The simplest way to explain how the current "game" works is by talking about the board game Monopoly.
Interestingly enough, the history of Monopoly can be traced back to 1903, when an American woman named Elizabeth J. Magie Phillips created the game as an educational tool to explain Single Tax theory of Henry George. She hoped the game would help explain the negative aspects of concentrating land into private monopolies. Since then, instead of becoming an educational tool and serving its main purpose, Monopoly caught on as a highly competitive, addictive game, selling over 250 million copies worldwide and educating kids and grownups, although not in the way that was originally intended.
So, let us examine the goal of the game Monopoly:
"Players move around the board buying or trading properties, developing their properties with houses and hotels, and collecting rent from their opponents, the ultimate goal being to drive them into bankruptcy".
Personally, I never liked the game, but not because I was losing more often than winning. Quite the opposite: I didn't like it because of the thoughts I had when I won for the first time.
Let me explain what I mean a bit more.
When I was losing, I was thinking about the game and other strategies to win, and sometimes I would envy the winner. Eventually, instead of being happy when I won I was sad because I realized something so obvious. If there is one winner, everyone else ware losers, meaning that the number of people who were happy would always be multiple times smaller than the people who were unhappy.
Now consider this: one way we learn is by repeating actions, so every time we "win", our brains reward us with emotions such as thrill, excitement and pleasure, and our brain remembers entire sequences of events because we want that pleasure again. But do not forget that the loser's brain also learns.
Stop for a moment and try to compare reality and the game.
Are we transferring patterns we have learned in a game to real life?
What if reflection of this game has become our reality?
That is not true, and it would not be fair to blame the Monopoly for all the issue we have in this world, the game we play has been here for thousands of years, a long before Monopoly came out into the light.
In the game of Monopoly, the number of players can range between 2 and 12. As you know, there will be one winner and a maximum of 11 losers. In the game of life, the number of "players" is much larger-hundreds, thousands, millions-and it follows the same principle, there will be a couple of winners and billions of losers.
Often, you hear a wealthy person saying something like "Every morning when I wake up, I want to think I am richer than the night before". What this person is saying can be summed up with the following: "I want MORE money". Most of these people do NOT have a goal or a definite number to reach-if they have one million, they would like two million; if they have hundred million, they want two hundred million; and even if they have one billion, they want two billion...and so on. They have more money than they could spend in their entire lifetime, and yet all they think is, "How do I get more?" So why is that? If you talk to a politician, you hear something similar: more money, more power, more influence, more people voting for them.
It seems we could use just one word to define the current state of the political and economic systems in which we are living - "more".
But there is one huge issue with "more" there is a certain point where "more" becomes "no more."
Like Monopoly, our world has its own limitations. Like a game, our world is limited by its size, the number of players and the amount of money in the game.
And there is one more thing. In Monopoly, we are playing our rounds and getting richer or poorer, and as the game progresses, sometimes slower or sometimes faster, one person will emerge on top. Sometimes, the winner will use his money to help, by giving loans and chances to others, and if the other players are lucky enough, the game will be extended and they will get a couple more turns with the dice.
But eventually, if everyone is playing by the rules, the game will end after some time, and a single, solitary person will win!
Similarly to Monopoly, in our world there is a playing time, although we do not call them games-we call them "cycles". As with Monopoly, we have a few winners and a rather ridiculous number of losers. Although in Monopoly there is no name for the end of the game, in our world, we call such an event an economic crisis. You already know the pattern: the rich become so rich that they push all others into bankruptcy. They do, and they will, after all, isn't that what they have learnt to do in life in the first place!?
There are other side effects in our world at the end of a cycle, such as riots, financial depressions or wars. You have to ask yourself-why is all this necessary?
So, you have heard already "History repeats itself". Of course it does; what's strange about that? We have been playing the same stupid game for so long.
But, be honest - you like playing the game, don't you? You like the thrill, and you like idea that maybe you will be a winner this time. For most of us, it does not matter how poor people around the world are. We are ok, we think we have a good job, we are secure, we are not losers and losing our small amount of wealth can't happen to us. So we decide not to think about the big picture around the world. The truth is painful, and the solution is SO easy, but we do not want to listen to a solution.
The simple solution is to stop playing Monopoly! Stop playing the game! Just stop this nonsense! Just stop it, all of it - the entire concept of playing competitive games with each other, cheering the winner, belonging to these games and endorsing the system of winning and losing. Just stop it!
There is a much better way to enjoy the game of life.
But that is not as easy a task as it seems. Forcing yourself to stop a bad habit is often an almost impossible task because of our nature. In terms of our habits, we are very much like a bottle filled with gas - if we force the gas out, what is left is a vacuum. In a gassy environment, the bottle will quickly "suck" back the surrounding gas in, or, to be precise, because gasses always fill all the surrounding space, they will push their way back into the bottle. Therefore, in order to replace bad gas with good gas, you have to fill the bottle with good gas of the same pressure.
What I am trying to say is:
"Let's build a new kind of game, a game where everyone will win."
Stay tuned! Later, we will talk about how to build this new game and the important pieces in it.
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