![]() ![]() I hadn't been back-packing for two decades, and I was a little nervous. I felt it again when I went to India last year. And then the characters you come across - so fascinating! So unpredictable! In fact, we've been playing this Earth game for 200,000 years and we still haven't exhausted all its missions, secret levels and hidden Easter eggs. The sky, particularly, is a masterstroke, but you can also drill down on tiny details - right down to the microscopic or even atomic level - and it's still beautifully and wondrously made. And I thought, if this is a computer simulation, what an utterly beautiful simulation. It was a beautiful evening, the sky was turning a sort of bruised purple, the darkening heath seemed to flicker with pagan mischief. I remember walking back over Hampstead Heath one evening last year, as the sun set. I've found myself thinking this more and more over the last couple of years, and I'm not sure if it's healthy or not. And that's precisely what's happened in the last few years - various philosophers and futurists have suggested we're actually living in a virtual simulation, created by future humans or some other intelligent species. That's what I felt when I played Grand Theft Auto for several days in a row - there were so many missions and side-missions, the world of the game was so changeable, so beautiful, so full of interesting characters, that I became totally absorbed in that world.Īnd when you can create games which are that absorbing and immersive, you can start to see this world as a game, a virtual reality. ![]() Today, we can create games that are so immersive, so huge, so brimming with intelligence, that we feel like we're in another world, a world of humans' own creation. We edited heaven out of the game of life. That version - now called simply The Game of Life - is still played today. However, in 1860 a new version of the game was developed, called The Chequered Game of Life, in which the object was not to get to heaven but rather to get rich, get a family, and retire in a nice home. The soul could be one square away from liberation, only to tumble down a large snake - how often this seems to happen to spiritual gurus!Īmerican Puritans developed a similar game in the 19th century called The Mansion of Happiness, in which players moved across squares representing the Christian virtues and vices until they reached heaven (shown on the left). Along the journey, the pieces could move up ladders - representing virtuous actions - or down snakes - representing vices. In medieval India, a popular game was Gyan Chauper, in which players tried to move their pieces towards Moksha or ultimate liberation. In the history of games, there have been games designed to teach people the hidden meaning of life, death and the afterlife, like Senet, an ancient Egyptian game where the movement of the pieces followed the soul's journey through the afterlife. So does treating life like a game necessarily empty it of meaning and moral value? It depends what game you're playing. Ludicrous: early 17th century (in the sense ‘sportive, intended as a jest’): from Latin ludicrus (probably from ludicrum ‘stage play’) Not only does it make life ludicrous but it also represents a very bleak outlook on our existence.' In the Quran, Allah likewise says: 'We didn't create the heavens and the earth, and all that is between, for mere play.'The Islamic apologist Hamza Andreas Tzortzis writes: 'believing life is just a game equals no ultimate purpose and value. He preferred 'life is a dance' - that frames life in a non-competitive and open way. ![]() The problem, the author suggested, was men were attached to the wrong metaphor for life. And it had this line: 'life is not a race, it's not a game, and it's not a fight'. The other day I came across one of those ubiquitous articles about the Problem with Men. ![]()
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