Game Life: Nothing Less Than Gods

Today, Game Life manual will be completed. The final stage will be revealed. Up till now no player has ever managed to reach this stage. However, with determination, hope and with the continuous cooperation among players it might be reached one day even if in the so distant future. Some might argue that reaching this stage is impossible and in fact it might be. However, the goal of Game Life or Eudaimonia can never be fully actualized unless this final stage is attained. In the final stage of Game Life, the impossible itself is what you are required to conquer. It is the stage at which the real nature of us is revealed with out any further fear or shame.

Humans, the most amazing species of creatures, have managed to survive through many long centuries. We were driven, by our basic desire to bond to each other, to cooperate together to start our very own process of cultural evolution. In this process, our amazing abilities of communication, conceptualization, imagination and adaptation allowed us to get into existence our very own creations. We created values, vice and virtue, wrong and right, good and evil. We created the concept of happiness. We conceptualized happiness as the attainment of the wonderful values of friendship, knowledge, accomplishment, practical reasoning and pleasure. The conceptualization of those values became the essence of our own nature and our own will. We suffered a lot in attempting to achieve those values. We faced lots of challenges. We tried to give up on them sometimes, but we can't escape our own selves. We can't escape the destiny we draw for our own selves. We can't escape the ultimate goal of Game Life.

As the challenges imposed upon us while attempting to actualize our core values became so strong, we had no choice but to use our strongest faculty, the faculty of imagination. We imagined gods. We assigned various gods with various values. We indulged ourselves in conceptualizing those gods as the realizations of those values. Gods represented those values triumphed over all possible challenges. Soon, gods were reduced to one god. We worshiped this god. After all, he was the essence of what ever we thought of as good. God resided in all of us, not as an entity distinct from us but as a symbol of our own essence. God is the realization of our own values, and our own happiness. God is the realization of the ultimate goal of Game Life. He is the realization of Eudaimonia. However, even though it might seem so daring to state it, God can't remain forever in our heads; we are destined to bring him into existence. Our nature as humans will never be completely revealed unless we become gods. This is the final stage of Game Life; Nothing Less Than Gods.

Final Stage: Nothing Less Than Gods

As more and more players reach the "Living it to the Maximum" stage, their contributions to the actualization of Eudaimonia will allow other players in the future to cooperate together more effectively to face the challenges imposed by the world we live in. hopefully, one day we will acquire complete knowledge of this world. Later, we will realize how to control it and power over universe will be attained. Such an absolute knowledge and absolute power guided with our other values will make us what we have longed for, for so long time. It will make us gods.

The task of any player who reaches this stage is to fully realize Eudaimonia despite all the challenges. Once this task is accomplished, Eudaimonia will be realized. With the realization of the ultimate goal of Game Life, game will not be over. The goal of Game Life is its own reward. Once Eudaimonia is achieved, its constituent values will be transformed to the absolute. Knowledge will become omniscience, accomplishment will become absolute power, friendship will become benevolence, practical reason will become wisdom, and pleasure will become total and absolute joy. Eternity will be accomplished and in this eternity you will get to enjoy those values to the point of infinity. Your limitless imagination and creativity will go on fueling your aspirations for knowledge, pleasure, accomplishment, benevolence and wisdom.

Such a goal might reside for ever in dream world. It might never escape this imaginary line of thought I called Game Life. However, what we can't deny is that this is our real dream. It is what we want. It is what makes up our will. We want to be nothing less than gods. Again whether you liked it or not, whether challenges you face managed to get you down or not, you have no choice but to seek this ultimate goal. You have no choice but to follow your own well, to listen to your real nature, and to seek your own dream. You have no choice but to play Game Life.

Game Life: Living it to the Maximum

I wish you are not bored yet guys. It seems like I am trying to answer a very big question in a very limited space. However, I still want to go on considering this fascinating game. It is at least insightful for me to attempt to conceive life in this manner. I think I should reintroduce my whole vision in a clearer manner. I will certainly do this in the future. However for now, I want to finish what I have started. Today, I will present another portion of the manual of Game Life.

After completion of the first stage of Game life, you will move to the next stage. "Just a human being" was the first stage of Game Life. The second stage is "living it to the maximum". By completion of the first stage you should have realized what is most important for you. You should know by now your most important value whether it is knowledge, practical reasoning, friendship, accomplishment or pleasure. You should have done considerable deal of work to attain this value. Now you are ready for the next harder stage of Game Life.

Second Stage: Living it to the maximum

In the "just a human being stage", your initial PTE was enough. In the "living it to the maximum" stage you are expected to realize nothing less than the general PTE. Your main task in this stage is to realize that Eudaimonia or happiness can't be attained unless you have actualized the various values of friendship, accomplishment, knowledge, practical reasoning and pleasure. You should have realized this from reflection upon your own life and the lives of other players. It is not only that other players in Game Life hold different values that all can be reduced to one of the five values mentioned repeatedly in the manual, but you yourself hold those values to be important even though you might have not recognized this initially.

Realizing the general PTE is an easy task compared to the second task in this stage. After realizing the general PTE, you are supposed to construct a corresponding PACT. This task is so difficult. Up till now no player has ever managed to achieve it. The problem is that since you have understood that the core values of the general PTE are shared by all other players, your theory of how to achieve those values, or your PACT in simpler terms, should not only allow you to achieve those values in your life but it should be suitable for any one as well to allow him to achieve the same values in his life. You are now participating in the construction of a general PACT that has not yet been adequately constructed. You are participating in the construction of morality itself.

So, your tasks in the stage can be explained further through the following points;

· Realize that happiness or eudaimonia can only be achieved through the actualization of the values of friendship, pleasure, knowledge, accomplishment, and practical reasoning.

· You should get involved in practices that allow you to achieve those values in your own life. In addition, you should commit to those practices so that your belief in the importance of those values becomes authentic and goes all the way down in your own personality.

· You should realize the real nature of those values. You should realize that in today's state of Game Life they are shared by all players even if they don't recognize it. You should also realize that those values can only be achieved through social interaction and can never be achieved in isolation.

· You are driven by the value of practical reasoning to construct a PACT or a theory of action that allows you to actualize your core values. However, since you now hold the value of knowledge as well, you are driven by this value to make your PACT accepted by all other rational beings. That's why your PACT can't be limited to your own situation but it should be suitable for all other players in Game Life.

· Construction of a successful universal PACT is difficult since most of the players in Game Life are still in the "just a human being stage" and accordingly don't recognize the importance of all of the values constituting the general PTE. Variations among those players in their starting points and the challenges they face make them vary even more considerably in their individual PACTS. In addition, the world you all players share place significant fluctuating challenges upon you that make it so difficult to construct a universal successful PACT corresponding to the general PTE.

· Since the construction of such a PACT is so difficult, all that's required from you in the "living it to the maximum stage" is to realize the five core values in your own life and to make what is considered by a significant portion of other players as a significant contribution to the construction of a universal successful PACT.

· Your contribution to the construction of a universal PACT should be transmitted by you to other generations of players in Game Life to allow them not to waste so much time in "just a human being" stage. Developing a successful universal PACT essentially requires solving lots of problems imposed upon you and upon other players by the world you share and by limitations of your abilities. Managing those problems successfully has never been achieved up till now. It will take the life time of so many players in Game Life. however, with the contribution of various players in "living it to the maximum"stage would allow one day other players to reach the final stage of Game Life, which is not only a stage of a game but the reward of Game Life itself.

Game Life: Just A Human Being...

Hi again guys. I will go on writing about Game Life. First of all, I would like to remind every one that the series of posts I write under the title Game life are not referring to some video game. It is rather an imaginary account attempting to answer the question "how should one live his life?" I thought it would be more stimulating and more appealing to you to answer this question in this alternative way. I wish you like it so far. Anyway, here is the rest of the manual of how to play Game Life. Enjoy it.

Stages of the game

Game life is a multi stage game. The first stage as argued before is a preparatory stage. In the preparatory stage you acquire the PTE and PACT. Again, you are not evaluated in this preparatory stage. The real game begins in the next stage. Once you reach adulthood, your mental abilities have fully developed and it is in this stage that evaluation of your progress in the game begins. Once the preparatory stage is over, you should pass through three different stages. It is those three stages that count.

First stage: "just a human being"

This stage can be considered as the first stage of the real game. You start this stage with a given starting point. You had a very limited role in shaping this starting point. However, you are supposed to work on this starting point to modify it so that you can achieve the ultimate goal of the game, namely achieving Eudaimonia. This is the main challenge of Game Life. Each player has a different starting point. The details of this starting point consist of the following:

· You are a member of various societies of other players. Those societies range from your family, the institution at which you work, circle of friends, marriage, partnership, recreational institutions and so on. In addition you are a citizen in a particular state. On the other hand, in today's current form of Game Life, you are also a member of a developing international society that extends to include the entire globe. Any of those societies might be more or less well defined. What makes a society or a group of players well defined or not is whether at least some of the players involved in this society have managed to constitute a well defined PTE or not. Any society with a well defined PTE would have a corresponding more or less defined PACT. This PACT might be well defined or not in the same manner as the PTE. In addition PACT might be successful or not depending upon whether it does in fact allow the realization of the corresponding PTE or not. Whether any of the societies you are involved in have a well defined PTE and PACT or not, and whether you recognize those social PTEs and PACTs or not, and whether those social PTEs and PACTs are consistent with your individual PTE and PACT might all vary in your starting point.

· You have a particular set of abilities; physical and mental. Those abilities together with the PTE and PACT of the societies you were involved in while in the preparatory stage have formed your own initial PTE and PACT.

· In addition to being a member of various societies, you also exist in a physical world. This world has its own form of behavior. This behavior has been explained best by the science theory developed by other players in the game. Taking this theory in account is essential for any successful PACT. The physical world you live in has a large impact on you in Game Life. All objects available to you in Game Life belong to the physical world and are governed by its form of behavior. Your body itself belongs to the physical world and similarly it follows its form of behavior. That's why having at least a primary grasp of the world surrounding you is essential for any successful PACT.

Clearly, your starting point in Game Life is complicated. Game Life is hard but don't give up on it, playing it properly would prove worthy of the effort invested in it.

Your ultimate goal in Game Life as mentioned before is to achieve eudaimonia. This ultimate goal can be achieved through fulfilling the tasks of each stage. In "just a human being" stage your tasks are the following;

· Grasp your initial PTE. The general PTE is the theory that is shared by all players of Game Life even though not recognized by them all. General PTE conceives happiness as a concept that can be reduced to various valuable concepts. According to general PTE, happiness or Eudaimonia can be achieved when one achieves friendship, understanding, practical reasoning, accomplishment and pleasure in his life. However, most of the players in Game Life start with an initial PTE that recognizes only one or some of those values but not all. This is again because in the preparatory stage your abilities, the societies you were involved in, and the world behavior surrounding you made it seem more possible for you to achieve one of those values rather than others. However, all that is required from you in the "just a human being" stage of this game is to recognize the value which is so important for you. Some might take friendship to be the most important thing; others might take accomplishment to the best thing in life, and certainly most would take pleasure to the most crucial in a happy life. Don’t resist your initial PTE. Take it as it is. Remember that what is required from you in this stage is to know what is the most important to you even if you have short slightness.

· Once you have determined the most important value to yourself, it will be time to move to the second more difficult task. The second task is the construction of an appropriate PACT. Knowing how to achieve what you take to be the most valuable is not an easy job. Lots of considerations must be put in mind while planning your action plan. This task can be broken down into the following more direct tasks.

· It is all about the activities you are involved in. to achieve your most valuable you must be involved in an activity within a social group that aims toward the actualization of this value. You can never achieve your most significant value in isolation.

· If the activities you are involved in are not adequate for the actualization of your main value, pick up new ones and get into them. You might even have to develop a whole new kind of activity directed toward the actualization of your main values. However, you will have to get others involved in this kind of activity. Together you will have to develop a well defined PTE and PACT of this new kind of activity.

· There are lots of challenges which will face you in actualization of your main value. Those challenges might be imposed by the world you live in, or by the social groups you are a member of. Manage those challenges as much as possible.

· Mange your time properly

· Mange your health situation

· Even if you don't accept the general PTE, you should try to remain away from any conflict with the PACT corresponding to this general PTE. Try as much as possible to avoid conflicts with others. If there is something you don't like about the behavior of others remember that what you are concerned with in this stage of the game is to actualize your main value. Affecting the general PTE and the corresponding PACT is left to the next stage of the game.

· In lots of times you might loose your motivation to pursuit your most significant value. Those are the times known as Pauses in Game Life. They might arise because of exhaustion or because of problems facing you. Remember that taking adequate care of your health status and solving problems imposed upon you by the world or by others is so crucial to avoid Pauses. However, most of the pauses are caused by neither exhaustion nor problems. Most of the Pauses are caused by lack of adequate habitual pattern. Your performance in Game Life depends to a large degree upon the kind of habits you have developed before. That's why you should develop a pattern of behavior that actualizes your most significant value and try to commit to it as much as possible to develop the adequate habitual pattern. By time Pauses will be encountered much less.

· Your performance in this stage can't all be devoted to the only one value you take to be the most significant. You will find yourself inclined to pursuit other values as well. After all the general PTS is still implanted in your head, its just lack of realizing it that prevents you from recognizing that all of its values are equally important. Don’t resist your desire to pursuit of other values. Instead learn from such tendencies. Learning from them will make you get more and more in contact with the general PTE which is very important for the next stage of the game. Allow your self to pursuit other values but without wasting so much time and effort. Save most of your time and effort to actualization of your most significant value.

· In Game Life, there are various supplementary games like sports, video games and so on. All of those supplementary games are great arena for training. They would allow you to develop the right sort of realization of a goal and rules in any game. They would also allow you to notice how being committed can help you greatly in playing this game.

By the end of this stage you are supposed to actualize your main value to a large degree. You should realize the general PTE and the importance of other values in your life. This stage of Game Life is not easy. However, when ever you feel like over whelmed by it, then this would be a good time to relax and focus on other values than the one you are most occupied with. After all it is just a game.

Before moving on to the next stages of the game, here is the summary of your task in the "just a human being" stage; know yourself and what is most significant to you whether knowledge, accomplishment, friendship, practical reasoning, pleasure or a group of those values. Remember that values can't be actualized except through interaction with others. Manage challenges facing you and focus on your goal. Develop the right habitual pattern needed for actualizing of your goal. Remember that Game Life is not easy but it certainly worth it

Game Life: The Ultimate Goal

In the last post I started conceiving life in a totally different imaginary way. Life is a game. I called this game "Game Life". Game Life is the game we all play. Whether we liked it or not we have no choice but playing it. I promised you that the manual of this game will be delivered to you soon. So here it is; the manual of Game Life.

Goal of the game

The ultimate goal of this game is to achieve Eudaimonia. You don't know what Eudaimonia is? Eudaimonia is an ancient Greek term commonly translated as happiness, flourishing or wellbeing. Why is the goal of this game stated as Eudaimonia rather than happiness? It is because the term Eudaimonia emphasizes the most adequate account we can offer of happiness. It emphasizes that happiness is the supreme good of any of your actions. It also emphasizes that achieving happiness can only be conceived as the realization of a list of irreducible values. Those values are friendship, understanding, accomplishment, practical reasoning, and last but not least pleasure.

Game Life is a multiplayer game. As a matter of fact more than 6 billion other players share this game with you at the moment. Millions of other players have played it long ago and those past players have contributed significantly to building this game and to your current situation in it. It is expected that many more players, more than what you might be even able to imagine will play this game in the future. Similarly, they will continue to influence this game.

To achieve eudaimonia, you must interact with other players. Interaction with other players is crucial for your progress in this game.

PTE & PACT

In this game each player must start with two different theories interacting together. First you must have what is called in this game the primary theory of Eudaimonia or (PTE). In addition you must have a primary theory of action or (PACT). PTE is a primary theory you hold of what you should achieve in this game. It is your initial vision of the goal of this game. PACT on the other hand is your initial theory of how to achieve the goals determined by your PTE.

In this game you pass through a preparatory stage. It is a stage corresponding to the childhood and adolescence stages of human life. In this stage you get, through other players, whether playing the role of parents, friends, celebrities, authors, or media figures, to form your PTE. In this stage you are not evaluated. Once you reach the adulthood stage, the real game begins.

In the preparatory stage, other players guide your actions. You are programmed to develop habits. Those habits will form your PACT. Your PACT aided by your built in ability to conceptualize will allow you to build your PTE. PTE and PACT interact together. Fist PACT form PTE, then PTE might change PACT. Again changes in PACT enforced upon you by surrounding circumstances or by the development of new habits might change the PTE which might again change PACT and so on. This continuous process of interaction between PACT and PTE is what is called learning. This process starts in the preparatory stage and goes on through all but the stage of the game. However, you will not be evaluated in this game until you pass the preparatory stage. It's PACT and PTE held by you then that counts the most.

Ancient players of this game had a PTE that was focused on mere survival and bonding to as much other players they can communicate with as possible. Through several generations of players, PTE has evolved into the form defined above. Current PTE held by most players conceives Eudaimonia as the realization of the above mentioned values. Unfortunately, lots of current players while holding this most recent form of PTE don't recognize that they do. In today's state of Game Life, lots of current players while in the preparatory stage get to develop a PACT that focuses mainly on the value of pleasure. This affected their PTE which similarly takes pleasure to be more important than other values. Such inappropriate PACTs and PTEs might have been facilitated by the relative easier possibility of gaining pleasure compared to other values in today's state of Game Life. Your very first task in Game Life might be to recognize the PTE that you really hold and develop a suitable PACT accordingly. More about this task will be explained later in the manual when tasks are explained.

There is an additional precaution which you must hold on your mind while playing this game. As it has been mentioned before, interaction with other players in this game is the most crucial part of the game. You have no choice but accepting the PTE and PACT formed in you by others in the preparatory stage. You can only develop the PTE and PACT you hold upon reaching adulthood. You can never discard them and start from scratch. If you do so, you have lost this game and game will be over for you. Developing the PACT and PTE you hold by the end of the preparatory stage is the main way through which the ultimate goal of the game can be realized. Again as mentioned before and as will be explained downward, developing PACT and PTE can only be achieved through interaction with other players.

Ok, guys, I think that's enough for now. I hope you like this imaginary line of thought I follow to consider how one should live his life. I will go on imagining in next posts. Till then, good luck…

Game Life: Wanna Play??

Through the last series of posts, and through the last post in particular, I offered what I think is the most coherent account that can be offered for happiness. The theoretical work is done. What I want to consider in this post is how this account can be applied practically in the life of each one of us.

The answer I offered to the question "How should one live life?" signified the importance of values in our life. However, arguing that one should live his life attempting to become ideal and reducing happiness down to morality might seem less motivating and more exhausting to lots of us. That's why I would like to describe the practical implications of this theoretical account of happiness in a totally different way. This way certainly depends on the utilization of the most significant faculty we humans have, namely imagination. So, I am asking you to open up your mind and let your imagination takes you to conceive life in a new way.

I am introducing to all of you the most fascinating game you could ever play. It's Game Life. Game Life is a virtual reality game. This game is not just a high quality third person game you get to play on X-box or play station. It is designed in a way that would allow your senses to be so soaked totally in it. It is an experience that is so vivid and real. It is so real that you can't distinguish it from reality itself.

You are not motivated to play Game Life just by the mere sake of having fun or by commercials surrounding you every where convincing you that is so pleasurable. Your motivation to play this game is the very basic essence of your own well. Your well screams upon you to play this game. You can't escape it. Even when you think that you have given up on this game and when you believe that you have reached the decision that it just doesn't worth, all you are actually doing is that you leave one tournament of it to another, gave up on one of its goals just to seek another. This game is you and nothing less than you.

Game life is not easy. It is the hardest game you might ever play. But while it is hard, it is certainly amazing and very much rewarding. It is a multistage game. None and I mean none has ever passed the first stage of it. However, every one is so eager to reach its end stage. Players are just crazy about it. Even though, most of them have recognized that its end stage is so difficult to be reached and might even be impossible, they keep on trying. They keep on transmitting their knowledge about how to play this game from one generation to another hoping that one day in the future some one might just do it. This game requires you to think and act, but above all it requires you to imagine. Some players imagined things so wonderful that have just enriched the game and made it much easier. Others let their imagination take them to wicked places and the results were awful. Even though imagination is essential to get through this game, it might have terrible consequences. However, with the basic urge of the players to survive, with reason, with hope, and with being open to learn, you will get to mange the dangers involved in playing this game.

So, are you ready to play this game? Whether your answer is yes or no, you have no choice but to play it. You are already playing it as you read this post. So, instead of resisting it, it is better for you to learn about its stages, tasks, rules and goals. You will have your manual in the next posts. For now, be patient….