This is making up for last week and not writing.
Here is an interesting thought. You can use it as a writing prompt, comedy material, a new life outlook, a war-cry, whatever.
Society is a game.
Not just American society, ALL society. Any kind of human interaction involving two or more people is a game we are all agreeing to play. This game is complex and involves written rules like speed limits, dress codes, and copyright. It also involves unwritten rules like shaking hands, not peeing in a urinal adjacent to another man peeing in a urinal, and talking with your mouth full.
Many of these rules vary from place to place. There are individual rules varying from family to family, often between different combinations of people within the same family. Rules vary in different neighborhoods, counties, states, ethnic groups, regions, and countries. Granted, these rules are helpful. Total chaos never really gets anything done. However, most of the rules involved in this game are quite silly.
Take this scenario: You go to work at a new job and you are in an interview. Already you have followed several dozen rules: you put on pants that morning before you left the house. You are going to a good job so you put on a tie as well. You matched the color and design of your tie with your pants. You drove the speed limit to get to work (close enough anyway). You parked between two little lines painted on the ground. You maybe held the door open for someone leaving as you walked in. You smiled at the person at the front desk asking if they could help you. You said "please" and "thank you." While waiting, you sat in a chair. What is with all these rules? And most of them are utterly ridiculous!
Assuming you are like most people, you did these things not because they were your idea, but because they are rules for playing the Game. (Also the name of a movie from 1997 with Michael Douglas and Sean Penn. Not bad. Worth checking out. Also also the name of an English TV show staring Tom Hughes and Brian Cox. Haven't seen it though.)
Now that you're at the interview you ask about what your job description is and how much you'll be paid. (LoLz)
Job description: We are assuming that this is a decent job and therefor(e) specialized. Ok. We are also assuming that you have to have a decent education to get said job. Awesome. So, you went to school for at least...16-17 years of your life if you were lucky in college. Now we are going to pay you to use a very small portion of what you were taught. Also, you're not allowed to use other things because we're only hired you to do this one thing.
...awesome!
Salary: They are paying you in digital numbers based of immaterial promises and statistics so that you can go to stores and trade numbers you never saw, touched, or really possessed for cars, suits, and homes; physical representations of the status and power those fictional numbers represent. (in a sarcastic, Glados voice) Congratulations, you are very good at this game.
One of the most powerful forms of informing the public of the rules is advertising. Advertising lets you know what everyone wants or already has. Advertising makes you aware of the need you didn't know you had and how to instantly resolve it. Advertising tells you what to buy and how to buy it. Advertising tells us who to associate with and who to avoid.
"Advertising has us chasing cars and clothes, working jobs we hate you we can buy [stuff] we don't need." (500 points for not naming that reference)
And like any game, there are penalties for breaking the rules. Here you go to prison, or worst case you're executed. You are put in time out. You are sent to your room. However, your new room is a small concrete and metal cell sometimes shared with other people who didn't follow the rules. You have to wear an orange jump suit in your new room and your not allowed to go outside until you've learned your lesson. Or until the rest of us think you've learned your lesson.
Things like gangs and the mafia come up when they are tired of playing the game and what to play by different rules. They come up with their own rules and penalties. They play their own game while pretending to play like everyone else.
Now, I'm not advocating NOT playing the Game. The Game is very helpful in keeping things running. Like I said, chaos gets us nowhere. I just want to call to questions which of the rules are actually helpful.
HOAs: does the length of your grass really matter? New rule: you have to keep your grass one inch long. If you don't........you have to give us one hundred of your numbers!
And people judge their own worth based off how other people judge them based off how long their grass is. What?!?!
Sometimes it feels like there are a bunch of eight-year-old people running around making the rules for everyone. Seriously, let's try to actually think this through!
I follow the rules that keep myself out of prison. I also follow the rules that keep me from getting into major conflict with other players because I don't like conflict. It's awkward and I often don't know how to deal with it. I don't know how to interact with conflict. (500 points for that anime reference)
I could keep going but I think the thought is there. Anything else would just be redundant. That and I'm hungry...
Cynical? Yes. Helpful? Probably not. Blogging material? Definitely. Just a different perspective on things. Fun to think about I think.
Love it.
ReplyDelete