Videogames, Metaphysics and Life

You know, it may sound silly, but I have had some of my most significant realisations while parked in front of a console. I am not a fan of cheesy analogies, but here I must make exception.

See, life is indeed a lot like a videogame. We temporarily suspend our previous state of existence to enter a world, where we assume an avatar in order to experience that virtual world, to participate in it and perhaps to learn from it.

In theory, anything could happen in that world, although in practice limitations have been put in place by the designer of the videogame; laws, rules, things like 'game physics', all of which are arbitrary conditions dependent on the will of the designer. Really, although these are in one sense limiting, they are also essential - for without limits there can be no challenges and thus no acheivement.

But things can go wrong when playing videogames. I can attest to the fact that it is possible to literally go into a trance-like state and actually not hear things going on around you; this kind of thing has occasionally happened to me while playing that reptillian-brain-fest also known as Call of Duty online mode. Literally, people talk to you and it takes you a while to snap out enough to listen to them so that you can never tell what they-damn don't they understand that stoned American kid is shooting at me? Shut up!

And this recollection brings me, inevitably, to Bill Hicks. See, as he almost said, we can play a videogame, and it's got bright lights and it goes round and round, and some of us who've been playing for a long time, we start to think the game is real, and then some people who've remembered come back and tell us, "hey, it's just a game." And we - kill those people. (Or just yell at them!)

But I am done with videogames. I figured shooting in effigy thousands of people wasn't doing much for my soul or my psyche.

Alas, perhaps we have become transfixed on the game of life, and in starting to think it is 'real', that our material possessions are real and so on, we have lost sight of any sense of purpose here. Oh, it's a bloody important game - we do not know for sure that you can respawn once it is over - but a game it is nonetheless.

And that's where we are asking only half of the question. Everyone, rightly, wants to know what happens when we die. Nobody wants to stop existing...which implies that we intuitively know there is a purpose to our existence, despite constantly pleading to know 'why we are here'. But is it not an equally legitimate question, perhaps central to understanding the answer to the other one, that we ask what we were before birth?

Western religion does not discuss this at all, but I reckon if we believe we may exist beyond death, I say it's equally legitimate - perhaps essential - to consider that we may have existed before birth. If so, did we choose to come here? Would you, really? And if so, what are you here to accomplish? I rather naively hope we get some answers about all this when the game is over. For now though, enjoy the bright lights!