The Game

Hello Everyone:

This post is not for E319, just some random thoughts if anyone wishes to have a simple conversation. Although I doubt anyone will read this post, I would like to discuss the idea of The Game.

First off, I shall explain the significance of The Game for anyone who has yet to lose it (if you do not want to join The Game and its never-ending cycle of inevitable loss, please stop reading now). The Game is as its name implies a simple game where one loses upon thinking about it. Although I am unsure as to where it began, I do know that many people are a part of it.

With this level of background knowledge, anyone who decides to read this emailshould have the ability to understand the following rant (which I shall begin now).

The Game represents two major conflicts: the struggle between humans and failure, and the humanity dealing with its imperfect methods of communication. Humanity versus failure, the first of the major conflicts, parallels the idea of conservation (for a small physics reference). No matter how much humans want to succeed, we cannot circumvent the natural laws of the world. Though we can make gold from lead, we need an enormous amount of energy to do so; to travel across the world we need to spend time, money, and energy/fuel. Similarly, no matter how much you may want to win, if you play The Game you will ALWAYS lose. The only way humans can deal with this problem of inevitable failure, is make the most out of failure. In this way, there are many people who cope with the epic fail (pardon the colloquialism/slang or whatever that is) associated with the game through various methods. Some choose to make others lose with them, while others choose to ignore their failures at The Game and live their lives in peace.

The second major conflict, humanity versus imperfect communication, simply exists as a more microscopic version of the previous problem. Due to the fact that humans cannot perfectly transmit thoughts among themselves and must rely on manipulating language to send messages to each other, there are times when we cannot send the message we want. The Game takes advantage of this inevitable failure by closely tying the connotation of failure to the ordinary word: game. By having a common word carry connotations that one may not intend, The Game displays the fallibility of language.

In the end, I believe that some failure is inevitable, but also that we must deal with the present and succeed as much as possible until we die (and therefore lose at life). Although I truly despise The Game and its cycle of failure, I appreciate that it has led to my thinking about many important aspects of reality.

As a side note/question (to the few who may read this post):
Can humans avoid failure?


Love,
Randolph Chua (has lost The Game)