The Meaning of Life is the Game Gene

Geoffrey Hamilton
January 1, 2007
Last revised November 1, 2007

Philosophy has become about endless analysis, questioning and mystery and as a result has become useless or obscure to most people -- even though its subject is relevant to everyone and every way of life. People often turn to self help gurus because philosophers have preferred to impress each other rather than actually answer the common questions of life. In the attempt to do just that here, the following paper is an answer to, probably, the most common question people have at some point in life -- "What is the meaning of it all?".

This question has been ruled immature and foolish by the countless self-appointed gate keepers of philosophy. However, it can only be foolish if the question is wrongly assumed (as Hume did) to be a search for an Ultimate answer -- only a relative meaning is to be discovered. And it turns out that the answer to the meaning of life doesn't take much time. In fact I'll tell you now. The meaning of life is that meaning is all made up. Perhaps it seems too easy to say so, but the evidence is all around for those who wish to see. Instead of the answer this article is actually offering to explain how meaning is created through the existence of a game gene and to begin with why it must be so.

Ask yourself, have you ever seen an absolute meaning, one that is not made up or contingent on anything? It turns out such a meaning is not within the realm of possibility. For starters meaning cannot live without contexts. As Hamlet says after hearing some conventional sounding nonsense, "...put your discourse into some frame...." Without a context there is no meaning to be had. The necessity of a subject/context relationship makes meaning incapable of being an absolute. Absolutes are noticeably fictions anyway; whole swaths of philosophers (like politicians) use bald assertion alone and just pretend these are absolutes from then on. Optional: see appendix called "Absolutes and Numbers".

Without absolutes in life there remains only two basic ways to create meaning. Previously these two ways were argued through an exceedingly pretentious debate between those who advocated an a posteriori system and those offering an a priori system. This debate is more simply and scientifically put: meaning is acquired either somehow after birth, or by a genetically installed form of meaning -- or even more simply put: meaning can be made after or before birth (the old nature / nurture debate). However, it turns out that the debate was a fool's errand all along. The following will show meaning must be both genetic and experiential.

The belief in a genetic encoding of meaning has a long history and many documented witnesses. Livia, wife of Augustus Caesar, is reported to have said, "...there is no law and no fear that is stronger than those instincts which are implanted by nature." Two thousand years later many scientists agree and are currently searching for genes that determine risk, selfishness, language, and innumerable other areas connected to meaning. No doubt, it is easy to see all around us that some meaning is inherited, like the meaning of eating. Even time would have no meaning without the genetic construct that make our circadian rhythm. There is a famous scientific example showing how far genes can take life into meaning. Twins have shown they will share their likes and dislikes more often when separated than when together -- indicating their closeness allows them to deliberately reject the genetically instructed meaning and create a differentiated meaning that is distinct for its own sake. Without the example of their own twin neither one can know how to resist their instincts. The rest, those without twins at their side, cannot know which of their beliefs are instinctual and, so, are unable to resist. Yes, some meaning is inherited, but meaning must be contingent on a changing reality or it won't survive (because it is used in the survival of life itself -- the signs of danger being one such fluctuating reality.) Life learns constantly how to survive, so a genetic source can never account for all knowledge and behavior.

Genes being natural, some believe that if something is natural it must be absolute or true, so they think that what our instincts drive us to do must be a back door to an absolute. I agree that whenever something is unnatural (like holding one's breath forever) it cannot be correct or absolute. However, the meanings offered in the genetic code cannot be either true or absolute for any reason, even for having aided survival for many generations (as a car is not true or absolute for running perfectly). Plato's vague theory of innate knowledge suffers from similar objections: many damning universal genetic traits can be found to counterbalance those 'true' or 'useful' traits, from the mob mentality to the repeated times humanity has wasted its own environment to the point of self destruction. If one instinct is an absolute just for being there, they all should be. Meaning cannot be absolute in any sense and an insufficient amount of meaning is innate to account for it all. We must look elsewhere.

The other way to create meaning, after birth, still requires a genetically produced mechanism to accomplish this task. If it were otherwise, a rock would create meaning. As an introduction to this section let me say that this mechanism also needs a place to store meaning, to analyze meaning and to see meaning, all of which are accomplished by the mechanisms already recognized as genetically produced -- the brain and eyes. Another mechanism, one for thinking as a whole is a recognized encoded behavior. However, none of these mechanisms are sufficient for meaning. The brain and thought must be prompted to create meaning from day one or no one would know the significance of all that's out there in this contingent world. Without prompting there would be no reason or drive to live at all. Life needs to be tricked into self preservation. So by a compulsion to make believe and by meaning's manufacture on site, we can build valuable reasons to live; and not only reasons, but methods and procedures as well. No one could even know how to get milk from their mother without prompting. That further encoded behavior which creates the much needed meaning is best labelled game playing.

I use the terms game and gamegene because the induced behavior is, by observation, always in complete accordance with what is generally called games (involving goals, rules, play, emotions, challenge, progress, sense of self, a finish, etc). This is the basic psychology of living: games and the compulsive playing of games. Of course many doubt that all our thoughts and actions are constituted as games, but consider how it could possibly be otherwise when we can see, as in the following section, that every component in games is compulsive to life when not being addictive.

The universe has no bounds (the big bang theory is about the observable universe and there is always a before and an outside) and life obviously does not know everything about it by necessity. Logic and intelligence fail utterly to grasp 'Truth'. Life must be satisfied with this predicament and therefore we are prompted to make goals. These are purposely limited thoughts that are chosen to the exclusion of aiming at all things. It seems ridiculous because we do it so compulsively, but this step must be done for life to function. (A zebra's stripes, for example, inhibits this step in a lion by confusing the detection of individuals {goals} in a herd.) Even regarding survival, there are thousands of ways to proceed and so goal selections must be essentially arbitrary -- the compulsion makes it happen.

Next, there are infinite ways to get at the goals, but we must limit it to what we can do and want to do, so we have rules. Some organic rules like time, gravity and the weather are rules we either accept or don't, but they have consequences to foist upon us. Some other rules we define as individuals, or are defined for us, like our rules regarding killing. The consequences are more complicated here, but these rules are completely pliable, even regarding killing. Again, this step is basically arbitrary so the compulsion works to trick us into choosing. As long as we limit our methods with rules and proceed, that is enough to get going.

There is no certain way to any goal in the unpredictable universe, so we must feel our way or play to it. Intellect has a role in play, in this and in many other areas of games, but only at a basic level. Play has joyful connotations to it, but anyone who has played all--in on a poker hand and lost can see play for what it is, a varying emotional trial and error process. The compulsion to play is the most apparent aspect of life's behavior and the only way any being can proceed when outcomes are always uncertain.

We feel our way while playing because, above the limited contribution the intellect can give to an unknowable future, the emotions confirm or deny the value of that play. We feel our way if we want to be successful. The intellect cannot even shoot a hoop; 'our' brain does such amazing calculations to get a basketball through a hoop, but it doesn't mean we did it. The brain doesn't even want 'our' input when the body's skills reach higher levels. Choking, in all games, happens when we think too much. Emotions create the value for the entire game as well as for life and living itself. All feelings even exist solely for the use of games. For example, knowing of the many horrors in the world, like starvation and torture, cannot emote a wince from people until a suitable story is made that completes a fantasy which can turn an enemy into a brother or a stranger into one's alter ego. That's the only way to empathize. Emotions from games provide the illusion that any life is worth something when ultimately nothing is there. Feelings also commonly focus the game compulsion towards particular games, whether it be video games, a charity, a person to love or a career. This focus makes more observable the compulsions that define the effect of the gamegene, especially in addicted individuals.

Hormones are the currency of emotions. However, so as not to debase these monies, the structure of payment from one part of the 'self' to another part of the 'self' is regulated by the requirement for games to be performed. Hormones are not some automatic dispensing machine untied to what the mind experiences. It's observable that games and hormones are relevant only through each other. I say "only" with the reservation that there is always a short circuiting possible through science and drugs. Hormones are dispensed in the body to create the emotion that is required in order to give value to what the mind unconsciously determines as important, (relevant to its games, one way or another).

Key emotions that determine continued play are related to challenge. Without this emotion boredom takes charge and sucks out the psychological energy from the activity. We see this when a life wants to die, so it is no trivial matter. Challenge creates. Also we all have a demonstrable need for challenges, as demonstrated by the discovery ten years ago of the 'risk' gene. The measurably longer this gene is in an individual the greater the challenge must be.

Integral to most cases of challenge is competition. Only through this incidental game factor does life have the ability to make standards, rankings and common values. Without competition no one can know what in particular they are missing, even if they are starving to death. This kind of ignorance is shown to be the case over and over again with isolated people (wild children) and isolated cultures (stone age tribes found today), equally matched cultures (the 1970's Soviet and American Empires), and even between species (humanity and any other species).

Part of the process of challenge involves learning from the emotional evaluations that occur during a game. You either like something or you don't and you adjust your future goals, rules and play accordingly. This learning instills a progression into the process that requires a constant rise in the level of the actual challenge on behalf of the emotion of challenge. This progress is expected because the emotions cannot maintain their equilibrium due to this effect of learning. Eventually, learning cannot go on forever and so progress stops and the game is given up and a new game started. So this progress in the level of challenge is actually the attempt to slow the inevitable decline of emotion and emotion's sanctioned value for life. However, this progress can be seen (relative to a particular game only) as the cause of actual physical growth in various spheres like economics and 'the evolutionary arms race' between species. The compulsion to play games feeds actual competition and progress (relative to a given game), but not always and not necessarily. Competition and progress are useful and likely external consequences of the gamegene, but keeping the emotion of challenge at the right level is the purpose.

It is our sense of where we, as individuals, stand in the universe that makes any life relevant. Our sense of self, and the choices made respecting the self, makes a game work. Though this sense works, and makes the games we play function, it is quite misplaced. Very little of 'us' can be called 'us'. Nearly all of our body is foreign and replaceable. Billions of other life forms inhabit and use our being for their own being -- like the six hundred different species of bacteria just in our mouths. Even our 'own' cells have minds and lives of their own. Very little of what our brains think about is conscious and even our conscious thoughts are barely under 'our' control. We do not exist. However, a game must have an individual and so a sense of self is manufactured in every life form to stake that game. That is all 'we' are, yet we are obviously compelled to believe 'we' exist.

Unlike one's whole life, which never has a final ending from the perspective of the sense of self (even in death -- it just stops mid stride), lots of events and thoughts do come to an end. These endings may seem real or based on the facts of life, but they are chosen from the continuum of existence by us as individuals as the finale to some story. This story is only a new game made of up of the game we just played as we replay it to ourselves. We suddenly see how the game may be finished; it could be abandoned as boring -- that's an ending to a story certainly; it could also end when the spouse has an affair -- or not end, if that's the way your game is playing. Endings, closure, fat ladies singing are about games that are being abandoned and emotional evaluations related to that game closing shop. The desire to see an end when none exists is consistent with a game compulsion.

These are the main ingredients of games and how life needs them to make meaning from living -- there are no grounds more relative than this. These aspects of games actually work together in a continuum and the separation of the various parts is for the purposes of discussion. All these aspects of life add up to the existence of a gamegene, nothing else applies, not a survival gene, not a selfish gene, not a god behind the curtain (who would also requires a gamegene to want to live).

Now, even within the limited scope of a pitch black torture chamber all the above applies -- the games must be played; "Is there an escape?"; "If I cooperate, will the torture really stop?"; "I remember that day near the cottage when. . . ." From the practical to the fantastic, many games one plays intersect or overlap, but they never stop even if one can never move or socialize. A man with cabin fever is the result of what anyone experiences when limited to purely mental games. Meaning for that individual seems strange to others only because meaning was created in isolation from those particular others.

When no threat to survival is apparent it is again only games which are the activity of compulsive choice. This observation is not only seen in spoiled rich kids and their extreme drinking contests or dangerous sports, but in every observable being. When you give any life form all it needs, and divorce it from any whiff of danger to life or status, obviously all it does and wants to do is play games. (A tiger pacing in a small cage is playing a game -- the only physical game it can.) It is as if all life is a windup toy soldier that seems to walk (survive), but actually just spins cogs (play games). We only appreciate that fact when we pick it up and hold its 'legs' off the ground and these flail about devoid of the usual appearance of purpose. Games aid survival incidentally, and that's why game playing itself survives, but survival is not the point of anything since no one survives. The point of life, if you could call it that, is just to play some random game.

When a parent says to their child, "Lets make a game of it," referring to eating, cleaning a room, or any other useful activity, they are really trying to find the kind of game the child will play. If he won't play the 'pleasing mommy' game he could always play the 'don't make mommy mad' or the 'earn allowance' games. These made up scenarios were always games, or formed parts of games, throughout human history. Every action is like this situation. From listening, to war, from going to Mars, to going for milk -- every activity is a game or part of a game. Though there is a compulsion to play games, it's not just to play any old game, it must have value for the individual. Listening is just such a game where it is not possible to listen to something unless you imagine the goal of it as having some value. Often a game chosen is long lasting, like a career, and then activities like going for milk and even going to Mars become only part of the play in that game. These long--game play activities often are void of much of the emotional connection that exists when the activity is done for its own sake. The phrase, "Lets make a game of it," (and all the variations of "life is ia game" in existence) also shows how we already recognize that any activity can be a game. We would never say alternatives like, "Let's make survival out of it," because there is no compulsion to just survive. In fact, a genetic compulsion to survive would cause unresolvable mental paralysis as it cannot be known how best to survive, and it would leave the existence of sports and other 'useless' games inexplicable.

There is also an overwhelming desire to see winners and losers in life. And the measure of such distinctions is patently the work of games. Think how a diligent artist may paint a perfect canvas that conforms to a near universal set of criteria, but he is too proud or incompetent to market it. Pity may come to mind, but what everyone will sense is the idea of a loser. On the other hand the idea of a winner will easily come to mind when observing nearly any genocidal maniac as long as their winning streak lasts: Alexander the Great is one example, and any small town bad boy is another. Destructive winners and creative losers -- no one unconsciously cares about who is destructive or creative, just who won and lost. Players and quitters are nearly synonymous except at a more basic level: we will automatically respect a player and have contempt for quitters. Labeling other people winners and losers is the most significant designations one can use on others or hear about oneself.

This game habit is instilled by what is best called the game gene. Whether such a thing is one gene or many is irrelevant and whether it has been found yet or not is immaterial, there is logically a game gene. Meaning can arrive in life forms and survive no other way. This is not the place to give all the evidence that I've collected, or that is out there for anyone to see, this is an introduction. But as Pliny the Younger said "...everyone...will always find an argument most convincing if it leads to the conclusion he has reached himself..." I can actually do no more.

GRH