part one of three

A - The basic concept of this theory is that all life, including humanity, needs an ongoing internally generated motive to exist and what that turns out to be is a genetically encoded disposition to play games -- what I call the game gene.

B - Life itself is not a game. Life is a bland, useless series of things and moments that are without any ultimate purpose or meaning. Games give life a structure, value and meaning where none are present. The game gene does help all life survive, but secondarily it can allow living itself to seem completed (or overdone) and so can make all life forms bored (or fulfilled) and so ready to die - and in some cases able to will one's own death without outside aide.

C - With some purposeful exceptions, the games played are not directly involved in survival. Survival is incidental, not purposeful, and it is often irrelevant to itself - even within life and death circumstances such as hunting for food.

D - A process does take place which describes how life survives and it is called simolution. Simolution means that life incidentally reproduces, or sims, itself and never rises or falls in any absolute value. This means it can only be valued ultimately as zero. This is not optimistic or pessimistic, it is a steady state.

E - In regards to the age-old philosophical debate, knowledge can precede experience only in the form of a genetically encoded instruction to understand something (like time, gravity or mathematics), but this knowledge does not become absolute, or better, in any way. Innate ideas are no truer than knowledge gained by experience and can be quite false irrespective of whether that information helps one survive. Games need make no sense to observers, can be full of errors, full of cheating and still they may help life itself survive.

F - Even a God cannot give or receive any absolute knowledge or escape the need for games to give meaning to its own life. Anyone who attempts to sidestep the basic illogic of all existence with the claim that God is too great to be comprehended by people is somehow the one being that is comprehending God. Need I say more?

G - Life forms need a large degree of stupidity in order to want to exist. If any life form lives significantly longer and learns more than it does today stupidity would need to proportionally increase in relation to the potential increase in any recognition that life is purposeless.

H -The common over-manufacturing and over-consuming of meaning through games can use up values and leave many life-forms with a need to commit suicide, if they can't just lay down and die.

I - Justice is a fiction that only exists to show who is in charge. Morality is a assertion used in order to trump other's values.

J - This game gene theory is just a game itself so escapes the accusatory claim that it is an absolutist theory in relativist clothing. Play with it or don't, it makes no difference to me.

K - Games consist of goals, rules, play (involving intellect but not dominated by it), challenge, and emotional rewards or warnings - what is commonly called emotional investment. Emotions need intelligence to appraise the play in relation to previously stored values. Intellect needs emotions to rank appraisel. Important are the perceptions of progress and the perceptions of risk or challenge which fall between the certain and the impossible. Without the belief that progress is occuring and without risk the game will not be played. If there is a sense that there is no point in continuing, any game may be discontinued. Emotions are then turned into values by the intellect for use later as further goals

Long Section

1) The game gene theory is simply an English term for a detailed idea that accounts for the continuing existence of all life, but which stops well short of explaining why non-life or the whole universe exists in the first place. It assumes, for good reason, that the big bang theory is wrong and irrelevant , as is God, and that the universe is infinite in space and time. Multi-verse theories are better in that they recognize the proto-universe (or actual) as infinite.

2) The term "game gene" is used because it most closely represents the main motivation of life, a genetically induced desire to play games. One piece of the gamegene has been found already in the discovery of a risk taking gene: the longer this gene is the greater the risk someone needs to take in life. Other pieces have been discovered in the near identical reactions of the brain during real events and imagined. Also the brain cannot handle not making decisions. People feel they must make decisions and, it turns out, when people see acceptable games it offers them a way to decide (see Live Science). Experiments in 2005 with empathy, so-called, have also shown an automatic element to the playing within another's imagined point of view. However the scientists doing the experiment failed to offer a chance to choose to play - the subjects were in the experiment in order to play and only to play - they couldn't say no. See related empathy articles at (see Live Science) (see BBC science). There are many many more experiments that show aspects of the game gene function.

3) 'Game' is the most accurate term because if the elements of games are abstracted out from common games such as hockey or cards, all life can be seen to play games consistently; even more consistently then life trys to survive. 'Gene' is the most accurate term to describe an inherited sub-cellular structure or series of structures which instructs the game, and other, behaviors in a life form.

4) Games cannot be dismissed, as in 'they're just games', any more than E=Mc² can be dismissed as 'just' relative. Gladiator games and Mayan ball games involved the most serious consequences , as do other rituals involving sacrifice or gambling. The fallacy of a dualism between what we usually call games and real life is no more relevant than the distinction between a gladiator's practice and his final show. Both are games, but we only think there are serious consequences with one rather than with the other.

5) This theory is an interpretation of observations anyone can make and most everyone does make at some point in their life. As an example, a large number of movies contain some understanding that life, at its most profound level, is about games.

part two of three