unlearning_ incomplete musings on the game of life and the illusions that keep us playing -...

8/19/2019 Unlearning_ Incomplete Musings on the Game of Life and the Illusions That Keep Us Playing - Alejandro R. Jadad

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Unlearning

© 2008 by Alejandro R. Jadad. All rights reserved.

For the cartoon:

In the Bleachers

© 2001 Steve Moore. Reprinted with permission of Universal PressSyndicate. All rights reserved.

The book can be purchased or downloaded for free at:http://www.lulu.com/content/4132419

No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any mannerwhatsoever without the prior written permission of the author or hisdescendants, except in the case of brief quotations embodied inreviews, and scholarly work by non-profit organizations.

Set in Bookman Old Style


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About the Author

Alejandro (Alex) R. Jadad is a physician, publicadvocate, researcher and educator. His mission is toimprove health and well being for all, through the innovativeuse of information and communication technologies. He hasbeen described as “a human bridge”, as he enjoysconnecting people and organizations, across traditionalboundaries, many years before they are meant to cometogether.

His auto-obituary is the final chapter of this book.

Acknowledgments

Many patients whom Alex met at the end of their livesinspired this book. He cannot thank them enough forreminding him, every time, that life is a game, full of powerfulillusions and distractions, that must be enjoyed as much aspossible, with no regrets.

The book improved substantially as a result of generousand wise comments from Martha Garcia, Alia and Tamen

Jadad-Garcia, Murray and Eleanor Enkin, Beatriz Bechara deBorge, Amol Deshpande, Josephine Fagan, Laura O’Grady,Enrique Carlos Angulo, Julio Lorca and Jose FranciscoGarcia. Svjetlana Kovacevic contributed to the cover design. The contents and structure of this version are Alex’s fullresponsibility.

Alex is also grateful to the owners and staff at HeliotoposHotel, Santorini, Greece, where the first draft of the book was

produced, in the summer of 2007.


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Contents

Reaching across ............................................................11

Living games .................................................................31

Controlling illusions ......................................................43

Fighting selves ..............................................................59

Twisting revolutions ......................................................83

Missing opportunities..................................................105

Transcending examples ...............................................123

Crossing over ..............................................................137

Killing regrets..............................................................161

Fading presence (an auto-obituary) .............................173

Index


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To those who have been forgotten forever


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Reaching across

Let’s cross our boundaries,

consciously,

just for a few minutes…

Or perhaps much longer…


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But…

Whose voice is it?


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Is it your voice?


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Is it the voice of Alex Jadad,

the person who wrote the words?

This might be possible,

if you knew Alex,

or heard his voice before…


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But how could it be Alex’s voice,

if he is not reading these words out loud

AT you,

right here,

and right now?


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Or should I have written:

“But how could it be my voice,

if I am not reading these words out loud

AT you,

right here,

and right now?”


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Or…

is it possible that you might be hearing a completely new

voice,

one that is being created,

somehow,

somewhere inside you,

or between us,

somehow,

as you read

what I have written?


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Could it be possible for us,

somehow,

to be creating something new that,

somehow,

transcends our personal boundaries?


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Aren’t we transcending our means of communication,

from the text I used to write the words,

to the sounds you hear,

somehow,

inside of you,

while you read them?


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Aren’t we transcending space,

from the place where I wrote these words,

my “here”,

to wherever you might be,

your “here”,

reading them?


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Aren’t we transcending time,

going across,

somehow,

from the moment when these words were written,

my “now”,

to this very moment,

your “now”,

when you are reading them?


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Who are we right now?


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What are the words you are reading:

Are they text now?

Sound?

Both?

Neither?


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Where are we now?

When is now?

What is now?


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Is it possible for us to have created a new being,

a new consciousness,

a “we”,

with a shared voice that is being expressed,

somehow,

at a new kind of time

and at a new type of place,

created by my writing

and made alive,

fresh,

new,

somehow,

by your reading?


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Would it be possible for us,

somehow,

to stay together,

in communion,

even after you finish reading these words,

here, now,

joined in a new process,

that enables us

to transcend

space,

time,

and

our selves?


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Perhaps,

some where,

some time,

we have been,

are,

and will be,

one…


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Somehow…


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Living games

“Life is the game that must be played:

This truth at least, good friend, we know;So live and laugh, nor be dismayed

As one by one the phantoms go.”

Edwin Arlington Robinson1

In the year 1251, perhaps as part of his 30th birthdaycelebrations, Prince Alfonso of Castile commissioned amanuscript entitled The Book of Games . Little he knew at thetime that his father would die a few months later and that hewould become Alfonso X, “the most remarkable king in the

history of the West”2

.It was also impossible for him to know that the book

would take three more decades to be completed, and that hewould only have a few months to enjoy it before his own deathin 1284, in Seville, rejected by his former allies and forcedinto exile by his own son.

Alfonso was also known as “El Sabio” (“The Wise” or “TheLearned”). He was the archetype of the Renaissance Man,

three centuries ahead of his time. He was a politician, alawmaker, a poet, a philosopher and a scientist. His courtwas a haven for artists, scientists, and musicians, where


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Jews, Muslims, and Christians lived in harmony. He was thefirst king who initiated the use of the Castilian language (nowknown as Spanish), instead of Latin, in courts, churches, andin books and official documents.

As a result, The Book of Games is one of the masterpiecesof European literature written in a colloquial language. Itincludes 150 pages with many illustrations, is 40 cm highand 28 cm wide and bound in sheepskin. The only known

original is held in the library of the Monastery of San Lorenzode El Escorial, near Madrid. This is a majestic but austerebuilding created by one of Alfonso’s successors, Philip II, whowas the first official King of Spain and who is frequentlydescribed as The Renaissance Prince.

Games as an enactment of life

What I find most fascinating about The Book of Games isthe way in which Alfonso acknowledges, perhaps for the firsttime in recorded history, the close relationship betweenhuman life and games. The King himself writes,

“Because God wanted that man have every manner ofhappiness, in himself naturally, so that he could suffer the

cares and troubles when they came to them, therefore mensought out many ways that they could have this happinesscompletely. Wherefore they found and made many types of

play and pieces with which to delight themselves” 3

At the beginning of the book, there is a story of an Indianking who loved to be surrounded by wise people. One day, heasked three of his favorite wise men their opinion about whatwas most valuable in life, intelligence or luck2.

One of the wise men said that it was intelligence, becauseit allows people to control their environment and to do thingsin an orderly fashion. Even if they make mistakes, they

should not be blamed because they chose what suited themat the time.


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The second wise man disagreed and said that luck wasworth more than intelligence, because if a person’s fate is tolose or win, it could not be avoided, no matter how muchbrains he or she might have.

The third one said that the most valuable option would bethe ability to draw from intelligence and luck, and he calledthis Prudence . People with true prudence would know thatluck plays a key role in life, and that many things cannot be

controlled, but would use their brains to turn any situation,regardless of how negative, to their advantage.

After listening to the men, the king asked them to bringexamples illustrating what they believed.

The one who thought that brains were most importantbrought Chess, showing that the most intelligent personwould have enormous power to influence the outcome life andemerge victorious.

The second brought dice showing that brains matterednothing without luck because it is largely through luck thatpeople would succeed or fail.

The third, who said that it was best to draw from both,brought a board game with dice to move its pieces. He thenshowed that those who know how to play them well, eventhough luck might be against them, will be able to playcleverly enough to avoid or minimize any harm that may come

to them.Although it could be argued that the third wise man had

the most compelling argument, the king chose intelligence asbeing more important in life than luck.

He declared Chess as the noblest and most honored of thegames.

He was not alone.

For at least two and a half millennia, Chess nurtured the

belief that humans have on the power of their intelligence,and on their ability to control the world around them and toinfluence their future.


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The earliest version of the game may have existed inBabylonia, as far back as the year 4,000 BC4.

The word Chess and the equivalent terms in Spanish,Portuguese, Arabic, Farsi, Turkish, Greek are all derived fromthe Sanskrit chaturanga , which means ‘quadripartite’ (dividedinto four parts), most likely referring to the four traditionaldivisions of a platoon in the Indian army of Vedic times:infantry (five soldiers on foot), cavalry (three soldiers on

horseback), one elephant and one chariot5. The board wasknown as the Ashtapada (eight-square) and seems to havebeen adopted from an older race game related to Parcheesi. The divisions of Chess are represented in the Europeanversion of the board by the pawn, the knight, the bishop andthe rook. As elephants were not known in Europe for a longtime, the rook (the protection of the back of an elephant)became a tower, while its rider became the bishop.

The game, in its modern form, enacts the battle forterritorial domination between two kingdoms or empires. TheKing or Emperor acts as a wise ruler, who is too weak to fightor to ensure his own safety, staying in his castle (that is whycastling was introduced in the 16th century), while thegenerals fight the battles. The players, like generals in a real-life confrontation, use their pieces to control their enemy’sterritory and win the game by capturing the opposing king.

Life as a game

But Chess is not a mere pastime. Because of the richnesswith which it can enact complex battle conditions, it has beena staple of the classical education of military, religious,economic and political leaders. Throughout history, Chesshas been viewed as a simulator to improve the decision-making capacity of future rulers, improving their foresight,teaching them about the dangers associated with hastydecisions, and ultimately, strengthening their ability tocontrol the outcome of a conflict. It is believed that in the 7th century, when Al Rashid, the first Caliph of Baghdad to play


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Chess, was asked, “What is Chess?” he simply replied, “Whatis life?”6.

The connection between Chess and life may be even older.In fact, the first written description of the game appeared inIndia in 500 BC, as part of the Brahmajala Sutta , the first of34 suttas in the Long Discourses of Buddha 7 .

The word ‘sutta’ literally means a rope or thread thatholds things together. In practice, it refers to aphorisms orrules that are included in a life manual8. The name of thesutta that describes Chess for the first time underscores therelevance of this game in our lives, as it derives from the word'Brahma' meaning The Perfect Wisdom , and 'Jala' meaning theNet-which-embraces-all-views .

The best piece of text I have ever seen in which Chess iscompared with life, however, was a short essay written byBenjamin Franklin in 1779. My grandfather showed it to me

when I was 12, the same day when he taught me the basicrules of the game. It was entitled The morals of Chess , whichthe polymath statesman wrote when he was AmericanAmbassador to France, completely unaware that almostexactly a decade later the revolutionary spirit that hadinspired the American Revolution would reverberate acrossthe Atlantic and lead to the Storming of Bastille, dealing amortal blow to the French Empire.

I still remember my maternal grandfather quoting

Franklin’s words:

“For Life is a kind of Chess, in which we have often pointsto gain, and competitors or adversaries to contend with, and in

which there is a vast variety of good and ill events, that are, insome degree, the effects of prudence or the want of it.” 9

Many years later, when I was in my late teens and alreadya medical student, my grandfather’s image and Franklin’swords came to me suddenly, while I was playing as the

captain and goalkeeper of my university indoor soccer team. Icould see the entire field from under the goalposts and wasshouting instructions to my teammates. I suddenly felt like


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the King on a Chessboard, being the target of the opposingteam, unable to move from my box and hoping that myteammates would follow my commands. I also realized that, atthe same time, in my life outside the pitch, I was adispensable pawn at the hospital where I was training as anintern, with little control over my future. It was my superiors,not me, who would decide where and when I would work, andwhat role I would play in the war against diseases. I replayed

the words from Franklin’s essay and realized that I couldeasily replace the word Chess for game , making hisstatements even more prescient:

“Life is a kind of game, in which we have points to gain,

and competitors or adversaries to contend with, in which thereis a variety of good and ill events, that are, in some degree, theeffects of prudence or the want of it”.

At that moment, feeling like a piece on a board, I startedto suspect that not just Chess, but all games in general, aremuch more than enactments of life. They may be signaling tous, constantly, that life itself is a game .

This thought set me on a path that proved to be muchmore challenging and exciting than I could have everanticipated.

Perhaps, I wondered, by looking at the nature andstructure of games, I could gain valuable insights about myown life and how to live it.

What is a game, anyway?

Etymologically, the word game appears to derive from theterm gamen , which in Old English (English that was usedfrom 450 to circa 1100 CE) meant "joy, fun, amusement"10. InOld Frisian (a language similar to English, but mainly spokenon the North Sea coast of modern Netherlands and Germany

before 1500), the word game seems to have been usedmeaning "joy, glee". In Gothic, a language extinct since the


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16th century, the term gaman was used to mean"participation, communion, people together."

All these words, however, just hint at what a game is, butare insufficient to define it.

In 1953, Ludwig Wittgenstein, perhaps the mostimportant philosopher of the 20th century11, challenged allexisting efforts to define the term game , suggesting that theywere futile. In a book he entitled Philosophical Investigations 12 ,he invited us to think about different games and answer thequestion, “what is common to them all?” He then showed thatit would be impossible to find what Aristotle called “Theessence”13, in this case a common set of core characteristicsthat would make a game what it is.

For instance, it would be tempting to say that all gamesare amusing, until we look at professional Chess or footballplayers at a championship game. It would also be easy to

think that all games involve winning and losing, orcompetition, until one looks at a child throwing a ball againsta wall and catching it.

Cleverly, Wittgenstein showed us how we could look atany component of any definition that we might feel would becommon to all games and put them to the test, and soonerrather than later find how the expected similarities wouldcrop up and disappear. He showed us that there are really noessential elements shared by board games, card games, ball

games or spinning the bottle.

And yet, we know that there are similarities across games.

Once he took us to that point, Wittgenstein invited us tostop trying to capture a single definition of the word game.

He compelled us to focus instead on the similarities thatwe know exist among what we know are games.

To succeed, we must look at the complex array of

overlapping “resemblances” and attempt to characterize themin a way that is analogous to what happens across membersof the same family.


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We must look at those features that, just like build, eyecolor and shape or temperament, are not the same from oneperson to the next, but somehow make us feel that we arefaced with members of the same family.

Just as is the case with love, beauty, fear, or even achair14, rather than seeking a definition, which would leaveus dissatisfied, we should feel comfortable with our tacitknowledge 15 . We must accept we know more than we can tell.

Therefore, it is okay to feel that we all understand what wemean when we talk about playing a game.

We do not need to refer to a standard, universallyaccepted definition.

Resemblances among members of the gamefamily

As Wittgenstein pointed out, when we refer to themembers of a human family we look at height, eye and skincolor, gait, and even temperament, even though we know thatthey are not identical from one person to another.

How about games? What should we seek across membersof their family?

People who study games formally provide some valuableinsights about the resemblances that “can be felt” across all

members of this family, particularly while they make futileattempts to produce a definition. Two of them deserve specialattention, as they are at the core of classical books about therole that games play in human life.

In Homo Ludens 16 (“Man the Player”), Johan Huizinga, aDutch philosopher, defined game play as “a voluntary activityor occupation executed within certain fixed limits of time andplace, according to rules freely accepted but absolutely

binding, having its aim in itself and accompanied by a feelingof tension, joy and the consciousness that it is ‘different’ from‘ordinary life’”. Huizinga also highlighted the importance of


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uncertain outcomes and having something at stake as keyelements of games.

The French sociologist Roger Caillois, in his book Les jeuxet les hommes 17 (Games and Men), defined a game usingsimilar terms, highlighting that it should be an activity that isenjoyable, fictitious, separate (is circumscribed in time andplace), governed by rules, uncertain (the outcome isunforeseeable), and non-productive.

From the etymology of the word game, from mostdefinitions, and even from Wittgenstein’s arguments, it couldbe concluded that the resemblances among members of thegame family, regardless of whether they require just a ball orneed a global network of interconnected computers, relate toactivities that:

• Follow rules

• Have something of perceived value at stake

•

Involve interactivity

• Require innate and acquired skills to pursue specificgoals

• Occur within a limited amount of time and space

• Have clear goals but uncertain outcomes, and

• Have different levels of difficulty that give the playersincreasing feelings of tension, achievement and joy

Looking at these resemblances, once again, the parallelbetween games and human life is uncanny.

With the rapid evolution of information andcommunication technologies, new and more powerful gamesare emerging every year.

There is now a plethora of courses on computer gamedesign, an increasing number of publications that are givingshape to an area known as Ludology (the study of games) and

a rapidly growing community of game designers. Together,they are generating new insights into the structure of gamesand the role that they play in our lives as humans.


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The book that heralded this new era was The Art of GameDesign by Chris Crawford18. It was published in 1983, almostexactly 700 years after the completion of Alfonso X’s The Bookof Games , which it complements in an almost magical way.

The Book of Games provided a concrete retrospectivedescription of games up to the 13th century. It also madeexplicit, perhaps for the first time in history, the importantrole of luck and intelligence within the context of our lives

and the games we play.The Art of Game Design , on the other hand, gave us a good

starting point to understand the ‘mechanics’ that have drivenplayers of games since time immemorial, hoping to guidedesigners now armed with powerful electronic tools, in theirrelentless efforts to invent the future of games. Thesemechanics, which are becoming more apparent as computergames approach the realism of life, include19, 20:

•

Goals and rewards : these usually determine when thegame is won or lost. They could involve eliminatingother players, reaching a target, or collecting a certaintype of token

• Rules : the laws or guidelines that determine the wayin which the game progresses

• Resources : the assets that players get to manage whiletrying to succeed

•

Chance : outcomes over which the player has nocontrol. These are usually achieved by throwing dice,spinning a wheel or drawing cards

• Strategy : the ability of the player to engage inpurposeful activities through which to increase thechances of success

• Territory : this involves as much control over the gamespace as possible, often rewarding the player that

denies opponents to do the same These mechanics also have a very close resemblance to

what encourages us to ‘keep going’ through our lives.


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The Art of Game Design , however, delivered a powerfulmessage that had not been captured by Wittgenstein,Huizinga, Caillois, or anyone else up to that point or perhapssince. In it, Crawford stated, chillingly, that for a game to betruly successful, it should give the players the illusion ofcontrol, feeding in them the belief that anyone could win.

But the game must never be truly winnable, or it will loseits appeal.

This last statement shocked me, and left me with twoquestions that still haunt me:

Is life just an un-winnable game?

Are we just delusional players?

References

1. Robinson, EA. Ballad by the fire[http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/ballad-by-the-fire/]

2. Emperor of Culture: Alfonso X the Learned of Castile andHis Thirteenth-Century Renaissance edited by Robert I.Burns, S.J.[http://libro.uca.edu/alfonso10/emperor.htm]

3. The Book of Games. Translation from Spanish by SonjaMusser Golladay[http://www.u.arizona.edu/~smusser/ljtranslation.html]

4. History Channel. Timeline of toys and games[http://www.history.com/exhibits/toys/chess.html]

5. Parlett D. The Oxford History of Board Games. OxfordUniversity Press, 1999.

6. Levy D, Reuben S. The Chess Scene. Faber & Faber,1974.

7. Brahmajala Sutta - The Supreme Net: What the TeachingIs Not


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[http://www.buddhistinformation.com/ida_b_wells_memorial_sutra_library/brahmajala_sutta.htm]

8. Sutta – Wikipedia [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sutta]

9. Franklin B. The morales of Chess. 1779.[http://www.angelfire.com/games/SBChess/franklin.html]

10. Online Etymology Dictionary

[http://www.etymonline.com/index.php?search=game&searchmode=none]

11. Monk R. Ludwig Wittgenstein: The Duty of Genius.Penguin, 1991.

12. Wittgenstein L. Philosophical Investigations. 1953.

13. Cohen SM. Aristotle’s metaphysics. StanfordEncyclopedia of Philosophy, 2003[http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/aristotle-

metaphysics/#SubEss]14. Glouberman S. Philosophical ideas: How we use the word

“chair”. Health and Everything[http://www.healthandeverything.org]

15. Polanyi M. Tacit dimension. Peter Smith Publisher Inc,1983.

16. Huizinga J. Homo Ludens. Beacon Press, 1971[published originally in Dutch in 1938]

17. Caillois R. Les jeux et les hommes. Gallimard, 1957.

18. Crawford C. The Art of Game Design[http://www.vancouver.wsu.edu/fac/peabody/game-book/Coverpage.html]

19. Thompson J, Berbank-Green B, Cusworth N. Gamedesign – Principles, practice, and techniques – theultimate guide for the aspiring game designer. Wiley &Sons Inc., 2007.

20. Game mechanic – Wikipedia[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Game_mechanic]


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Controlling illusions

“I myself am made entirely of flaws, stitched together

with good intentions”

Augusten Burroughs1

Since the early part of the 18th century, Hispanic tradersstruggled to find an overland path to take mules loaded withwoolen goods from Santa Fe to Los Angeles each fall, andreturn each spring with Chinese goods and horses formarkets in Missouri. Most settlers traveling between these

two points knew that attempting to go straight along this1,200-mile route was so dangerous that it was known as TheJourney of Death (La Jornada de la Muerte, in Spanish),because it required crossing a long patch of desert that hadclaimed the lives of many explorers for over a century.

On November 7, 1829, a Mexican merchant, AntonioArmijo assembled a group of 60 men and left the town ofAbiquiú, north of Santa Fe, determined to find a safe routeacross the desert that would cut weeks of travel, increase the

profits of each trip and have a lower death toll2.


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Armijo and his men followed the usual path to California,along the edge of the desert, attempting to deviate as often aspossible from their path to find a new trail. By Christmas day,the group set up camp near the northwest corner of what waslater known as Arizona, and sent out scouts to find water.One of these scouts was a teenaged boy named RafaelRivera3.

The scouts were instructed to explore a patch of desert

that could provide future camp sites, while the rest of theparty could continue their journey into Nevada down theVirgin River. The plan was to re-group at the Colorado River junction.

Every scout made it back as planned, except Rivera, whohad decided to wander alone, following a hunch.

After several days alone in the wilderness, Rivera decidedto camp on top of a mesa that overlooked a valley. From the

mesa, to his surprise, he could see many artisan springs andextensive green in the middle of the desert. Two weeks after he had separated from the group, Rivera

joined Armijo’s party and led them back to the valley, whichthey named “the meadows” using the two equivalent Spanishwords: Las Vegas .

It took Armijo and his team a total of 86 days to reach LosAngeles, but only 40 to return, thanks to this oasis.

Nobody could have predicted that twenty years later, thenew path would serve as safe passage for a much largernumber of punters driven by the California Gold Rush; thatthe advent of the train would make the path obsolete in lessthan 5 decades; and that the oasis itself would become amagnet for gamblers from all over the world.

During the following century, Las Vegas grew to become apurpose-built playground, where the similarities betweengames and life can be experienced in full.


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Gambling power

The City of Las Vegas was founded on May 15, 1905. Bythe time of its centennial anniversary, it had already claimedthe title of the largest city in the US born in the 20th century4 and the top gambling destination in the world, receiving over30 million visitors a year.

Las Vegas casinos offer every type of betting game

imaginable, from those that rely mostly on luck such as slotmachines, video lottery terminals, craps, Keno and roulette,to games that involve a combination of luck and strategy,such as blackjack, poker, baccarat, and sports and animalraces. To top it all, the city promises to fulfill every earthlypleasure that could be purchased, from luxury goods,through lavish shows to sex.

In 2006, the first year of its second century, Las Vegasgenerated US$6.7 billion in revenues. This amount was larger

than the size of the gross domestic product of 60 individualcountries that same year5 and was equivalent to almost onethird of the total amount produced by the top 10 casinos inthe US, whose combined annual revenue exceeded $22.8billion6.

But the second centennial for Las Vegas also arrived withsome concerning signs. Perhaps as a reflection of the leadingposition of China in world economics at the time, Macau

overtook it as the top gambling capital of the world in 2006,with annual revenue of $6.95 billion (a 22% increase from2005), generated by fewer visitors (22 million)7. Just one yearlater, Macau also claimed to be the host city for the largestcasino in the world, relegating Las Vegas once again to anunfamiliar second place8.

The new century also presented Las Vegas with a novelcontender: online casinos. In 2005, it was estimated thatthere were over 2,000 gambling sites on the Internet, visited

by 23 million people worldwide, and offering every gameavailable in their bricks-and-mortar counterparts, plus otherssuch as lotteries and bingo, among many more. That same


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year, this modality of gambling generated almost $11 billionin revenues, overtaking all traditional casinos9, 10.

All of this leaves one wondering: why do people bet?

What could be learned from the behaviour of gamblers incasinos that could be valuable in terms of gaining a betterunderstanding of human nature?

The gambling formula

The formula is simple.

There are three variables that must be taken into accountby anyone who gambles, regardless of the game:

• the stake or wager,

• the predictability and probabilities of the outcomes,and

• the rewards (or payout odds) and costs associated witheach outcome.

The wager is usually determined by the funds available tothe player and by any limit set by the casinos or bookmakers.As a norm, gamblers should not bet more than they couldafford to lose, but it is not rare to see players who are willingto incur debts to keep playing once they have run out offunds.

The predictability of the outcomes depends on the game.In games of chance such as slot machines, craps, roulette,lotteries or Keno, the results are impossible to anticipatebecause they are generated randomly. In these cases, theexact probability of each of the outcomes is known, but noamount of skill or knowledge (except when the machineryinvolved is faulty) can give an advantage to anyone.

For games that involve strategy and chance, such as

poker or blackjack, the level of knowledge of the player couldprove advantageous.


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Some even consider a third category, called games ofsubjective probability , which apply to situations in which theevents are not completely random but can still occurunpredictably, such as in sports or animal races.

The payout odds are usually arranged to favor the casino(“the house”) in the long term, even in games that rely purelyon chance, while offering the player the possibility of a largeshort-term reward.

In most cases it is impossible for a player to counteractthe long-term disadvantage in a casino game.

In all games, except in some cases such as blackjack andvideo poker, there is a built-in profit in every bet, whichcomes from the difference between the true odds and the oddsa casino pays players. It is known as the house advantage orhouse edge 11.

In sum, the house advantage is a measure of how much

the house expects to win. It is expressed as a percentage ofthe player's wager. For example, in a wager with a houseadvantage of 5 percent, the player will lose, on average overtime, $5 for every $100 wagered. Because the odds alwaysfavour the casino, the faster, the longer and the more a playerwagers, the more the person should expect to lose12.

If the house has an advantage, and we know it, why thendo we keep playing?

Mirroring lives

Granted, casinos make relentless, systematic andcalculating efforts to boost our cognitive biases13 and ourmagical thinking (present long before we set foot inside).

Theoretically, they are finely tuned traps, set to catch us,their perfect prey.

I used the word ‘theoretically’ on purpose.


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Most of us know that casinos are after our money andthat they would do anything within legal bounds to get asmuch as possible of it.

Therefore, we are not their blind victims; far from it.

We are their partners in a symbiotic relationship in whichthey provide entertainment and we are expected to pay a pricefor admission14.

Unlike a movie or a show, there is no fixed cost, so it is upto us (we are led to believe, willingly) how little or how muchwe spend.

As part of the deal, we have a shot at being paid for theentertainment, knowing that in reality most of us will end uppaying more than we intended at the outset, and definitelyenough to cover the cost incurred by the casino to provide thegaming tables, dealers and machines, and to make ahandsome profit.

The ideal situation, which happens more often than not,is that casinos get what we can afford to lose, while makingus think that we are having fun in the process.

Casinos, however, might play a much more important andfar-reaching function, albeit perhaps the most overlooked.

For years, psychologists have viewed them as invaluableliving laboratories where they could gain a betterunderstanding of how we make decisions while we play the

game of life, in what we call ‘the real world’.

The Gambler’s traps

Casinos are designed to produce effects that evoke thoseachieved by medieval cathedrals.

In the Middle Ages, people, who lived for the most part insqualor, would come into huge buildings that gave them aglimpse of heaven.


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Even before entering, the ornate and spectacular exteriorswould help them build their expectations for what wasawaiting for them inside.

Once inside, it was paradise on earth. Every one of theirsenses would be stimulated; their noses would be filled withincense, their eyes with light and beautiful images. Musicwould caress their ears in large rooms with controlledtemperature. At the end, their communion with the

supernatural would be crowned with food that wouldcomplete a transitory connection with the Creator.

Steve Wynn, the mogul who spurred the resort-buildingcraze in Las Vegas in the 20th century understood the parallelwell, capturing the hubris of his kind when he said, “LasVegas is sort of like how God would do it if he had money.”15 And a fantasy world they have created.

In the last decade of the 20th century, casinos in Las

Vegas became massive buildings that used every possiblearchitectural and technological trick to lure punters,promising wonders inside. With the highest concentration ofartificial light on the planet, the exterior of this World-on-a-Strip could transport a visitor to Ancient Egypt; to Venice,Paris or New York in their golden ages; or to a pirate island inthe Caribbean. And best of all, anyone would think that theycould choose what to experience, and when.

Once inside, in huge rooms lavishly decorated, a

supplicant could find exquisite and affordable food andmyriad options to join in a communal song to the tune of slotmachines; a prayer to our modern god, wealth, for thefulfillment of all of our desires, in this world, not the next.

Anyone would be welcome, from the poor seekingredemption, to the rich looking for reaffirmation of theimportance of a life spent pursuing money. People would feelin control of their destiny.

All our fantasies of power over the world are reinforcedinside a casino.


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These temples have been built to exploit every one of ourcognitive weaknesses, to make us spend as much as possible,as quickly as possible.

We are placed in rooms with no clocks or windows, so wecan forget about time and concentrate on playing. Our moneyis converted into chips, and then we are given free drinks,which are known to insiders as “chip removers”, with dealersmaking sure that it happens fast. In the slot machines, our

money becomes digital credits, with which we lose our senseof their value.

After this, we do not need to do much else. We are readyto do the rest by ourselves, falling into many of our own traps.

One of the most fascinating leads us to see nonexistentrelationships among independent events.

It is known as The Gambler’s Fallacy .

In its typical form, we tend to believe that a future randomevent can be influenced by what has happened in the past16.

Let’s imagine a person standing by a roulette table inwhich the ball has landed on red 9 times in a row, trying todecide how to bet on the imminent tenth spin of the wheel. Inthis case, one might first think that the wheel wasmechanically unbalanced, favoring red. Assuming that this isnot the case, would the player be more likely to bet on red oron black?

The way in which our brains are wired usually compels usto think of the probabilities associated with getting 10 reds ina row. We can get the answer by multiplying the probability ofgetting red each time (this is ! or 50% or 1 in 2) as manytimes as we need it to happen, which in this case is 10. Therefore, we get 1/1024, as it is the result of ! x ! x ! x ! x ! x ! x ! x ! x ! x !.

With this in mind, the player would consider that the

probability of the ball landing again on red is so low that itwould seem that betting against it would be the best option.


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In other words, the player would lump all of the previous 9events into a single related sequence of occurrences.

The fact, however, is that the tenth spin would becompletely independent from the previous 9, having the sameprobability for the ball to land on each color after the spin. Inother words, it does not matter if the player chooses red orblack.

We are also vulnerable to a variation on this theme, calledthe Inverse Gambler’s Fallacy 17. It occurs when we perceive arandom event as unusual and think that its likelihood ofhappening would increase or decrease in time. Let’s imagine,for instance, that our player notices that the ball at the sameroulette table has not landed on Black-8 for a while anddecided to bet on it because “it’s bound to happen”.

But this is just the beginning. Our ability to resist theidea of chance seems inexhaustible.

Experimental work in casinos has identified a wide varietyof irrational or superstitious behaviours with which gamblersseek to influence the occurrence of random events18. Crapplayers, for instance, would throw the dice harder for highnumbers and softer for low numbers. They would talk to thedice asking for a number, kiss them, blow them, bang themon the table or rub them on their foreheads before a throw19.

Gamblers also tend to believe that effort (“working at it”)

and concentration would increase their chances of getting theresults they want, and that luck would rub off fromsuccessful gamblers20. Many crap players, on the other hand,would never mention the number seven when someone isrolling the dice, or stay alone at a table. Others would carrytalismans or amulets (e.g., gems, simple stones, coins, ringsor statues) to increase their chances of success.

The reasons why we engage in these irrational andsuperstitious behaviours have been the subject of debate for

years, and remain poorly understood.


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It seems that we are very liable to experience a verypowerful illusion of control, in casinos and in every otheraspect of our lives.

We appear to be wired to overestimate our chances ofsuccess.

This illusion is most powerful when we play with familiarobjects, when we perceive that we are competing with others,when we have had a string of successes, when we participateactively in key aspects of the game (e.g., rolling the dice) andwhen we are given choices. Together, these factors makepowerful bait.

Casinos, just like any other successful institution insociety, offer us familiar objects and plenty of opportunities toplay. They ensure that we are not alone, that we get smallvictories, that we believe that we are in control of our actions,that we can choose what to eat, where to sit, where to walk,

where and how much to bet and, more importantly, when tostop21.

Just like in other aspects of our lives, our sense of controlover the future is just an illusion.

Nevertheless, we refuse to accept it.

Wanting oracles

The folly of controlling the uncontrollable has also found afertile ground in the realm of the supernatural. Throughouthistory, humans have believed in their ability to connect withnon-material beings that could allow them to peer into thefuture.

Oracles – represented by individuals, objects or placesthat could predict the future – have been documented in allancient civilizations. From the earliest known example, at the

Temple of Wadjet in Egypt; through the most famous inDelphi, Greece; to a late 20th century financial augur inOmaha, United States, humans have relied on prophets to


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relieve the anxiety caused by not knowing what is going tohappen.

Humans have also developed sophisticated methods andtools to anticipate future events. Two of the clearestsuccessful examples have been the use of calculus by IsaacNewton to predict the position of planets in the 17th centuryand the development of the Periodic Table by DmitriMendeleyeev in the 19th as an effective way to foretell the

existence of unknown chemical elements.Pierre Simon Laplace beautifully captured the confidence

of humans in their analytical abilities to prognosticate, whenhe stated in 1814,

“An intellect which at any given moment knew all of the forces that animate nature and the mutual positions of the

beings that compose it, if this intellect were vast enough tosubmit the data to analysis, could condense into a single

formula the movement of the greatest bodies of the universeand that of the lightest atom; for such an intellect nothing couldbe uncertain and the future just like the past would be presentbefore its eyes.” 22

Achieving the power of such intellect, also known asLaplace’s Demon, has attracted exorbitant amounts of fundsand some of the brightest human minds in the world. Thispursuit has yielded increasingly powerful computertechnology that promises to bring this goal within reach.

In the middle of the 20th century, however, a newphenomenon that could make any amount of computingpower irrelevant was discovered. This phenomenon, known ascomplexity , seems to govern the behaviour of most of theaspects of life that have motivated humans to predict thefuture since time immemorial, such as their health, theweather and the economy.

Complex systems do not follow a linear pattern. They

resemble “highly decentralized democracies” 23 that obey somebasic rules but evolve through a large number of localchoices. The only way to predict their behaviour is by letting


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them evolve. Computers or advanced mathematical modelswill be unable to determine whether a child will developdiabetes as an adult, or the value of a stock next year, or evenif it will rain in a particular day next month.

The only way to find out is to wait and see whathappens23.

Mounting evidence about the computational irreducibilityof these important systems, just as evidence of theunreliability of oracles, may not be powerful enough to deterhumans.

We seem programmed to keep trying to predict theunpredictable.

Feeling lucky

We also have the tendency to feel that there are successesor failures that seem to fall upon us, in a systematic way,driven by mechanisms that are beyond our control24. Theforce behind this feeling is what we call fortune or luck .

Modern moral philosophers have identified at least threekinds of luck25. The ancient Greeks linked them to the Three Fates , which they called the Moirae , the goddesses whomanaged the threads of individual lives26.

The first kind of luck, known as constitutive , refers to whowe are thanks to the parents we had and the genes wereceived from them. This is the kind of luck that leads me tosay, “I am lucky; I can eat anything and I do not gain muchweight”. The Greeks linked this type of luck to Clotho , the firstof the Moirae , and regarded her as the one who selected the Thread of Life and who was in charge of spinning it.

The second kind of luck, circumstantial, relates to thecontext in which one finds oneself at a particular time. It

depends on the sum of factors that converge in the contextwhere the event happens. This is the kind of luck I invokewhen I say, “I am lucky my ancestors decided to leave


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Lebanon during the First World War, allowing me to be bornin South America!” This kind of luck was personified byLachesis , the second of the Moirae . She was the Drawer ofLots, being responsible for measuring the Thread, evaluatingits length and determining the present27, 28.

The last kind, known as resultant luck , is associated withthe way things turn out to be in our lives. We tend to judge itby balancing the fortunate or unfortunate events that simply

appear to fall upon us. The feeling that we have had “the luckof the draw” in life, for instance, may compel us to believethat our good fortune will continue unabated, forever. Even ifwe think that we have been unlucky, at a critical junction weoften feel that we will soon “turn the corner”. In either case,we tend to believe that we will be “lucky” and able to avoidAtropos , the third of the Moirae , the one in charge of cuttingthe Thread.

Armed with our best wishes, naively over-confident, justlike stern gamblers in a casino, we live our lives with thedelusional conviction that we can cheat death29.

But Atropos ’s actions are inevitable.

She always has a house advantage.

We cannot control the final outcome of the game of life.

We all, one day, must die.

References

1. Burroughs A. Magical Thinking – True Stories. St.Martin’s Press. 2004

2. Bowen J. Settlers followed the 'Spanish Trail' to Solano[http://63.192.157.117/history/history091805.html]

3. The H2O University. Rafael Rivera[http://www.h2ouniversity.org/html/6-12_history_rivera.html]


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4. City of Las Vegas. History[http://www.lasvegasnevada.gov/FactsStatistics/histor y.htm]

5. List of countries by GDP – Wikipedia[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_GDP_(nominal)]

6. American Gaming Association. Industry information -fact sheets: statistics[http://www.americangaming.org/Industry/factsheets/statistics_detail.cfv?id=4

7. Cheung C. Macau Overtakes Las Vegas Strip in GamingRevenue (Update6)[http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601087&sid=aTWqxxBfz_B8&refer=home]

8. The Venetian Macau Resort Hotel[www.venetianmacau.com]

9. Internet gambling[http://www.americangaming.org/Industry/factsheets/issues_detail.cfv?id=17]

10. Online casinos – Beginner’s table[http://www.vegascasinogameslive.com/beginners_table.html]

11. Centre for Addiction and Mental Health. Gambling andthe House Advantage - Games, Expected Return, House

Edge and Payback Percentage - How the House EdgeWorks, Playing Multiple Hands, Tickets or Bets[http://www.problemgambling.ca]

12. American Gaming Association. Responsible gaming –Resources: understanding the odds[http://www.americangaming.org/programs/responsiblegaming/guide_to_odds.cfm]

13. Tversky A, Kahneman D. Judgment under uncertainty:

Heuristics and Bases. Science 1974; 185: 1124-31.14. Burton B. Don’t lose control. Your guide to casino

gambling


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[http://casinogambling.about.com/od/moneymanagement/a/control.htm]

15. Stein J. Steve Wynn. Time magazine, April 30, 2006[http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1187488,00.html]

16. Bluejay M. Exposing the Gambler’s Fallacy[http://vegasclick.com/gambling/fallacy.html]

17. Hacking I. The Inverse Gambler's Fallacy: The Argumentfrom Design. The Anthropic Principle Applied to WheelerUniverses. Mind, New Series, Vol. 96, No. 383 (Jul.,1987), pp. 331-340

18. Langer, E. J. (1975). The Illusion of Control. Journal ofPersonality and Social Psychology 32(2), 311-328.

19. Davis D, Sundahl I, Lesbo M. Illusory Personal Controlas a Determinant of Bet Size and Type in Casino CrapsGames. Journal of Applied Social Psychology 2000; 30:1224-42.

20. Henslin JM. Craps and magic. American Journal ofSociology 1967; 73:316-330.

21. Gambler’s conceit – Wikipedia[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gambler's_conceit]

22. Laplace PS. Essai philosophique sur les probabilites.1814.

23. Orrell D. Apollo’s Arrow: The Science of Prediction andthe Future of Everything. Harper Perennial, 2007.

24. Fredriksen S. Luck, Risk and Blame. Journal ofMedicine and Philosophy 2005; 30: 535 – 553.

25. Nelkin DK. Moral luck. Standford Encyclopedia ofPhilosophy [http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/moral-luck/#1]

26. Hesiod. Theogony (translated by HG Evelyn-

White)[http://www.sacred-texts.com/cla/hesiod/theogony.htm

27. Wilson’s Blogmanac. Folklore of the month of December


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[http://wilsonsalmanac.blogspot.com/2006_12_01_wilsonsalmanac_archive.html]

28. Bar T. Fate and Destiny[http://www.eclectica.org/v11n1/bar.html]

29. Weisstein E. Gambler’s ruin[http://mathworld.wolfram.com/GamblersRuin.html]


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Fighting selves

“So if you think your life is complete confusion

Because you never win the gameJust remember that it's a Grand Illusion

And deep inside we're all the same.

We're all the same...”

Styx, from the Album The Grand Illusion [1977]

“What is the name of the oldest and heaviest livingindividual organism in the world?”

When I read those words in an article on curious pieces oftrivia, I was left in shock, realizing that I did not know theanswer. Then, I started conjuring up images of a huge tree inthe Amazon rainforest or a giant turtle in the GalapagosIslands. But I could not “name” one in particular.

I immediately flipped to the page where the answer waslisted and my shock grew even more when I saw a single

word:

“Pando”.


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This is the nickname given to a colony of a single malequaking aspen tree that has survived in Utah, United States,for at least a million years1. This tree, which is made up of47,000 trunks, each resembling a separate individual, covers106 acres and weighs at least 6 million kilograms2.

The term Pando , which in Latin means “to spread out; toextend”3, is a good reflection of the mechanism that this treehas used to defy death for much longer than any other

organism known to humans. This mechanism, calledsuckering or vegetative reproduction, allows a plant to sendroots horizontally underground. When the outside conditionsare appropriate, these roots produce vertical stems (known asramets ) that pierce the ground and bundle into what appearsto be an entirely separate plant.

Suckering is very common among plants. It is thepreferred process of reproduction for common types of lawngrass and strawberry bushes. Pando , however, has taken it toanother level. Its underground roots can grow for longdistances before sprouting up. When they do, the ramets turninto fully developed trunk trees that can grow as tall as 100feet, with their own branches, bark and leaves. Each of thesetrunks, in turn, can produce its own army of undergroundroots to form still more new shoots that can spread over vastexpanses of land.

As Pando’s reproductive system is in its root, deep into

the ground, it has resisted major changes in climate andground conditions over millennia, including frequent wildfiresthat have proven lethal to its competitors4. As a result, Pandois the single living thing on earth that has come closest tobeing immortal.

At the time when Pando started its death-defying feat, inthe Early Pleistocene, another creature underwent a majortransformation that would change the history of the world. Ahominid that inhabited several regions of what is now known

as Africa, Asia, and Europe developed a large brain thatenabled it to create elaborate stone tools and locking kneesthat allowed it to walk upright. Because of these differences,


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which set it apart from its ancestors, anthropologists haveclassified it as a member of a new species, known as HomoErectus .

Between 400,000 and 250,000 Before Present (also knownas BP, or the time before 1950, when radiocarbon dating wasfirst established)5, the trend in cranial expansion and theelaboration of stone tool technologies developed to such apoint that it became accepted that a group of Homo Erectus

that lived in Africa (and possibly in other continents too)turned into yet another species. In 1758, Linnaeus namedthis creature, optimistically, Homo sapiens (“wise human”)6.

Until about 50,000 BP, human development was slow.

At around that time, however, there seems to haveoccurred what some consider “the big bang of humanconsciousness"7.

Our culture apparently started to change at high speed.

We started to make clothing out of hides, developedsophisticated hunting techniques and produced the first cavepaintings8.

We also started burying our dead, leaving goods in thegraves. Anthropologists believe that this "concern for the deadthat transcends daily life."9, which may have appeared as faras 100,000 years BP, may be a good reflection of anothermajor evolutionary twist that, so far, is uniquely human.

At some point during this period, our brains started toconvert the stimuli it received through the senses intosymbols that could represent the outside world.

We could use these symbols to think about things andplaces, and imagine new situations that did not exist in ‘thereal world’ or in the present10.

As part of this process, one of the main symbols thatemerged was our notion of self. We started to recognize and

refer to ourselves as “I” 11.We could also feel and recognize entities such as love,

hope and regret.


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Perhaps inevitably, a new pattern emerged, which made ahuge difference to the way in which we played the game ofsurvival.

We developed a symbol for our own death.

We became aware of our own mortality.

We became able to think, “‘I’ can die.”

We knew that at some point in our lives we would cease to

exist. This became perhaps the most significant event in the

evolutionary history of our species12, 13.

It has also been the scariest.

It does not matter how hard we try, we cannot shake thefear of our own death off.

Regardless of the level of sophistication of our brains, orthe strength of our bodies, or the power of our inventions, orour material possessions, we have been unable to make ourbodies live forever.

Thus, becoming modern humans brought with it a heftyprice: the horror of feeling profoundly vulnerable, of knowingthat we could die at any time, of realizing that we could notcontrol how or when it will happen14.

Even worse, we are unable to know, with certainty, whatto expect after we die.

We might just be as ephemeral, dispensable andirrelevant as a bug, a worm, or any other animal.

Life might just be a game with no victor or victory.

Suffering might be the norm, not the exception15.

To protect us from these painful and unbearablethoughts, our brains developed a very elegant and effectivegame strategy.

They gave us the illusion of immortality.


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Thanks to the power of our minds, we could make the fearvanish.

We could deny death.

We could also glorify it.

Not I

Denial is a very powerful and effective mechanism ofdefense that we use to reject a fact that is too stressful toaccept.

When we deny a fact, despite overwhelming amounts ofcontradicting evidence, we convince ourselves that it is nottrue.

Freud’s depressive sixth and youngest daughter, Anna,studied denial extensively16.

She found out that we can reject the scary fact altogether.

Alternatively, we can admit that the fact exists, butchallenge its importance.

Or we can admit that the fact exists and that it isimportant, but refuse to accept any responsibility about it.

We experience all three kinds of denial in relation to ourfear of death.

Their combined effect is so powerful that they make italmost impossible for us to think seriously about our owndeath throughout most of our lives17.

Just go ahead and try to think about your own mortality.

Try to think, “I am going to die”

Imagine that you are lying somewhere, dying.

Even better, try to imagine that you have ceased to exist;that you are dead.

Pause…

Do not rush it…


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Try as hard as you can, as often as you can…

You will notice that, after a few seconds, certainly lessthan a minute, something forces you to stop.

A mental barrier suddenly appears (you can really feel it),preventing you from going forward.

Your mind forces you to move on.

To think about something else…

To engage in some other activity; anything…

At the end, there is nothing to fear…

If someone else brings up the topic of death, you or Iwould react similarly.

We could easy acknowledge that we are mortal, that wewill die one day and that our time is limited.

But we do it in a nonchalant way, with no fear.

As if we were talking about someone else.

Somehow, we tend to be left with the feeling that death issomething that happens to others or to fictional characters.

Thus, most of us manage to go through our lives obliviousto how little time we have available, to how fragile we are or tohow quickly we will reach our end.

Martin Heidegger was right, when he said,

“All men are mortal. Not I” 18

Soothing distractions

But the risk of breaking through our denial is still there.

We need extra insurance.

When our lives are not immediately under threat and wehave met our basic subsistence needs, we can afford to look

for distractions that could quell any residual fear of death.


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One of the commonest and most effective distractions is agroup of respectable activities known as building a ‘career’,creating a successful business, pursuing an ideal or fulfillinga duty.

Most of the time, under pressure from socially imposednorms, we do not pause to reflect upon the purpose or valueof such efforts.

We simply keep going.

We focus on the tasks at hand.

We keep trying to reach the next objective.

Once we reach it, we set another one, higher, harder.

We become frantic, thoughtless, obsessed runners on arapidly accelerating treadmill.

Fittingly, the term career derives from the Middle Frenchcarriere , which dates back to the 16th century when it was

used to describe the racecourse and some of the actions of ahorse on a jousting field.

Its modern meaning as ‘the course of a person’s lifethrough a working life’ was introduced for the first time in180319.

While ‘pursuing a career’, we certainly behave as horseson a racecourse. The track, however, is one that becomesharder and harder to master.

We cannot get used to it.

We should not give ourselves time to pause for too long…

We must find comfort on exhaustion, on the never-endingpursuit of a goal.

Ralph Waldo Emerson, the great American essayist andfounder of the Transcendentalist movement20, captured thesoothing value of work clearly when he stated,

“Sufficient to to-day are the duties of to-day. Don't waste lifein doubts and fears; spend yourself on the work before you,well assured that the right performance of this hour's duties will


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be the best preparation for the hours and ages that will followit.” 21

The game is played in full in corporate and academic‘circles’, where we routinely set milestones and have ‘ladders’to climb, and where we create incentives that stimulate us tospend lifetimes proving that we are worthy of them.

Regardless of the nature of the distraction, the calmingeffect of the structured activities at a job is boosted by rulesand routines guided by timetables and schedules, which weare compelled to follow, frequently at the expense of highlevels of psychological stress, until the end of our productivedays. There, at our workplaces, we are kept engaged inthoughtless action through rewards and punishments thatare designed to ensure that we reach, as productively andthoughtlessly as possible, our maximum levels of efficiencyand competence.

Often, not surprisingly, the whole effort is perceived as aduty.

We give ourselves a strong boost whenever we reach ahigher level of the game we call work.

Often, reaching a new level is rewarded through powerfultokens. These could be presented as pieces of paper(‘achievement certificates’), badges, offices, keys, awards,money and, increasingly, fancy titles. These symbols or

objects would be perceived as rather trivial under differentcircumstances, but not as part of this therapeutic play.

Children follow a similar path.

Those unfortunate enough to have to work from an earlyage usually are treated like adults, often with fewer andweaker rewards, or none at all.

Those who grow in regions where child labour is bannedreceive their own share of regulated activities in places we call

schools, a word that in English is the same as that used todescribe ‘a group of fish or other animals’.


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In these industrial educational environments, they spend years following timetables and schedules until they are readyto enter the work force.

Instead of striving for what Ivan Illich called “educationalwebs which heighten the opportunity for each one totransform each moment of his living into one of learning,sharing, and caring”22, they are funneled into a processdesigned to give them knowledge that will be of little value tosurvive once they leave.

Soon, they are funneled again, often after having toendure additional years of even more formal education, totake over their elders, inheriting their timetables and workschedules, until the next generation replaces them.

Those who opt out of traditional paths also find their owndistractions, regardless of whether they are artists or self-employed. Ironically, they tend to experience similar

situations as their counterparts, with their own timetables,milestones and anxieties.

As people started to live longer and developed innovationsthat enabled them to achieve their expected level ofproductivity faster, elements were added to the menu ofdistractions with which they could avoid periods of time longenough to think about the meaning(lessness) of life. Weinvented additional industries devoted exclusively to entertainus, to keep us engaged in repetitive activities that required

little thought and whose main purpose is to amuse us, to giveus diversion.

Interestingly, the word amuse derives from the Latin termsad (to) and muser, which together mean ‘to stare stupidly’ 23.Diversion, on the other hand, comes from the Latin worddivertere , which means ‘to turn away’ from something24.

Juvenal, a Roman poet, put it clearly, for all times tounderstand, when he said, in his Satire X25,

“... iam pridem, ex quo suffragia nulli uendimus, effudit

curas; nam qui dabat olim imperium, fasces, legiones, omnia,


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nunc se continet atque duas tantum res anxius optat, panem etcircenses. ...”

Which translates, “... Already long ago, from when we soldour vote to no man, the People have abdicated our duties; forthe People who once upon a time handed out military command,

high civil office, legions – everything, now restrains itself andanxiously hopes for just two things: bread and circuses. …”

With the power of new electronic tools, there was noshortage of circuses.

The 20th century saw an explosion in entertainmentmodalities that rapidly became accessible to the masses,almost in every corner of the planet26, thanks to the ease withwhich material could be duplicated and distributed.

Although physical duplication technologies for books hadbeen available for centuries, radio and television allowed forthe first time the transmission of electronic copies to large

audiences, almost instantaneously, across long distances.

It was no longer the creator of the content or theperformer who determined the price or profit from the work. Itwas the number of copies sold.

By the end of the century, computer-driven masscommunications made entertaining activities more accessible,diverse, persuasive and powerful than ever.

Modern jesters and gladiators ruled the world.

In 2002, the most extensive study conducted at the dawnof the 21st century reported that Americans were spending onaverage almost 12 hours a day using media, a staggering twothirds of their waking time!27.

The new millennium was welcome by a new phenomenon:those willing to be exposed to advertisements would receivefree digital entertainment in exchange.

Ads, obligingly, quickly became very effective forms ofentertainment in their own right, magnifying the distractingpower of electronic mass media.


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The promise of a day in which every waking moment couldbe swallowed by hard work schedules or by powerful amusingdistractions was finally fulfilled.

Chasing happiness

Our relentless efforts to seek powerful sources ofentertainment or to be more productive may be effective atdistracting us from our fear of death, but do not necessarilylead to a blissful life.

Happiness levels in high-income countries remainedlargely unchanged over the second half of the 20th century,despite massive growth in wealth. This phenomenon, knownas The Easterlin Paradox 28, 29, has led to many efforts aroundthe world aiming to take a deeper look into the relationshipbetween human happiness and so-called economic

development30.Using blunt measurement instruments, the conclusion

appears clear: beyond a certain point, as the cliché goes,money cannot buy happiness.

Once a community has reached a certain level of incomeper capita, at around US$13,000 dollars per year (at 1995values), there appear to be no substantial increases in theperceived levels of happiness with increasing wealth.

Something similar has been shown at the micro, personallevel. It seems that once an individual rises above the‘subsistence level’ of income, somewhere between US$10,000and $20,000 per annum (in terms of purchasing powerparity)31, 32, more money does not translate into morehappiness.

Learning that Nigeria, Mexico, Venezuela, El Salvador andPuerto Rico top the list of the world’s happiest countriessuggests that the opposite might be true, as none of them

could be regarded as the epitome of wealth or technologicalprowess33, 34. This is reinforced by data from the UnitedKingdom, showing a dramatic decline in reported levels of


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happiness from 57% in 1957 to 36% in 2005, despite a three-fold increase in wealth by its population35. The situation iseven more dramatic in Japan, where levels of perceivedhappiness did not change in the presence of a five-foldincrease in wealth36.

The radical implication of these findings is that thepursuit of wealth beyond what is necessary to meet basicneeds might be even detrimental when the main goal is to

achieve optimal levels of happiness37.Nevertheless, a reduction in happiness may be an

acceptable price to pay if the relentless pursuit of busyness,of material wealth, or the fulfillment of what is regarded as“duty” can keep the fear of death at bay.

Enduring awareness

Most of those who break through the protective shieldprovided by denial and distraction pay steep emotional fees.

For some people, the toll comes in the form of what isknown as chronic health anxiety . This is the unbearable senseof dread associated with the fear of death, illness and disease.Its main manifestations are hypochondriasis anddepression38-40.

Hypochondriasis, known colloquially as hypochondria41, is

perhaps the clearest expression of the fear that follows thedissipation of the illusion of immortality. The Greeks coinedthe term, which is a combination of hypo (meaning “below”),and chondros (for “cartilage”, usually of the ribs), as theythought that it resulted from a dysfunction of the spleen42. Itis now clinically defined as a persistent concern of having aserious disease, that lasts at least for 6 months and thatcompels the person to seek medical attention repeatedly. Thisfear remains despite reassurance that there is nothing

physically wrong43. Hypochondria seems to affect about 3 to5% of people seeing a primary care practitioner, and was


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responsible for 10 to 20% of the US medical budget at the endof the 20th century44.

Depression was declared by the World HealthOrganization to be the leading cause of disability in the worldin the year 200045. This condition, which affects an increasingnumber of people, includes a wide array of disordersmanifested through various degrees of sad or “empty” mood;feelings of hopelessness, helplessness, worthlessness and

pessimism; loss of interest in activities that were onceenjoyed; decreased levels of energy, difficulty concentrating,remembering or making decisions; loss of appetite and sleep;irritability; and thoughts of suicide46.

These conditions, not surprisingly, are at the heart ofwhat motivates most forms of psychotherapy and manypsychiatric interventions.

For others, gaining insight of their mortality sends them

to a state of Existential nihilism , expressed as the belief thatlife is meaningless, that the world is devoid of purpose; thathuman existence, including all of its feelings and suffering, isultimately senseless and empty47. For them, free will does notexist. There is no illusion of immortality or control. The gameis unwinnable. There is no victor other than death.

Humans have expressed this level of extreme pessimism(or realism?) for more than two millennia. Philosophers suchas Empedocles (490 – 430 BC), or the lesser-known Hegesis

(circa 250 BC), believed that the predominance of misery andsuffering in our lives makes happiness ultimately anunreacheable goal.

The nihilists’ belief in their “nothingness” leaves themalone and anxious in a vast unresponsive universe48.

They are “barred forever from knowing why yet required toinvent meaning” 47.

Literary giants have also captured the anguish of thenihilist exquisitely over the centuries.


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Shakespeare, for instance, uses Macbeth as his vehicle49 by saying,

“Out, out, brief candle!

Life's but a walking shadow, a poor playerThat struts and frets his hour upon the stage

And then is heard no more; it is a taleTold by an idiot, full of sound and fury,Signifying nothing.” 49

In the twentieth century, the work of Jean-Paul Sartre(1905-1980) and Albert Camus (1913-1960) illustrated how“nothingness is the source of not only absolute freedom butalso existential horror”47.

Not surprisingly, many people experiencing depression orimmersed in the deep thoughts of existential nihilism end upcommitting suicide.

Welcoming afterlife…

For those who cannot find comfort through therapy orintellectual exercises, or for whom a life devoid of highermeaning is not an acceptable option, an alternative, anoverlapping path, is available.

This path may have opened at some point 100,000 to

50,000 years BP when humans appear to have developed theability to believe in supernatural beings and the afterlife50.

Throughout recorded human history, the conviction in theexistence of an afterlife has been reinforced by intuition, bystories from ancestors, by sacred texts, or by some sort ofobservation (either by a human being or an instrument).

Regardless of why or how the belief emerges and getsreaffirmed, it is clear that it leads to spiritual solace byimbuing physical death with purpose.


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Thanks to the belief in the afterlife, death turns into atransitional phase, a mere stepping stone towards an eternalspiritual afterworld or an eternal cycle of re-birth.

Religion - a communal system for the coherence of belieffocusing on a system of thought around an unseen being,person, or object that is considered to be supernatural,sacred, divine, or of the highest truth, and which is codifiedas prayer, ritual and laws51 - seems to have been part of

human culture for a long time too.Since the time of the first human rituals involving

symbolic thought and belief in the supernatural, which havebeen dated to at least 30,000 years BP52, anthropologists havefound, in virtually every culture on earth, religions that sharethe belief in a noncorporeal supernatural God or gods, beliefin the afterlife, and belief in the power of prayer or ritual tochange the course of human events53, 54.

By the year 2000 CE, there were 19 major world religiousgroupings in the world, which could be subdivided into a totalof about 10,000 distinct religions. Of the latter, 270 havereported having over a half million adherents each55, 56.

Consequently, the main challenge for people seekingpeace of mind and protection from the fear of death throughreligion would be which one to choose. Within each religion,no matter how large or small, they would find most of theelements of highly efficient franchised global corporations

vying for hegemony in a highly competitive market. Theywould offer spiritual guidance and support throughindividuals anointed by self-appointed leaders, who wouldfollow manuals with standardized rituals and rules inspiredby the stories or teachings of very charismatic and visionaryhistorical figures. The most recent religions, in their pursuitfor global dominance, are harnessing the distracting power ofentertainment, enriching their rituals with entrancing musicand sophisticated productions delivered through mass media

that reinforce the offer for a risk-free strategy to achieveeternal life.

8/19/2019 Unlearning_ Incomplete Musings on the Game of Life an

unlearning_ incomplete musings on the game of life and the illusions that keep us playing -...

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