Duality Trap: Playing The Game

Let me make it perfectly clear: No matter what game you play or how well you play it, the game is rigged. All games are rigged. The game of life is no less rigged than Monopoly or Bridge. There's no such thing as a fair game, as all games are built through labels and rules that define the game. Without these labels or rules, we would have no game. Therefore, it is rigged just by the very nature of its existence!

Who rigs the game? Who is the Being in power? We are. We created the game and we rigged it to do what it does. When we created the word light, we created it's opposite: darkness. From our experience of light and darkness we may have assigned value judgments to the qualities we perceived to be inherent in light or darkness, forgetting, of course, that we created the light and the darkness labels and thus we also are the ones who perceived value where there was no inherent value. Thus, if born in Africa, you perceive dark to be good and if born in the Western world you may decide light is good. Neither is a false perception, merely different perceptions of the same truth: light and darkness.

So, we built this patriarchal world and we imbued it with male qualities, one of which was hierarchy. Most organizations follow the path of hierarchy and this is modeled in the animal world through what we define as "the pecking order." Therefore, we're pretty smug about ourselves for figuring out how to organize human beings into collectives that work and produce great good in society. However, we've also begun to notice that humans in hierarchal organizations can also produce great evil. We become despondent and despair on the nature of the human soul when faced with atrocities like the present Lebanon-Israel war, the Iraqi war, the rape and starvation of Africa, and the mindless, soulless existences of millions of corporate Americans who live lives of total materialism wondering if there is any meaning to life other then their next paycheck. What can we do? What is wrong with our society?

It simply all begins with the bully. We are in a hierarchal world. There is no escaping the bully if we insist on creating models of organization that create leaders and followers, winners and losers, the supervisor and the employee, and ultimately, the bully and the victim. We are taught that to get our way and to be effective in this society, we must learn when to use force and how to use the system to be the one in power who can affect the most change. If the change we affect through the use of force is positive in our estimation, then we label that person a "hero." If the change produced is negative in our estimation, we label that person a "bully." It's still the same truth. It is hierarchy and power and if we insist on playing this patriarchal game, we can not escape that which we have created. The game is rigged. In a single instant, the hero can change coats and quickly assume the role of the bully, and there is nothing anyone can do to change that. It is inherent in this game.

Recently in our timeframe, there are many of us getting tired of playing this game. We've recognized it is rigged. We have begun to look for other solutions. Are we to go back to matriarchy and live in communities in order to demolish the power of the bully? It doesn't seem likely, socialism does not appear to work any better than capitalism. So, we come to the realization our present systems don't serve us and inherent with them is great evil. What model shall we use if we do not ascribe our world a matriarchal or a patriarchal bias?

Behold, the child is born and the self is awakening. When we learn how to organize our society on the basis of self-autonomy, then we will no longer suffer the punishments of a system that has derailed and is forcing millions of people to play a game they can not win. The game is rigged. We must accept that fact and learn to find new ways to organize in collectives that are neither competitive nor socialistic. We must choose to play a new game even while the old game peters out. We must learn to find the models that exhibit self-autonomy and cooperation if there is to be any hope for our future.