going to happen in the next moment because you know something disastrous is going to happen? Do you expect every moment to bring you good results no matter what others think the results look like to them?

You may speak one language or multiple languages/dialects simply because of where you grew up, completely unaware of the normality of your language set(s) compared to other cultures. You carry your vocabulary with you because of your social setting, not because there is a universal language requirement or set of language rules for humans. Your brain's capacity for synaptic connections, determined by genetics and aided by childhood nurturing, may allow you to learn many human cultural communication techniques including language syntax rules and mathematical equation solving, but no matter how much you can memorize or process, you operate from within one human body in a network of human bodies.

There are no permanent rules. There's only us finding ways to behave around us while ensuring our success from moment to moment. With no rules forever frozen in clay tablets, etched on stone or written on papyrus/rice paper, we can decide as a global population what is most important for us, regardless of human history or previous belief in eternal rules.

We cannot change what happened in the past but we can rewrite history to meet the needs of current populations, always turning our lives into meaningful stories.

You're here because you can read these words in one language or another, from one cultural background or many cultural backgrounds, and from the perspective of one person. I'm here because I'm looking ahead to the next moment while enjoying writing in this moment.

In a moment, some things interesting are going to happen. A nation-state is going to declare itself null and void, giving its pieces over to the people through corporate ownership, individual ownership and global heritage sites, leaving other nation-states in a quandary. Some nation-states are going to band together and wipe out a group of people without a country who are opposed to individual freedom. History will be rewritten once again, wiping out the stories of people who believed in freedom while keeping other people enslaved. The human population will expand into the warming territories and archipelagos of the Northern Hemisphere. Most everyone you know will strongly support or oppose these changes, leaving you to laugh and wonder how to get people to find a middle ground devoid of irrational emotional arguments free of outdated hard-and-fast rules.

I'll see you in the next moment. You bring whatever rules and language(s) you want. We'll see what we see in each other and go from there.