You’re playing within a game right now but you’re just not aware of it.
Why? Because you’re so immersed within it, you’re like a fish in water.
In effect, just like how a person can put on VR headset and feel immersed within a virtual environment, so too are we immersed within a virtual environment which is a representation of the information being transmitted to our brains via our senses.
To put this more simply, we don’t see reality.
In fact, we’ve evolved this way on purpose.
What we call reality is, in fact, our perception of it.
Beau Lotto helps explain this within his book Deviate: The Science of Seeing Differently.
The answer is that we don’t see reality. The world exists. It’s just that we don’t see it. We do not experience the world as it is because our brain didn’t evolve to do so. It’s a paradox of sorts: Your brain gives you the impression that your perceptions are objectively real, yet the sensory processes that make perception possible actually separate you from ever accessing that reality directly. Our five senses are like a keyboard to a computer—they provide the means for information from the world to get in, but they have very little to do with what is then experienced in perception.
Beau Lotto, Deviate
Others can also help us understand this from different perspectives as well.
Dave Gray describes how our beliefs form our perception of reality, using the parable of the blind men and the elephant.
This is what the story of the blind men and the elephant is all about. We are all blind. Reality is like the elephant. We may be able to grasp pieces of the truth, but the whole truth about reality is unknowable.
Reality is something that is out there. It has a concrete existence, whether you believe it or not. A belief is something you hold in your mind, a kind of map or model of that external reality. But just as maps and models can be wrong, so can beliefs. And just as following the wrong map can get you into dangerous places, a wrong belief can get you into trouble.
When people confuse their beliefs with reality, they get into arguments and conflicts, sometimes even wars.
Dave Gray, Liminal Thinking: Create the Change You Want by Changing the Way You Think
Donald Hoffman helps us to understand this from the perspective of seeing life as a video game whereby we don’t see reality directly but rather we have evolved to see “fitness payoffs” which help us to survive and evolve in turn.
Think of life as a video game.
In a video game, you have to try to grab as many points as quickly as you can at the level you’re at. And if you get enough points in the minimal time, you might get to the next level. If you don’t, you die.
And the idea is that life is like that. It’s like a video game, but instead of the points in the game, we have fitness payoffs.
Donald Hoffman, Truth vs Reality: How we evolved to survive, not to see what’s really there
Perhaps the most famous perspective of this is Plato’s allegory of the cave which he described in his work Republic around 375 BC, written as a dialogue between the famous greek philosopher Socrates and his brother Glaucon.
In the allegory, Plato describes people who have spent their entire lives chained by their necks and ankles in front of an inner wall with a view of the empty outer wall of the cave. They observe the shadows projected onto the outer wall by objects carried behind the inner wall by people who are invisible to the chained “prisoners” and who walk along the inner wall with a fire behind them, creating the shadows on the inner wall in front of the prisoners. The “sign bearers” pronounce the names of the objects, the sounds of which are reflected near the shadows and are understood by the prisoners as if they were coming from the shadows themselves.
Socrates explains how the philosopher is like a prisoner freed from the cave and comes to understand that the shadows on the wall are not the direct source of the images seen. A philosopher aims to understand and perceive the higher levels of reality. However, the other inmates of the cave do not even desire to leave their prison, for they know no better life.
Allegory of the Cave, Wikipedia
In fact, if you’re familiar with the movie The Matrix, you might remember Morpheus mirroring a quote that sounds very similar to how these inmates react within the cave when presented with the opportunity to escape it.
The Matrix is a system, Neo. That system is our enemy. But when you’re inside, you look around, what do you see? Businessmen, teachers, lawyers, carpenters. The very minds of the people we are trying to save. But until we do, these people are still a part of that system and that makes them our enemy. You have to understand, most of these people are not ready to be unplugged. And many of them are so inured, so hopelessly dependent on the system, that they will fight to protect it.
Morpheus, The Matrix
Now while this perceptual “Matrix” we are within ourselves is not so much our “enemy,” since it is a simulation of our own evolutionary creation, it is important to become aware of it so that we don’t become trapped and stuck within it ourselves, like prisoners within the cave or people within The Matrix.
Fortunately, Alfred Korzybski, a Polish-American philosopher, can assist us with this, when he said the following.
A map is not the territory it represents, but, if correct, it has a similar structure to the territory, which accounts for its usefulness.
Alfred Korzybski
Donald Hoffman himself mirrors this quote by describing how using this map is like using a useful computer interface.
So I don’t take the icon literally. It’s not literally true about what’s in the reality. But I do take it seriously. I would not drag that icon to the trash can carelessly. If I drag the icon to the trash can, I could lose all of my work. So I take my icons seriously, but not literally.
Donald Hoffman, Truth vs Reality: How we evolved to survive, not to see what’s really there
What I find fascinating about this all is that if you understand what myths are in terms of Joseph Campbell’s work on mythology, they work very similarly.
Myths are fictional stories that communicate truths about life.
So if you believe myths to be true and literal, just like you might believe your perception is actually reality, then you’re completely missing the entire point of what they’re trying to communicate to you.
But how can we take all of this knowledge now and actually put it to use?
We can do so by beginning to see life as a game.
Again not literally. But more ontologically, to understand the true nature of life.
To do so, let’s get the help of an American academic by the name of James P. Carse to assist us, using his book Finite and Infinite Games: A Vision of Life as Play and Possibility.
There are at least two kinds of games. One could be called finite, the other infinite.
A finite game is played for the purpose of winning, an infinite game for the purpose of continuing the play.
James P. Carse, Finite and Infinite Games: A Vision of Life as Play and Possibility
To summarize the meaning of these two types of games that we are playing with life, Carse is describing how there are at least two primary mindsets within life. One is focused on competition and conclusion, while the other is focused on continuation and evolution.
What I would like to now propose in presenting all of this knowledge is to take a step further and see a much bigger picture of life as a whole.
Life is an overarching game in which the different levels of it are each their own smaller game within the larger game.
Let’s jump back to Donald Hoffman’s quote to help us absorb what this means.
Think of life as a video game.
In a video game, you have to try to grab as many points as quickly as you can at the level you’re at. And if you get enough points in the minimal time, you might get to the next level. If you don’t, you die.
Donald Hoffman, Truth vs Reality: How we evolved to survive, not to see what’s really there
But while Hoffman is speaking from a physical life perspective (in terms of passing on what you’ve learnt to your offspring before you die), I’d like to propose a twist and present life from a psychological perspective of meaning instead.
Life is an overarching larger game whereby when you collect enough experience points, you are able to level up to the next level, and in doing so, the game changes.
Or to put it another way, when you level up within life, you’re able to shift from playing finite games to infinite games.
But to finish things off, I’d like to throw in a paradoxical kicker related to something Hoffman said, which I will later elaborate on, especially with regard to its meaning.
Levelling up initially feels like you’re dying.